Recently two new departments, the School of Broadcast Journalism and the Department of Political Science, were created at Moscow State University while leaving the two traditional departments that engendered them intact. The result has been a contestation over academic freedom, standards, and the very definition of both disciplines at Russia’s premier university. The new departments are both closely associated with United Russia, the dominant political party in Russian politics and the political movement designed to promote the priorities and policies of Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin. This paper examines the self-definition of each of the four departments by means of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with faculty and content-analytic examination of curricular materials, including syllabi and assigned readings. We conclude that the newer departments are somewhat more attuned to certain aspects of the international standards of both disciplines, but demonstrate little adherence to key ethical and pedagogical norms, leaving them more susceptible to political influence.

The article reports on the progress of Russian research on globalization and equity. Building on Stain Roekan’s classification of social cleavages, the author identifies several schools in Russian globalization studies. He then discusses how the distinctions of authority—people, church—state, land—industry, owners—workers, metropolis—colony, and network—hierarchy find their reflection in current Russian research. The article shows that Russian scholars have recently engaged in a series of discussions of globalization’s equity criteria and their application to democratic governance, utilizing the world system’s approach, civilization analysis, and the theory of Kondratieff’s cycles.