Meta-detection of FSB.
How 900 pages of Sergei Abramov’s criminal case were born from $75 in a year

The FSB completed investigative actions in the case of corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Abramov a year later: the materials were transferred to the court, which must set a date for the hearing. According to T-invariant, Abramov’s case involves seven donations of 1,000 rubles each. The scientist himself has repeatedly denied his guilt, including denying that he made these translations.
University Transparency Laboratory (Lupa), with the help of the free online community Dissernet, analyzed the activities of expert councils of the upper house of the Russian parliament. It turned out that 10% of experts advising senators on the laws they pass have violations of academic ethics.
How does war become routine, heroic and ordinary? Do you need to look at photographs of hostages every day? Where is the line between adapting to war and rejecting conflict? These questions were discussed by the participants in the discussion “Normalization of Evil” - urban geographer Aleksey Novikov, visiting researcher at Ariel University Viktor Vakhshtain and communication specialist Grigory Ogibin.
42 Nobel laureates in an open letter called on world leaders not to recognize the legitimacy of Putin as president: “The war in Ukraine and the murder of Alexei Navalny do not concern only Russia and Ukraine. The Putin regime has shown that it poses a direct and clear threat to all humanity.”
Over the course of two years, several thousand scientists left Russia, sometimes entire teams were evacuated. Some of them managed not only to survive, but to be reborn in a new reality. In February 2024, the Agency for Control and Quality Assurance of Higher Education of Montenegro decided on state accreditation of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (FLASH), which was created by former employees of the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences. Teodora Shanin. And this is not the only example of how fugitive Russians are reassembling academic projects.
The seventh essay in the “Creators” series is dedicated to Igor Sikorsky, one of the founders of modern aviation. In the “Creators” project, T-invariant together with RASA (Russian-American Science Association) and with the support of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation continues to publish a series of biographical essays about people from the Russian Empire who made significant contributions to world science and technology.
In 2023, the FSB began subjecting dissenters to punitive psychiatry. Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Abramov left the psychiatric hospital after the examination and became familiar with the updated version of the charges. T-invariant spoke with the scientist about his life with the “extremist” label, his political views and the reasons for the security forces’ attack on the Russian supercomputer industry.
The sixth essay in the “Creators” series is dedicated to Tamara Dembo, an outstanding psychologist whose work on the study of “anger as a dynamic problem” and the rehabilitation of people with disabilities remains scientifically relevant to this day. The “Creators” project, created by T-invariant together with RASA (Russian-American Science Association) with the support of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation , talks about people from the Russian Empire who made significant contributions to world science and technology.
New detainees in the case of Siberian scientists from the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITPM) named after. Christianovich of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, accused of treason, was scientist Vladislav Galkin from Tomsk. The human rights organization First Department is confident that the repressive campaign is growing and the next victim of the FSB could be absolutely any scientist who has worked on this topic as part of international collaborations.
In Togliatti, in the local special economic zone (SEZ), they can build another plant for the assembly of Iranian combat drones. There is no official information about this and in words the plans are purely peaceful. The EFKO group of companies, the founder of enterprises producing drones in Tolyatti, pretends that it has nothing to do with the plant. T-invariant looks at how this big business moved from projects with GM and Volkswagen to assembling deadly machines for the war in Ukraine.
The fifth essay in the “Creators” series is dedicated to Vladimir (Waldemar) Haffkine, the creator of the first effective vaccines against cholera and plague. At the end of the 19th century, Haffkine carried out the first mass vaccination in India. His laboratories have developed and produced tens of millions of doses of cholera and plague vaccines. In the “Creators” project, T-inavariant, together with RASA (Russian-American Science Association) and with the support of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, continues to publish a series of biographical essays about people from the Russian Empire who made a significant contribution to world science and technology,
The Russian Federation's leading specialist in supercomputer systems was first checked by the FSB “for treason”, then kept under house arrest for six months on suspicion of “financing an extremist organization”. After fruitless attempts to plant according to the proven Soviet tradition, the “fool” is used. Sergei Abramov, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, founder of a number of innovative companies, is planned to be sent to a psychiatric hospital for three weeks on November 30 for “conducting an inpatient examination.”Because the outpatient motivation of the scientist who organizes the supercomputer forum in Pereslavl-Zalessky, even while under investigation, the FSB could not understand even after eight months.
T-invariant publish open letter by Alexander Kabanov, Mescal S. Ferguson Distinguished Professor, Director, Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery Chapel Hill, UNC. He writes: "The terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, shocked me deeply. I was also disappointed by the statement issued by the UNC Chapel Hill Faculty, Graduate Students, and Staff Regarding Justice in Palestine, which said, among other things, “…We believe that an understanding of such loss must be situated within the historical and political context of ongoing colonial oppression.” On November 3, 2023, I sent a brief note to about 40 UNC faculty members who had signed this statement by then..."
In Chicago, at the annual conference of the Russian-speaking American Scientific Association (RASA), sociologists who have recently been living in the United States chose for their presentations topics that can now hardly be discussed publicly while in Russia. Sergey Erofeev (Rutgers University)presented a brief overview of the most interesting presentations for T-invariant.
In Ivanovo, under strange circumstances, Olga Nazarenko, associate professor of the department of pharmacology of the Ivanovo State Medical Academy and political activist, died from numerous injuries. The lawyer was unable to get an investigation into the causes of her death and gain access to a medical report on the causes of death, so she is going conduct your own investigation. T-invariant spoke with the lawyer of the deceased and some other local activists who knew Olga personally and mourn her death.
In Chicago, at Northwestern University, an annual conference was held, organized by the Russian-American Association of Scientists - Russian American Science Association (RASA). Mutual support, academic solidarity, political context and political division in the scientific community - in report by Denis Cheredov.
The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) "Alabuga", which has already hit the pages of all the world's media this year with a series of high-profile scandals, this time swung at the solar system and acted as a collective Ostap Bender for all the money - namely 491 trillion rubles . Leading Russian astrophysicists responded by recalling the gravitsappa on the Yubileiny satellite (a loud anti-scientific failure of Roscosmos from 2008).
Behind the names in the “Chronicle of the Persecution of Scientists”, which is jointly conducted by T-invariant and CISRUS, there are specific people forced to fight for their civil and academic freedoms. We decided to tell in detail who and why decides to go against government pressure in science and education. The first material focuses on the history of Novokolledzh, one of the largest colleges in Russia.How did the institution begin to work, despite the refusal of accreditation and the resignation of the director, candidate of historical sciences Sergei Chernyshov? Why do the new director Yuri Lobanov and Sergei Chernyshov himself not give up their professional and civic positions? Yulia Chernaya spoke with the former and current leaders of Novocollege - Sergei Chernyshov and Yuri Lobanov.
The number of Israelis abducted during the terrorist attack on October 7, whose identities have been identified, has reached 210 people. However, it is not yet known how many people remain alive and how many are killed. In southern Israel, where fighting is still ongoing, small volunteer groups were searching for missing people. Zoologist Alexandra Panyutina worked in one of them. At the request of T-invariant, Alexandra tried to reconstruct the picture of the tragedy that occurred.
Why did the Higher School of Economics find itself in the worst position among all the new famous universities that emerged in post-Soviet Russia? At what point did the era of solidarity with state ideology begin at the university? Was the pressure on Yaroslav Kuzminov pressure on the university itself or on the head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Elvira Nabiullina? What are the reasons and consequences of including the HSE on the sanctions list? Explains former vice-rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics Andrei Yakovlev.
G.A. Gamow award, established by the Russian-American Association of Scientists (RASA-America, Russian-American Science Association) in memory of the outstanding Russian-American physicist, Professor Georgy Antonovich Gamow (1904-1968) for 2023 is awarded to Andrei Zorin, professor at the Oxford University (The United Kingdom) and Victor Chernozhukov, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
How do the events of October, 7 differ from the previous Israeli-Palestinian conflicts? Why was Israel unprepared for the invasion? What could happen to the hostages? A new configuration of the relations between Palestine and Israel emerges, says Dmitry Mariasis, candidate of economic sciences, specialist on the Middle East, former head of the department of the Israel study and Jewish communities at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Updates: Andrey Boyarshinov, Dmitry Ivanov, Valery Golubkin, Boris Kagarlitsky, Svetlana Drugoveyko-Dolzhanskaya.
Additions: Alexander Lukanin, Alexey Vorobyov.

Dismissals, fines, stigmatization, criminal cases, torture — all this awaits in Russia those who are trying to tell the truth, oppose war, protect peace, criticize the authorities or simply honestly do their academic and teaching work .
T-invariant and the CISRUS Centerwill work together to chronicle the persecution of scientists in Russia for as long as it continues. If you have witnessed or been the target of academic harassment, please contact us at [email protected].
The chronicle records violations of the rights and freedoms of scientists and teachersas citizens of the Russian Federation, as well as violations of their academic rights and freedoms by the leadership of their scientific institution.

Date of incident: September 29, 2023
Type of violation: the ethics commission of St. Petersburg State University demanded dismissal
Institution: St. Petersburg State University

Summary: On September 29, 2023, a meeting of the St. Petersburg State University Ethics Commission was held. The Commission received an appeal from Vice-Rector for Legal Affairs Yu. V. Penov with a request to provide an ethical assessment of the actions and behavior of the senior teacher of the Russian Language Department S. V. Drugoveyko-Dolzhanskaya. The commission came to the conclusion “that the actions of S. V. Drugoveyko-Dolzhanskaya are incompatible with the status of a university student at St. Petersburg State University.”

Sources: Paper, Decision of the St. Petersburg State University Ethics Commission
Is it possible to say that the USSR annexed Lithuania? Why was the contract with the emigrant professor officially terminated? What do other teachers and students of Vilnius University, as well as Andrey Desnitsky himself, think about this? T-invariant tried to understand how such issues should be resolved from the point of view of the norms of the academic community.
On October 14-15, the annual RASA conference will be held in Chicago. This year it is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Rachmaninov. We discussed what Rachmaninov’s creative experience of emigration teaches, why his works were banned and allowed to be performed again in the USSR, and whether classical music will stand the test of time in a conversation with the honorary speaker of the conference, the conductor who performed all of Rachmaninov’s works, professor, Director of the Orchestra Northwestern University Music Biehnen School Viktor Yampolsky. Interviewed by Olga Orlova.
Within the project “Creators” supported by Richard Lounsbery Foundation T-invariant together with RASA (Russian-American Science Association) continues to publish a series of biographical essays about people from Russian Empire, who made a significant contribution to world science and technology. Alexander Petrunkevitch was born in the Chernigov Governorate, but most of his life he worked at Yale University. He became especially famous for his research on arachnids.
What can sociology tell us about war? For residents of Eastern Europe, war has ceased to be a word from textbooks and news. It invaded their homes and their destiny, it became part of their everyday life. Ariel University researcher Victor Vakhshtain gave an open lecture at the Free University about how war mixes with everyday life.T-invariant suggests reading a short version of the speech scientist.