Many acquaintances and strangers write to me, call and say words of support. I am very grateful for this, in my situation it is important to understand that I am not alone and that there are many people on my side. I will confer with lawyers and file a lawsuit with the labor inspectorate. Objectively speaking, I do not really count on a positive outcome of this lawsuit, I just think that I am right in this case. Even if I win this lawsuit, St Petersburg University will simply not let me work normally, but I am doing this not to return there, but to restore moral justice.
As far as I know, this kind of dismissal in Russia is still unprecedented, this is the first time that a person is fired [from a university] directly for expressing his civil and political position. I know that there were cases at St Petersburg University when teachers were fired for participating in political protests, but this was never worded exactly as in my order. The most common way to get fired at St Petersburg University is when contracts are not renewed. Most teachers have one-year contracts or even shorter, and it's very easy to end a person's employment if the administration doesn't like them. In my case, they had no choice, apparently, because I have a three-year contract, and they broke it with this wording.
I think it is very good that St Petersburg University has directly expressed its position on this issue. As a rule, St Petersburg University denies the dismissal of teachers for political reasons, but in this case they could not.
I try to consistently defend my position, which is that the fighting in Ukraine and mobilization are criminal actions, and I categorically oppose them. I consider it my moral duty. This is not the first action in which I participated, I went out on February 24, and then again. Then the situation developed automatically and almost nothing depended on me.
After I was released, I returned to the university and I began to receive service [memos], there were three of them in total. In the first service, I wrote where I was all this time, provided a certificate of administrative arrest. Then the second and finally the third came to me, after which they issued an order to dismiss. I think that when they sent me the memos, they were looking for some other formal reason to fire me, but since they did not find another, they used this transparent and wonderful wording. And I think that's good, because this transparency is indicative.
I am not a political activist, I am a scientist. My main occupation is science and teaching. I'm just showing my citizenship. I intend to stay here for a while, and I will challenge this decision, but I am not sure that I will stay in Russia. After February 24, Russian science died. The state of modern Russian science can be illustrated by one simple fact. I served my sentence with a colleague from St. Petersburg State University, a mathematician by profession. I have a PhD, I defended my dissertation in France, and a colleague recently defended his thesis at the University of Zurich, and now we were serving a sentence together in a double cell. This fact perfectly illustrates the state of modern Russian science, when two scientists who were educated in the West and then returned to Russia to work here and apply the knowledge they acquired there to apply in this country are in prison.
