27 August 2025
How the ban on teaching and educational outreach is going to work for ‘foreign agents’ and what Kant has to do with it
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya gazeta
On 1 September, the Day of Knowledge, federal laws nos. FZ-100 and FZ-171 dated 21 April 2025 go into effect, instituting amendments in education legislation and also new restrictions in the law ‘on individuals who are under foreign influence’. Bookstores are getting rid of works by ‘foreign agents’, while educational and other sites are quickly blocking access to lectures and texts by ‘foreign agents’. How justified is this panic?
The amendments make the legislation on ‘foreign agents’ yet again more vague: ‘A foreign agent does not have the right to carry out teaching activities [pedagogicheskaya deyatel’nost’] in state and municipal educational organizations and (or) educational-cultural work more broadly defined [prosvetitel’naya deyatel’nost’ – hereafter translated as ‘educational outreach’] …’
The teaching activity part is more or less clear, and the amendments do not even prohibit a ‘foreign agent’ from engaging in it outside the walls of state and municipal educational institutions (as a tutor, for example).
On the other hand, ‘educational outreach’ is not defined in any way with respect to content, theme, form, or platform on which this kind of activity might take place.
Discrepancies are inevitable in practical application of the law. For example, lectures on Russian history might well be categorized as educational outreach, but what about lectures on ancient Oriental history? What about nuclear physics? And legal consultations?.. Will the writing and publication of articles and books be considered educational outreach depending on their content?
We will learn the answers to these questions only from future application of the law, which, if we’re talking about ideology, usually outstrips legislation in its zeal, according to the principle ‘better too cautious than not cautious enough’.
The mechanism for prosecuting a ‘foreign agent’ in such cases would be based on Article 19.34, Part 8, of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation [CAO RF] on failure to carry out the obligations of a foreign agent, which entails fines of 30,000-50,000 rubles for citizens, 100,000-300,000 rubles for officials, and 300,000-500,000 for legal entities.
Could all three fines be imposed simultaneously for each instance? Based on current practice regarding the ‘foreign agent’ label, only the publication’s author is fined for its absence, but not the publisher as a legal entity or its director. We can hope that application of the law will take shape in the same way with respect to educational outreach by ‘foreign agents’, but today we cannot say this with confidence.
In the event of repeated failure to fulfill the obligations of a ‘foreign agent’ in the course of a year, including other types (for example, posting material without the required label), the content’s author may be charged under the analogous Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [CC RF] (maximum punishment up to two years’ imprisonment).
The facts of these ‘crimes’ will be revealed in the course of the Justice Ministry checking stores and websites according to plan, as well as based on denunciations from do-gooders specializing in this.
The materials will be handed over to the appropriate departments of the police or the FSB for the conduct of an inquiry and, in more complicated instances, further to the court.
Federal law FZ-100 does not provide for liability for commercial platforms and websites. However, according to federal law FZ-171, ‘failure to carry out the legal demands of an organ authorized to implement state control over the observance of legislation on foreign agents’, which was passed the same day, will entail a fine of 100,000-300,000 rubles for officials and 300,000-500,000 for legal entities. In this context, ‘legal demands’ means the seizure of unsold copies of the ‘foreign agent’s’ ‘educational outreach’ works from stores and their removal from websites. Disseminators of harmful educational outreach are threatened with other unpleasant actions, which have a cumulative effect, up to and including revocation of essential licenses and liquidation of legal entities.
Enforcement practice will more than likely examine the publication of ‘educational outreach’ works by a ‘foreign agent’ as an ‘ongoing’ crime, and this means that liability may ensue for the very fact of their being within public access regardless of when they were posted, including before 1 September 2025.
In conclusion, it is worth pointing out that President Putin has stated more than once, including when answering questions from former members of the Presidential Human Rights Council, that the legislation on ‘foreign agents’ has as its sole goal the making visible of financial means coming in from abroad and in no way diminishes the rights of the individuals on whom the Justice Ministry has conferred this status.
However in fact, as of 1 September 2025, a new ban was introduced for ‘agents’ on their profession: a direct ban, if we’re talking about teaching activity, and ‘at the court’s discretion’ for those whose public activity could be characterized as educational outreach.
This will be the work of the ‘security structures’ (including the organs of justice), for whom the qualities of the educational outreach are, on the contrary, counter-indicative.
The most famous definition of ‘enlightenment’ [prosveshchenie – for the purposes of this article, translated as ‘educational outreach’ – trans.] was given by Immanuel Kant, who described it as the person’s emergence from the state of immaturity in which he finds himself due to his own fault. Moreover, he attributes this ‘fault’ to a lack not of intelligence or knowledge but of ‘courage’.
As of 1 September of this year, blame for the ‘immaturity’ (ignorance) of Russians, young and not so young, will be borne by the country’s legislative organs and political leadership. Actually, anyone who wants genuine knowledge will be able to break through the roadblocks put up by the state. By having ‘courage’.
Translated by Marian Schwartz
