Week-ending 7 February 2020
Anatoly Kasprzhak on Teodor Shanin: ‘He was able to integrate the best traditions of the Russian and Western education systems. He wasn’t a dogmatic Westernizer; he took only the best aspects of it and combined them with the best there was in Russian education.’
Source:
A problem-solving Don Quixote Teodor Shanin, who modernized Russia’s higher education system for the humanities, dies at 89
On February 4, the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES), more commonly known as “Shaninka,” announced the passing of its founder, sociologist Teodor Shanin. Irina Kravtsova asked Anatoly Kasprzhak, who succeeded Shanin as MSSES rector, how his mentor changed higher education in the humanities in Russia. […] ‘Teodor didn’t transfer that [Western] model directly, but he showed that you could unite those Western models with the best practices Russian pedagogues had to offer. It would have been so easy to copy Harvard or Oxford’s model and import it into Russia, but Shanin understood very well that that would never work. He was able to integrate the best traditions of the Russian and Western education systems. He wasn’t a dogmatic Westernizer; he took only the best aspects of it and combined them with the best there was in Russian education. In that sense, Teodor’s students, who are now working in centers of higher education all over the country, have seen that his work was right, and they’re continuing that work.’ Meduza, 4 February 2020
