The strange limbo of a Russian university

IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S “Invitation to a beheading” the protagonist never finds out why he is to be executed. Cincinnatus, as he was called, was popular among his jailers, but none of them was able to say why their prisoner had to lose his life. Nabokov died in 1977 and knew nothing of the European University at St Petersburg (EUSP), which opened in 1994, 3km north-east of where he grew up before his family emigrated. But like Cincinnatus, the EUSP is being threatened with destruction by the state. Students are unable to graduate, and staff are forbidden from giving lectures. It is unclear if university life will ever return to normal, and nobody is able or willing to explain why it should close down.

The EUSP was established as a postgraduate institute by private donors during a short and unusual period of openness and liberalism in Russia. The 1990s ushered in free markets, democracy and greater academic freedom, though today they are more often remembered as a time of economic and social disarray.