A school like no other

Photo (CC) https://pixabay.com/p-610028/

Kitchen politics

Establishing an independent school in Russia was not the obvious choice during the early 1990s. Although Nemirovskaya and Senokosov had prior experience with civic activism (they were engaged in the dissident movement), they never considered starting a school. The idea came from outside and by accident. In 1992 Catherine Lalumière, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe at the time, came to Russia to meet with Boris Yeltsin, and during the visit she was told there was a place in Moscow with a rather unusual significance. It was the spot where Soviet dissidents would meet during the communist period and where intellectuals would come and discuss philosophical, historical, social and cultural matters.

That place was Nemirovskaya and Senokosov’s kitchen. Lalumière visited them and offered assistance – the Council of Europe would support their activities. With such an offer on the table, Nemirovskaya and Senokosov decided to officially register what they had been unofficially doing for so long. They set up a new organisation, an independent NGO, naming it the Moscow School of Political Studies. To run the school, Nemirovskaya and Senokosov abandoned their earlier careers as philosophy and art history scholars, and devoted themselves entirely towards civic education and the promotion of democracy.

Thanks to their wide network of contacts at that time the school soon gathered high-level experts, both from Russia and abroad. Recalling the school’s operation in the early years, Svetlana Shmelova, who is the school’s project manager today, but also one of the alumni, says: “When people from different parts of the world started coming here it became quite clear that there was a need to analyse law and institutions (you can call it democracy). Consequently, the school started serving as a meeting point for people of different nationalities, even at times of wars. For example, the first Georgian-Russian meeting took place shortly after August 2008.” She continues: “In this way, the very concept of democracy was established. However, when discussing it the founders of the school, Lena [Nemirovskaya] and Yury [Senokosov], never had any straight answers. They were always interested in raising questions. That’s also how the school’s slogan came to life, which was actually a demand: ‘Civic education for a civil society’. Even the name was not fully applicable to our work. We even joked that it was ‘neither Moscow, nor a school, nor political nor studies’”. Although the name was a little misunderstanding, it became widely recognisable.

Not a Moscow elite club

The work started developing rapidly and staff members were involved in various types of activities: publishing books, writing papers, doing editorial work and building a library. But the most important thing was education. The format that was established to train students was based on seminars that last for several days; it gathered participants from various disciplines that meet and discuss matters with experts. Although it was founded in Moscow, the school never made the mistake of becoming a Moscow-centred elite club. Nemirovskaya and Senokosov stressed from the beginning that if the project was to make a real difference, it had to go beyond the capital. That is why the seminars always seek participants who are representatives of all Russian regions (from the Far East and Far North to Siberia, the Ural to Northern Caucasus) as well as different academic and professional areas. Thus, the school gathers not only civic activists but also scholars, analysts, people from the business sector, journalists, public administration employees and many others.

Unlike many popular educational projects these days, the school has never limited itself to training the “young leaders”. Instead, it includes people of different ages as well as those who hold different, often opposing, political views. Among the experts invited to the school, there are often both representatives of the Russian government and the opposition. One of the school’s regular experts, Alexei Makarkin, who is a renowned Russian political scientist, explains the phenomenon in the following way: “25 years of the school is 25 years of civic education, 25 years of dialogue, 25 years of time when participants from different regions, people with various political and social views, different mentalities, have been learning how to understand each other. How to process the information they were given and approach it critically. How not to be afraid of the experts: figures they know from TV, professors, state employees, etc. In the school it becomes clear that these experts are normal people who can be approached and engaged into conversation by anyone. That one could agree with or disagree with them,” adding: “What is especially important to me is that participants ask questions. When I’m running a seminar I try to give as much time as I can to the participants. So that they can initiate a discussion. And we talk about the issues that are interesting, not to me, but to them. I think that this is a tremendous contribution made by Lena and Yury. They founded this school and continuously try to solve all of the issues under the way, improve them and develop. It has become a significant part of their lives.”

Black clouds

For a quarter of a century the Moscow School of Political Studies, since 2013 called the Moscow School of Civic Education, has trained over ten thousand graduates. Some of them became influential figures in Russian political and civic life. Many use the skills they acquired in their everyday life. Some others stayed around and became a part of the team, like Svetlana Shmelova. When asked about joining the school’s staff, she recalls: “I graduated from the school in 2005 and soon started working there. For me, the school was not only an opportunity to meet high level experts but also to see their diversity. Being born and raised in Moscow I hardly ever left my hometown. Therefore, it was a great opportunity to meet people from all over Russian, and the whole post-Soviet territory, who were interested in numerous things and weren’t indifferent to our common fate.”

She continues: “After the first experience I tried to get into the second year, and then into the third year. I became a regular student of the school. So when Lena and Yura say they are also graduates of the school, they are not lying. The process of education is endless here. And I realised that this does not come in spurts. It could be said that I dived into this space. I became a volunteer, I was bringing in what I could. For example, the school developed an online forum. At some point, I wanted to get to know all those who were in the school and I began looking for all its graduates on the internet. Pretty soon Lena offered me a job, but I was afraid of the bureaucratic overload. However, when clouds began to gather over the school, I devoted all my time to it, and now it is my full time job.”

The black clouds gathered over the school in 2014 when the Russian ministry of justice placed the institution on the list of “foreign agents”, something that was created as a result of 2012 legislation. According to the law – officially titled the law “On Amendments to Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation regarding the Regulation of the Activities of Non-profit Organisations Performing the Functions of a Foreign Agent”, and popularly known as the law on foreign agents – each NGO that receives funding from a foreign entity (private or public) and is involved in “political activity”, is required to register as a “foreign agent” in a special registry of the ministry of justice. And organisations that do not register, but meet the conditions stipulated by the law, risk being charged with very large fines. Being enlisted into the ministry’s registry does not generate only cosmetic-related consequences (every document, be it a letterhead or a business card, issued by such organisations must declare that it is a “foreign agent”). It also means that organisations are faced with frequent and thorough controls from public agencies that will result in excessive red tape. The latter is a significant burden, especially for small NGOs that do not have the administrative capacity to handle all formal requirements assigned to them.

The accusations that were formulated against the school, like many other NGOs who are also on the list of “foreign agents”, were not entirely clear. In its justification, the ministry stated that the foreign funding the school received had been used for commercial activities and had to be taxed. Therefore, the organisation was charged with a 6.5 million rouble fine (almost 100,000 euro) and received the status of a foreign agent. It was basically forced to close its doors. Shmelova, recalling this moment, explains: “Formally, this law does not prohibit activities, but it makes running them impossible. This is not because of the daily inspections and reporting, which are no longer aimed at openness (the school has always published reports of its activities), but because we are wasting our time and energy on bureaucracy that can be sustained only if you have a large number of administrators and lawyers and accountants.”

In Russia and abroad

Although the school was forced to close down, it did not end its activities. Nemirovskaya and Senokosov established a new NGO, one that is only operating with Russian resources. They continue their work in Moscow and other regions. In addition, with the support of numerous foreign partners the school continues to promote civic education, but it now takes place abroad. Five day workshops are now organised in different parts of Europe (Sweden, the United Kingdom, and recently Spain) and gather around 100 people for each event. Like before, the workshops discuss the most burning issues of the rule of law, civic engagement, historical memory, social challenges and other contemporary problems related to democracy.

Participants come not only from Russia but other former Soviet and communist states as well as Western Europe. This diversity clearly strengthens dialogue and allows broad networking. The experts remain both Russian and foreign. “The school has created a model that promotes civic education, is open to people of all political viewpoints, and creates an active network for graduates, including civil activists from all across Russia and other countries. It has created a space where dialogue can take place between academics, civic activists, politicians, business people, and journalists. This model was adopted with the inspiration of the Council of Europe and has served to create a network of 22 other schools of political studies in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe,” says Skorikova. She adds: “Now, the main objective of our programme is to help Russian and European societies return to a European dialogue based on mutual trust. We aim to achieve civilised ways of interaction based on the rule of law, civil and human rights. We want to involve young Europeans who really understand that stability of the world order depends on co-operation and the participation of all countries in a global, transnational dialogue. We hope that our graduates will become ambassadors of civic values, promoting practices based on trust, understanding and the rule of law.”

For the school, the end of 2017 was a time of celebration, but also a time for evaluation of what had been achieved and a time to reflect on the future. The beginning of 2018 is also the start of the second quarter of the school’s work. Civic education has been developing rapidly over the last several years across the world and more and more organisations are launching their own programmes dedicated to many of these issues. Yet the programme developed by the Moscow School of Civic Education 25 years ago is unique and one can only imagine what it will be like in 25 years’ time.

 The author would like to thank the whole MSCE team for their support during the preparation of this article. Special thanks go to Anastasiya Gontareva, Svetlana Shmeleva, Marina Skorikova and Marina Potekhina.

Kacper Dziekan is a European projects specialist at the European Solidarity Centre and a PhD candidate at the history department of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He is a graduate of the Moscow School of Civic Education.

Moscow School of Political Studies