Paul Goble
Staunton, May 21 – Proposals to make the Kabardino-Balkar State University autonomous and thus self-financing are being promoted by republic officials who see this step as a means to reducing their dependence on aid from Moscow, but such a step would be disastrous for both the university and the republic, regional activists say.
Approximately 40 Russian universities have become autonomous because they were able to pay 60 percent or more of their costs by self-financing, but the KBSU could not reach that level, the activists say (zapravakbr.ru/index.php/30-uncategorised/1975-avtonomizatsiya-kabardino-balkarskogo-universiteta-eto-razrushitelnyj-protsess-s-neobratimymi-posledstviyami).
Consequently, making the university responsible for its own financing rather than it being funded by the republic government would lead to its deterioration and likely demise and thus threaten not only the intellectual life of the peoples of Kabardino-Balkaria but the future of their republic as a whole.
This back and forth is noteworthy because if reflects the exposure of the plans of the authorities to use the positive term “autonomy” in fact to destroy a university that has opposed their moves and may be a bellwether for developments not only in that one republic but throughout the regions and republics of the Russian Federation as a whole.
As the activists warn, no one should be distracted from such possibilities by the willingness of those in power to cover their actions with a term that means something very different to the officials now using it than it does to those activists and university employees who have used it in the past.
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