SUMMARY

Proceeding from the perceived division of post-Soviet academia into two competing groups adhering to the “Soviet” and “Western” paradigms, Elena Gapova demonstrates how this controversy, overtly focused on who dominates in national academia and international symbolic markets, results from the general anxiety of postsocialist intellectuals over their social status. Without economic capital, intellectuals rely on “knowledge” as the only asset they can use to negotiate their position. But knowledge is a “dependent” form of capital, and to be able to convert it into social status, academics depend on some “real” social power. One academic faction is interested in academic freedom, autonomy, and corporate solidarity, as the social and cultural capital of its members is involved with the global symbolic market: it is aligned with the liberal (economic) elites that emerged in post-Soviet Russia. The capital of the other group is invested in the slightly modified Soviet academic system and local symbolic fields, and it is supported and legitimized by the national government (this case is most visible in Belarus). There is a problem with this arrangement, though: a divided academia cannot produce the “one and only” truth, and intellectuals are thus unable to assert their social status as experts.