Earlier this year, one of Russia’s most prestigious educational establishments—the European University at St. Petersburg—decided to fire Professor Ivan Kurilla, he says, because of his “toxic” views.
“I lost my job because, like so many Russians, I am against the war in Ukraine,” said Kurilla, who is now the Visiting Tallman Scholar in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ College.
He was among thousands of academics who signed a petition condemning Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Some of those who spoke out found themselves behind bars, some joined the exodus of activists leaving Russia to continue their work in exile, and some, like Kurilla, stayed put in their homeland, where life became more and more intolerable.
“Despite the increasingly autocratic nature of Putin’s regime, I was able to carve out enough academic freedom to continue teaching in St. Petersburg,” said the professor of history and international relations.
“Putin is repressive, but randomly repressive. While Stalin would simply have arrested everyone opposing the war, Putin’s strategy has been more about creating a climate of fear by targeting people at random,” said Kurilla. “Opposing the Kremlin is a gamble.”
Crunch time for Kurilla came in January 2024, when he left for a sabbatical at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts. On the eve of his departure, the university authorities in St. Petersburg informed him they would no longer sign off on his academic leave and if he went to the US, he would be fired for absenteeism. A couple of months later, that’s exactly what happened.
“After reading some of the that’s been done on the subject, my guess is that the university leadership was under increasing pressure from the FSB [federal security service] to get rid of any faculty who had signed the antiwar petition,” explained Kurilla. “Professors like me had become ‘toxic.’” Kurilla was fired in March 2024, and in June the entire political science department in St. Petersburg was shut down. “In fact,” he pointed out, “any area of study that the Kremlin considered a political threat was suppressed, including the sociology department, which was reorganized in order to get rid of the gender studies program.”
Kurilla said he is both shocked and saddened by how much his former university has changed since the full-scale Ukraine war got underway. “The European University was always Western-oriented, integrated into global academia, with trustees from Europe and the US. This has changed now, and all foreigners are excluded from the board of trustees.”
Kurilla’s plight is part of a bigger story, he said. “So many academics have suffered in Russia, and some of them are in prison, so I’m grateful to have my freedom.” He still keeps in touch with former colleagues in Russia, he said, but they are nowhere near as vocal as they were about expressing their opinions.
“Putin is repressive, but randomly repressive. While Stalin would simply have arrested everyone opposing the war, Putin’s strategy has been more about creating a climate of fear by targeting people at random. Opposing the Kremlin is a gamble.”
Exploring Russia-US Relations
His arrival in the US this year is the latest chapter in Kurilla’s longstanding relationship with the country. He first came as a student in 1990, spending a semester at Kent State University in Ohio. He went on to specialize in American history, particularly the country’s relationship with Russia.
This semester he’s teaching a course called Frenemies: Russia and the United States from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (RUS 24/22 HIST 24/22). Students are learning how the two countries have served as mirror images of each other for much of the last two and a half centuries, “dark twins” that used the image of the other country for domestic political purposes, said Kurilla, who will return to take up an appointment at Wellesley after leaving ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾.
“Russia and the US have often been allies, or at least found themselves on the same side,” he added. “Russia sent warships to help the Union side in the US Civil War, while during the previous decade America provided support to Russia in the Crimean war, which was fought against a coalition of European powers.” Then, of course, there were the two World Wars of the twentieth century, when the nations were firm allies against Nazi Germany.
“Furthermore,” commented Kurilla, “Russian history has always featured prominent figures who were sympathetic to the US and wanted to learn from them to reform Russian economic efficiency. Tsar Nicholas the First hired American engineers to help build railroads in the mid-nineteenth century while in the 1920s and 1930s the Bolsheviks employed thousands of American experts to help with industrialization efforts.”
During the Cold War, meanwhile, US-Russian relations thawed somewhat after the death of Stalin, whose successor, Nikita Khrushchev, was also influenced by American economic ideas. In 1959, Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to visit the US.
“More recently, Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russian president between 2008 and 2012, when Putin returned to office, flirted with liberalization and traveled to the US, including Silicon Valley, to explore ideas about how to modernize the Russian economy.” Importantly however, added Kurilla, these efforts throughout history have been more about economic rather than political reform.
As for the prospect of closer ties between Putin’s Russia and the US under a Donald Trump administration next year, Kurilla said it’s a difficult one to call. President-elect Trump has in the past expressed admiration for Putin but has also shown himself to be unpredictable. “Putin will need to weigh his actions more carefully when dealing with Trump because of this unpredictability,” he said. “Trump may choose to escalate tensions in the face of nuclear blackmail, whereas Biden was definitely susceptible to this threat and for most of his presidency has been unwilling to cross certain of his own red lines.”
Supporting a Scholar at Risk
“Ivan Kurilla's circumstances should serve as a powerful reminder of the need to safeguard the right to free speech in our country,” said Professor of History Page Herrlinger, “and more specifically, the importance of tenure as a means to protect the right of individual faculty members to express views that do not align with the politics of those in power, both at the institutional and governmental level.”
Bringing Kurilla to the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ campus was very much a collective effort, added Herrlinger, who is chair of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies department (REEES). “The process began late last spring at the suggestion of a colleague, Bill Rosenberg, professor emeritus of history at the University of Michigan, who knew Ivan from their many years at the European University at St. Petersburg.” REEES jumped at the possibility of bringing Kurilla to campus for the fall semester, “both out of a desire to support a scholar at risk and because of his reputation as an outstanding historian whose area of expertise would add a lot to our curriculum.”
Volodymyr Zadorojny ’27 feels fortunate to have been able to sign up for Kurilla’s class on Russian-American relations. “He has made it accessible and engaging while maintaining a high level of critical inquiry, discussion, and reading.” Kurilla’s classroom observations, said Zadorojny, have extra significance given his personal experiences. “The fact that he had the personal and civic courage to sign a letter condemning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022—when Kurilla still lived and taught in Russia—speaks volumes about him as a man of principle and true integrity.”
On December 3, Ivan Kurilla will be delivering a lecture to the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ community. The talk will be titled “Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: What Does the Long History of Russian-American Relations Tell Us about the Present and Future?"
