Illustrative photo – On October 24, 2022, Russian historian Andrej Zubov spoke at the press conference of Masaryk University in Brno, where he lectures at the Faculty of Philosophy after leaving Russia.
Brno/Moscow – On his Facebook profile, Russian historian and religionist Andrej Zubov called the move by the Russian Ministry of Justice, which included him on the list of foreign agents, an “absurd decision by the criminal authorities”. Zubov has been working as a visiting professor at the Masaryk University in Brno since October last year, and intends to defend himself in court against the move of the Russian authorities.
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Rádio Svobodná Evropa reported on its website about the addition of Zubov to the register of agents who are subject to much stricter official control. Since December, a new law has been in force in Russia, which makes it possible to designate as a foreign agent anyone who, from the point of view of the regime, has come under “foreign influence”. Now the authorities do not even have to prove that the person in question receives financial support from abroad.
“As a Russian citizen and politician, I have every right and even duty to criticize and condemn the people who usurped power in my country and set it on the path of national disaster when they launched a war against the neighboring sovereign state, Ukraine. As a scientist, I have every right to work on any university in the world where I am invited and where they wish to listen to my lectures, especially since I was deprived of this opportunity by the state authorities in my homeland in 2014,” wrote Zubov.
The historian spoke out against the regime in Russia already in 2014, when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. At the time, Zubov published an article in the Russian newspaper Vedomosti entitled “It already happened”, where, among other things, he warned against territorial greed, which countries can only achieve with blood and tears, and campaigned for peace. In response to the text, Zubov had to leave the State Institute of International Relations in Moscow, where he taught. The historian has also repeatedly criticized the Russian war in Ukraine.
In response to being included in the list of agents in Russia, Zubov intends to file a lawsuit against the Russian Ministry of Justice through his lawyer Mikhail Biryukov, whom he “respects for his professionalism and honesty”.< /p>
Masaryk University awarded Zubov an honorary doctorate in 2019. Even then, he received an offer from her to give a lecture, but he refused, saying that he wanted to work in Russia. He arrived only last year, when he no longer saw a perspective in his homeland and did not feel safe. The last impetus for him was the mobilization in Russia, associated with a significant change in rhetoric and hardening of propaganda.
