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Thursday, March 22, 2007
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MSU Sociology students at Moscow State University, probably the best university in Russia, are complaining about "creeping nationalism... extremist views... [and] conspiracy theories" taking over its classrooms. The university has begun to investigate the sociology faculty, though there's no telling whether a university investigating itself under these circumstances will take the matter seriously. “The dean’s office has distributed a brochure to all students that approvingly quotes the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ blames Freemasons and Zionists for the world wars, and claims that they control U.S. and British policy and the global financial system,” the students wrote in one of their public appeals. “Studying conditions at the department are unbearable.” The dean of sociology has issued Brezhnev-vintage denials and assurances: It's just a disgruntled minority... We look forward to a "constructive dialogue" ... that stuff about anti-semitism is a crock... UD described this development to Mr. UD -- who grew up under Communism in Poland -- at the breakfast table just now. He responded with what seemed an irrelevancy: "The current head of the Romanian fascist party was the Ceausescus’ poet laureate." "Uh huh. And?" "Well, Moscow State is excellent in things like engineering and some of the sciences, but it's precisely in softer fields like sociology -- and poetry -- that you'll still find once-Communist, now-fascist hacks in lots of post-Communist places. Corneliu Vadim Tudor was the regime's lapdog... Someone who took orders and loved authoritarianism... Now he's got his own party devoted to it. In the Soviet Union, a lot of university people of his sort were social science types grinding out propaganda. It's probably hard to get rid of them ..." |