Press Conference of the European University in St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg, House of Journalists, February 19, 2008

Nikolay Vakhtin: I am pleased to see that we have a fairly large number of European University alumni and current students in the hall, as well as members of the Alumni Association. And if any reporters are interested, you can speak with them after the press conference. That’s for starters. Now let me begin.
To my right is Oleg Kharkhordin, Vice-Rector for Development of the European University; to my left is Leonid Ravnushkin, Vice-Rector for Administrative Matters. My name is Nikolay Vakhtin, and I am the Rector of the University. We are holding this press conference today on a sad anniversary—today it has been eight years since the death of Anatoly Sobchak, the man who actually created or, more accurately, was one of the creators of the European University. He got the idea in 1991, began to realize it in 1992, completed it in 1994, and now for 13 years the University has been occupying the building Anatoly Aleksandrovich allocated to us. I will not go into detail about what the European University is, because you have material on that, and our website has more, and generally I think everyone has learned recently what the European University is. I will just say a couple of words about how we conduct postgraduate education, that our purpose is to produce first-class specialists in the social sciences – but not just professionals, but simply free people. Our mission is the training, let us say, of a new educated élite for Russia. We are not a political institution, and we are not a human rights organization, but we are certainly part of civil society, because as I have already said, we are training free people. And that’s the strange and evil irony of the date—that bailiffs have sealed the European University’s lecture hall on Science Day and we are holding a press conference on the suspension of the University’s activities on the anniversary of our founder’s death… This strange unpleasant irony of history seems pretty symbolic.
I will not lay out the fire inspectorate’s charges against us or the details of the court case at this time—you are all more or less up to speed. When I finish, I’ll ask Mr. Ravnushkin to show you some documents and say a few words. I want to comment a little on the circumstances. We are evidently dealing with an unexpected tightening of the fire inspectorate’s requirements regarding fire code violations, some of which we have corrected – but it has taken a long time and a lot of money—and some of them simply cannot be corrected or would take, say, three or four years, because they require detailed coordination with the State Landmark Preservation Inspectorate [GIOP]—as you know, we occupy an architectural landmark. Simultaneously with the fire inspectorate, the University has been undergoing two more audits: one by the Federal Registration Service [FRS], a unit of the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for all nonprofit organizations, and one by the Science Committee of the St. Petersburg government. We don’t yet know the results of these audits; the Science Committee has already completed its audit, and the FRS audit is still underway.
Based on the fire inspectorate’s results, we are now working to correct these violations, but the fire codes and their application today are such that it is fairly difficult to objectively establish [the proper] level of fire safety. All this is very worrisome and suggests that someone wants to create a maximum of difficulties for the University—I will not say to close it.

Who needs this and why is a question that we will be asking ourselves over the next month and a half. But there are various possibilities, as you can see. One is that it’s just the shortcomings of imperfect Russian laws, and mainly of the law-enforcement system. We often see cases where standards are interpreted one way today, and another way tomorrow, so in this situation, especially in the case of fire inspectorates, the operation of any institution can be suspended for perfectly lawful and formally correct reasons, but the true reasons do not become clear for some time. Nor can I rule out the possibility that the pressure on the European University is tied to an attempt to drive the university out of the building we have occupied since 1994; as I have already said, this building was allocated to us by decision of St. Petersburg’s mayor at the time, Anatoly Sobchak. This is the most plausible theory, although in fact there can be an enormous number of possibilities. I’ve even heard one to the effect that all this is a thoroughly planned PR campaign by the European University. I will not even attempt to rebut this due to its absolute senselessness.

There are other theories. It’s no secret to anyone, we all understand perfectly, that all these events are occurring during an election campaign. During an election campaign, observers are likely to see big politics, the biggest politics, behind any conflict. We must understand that the closure of the European University, or at any rate this kind of scandal involving a suspension of its operations, is now evoking and will evoke a response in Russian society, and in the Russian media, and in the foreign media. This is already happening. We are not the ones playing this political card; to the contrary—all last week we did everything we possibly could to damp this political wave. The cause of the conflict, the cause of the situation with the European University, comes from outside the walls of the European University. It’s someone else. It evidently suits someone for a scandal to break out in St. Petersburg during the election campaign, and this kind of scandal in particular. I must say, the target was very precisely chosen. An attack on the European University covers two points of the platform of the main candidate for president at the same time: [Dmitry] Medvedev has spoken out for a radical change in law-enforcement practice and on the importance of innovative education. So a simultaneous attack on the European University—I will not address other similar attacks here—an attack on the European University will make someone think that the words of the successor, or more precisely, the most likely future president, are at variance with the facts. This can be interpreted as a purposeful campaign to exacerbate the situation before the election, and to do so specifically in St. Petersburg.

We find ourselves in good company here: the closure of the Journalists’ Union building in Moscow will also certainly evoke a wide response. Yesterday, fontanka.ru reported that “the Main Administration of the Ministry of Emergency Situations [MChS] suspended… brought to court … for 90 days… fire safety violation… 14 charges….” Well, the St. Petersburg fire inspectorate is much more efficient—we have 52 [violations].

The only question is, what are we going to do next? First, we will patiently work to correct the violations and use all legal measures to restore the university’s operations. At present, we cannot lawfully hold any classes. I know that some teachers are inviting their graduate students—after all, we are a graduate program, and most of our students are working on dissertations, that work cannot stop—I know that many teachers are inviting their graduate students home, that they are holding classes somewhere, I don’t know, at their homes or in cafés…. But we know nothing about this and officially the University is closed. We will make every effort to try to save the European University, this is our main goal, and we will make every effort to try to develop the European University further. Today, we need the support of civil society to do so. We need your support, we need the support of the media. I know that many associations and scientific societies of St. Petersburg either have already written and published, or are preparing letters in support of the European University. I know that our alumni are preparing a joint appeal, I know that our current students are writing a joint letter and individual letters. Thank you, everyone. Any similar support will be extremely useful to us today. I will end here and ask Leonid —he will comment briefly on the specific citations.

Leonid Ravnushkin: The fire orders, the fire codes are the kind of fairly all-purpose document that can be shrunk or expanded as necessary. Nevertheless, the European University—this we declare responsibly—is constantly working to improve fire safety in the building. The building that was put at our disposal in 1994, we began moving into in 1995, a building that was in a very difficult condition, because most of the rooms had been laboratories and workshops of the Institute of Labor Protection. We worked many days, over the course of a year, to remove these labs, to adapt the labs to educational activities. And I believe we have generally attained a level that allows us to carry on both educational and research activities, and the types of activities for which we are licensed. To confirm this, I can show you—I brought with me, three findings of the State Fire Safety Service from 2004, 2005, and early 2007. All these findings were issued to us with the phrasing, “The condition of the license applicant’s facilities, rooms, and property were found capable of ensuring compliance with fire safety requirements during the conduct of educational and research activities.” At the same time, when we were working to correct the deficiencies noted in the report—that was January 23—correcting the deficiencies that were on the surface, we sort of summarized our activities, and in our petition to the court to lift this suspension against us, we sort of summed up, what the building has today in terms of fire safety. As of today, the university building has: an operational automatic fire alarm system, we installed it, naturally, there wasn’t one; an operational fire annunciation system—also in place; an operational fire water supply system; primary firefighting aids whose quantities conform to codes, all this is in place, it’s on record; a building electrical system that meets requirements—also in place, no complaints against us; staff and student instruction program—the fire inspector pointed out that we were also required to conduct a practical evacuation study with mandatory analysis of deficiencies and illustrations of positive examples. We formulated that, and we were preparing to begin doing it, we distributed instruction sheets to all students, all staff, but now unfortunately they shut us down on February 8, so we have no one to do these exercises with. Instruction of staff and students for unimpeded evacuation. And taking into account these circumstances, the fire safety condition of the building, the administration went to court asking for this administrative penalty to be lifted early. The university administration is confident that it has now taken the necessary steps to prevent a real danger of fire and to prevent a loss of life, and has asked the court, is asking the court to permit the university to hold classes. As you know, the court has denied our petition.

Oleg Kharkhordin: I wanted to add one thing that is generally related to one issue: where the situation of selective law enforcement came from. Clearly, if the fire department signed reports from all prior years and everything was all right, and one fine day suddenly decided to change its opinion, and radically, that raises the question: what on earth happened in the past year?
From what the university actually did, it is the second in the nation and first in the city to register an endowment, that is, an earmarked capital fund. And in January, funds were deposited there, which the endowment’s Board of Trustees must manage—it will select a management company in the immediate future. This is a lot of money. Given the funds now on deposit in the endowment, this means… and naturally, we are not only the leaders in the development of social sciences in Russia, we are also trying to develop new teaching practices and standards, the university’s relationship with the outside world. And the endowment, the earmarked capital fund, is the platform that enables us to build long-term strategies in the development of education.

We have participated in the development of the endowment law. Beginning in 2005, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade [MERT] began developing it, and accordingly formed a team led by Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev; we accordingly did what we could to develop the law. We were very pleased that the law was adopted quickly, and we naturally, as I have already said, were first in the city to register such a fund in order to guarantee the university’s long-term financial stability. Allow me one quote from the speeches of Dmitry Medvedev. On May 31, 2007, representatives of business and nonprofit organizations held a meeting on the implementation of this very Federal Law, “On the Manner of Raising and Use of Earmarked Capital by Nonprofit Organizations.” I was there representing the University, and Mr. Medvedev summarized our successes and what had been done in the country, and the quote, verbatim from the transcript, reads as follows: “The process of raising earmarked capital has begun. I will name only the ‘pioneers’ in this area, so the whole country will know them. I am speaking of the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations [MGIMO], the New Economic School, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Higher Management School from St. Petersburg, the Government of Russia’s Finance Academy, and the European University at St. Petersburg. These are the most significant examples we have as of today.”

He probably wanted simply to stress our uniqueness not only in what we are doing from the standpoint of what’s new in social sciences, but also in the development of new practices that will enable education to interact differently with the outside world, so that it need not, for example, ask for a lot of money from the budget and can afford to develop programs [using] its own funds.
Nikolay Vakhtin: Thank you very much, Oleg. We would be very happy to tell you more about the difficult and interesting process of creating an endowment, which is actually the form of our future existence. It’s just important to emphasize that the target of this whole campaign now underway against the European University was actually chosen very precisely. We are ready to answer questions.
Question: Please tell us, has the university contacted other colleges and universities in St. Petersburg or the Higher Education Association to offer or request assistance in order to provide temporary facilities for classes to continue? After all, the citations relate to the building, and not the educational process itself.

Nikolay Vakhtin: The court’s phrasing is, “temporary suspension of activities of the European University.” We are continuing to explore this issue, but preliminary consultations indicate that the university is not entitled to hold any classes. Other questions.

Q.: I know that some of the media link, well, from your remarks I know, the situation with this program of training election observers. How can you comment on this?

Nikolay Vakhtin: I will be happy to comment; I see no link, at least no direct one. We actually had a project calling for the training of members of all parties and nonpartisan [groups] in Russian law, including election observation law. However, the Science Committee of the St. Petersburg Government told us back in August of 2007, before we put it into action, that educational activities under this project would violate our license. For this reason, educational activities under this project were canceled before it began, and the project remained limited to research. And this whole project is not about alternative election observation and not alternative and independent vote-counting, as many media have written, unfortunately, but simply work to improve legal awareness and competence, which would improve election transparency. The project now, by decision of the Academic Council, has been shut down for more than half a month. As far as we know, there are no outstanding charges against the European University on this matter. I would not link what is happening now to that story, which is already history.

Q.: The project has been shut down for two weeks, right, is that right? Or half a year?

Nikolay Vakhtin: The project was shut down by the Academic Council on January 30. More questions, please.

Q.: Please tell us, this university community, say, the management of the St. Petersburg University, [Lyudmila] Verbitskaya—they somehow… or there, the Board of Rectors… Did you say you had the support of the alumni, the scientific community?

Nikolay Vakhtin: I told you that the whole previous week we genuinely hoped we would be able to resolve this problem ourselves and did everything we could to hold back any public statements, any support in this areas. We naturally did contact the Board of Rectors, and the Board of Rectors of Private Colleges, which exists in St. Petersburg, and to which we belong. And naturally, other organizations and scientific associations, etc.

Q.: But so far they have not supported….

Nikolay Vakhtin: So far, no, so far the only one we know—maybe I don’t know something—is a letter in support of the university by the Sociology Association.

Q.: I would like to make a suggestion…. Well, this puzzle must be explained somehow. You don’t want to link it to the creation of the endowment? To this program? Well, how do you explain the situation, what’s going on?

Nikolay Vakhtin: You understand, I think I answered this question fairly clearly in my prepared remarks. I link it to the interests of forces I don’t understand who want to exacerbate the situation in St. Petersburg before the election. That’s my interpretation of the matter. I don’t know what it is.

Q.: Besides the Medvedev quotes on the European University, you gave us a quote from Mr. Putin, where he said, “you have to bring a bribe to every institution—for the fire inspectors, the health inspectors,” and so forth. And another one, from Medvedev again, on raiding. So could you tell us, does this mean that same fire inspectorate is extorting a bribe from you, or does some commercial entity want to seize the building, or was that just a ready example?

Nikolay Vakhtin: To my complete astonishment, [laughter] no one has contacted us with this question or proposal. I’ve been waiting day after day, hour after hour, for someone to finally come and explain to me what all this means—who took a liking to our building or who took a dislike to our university. It isn’t happening. I don’t know; if I did I would tell you, believe me. I don’t know what this is, but if you use this quote from Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], yes, firemen have visited us, gynecologists so far have not.

Q.: And a second question, if I may: In court yesterday, counsel for the fire inspectorate said that in principle, they have fundamental complaints about evacuation routes. So what do you think, if you addressed this comment, regarding plastering, flooring… would the audit end there, or would the process continue?

Nikolay Vakhtin: This question is better addressed to the fire inspectorate. I don’t know their next actions. Judging by what they said yesterday in court, yes, it would end. As for eliminating these violations, yes, we can do that, of course. But it would take, keeping in mind the consultations with the State Landmark Preservation Inspectorate [GIOP], well, I think it would be until about September or October of this year. Maybe longer. That is, it would actually mean, well, I don’t know… destruction of the European University as a whole. Our offer, which we made yesterday in court and for which we asked, is to permit us to continue operating and, mandatorily in close cooperation with the fire inspectorate, gradually, at a feasible pace, work to eliminate the fire safety violations. The judge rejected this offer.

Q.: Has there been any reaction from your students, your enrollees, your teachers—what’s happening?

Nikolay Vakhtin: Yes, well, it would be better to ask them about this after the press conference is over. I think half the room here are our students. This morning, I received a draft joint letter from our students—I don’t know, for the moment I don’t have the right to quote it, because it’s a draft, but I have received it. I know it is being drafted, this letter.

Q.: Couldn’t you tell us in more detail, what is the point of the two other audits that are underway or have already been completed, the Federal Registration Service and the city’s Science Committee? And what do you expect from them, and when will we know the results?

Nikolay Vakhtin: The Federal Registration Service, as you know, audits all nonprofit organizations. Our turn came, the audit is comprehensive, they are checking everything, from [inaudible] to, well, I don’t know, they’re looking at our contracts, our publications, they’re checking what book we printed using what money, using what grants—that is, examining all our scholarly activities, employee contracts, in excruciating detail. This audit was due to end February 11, but on February 11 we received an official paper saying it had been extended for another month. So it will end March 11. I don’t know the results, naturally. The other audit is by the Committee, or rather, the Agency… what they call the education inspectorate. Right? In fact, this is an audit initiated by the Science Committee. This is an audit of our activities for compliance with our license. The audit is fairly brief; the report I saw contains no language I think would be dangerous to the university. The only thing is that we have this unpleasantness with the fire inspectorate, but we already know about that. All the rest, judging by the draft—I repeat—report that I’ve seen, all this we’re coordinating, complying, not contradicting. However, I have not seen the final report.

Q.: Please tell us why the IRENA project  was still shut down? Why? Don’t you want it linked to the European University? Or have you concluded that it must be shut down—why? [inaudible]

Nikolay Vakhtin: Well, we were told, as I have said, in a significant amount, in significant aspects—in particular, the project did not conform to our license. We tried to save the project in truncated form, so to speak, but after discussion the Academic Council decided that it was inadvisable to continue it. To answer your question, “why?” I would say by decision of the Academic Council. More questions, please.

Q.: Please tell us who in particular are the sponsors, or what is the name of this Endowment? Can you name primarily Russian entrepreneurs or Russian companies participating in it?

Oleg Kharkhordin: I will name those who are members of the Endowment’s Board of Trustees. The trustees include Aleksey Kudrin, representatives of MDM, VTB, Lentа, and Ward & Howell. The first contribution was made by KIT Finance investment bank.

Q.: Forgive me a rather pedestrian question. What is the name of the judge who made the decision? The nation must know its heroes. Do you know it?

Nikolay Vakhtin: I do: Anzhelika Morozova.

Q.: Thank you very much.

Nikolay Vakhtin: A woman of exceptional beauty. Are there more questions?

Q.: Tell us how to understand… At what level do the citations originate? We know several large supermarkets have been closed in the city after fire inspections, and again something so unclear occurred, they tried to shut them down… Do you know of any statistics as to how many institutions have been issued as many citations as the European University?

Nikolay Vakhtin: Unfortunately, I don’t, but I can say that yesterday our alumni and teachers discussed how it was time to conduct an investigation regarding statistics on this kind of activity by the fire inspectorate. So I hope to be able to answer that question shortly. As for the level, I can’t say anything, I don’t know.

Q.: Could you clarify, off the record, that the security commitments for your building, they were made with your university, and even Mrs. Verbitskaya and the management of St. Petersburg University got involved? Could you clarify this situation?

Nikolay Vakhtin: I think you are referring to our founders and the Board of Trustees, to which Mrs. Verbitskaya did initially belong. But no, there are no security commitments.

Leonid Ravnushkin: The security commitments were eliminated, everything on the existence of this landmark [inaudible]. Even though we had a plate saying the landmark was protected by the state, actually, the plate before our entrance was stolen for the metal in the nineties. Nevertheless, the previous owner of the building, or rather, we will say tenant—the building belongs to the city, although it is also listed on the Federal books—so the Institute of Labor Protection had no such security commitment. The arrangement was not made until 2005. And when our lease was extended in 2004, under the terms of the lease, as we should, we renewed the security commitment with the Committee of the State Landmark Preservation Inspectorate.

Q.: For what term?

Nikolay Vakhtin: The lease runs through 2014, it was issued for ten years, and then extended for another ten. If you have no more questions….

Q.: May I ask, what actions are you taking?

Nikolay Vakhtin: I told you what we’ll be doing. We will ask for help, you know, from the public.  We will eliminate, as far as possible, the fire safety violations. We will go back to court as soon as we can prove that we’ve addressed two or three more of these 52 items. For now, we can boast that we have addressed 24. There will be 26—we’ll file another petition in court, and then again. I see no other way. Either one of us will get tired of this at some point, either us or the fire inspectorate. I don’t think it will be us.

I understand that a member of the Alumni Association has asked to speak, right? Yuliya Zelikova, our alumna, who enrolled in the university in 1996 and graduated in 1999.

Yuliya Zelikova: I wanted to answer the question as to what activities and actions the university alumni are planning. And I wanted to say that the Alumni Association is also planning an open letter to the public aimed at trying to put across that the European University is not just the people who work here, because you might think they are afraid of losing their jobs, or students who are afraid of losing their school seats. But the people who have graduated from the European University, because the European University plays a very big role in our lives and in the lives of the entire scientific community; university alumni are now teaching in various universities both in St. Petersburg and elsewhere, working in research companies, heading research companies. When people see a European University diploma, it is always a sign of quality for them. So the European University’s closure is a great loss both to the scientific community and to the business community. That’s what I wanted to say.

Nikolay Vakhtin: Thank you very much, Yuliya. If there are no more questions… Yes.

Q.: Please tell us if you are developing some strategies to eliminate the problem of raiding. For example, the university could take an initiative to the City Property Management Committee [KUGI], to the city, saying fine, let’s abandon this building where we cannot work due to the firemen’s complaints, let’s find another building, but let us work.

Nikolay Vakhtin: Well, we have discussed this option, naturally, but for the moment I still hope that…. You see, that also means ceasing operations for the university for at least six months, if not more. Moving, as you know, is like half a fire, and we’ve already had half a fire…

Oleg Kharkhordin: You know, when the university had its tenth anniversary, those who studied there wrote the book entitled The European University from A to Z. You know, the way it is structured, it is structured by corridors, staircases, and rooms, each of which is tied to some memory. The building is part of the university life, taking it out of there means taking away the environment linked to so much of student life. Of course this is mythology, but it is a substantial obstacle, and very important. That is, of course, I would not like to consider the option of moving until the very end. Because, say, there’s another factor … Prince Yurievsky, the great-grandson of Alexander II, when he arrived, he came to look at his great grandmother’s building, and asked with some interest what we do. A little later, he became a trustee of the university, because he understands that this palace houses an organization worthy of his ideas of academic and Russian greatness. He is a man who supports us. This building is very important to graduate student life, it is difficult to imagine another one.

Nikolay Vakhtin: Thank you very much, Oleg. You see, the university community has its own views on the subject.

Q.: Mr. Vakhtin, I want to clarify, are your financial and business operations continuing?

Nikolay Vakhtin: First, a big thank-you to fontanka.ru for its accurate, timely, and exhaustive information throughout this time. And second, no, thank God, no. The closure order leaves all our [administrative operations] intact. Including, naturally, the accounting department and the financial unit.

Q.: Still, I don’t fully understand whether you asked for an explanation, for example, from the Ministry of Emergency Situations? Did you attempt to clarify what was happening? Why was it at this very moment that such a situation—that they decided to assemble [inaudible]… to fight it somehow?

Nikolay Vakhtin: No, we didn’t ask.

Leonid Ravnushkin: The only thing I can add is that Nikolay and I were received by the leadership of the OGPF, the State Fire Inspection Department, of the Central District, where we were assured that this was the general practice, that now they had these practices. Because there were a lot of fires in the country, and naturally they were on the front lines of avoiding casualties and were very afraid for our students.

Q.: You say this is standard practice, there are many fires in the country. Perhaps you had some situations in the past six months?

Nikolay Vakhtin: No. Not in the past six months, not in the past two years. We once had…

Leonid Ravnushkin: Six years ago.

Nikolay Vakhtin: Six years ago one lecture hall filled with smoke.

Leonid Ravnushkin: Or rather, one room.

Nikolay Vakhtin: It was put out by the very same firemen, who found that everything was working, the water was flowing….

Q.: Nothing since?

Nikolay Vakhtin: No, nothing before, nothing since.

Leonid Ravnushkin: And incidentally, the evacuation went fine, without any problems.

Nikolay Vakhtin: In light of the fact that it was 12 o’clock at night…. Well, let’s end here.

Boris Firsov: May I have a word?

Nikolay Vakhtin: Yes! Boris Maksimovich Firsov, our Rector Emeritus, truly, one of the founders of the European University. My pleasure.

Boris Firsov: First, this may help the people who will write about the university. So, in yesterday’s Sankt-Peterburgskiye vedomosti [“St. Petersburg Gazette”], I read a short note, a report of a letter written by honored citizens of the city, respected by all of us, where they were writing about a “triumph of will” by the President and our governor, which had led to unprecedented historic… unprecedented results in the city’s development. I do not dispute this point. It even helps me to say that if there had been a triumph of will, then besides that, if not for the heroic actions of the people who founded this university, their will, talent, intellect, energy, then this university would never have existed! You know, this is a very complicated process. I don’t object to giving our country’s leaders their due. But there is still some “bottom”—excuse me for such a vulgar expression—that predetermines that triumph of will. That’s one. I repeat, this is not a polemic against the respected citizens of our city. Two. The second link. About this technology that our firefighter colleagues used, we are still fellow citizens, I cannot ignore that. This technology [of university closure] is absolutely, maybe even justified in force majeure circumstances. For example, the university… I don’t know, [say] the building collapsed. Or it didn’t ensure its integrity and upkeep. But what Leonid Ravnushkin says is not to say that we must have a flashing red light, a disaster alarm, that the university is on the point of a conflagration. A completely different problem, evacuation, has suddenly cropped up now. But I assure you that the number of people who gather, for example, in the Passage Supermarket on Nevsky prospect —that is far more dangerous than 100–150 students, if God forbid such a danger should occur. And if there are no force majeure circumstances, we must not, must not interfere in the fabric of a very complex intellectual process, which is supported and balanced at the cost of improbable efforts! And this is not to praise my own activities or those of my colleagues. Understand, besides the fact that we must care about fire safety, we must protect the people’s intellectual activities, their talent! This is ultimately their devotion to Russia, their devotion to this country’s development!

Now, what is the solution? If there are no force majeure circumstances—and there are not—there should be a negotiating process. Compromise, mutual trust, and not the crude application of some statutes. I have an explanation why this is happening. It is not linked to any specific historic figure of our nation. We ourselves did not notice this (including, possibly, the leaders of our nation—it is no accident that presidential candidate Medvedev is so disturbed by certain things, you know that): administrative law has come to dominate civil rights and freedoms! And that’s my explanation of what’s happening, that’s it. But this situation is complicated and very dangerous, because an invisible line divides administrative tyranny so to speak from that lawlessness from which we barely escaped in 1991. So I want to ask the press. Yes, we need support, we do. We need money because what the firemen are proposing is not cheap. And by the way, I am struck by the absence of an assessment of what they are proposing—either they are too rich or something else is going on with them—this is very expensive, and commensurate with the budgets and capabilities of the university. We will require extensive financial support, specifically targeted, aimed at saving the university, unless some reasonable element of compromise is introduced into the technology of solving these problems. Because after all, the people—the citizens of this country—are generally tired of raids, of strife, of inspections, audits, commissions, and regulations. And the main thing is that you understand, this is a distortion of our internal life, while we must live a natural human life. That, with faith in what will come sooner or later, is what I want to say, thank you.