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Arrested university director Mau (with his face covered) at a court hearing in Moscow on Thursday
Photo: Dmitry Serebryakov / AP
Last week Russia launched (almost officially) a new wave of repression in culture and education.
This was to be expected and came as no surprise to anyone in the country.
The regime launched an all-out attack on that part of the intelligentsia that remained in the country.
It is no accident this time that it hits those who tried to appear loyal and not publicly condemn the war in Ukraine.
There is an appropriate saying in the Russian language: "Beat your own people so that others will be afraid." Of course, the current wave of repression is not aimed at insiders - but at outsiders, against liberal intellectuals who have tried to appear as insiders.
Elections for Gazprom's new board of directors were held in Moscow on June 30.
Not much has changed, apart from Gerhard Schröder being replaced by Dmitri Patrushev, the son of the former FSB director and current Russia's Minister of Agriculture.
Curiously, Vladimir Mau, the rector of Russia's largest civil service college, the Civil Service Academy, was re-elected and retained his seat on the board.
Although by that time he had already been wanted for several days and a criminal case was pending against him.
On the same day, June 30, Vladimir Mau was arrested – he applied for bail (around 300,000 euros), but the court put him under house arrest.
Ideologue of the "system liberals"
The case against Mau is the most significant blow against Russia's "system liberals" since the beginning of the war.
Mau was a classmate of Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister and close friend of President Putin, and also worked as an adviser to Yegor Gaidar, the former prime minister and architect of Russia's reforms in the 1990s.
Ten years ago, Mau, along with Yaroslav Kuzminov, the rector of Moscow's Higher School of Economics, was commissioned by Putin to draft the so-called "Strategy 2020," an ambitious plan for Russia's economic development.
At that time, even before the annexation of Crimea, it was believed that Russia's future lay in a liberal market economy, in innovation and in overcoming dependence on raw materials.
And it was okay that the political system was authoritarian, the people had to endure that, otherwise the economic reforms could not be carried out, according to the “system liberals”.
Mau was one of the ideologues of this approach.
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The "system liberals" camp was very important and influential;
20 years ago it seemed to carry much more weight in government than, say, the KGB.
Had the "system liberals" dared to form a party, it would have been in power during Dmitry Medvedev's presidency;
but it would have controlled the government for many years afterwards.
What were the beliefs of the "system liberals"?
The most important of these was that they should be tolerated, along the lines of: Putin is a dictator, but he can't do better - don't criticize him, you're only making it worse and undermining the hold of your like-minded supporters in power.
As the economy has become increasingly nationalized and the political system more totalitarian over the past decade, the "system liberals" have responded with the stoic philosophical thesis: "Do what you must and be what you want."
Namely: keep working for the government because if you get fired, much worse people will take your place.
If your friends are oppressed, keep silent - you cannot help them.
At times it seemed from the outside that the real reason for the silence and patience of the "system liberals" was their unwillingness to break away from their feeding troughs, their attempt to maintain their closeness to power.
But of course they genuinely believed that they were sacrificing themselves for Russia's future - they continued to work side by side with the terrible siloviki, all for the sake of Russia's bright future.
In these ten years, the »system-liberal« camp was reduced to rubble and ashes.
In 2016, Finance Minister Alexei Ulyukayev was demonstratively and humiliatingly arrested and imprisoned - that was the beginning (he was released in April this year).
The destruction of the Higher School of Economics, the most popular and high-quality university in Russia, was very revealing.
Its rector, Yaroslav Kuzminov, who co-wrote Strategy 2020 with Vladimir Mau, initially tried to be as useful to the government as possible.
In 2014, he agreed to enter politics and was even elected to the Moscow City Parliament (although he did not take part in its work, he helped prevent the opposition from being elected).
However, in 2021 this was not enough, and Kuzminov was quietly allowed to resign.
That's important, because the Higher School of Economics isn't just about influencing the minds of young people, it's also about a huge fortune - hundreds of buildings in Moscow and across the country.
After Kuzminov's departure, change took off at lightning speed: last year, all the professors who had demonstrated their liberal beliefs (and that's hundreds, if not thousands) were fired from his university.
Intimate video online
Kuzminov has another connection to the government: his wife is the head of Russia's central bank, Elvira Nabiullina.
In the past year, an amazing intelligence action was carried out against the family: an intimate video of Kuzminov and another woman was posted on the Internet.
Even the uninitiated have no doubt that the most influential couple in the "liberal system" are being blatantly blackmailed: he is being blackmailed into not trying to keep his post at EHEA, and she is being blackmailed into not even considering resigning .
In fact, after the war began, Nabiullina did everything that was asked of her - she stayed to work for Putin.
But while Kuzminov's "empire" was being quietly smashed, Mau's "empire" was being bloodily destroyed.
The case in which the rector was imprisoned began a year ago.
Then Sergei Zuev, the rector of a RANEPA-affiliated university, a close friend of Mau, and Marina Rakova, a former deputy minister of education, were arrested.
They are accused of fraud and misappropriation of budget funds.
But for the past year, many thought Mau was so influential and so close to Putin that he would be spared the crackdown.
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The arrest of Zuev a year ago did not only seem to be a challenge for the "system liberals".
The fact is that he was very close to Sergei Kiriyenko, one of the most influential Kremlin officials responsible for domestic policy in the presidential administration.
Zuyev worked for Kiriyenko for a long time - but even the current Kremlin ideologue could do nothing to protect his close confidant.
Another former adviser to Kirienko, philosopher and political technologist Pyotr Shchedrovitsky, sees the arrests of Zuev and Mau as a signal that being a loyalist is no longer enough;
one should wear a pioneer tie and the letter Z on the chest.
Mau is a natural target for attacks.
A supporter of European values, even if he does not protest publicly, is not a suitable leader of the system to train civil servants.
All the more so since his academy has always run student exchange programs taught by foreign professors.
Mau also did not allow a mass dismissal of liberal professors, as happened at the Higher School of Economics - he used all his bureaucratic connections to avoid a purge.
After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the idea of a witch-hunt in education became a much-discussed topic among the Russian elite.
State Duma spokesman Vyacheslav Volodin initiated Russia's exit from the Bologna system and publicly declared several times that all teachers and university professors who did not support the "special action" should be fired.
That said, Mau's arrest opens a new phase of repression in Russian education.
Another battlefield is Russian culture.
On June 29, the Moscow Ministry of Culture announced the dismissal of three artistic directors (analogous to the artistic director) of three major Moscow theaters: the Gogol Center, the Sovremennik and the School of Modern Drama.
Destruction of the Gogol Center
Iosif Raichelgauz, the head of the School of Modern Drama, has tried to bring some order - he's as loyal as Mau.
But even here that was not enough, and there was no way Raichelgauz, a native of Odessa, could publicly support the war.
Viktor Ryzhakov only became the head of this theater in 2020, which was legendary and very brave in Soviet times.
And a year ago he was attacked by the "Officers of Russia" movement - all Russian media wrote that the play "First Bread" insulted the patriotic feelings of citizens and desecrated the memory of the war.
The current dismissal of Ryzhakov also falls into the category of the long-awaited.
The most symbolic event, however, is the destruction of the Gogol center.
This theater was founded nine years ago (before Crimea, in the previous ideological era), when the authorities were still trying to win over the "creative class".
Kirill Serebrennikov, who has become a living icon of Russian art in recent years under Putin, has been appointed director of the theatre.
He managed to create the most intelligent and talented theater in Russia.
In many ways, thanks to the efforts of Serebrennikov and his school, theater as such has become perhaps the most important and politically sensitive art in Russia.
In recent years, the most apt words about what is happening in the country have been spoken from the theater stage.
In 2017, Serebrennikov was arrested for embezzlement, but he continued to run the theater from house arrest and produce new plays.
A year ago, Serebrennikov's contract as artistic director was not renewed, but his team at the theater was allowed to stay;
his friend Alexei Agranovich became the new head of the theater.
Serebrennikov himself left Russia after the outbreak of war and made several anti-war statements.
In return, he was heavily criticized by the Ukrainians.
They accused him of collaborating with the regime, running the state theater for years and receiving money from the Russian budget and from Russian oligarchs.
But, of course, Serebrennikov was never a loyalist — on the contrary, he was an apparent rebel who for a moment veered close to the authorities.
The closure of the Gogol Center was an expected but very important sign of the end of old Moscow.
The end of the liberal Russian public that had lived in Russia for years, criticizing the regime (sometimes openly and fiercely, sometimes whispering over a glass of wine), but still hoping that Putin would pass and the art would stand forever.
Even after the war began, some Russian intellectuals still found the strength to pretend that it was possible to live as before and do
business as usual
to operate.
But the regime doesn't need that.
Disloyal, reserved people are also dangerous because they are always ready to betray.
Putin's new policy presents everyone with a choice: either take an oath of allegiance in blood, or become an "enemy of the people" and suffer repression for breaking silence.
The last play
On September 30, the Gogol Center hosted the last performance of the play "I will not take part in the war" based on poems by the poet Yuri Levitansky.
All the remaining famous cultural figures in Russia were probably present at this symbolic »closure of the theatre«.
Many of them cried.
Finally, after the performance, appeared via video link Kirill Serebrennikov, who is currently in Avignon directing Chekhov's play The Black Monk, which opens this year's theater festival.
Along with Serebrennikov, part of the troupe of the Gogol Center - the actors starring in the play - was in Avignon.
Serebrennikov promised that this was not the end - the loss of the building in Moscow did not mean the death of the theater.
But it is this on-screen communication that has become a symbol of yet another tragedy of contemporary Russian intelligentsia.
All actors and viewers watched Serebrennikov at work in France and realized that few would be able to go to Europe and work with Cyril.
Few have a chance to find a place for themselves outside of Russia.
Most are not welcome there - they will be forced to remain in Moscow where they are now enemies of the people.
Where even loyalty is not enough and tomorrow you will be arrested and forced to draw the letter Z.