SUMMARY:

Boris Kolonitskii’s essay addresses the history and nature of the European University in St. Petersburg (EU) with respect to the suspension of its activities and the debate that it aroused. The author is not sure whether this article will turn out to be an obituary or not. He makes a prediction that in light of the eventual closing of the university its history will be either eulogized or scorned. The sign of the latter attitude is already visible. This will make the critical assessment of the role of the European University in Russian and international scholarship and education impossible. Therefore Kolonitskii proposes to go beyond stereotypes (e.g., the EU as a well-paid agent of Westernization, the university as a homogenous institution and an embodiment of truly cosmopolitan knowledge) and looks at this institution as a laboratory of contemporary social knowledge. The author notes that the EU was a rather heterogeneous structure that hosted different departmental cultures and people with varying views on the nature and future of education and scholarship in the field of social sciences and humanities. He also notes that the university reproduced some of the drawbacks of the Soviet model of the university, i.e., the isolation of departments and the lack of interdisciplinary dialogue. Scrutinizing the structure of the university, Kolonitskii calls it a federative empire with complex and varying arrangements of autonomy and control. After a comprehensive survey of differences and cleavages in the intellectual and organizational set up of the university, the author asks how the integrity of the university is possible, and upon what does it rest. The suggested answer is that the intelligentsia’s stylistic and ethical code formed the basis of the university. It developed from the very beginning as a means of sociability by the faculty and students, and continues to ensure the solidarity of the corporation, and precludes the splits despite the crisis. The author then adds that one of the distinguishing features of the European University and the pillars of its integrity is its flexible and creative climate, the spirit of criticism and the eagerness to improve.
The article then surveys a number of problems that the EU faces and warns against the danger of becoming a famous institution, where fame is due to a political crisis around the institution. This, as the author argues, might prevent the institution from addressing the real problems that it faces and forestall the full realization of the institution’s most promising features.