Over the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of universities has emerged in Russia – mostly in Moscow and St. Petersburg – that the media often referred to as “liberal.” These were small, non-state, non-profit institutions affiliated with European and American universities and focused on social, economic, and political studies. In the late 2010s, the Russian government declared war on them: revoking licenses, designating professors as “foreign agents,” confiscating property, and arresting faculty and students.

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, most professors and researchers from these “liberal universities” left Russia, facing a choice: to pursue individual academic careers or to attempt to reassemble their scholarly communities abroad, following the precedent of the Frankfurt School. This is how the first Russian universities and research centers in exile came into being. This talk will examine this process not from the perspective of its participants, but through the lens of community studies. The type of solidarity that emerged within these “liberal universities” was described by early 20th-century sociologists as a community of fate (Schicksalsgemeinschaft). This form of solidarity is marked by several distinct features: awareness of a shared existential threat, adherence to certain ethical imperatives, and the densification of trust-based relations across different social groups and political tribes. The lecture will explore how this recent experience might contribute to the sociological theory of existential solidarity.

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Victor Vakhshtayn graduated from the Department of Psychology at Penza University and earned his MA in Social Sciences at the Russian-British University in Moscow. He received his PhD in social theory from the Higher School of Economics (Shaninka) in Moscow, where he subsequently served as Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He is the author of nine books and 150 scholarly articles and has twice been included in the list of the 100 most-cited Russian-speaking sociologists. In September 2021, following the arrest of colleagues and a raid by the Russian Federal Security Service, Vakhshtayn left Russia. Declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities, he joined the Board of the Teodor Shanin International Foundation and became one of the founders of the first Russian “university in exile”—the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (FLAS, based in Montenegro), created by former Russian-British University faculty. He is currently a professor and head of the Department of Sociology at FLAS. Since January 2022, Victor Vakhshtayn has been living in Israel, where he serves as a senior research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies, Tel Aviv University.