Russian scholars who signed a 2022 anti-war letter face renewed FSB pressure

Russian outlet T-invariant reports that the FSB, together with administrators at universities and research institutes, is renewing pressure on academics who signed an anti-war letter back in 2022, as well as on employees whose names surfaced in a leaked database of users of the opposition's Smart Voting platform.

Staff at institutions across Russia told the outlet that scholars are being summoned for questioning or simply finding their employment contracts left unrenewed.

One scholar in the Urals said an FSB officer attached to his university called him in for a meeting specifically because he had signed the letter. The officer asked what he had thought about the war in 2022 and what he thinks now, even producing a printout of an archived version of the webpage hosting the letter from spring 2022. The scholar replied that his signature had caused him no trouble in the four years since, and that removing it now would serve no purpose.

An employee at a Siberian research institute was called in for questioning by an FSB representative acting on a request from Moscow, who asked her where she had obtained the link to the letter and to whom she had forwarded it.

Especially intense pressure in St. Petersburg

T-invariant reports that pressure on academics over their anti-war views is particularly widespread at St. Petersburg State University, where Oleg Shaidulin — the former head of the political department at the local Center E anti-extremism unit — now serves as deputy to the vice rector for security.

Several former employees of the university said their supervisors told them their contracts weren't renewed because they were on a blacklist. A former staffer in one of the university's IT departments described the system as a "traffic light," with employees sorted onto yellow or red lists; she herself was placed on an internal list of the "politically unreliable" because she had registered on the Smart Voting website.

Employees can reportedly get removed from St. Petersburg State University's blacklist by donating to the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, which supports Russian military personnel, or by becoming lecturers for the pro-government Znanie Society.

One source told T-invariant that HSE University in St. Petersburg and the European University at St. Petersburg had also refused to renew some employees' contracts.