Skip to main content.
OSUN Menu
Education sub-menu
Education
OSUN Courses
Faculty
Graduate Programs
Certificate Programs
Mobility
Teaching
Birkbeck Summer School
Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy (CLASP)
Developing Teaching Professionals
Experiential Learning Institute
Global History Lab
Global Teaching Fellowship Program
GLOBALED
Curricula
CORUSUS
Economic Democracy Initiative
Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network
Global Studies
Hannah Arendt Humanities Network
Human Rights Program
Liberal Arts and Sciences Collaborative
Policy Labs
Professional Development Program for University Administrators
Strengthening the Core
Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice
Research sub-menu
Research
Research Projects
Community Engaged Research
The Democracy Institute
Economic Democracy Initiative
GEOHUB
Global Institute of Advanced Study
OSUN Forum on Democracy and Development
Research Creation Initiative
Fellowships
Chatham House Academy Fellowships
Global Scholars Academy
Past Projects
Interruptrr
Global Observatory on Academic Freedom
Open Society Research Platform
Access sub-menu
Access
Teacher Education
Enhanced Network Teacher Education Capacity
Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives
Education Pathways
Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership
Collaborative for Liberal Education for Adolescents
Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison
Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives
Civic sub-menu
Civic Engagement
Student Engagement
Get Engaged Conference
Global Commons
Global Engagement Fellows
Engaged Learning
Certificate in Civic Engagement
Community Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences
Community Engaged Research
Experiential Learning Institute
Solve Climate by 2030
Past Projects
Engaged Senior Projects
OSUN Science Shop
Academic Freedom sub-menu
Academic Freedom
Initiatives
AltLiberalArts
Invisible University for Ukraine
Smolny Beyond Borders
Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative
Institutional Partners
American University of Afghanistan
Parami University
News sub-menu
News + Opportunities
Newsroom
Current News
News Archive
Events
Current Events
Events Archive
Opportunities
For Students
For Faculty
Archive
Resources sub-menu
Resources
Digital Collection
Digital Case Studies
Digital Course Collection
Student-Produced Videos
Teaching Tools
About sub-menu
About
About OSUN
Our Vision
Who We Are
What We Do
Member Institutions
Themes
Annual Report
Branding
Search
Search
News & Events Menu
News & Events Menu
Newsroom
Current News
News Archive
Events
Current Events
Events Archive
Opportunities
Current Opportunities
Opportunities Archive
OSUN News
View all news
Threatened Scholars: Writer and Public Intellectual Dmitry Bykov on Russian
Ressentiment
and Resilience
Author and journalist Dmitry Bykov is a fellow with the OSUN Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative. Photo courtesy of the author's Instagram.
This is the first in a series of profiles of fellows participating in OSUN’s innovative Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative, which supports writers, researchers, teachers, and intellectuals who have fled authoritarian governments in their home countries.
Surviving Poisoning and Professional Attacks
The only thing
Dmitry Bykov
remembers as he lay comatose for five days in a hospital bed in Russia during April 2019 was a feeling of euphoria. Even though he had been poisoned by Russian federal security services and was gravely ill,“I felt like I was 20 again,” he says. “I felt flattered because it meant I was not being ignored,” says the darkly humorous and charismatic journalist, novelist, public intellectual, and outspoken critic of President
Vladimir Putin
.
“Russian literature still holds some power, and if you write well, you begin to be accepted as a prophet,” says Bykov, who migrated to the US three years later under the aegis of OSUN’s
Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative
(TSI). TSI offers fellowships at OSUN institutions to scholars, writers, and other intellectuals whose critical work, or even identity, forces them to leave their home countries due to threats from authoritarian regimes or other types of persecution.
The initiative offers fellows a safe haven and a place where they can integrate into the local community while pursuing their teaching, writing, or research. It also benefits students and faculty at the host institution, giving them valuable exposure to the various global perspectives and stories that visiting fellows provide.
Since its inception in 2021, TSI has supported 166 individual fellows from 23 countries. Residential and non-residential academic affiliations have been hosted by 18 OSUN institutions, with fellows in exile from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Palestine, Russia, Serbia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.
Bykov survived the poisoning and stayed in his much loved Moscow for three years, until the Russian government’s clampdown on his writing and broadcasting work became increasingly oppressive. Eventually, the opportunity to come to the US presented itself and just one week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Bykov fled.
Ressentiment and the War in Ukraine
Since his arrival in the US, Bykov has lived up to his aforementioned identification as a prophetic (and prolific) Russian literary figure, writing biographies of Ukrainian President
Vladimir Zelensky
and Russian novelist
Vladimir Nabokov
, as well as a science fiction novel. Simultaneously, he has taught at Cornell University in New York state for the 2022/23 academic year and is currently at the University of Rochester, specializing in literature courses focused on prison and exile in Russia and Gogol’s creation of the Ukrainian national mythology.
Bykov says this area of post-Soviet literature reflects a certain ressentiment that abides in the Soviet/Russian consciousness, an amalgamation of unexpressed feelings of despair, frustration, and hostility generated by the loss of 15 former republics. He thinks this sentiment plays a key role in current popular Russian support for the war on Ukraine.
“I think that the real support for the war can be compared with the real opposition to war, with about 10% of the Russian population supporting either side and about 80% just waiting for any winner that will help them to define their attitude,” he says.
Current surveys
report that roughly 60% of Russians support the war but this percentage fluctuates as daily events unfold.
While Bykov originally thought sanctions and global disapproval would bring the war to a swift end, he now thinks more military support from the US and EU is urgently needed. “The war can be finished at any moment when the West is ready to stop it,” he says. “You can't win without arms and you can't lose with such a courageous population,” he says, referring to the Ukrainian people. He adds that Russian citizens “have no private hatred for Ukraine and no true devotion for the motherland.”
A Lost Generation Ready for Action
Bykov says he has enjoyed his time at Cornell and he appreciates the hospitality of his hosts, the curiosity of students who attend his lectures, and the institutional resources he has benefited from while researching and writing his books. But he’s also eager to return to Russia, where he hopes to one day serve as the head of a university or the editor-in-chief of a newspaper or press agency.
Bykov believes that his cohort of Russian migrants–the “lost generation,” who acutely experienced the chilling effect of Putin’s regime on culture and social mobility–would be happy to get back home and use their skills and abilities to enhance life in Russia. “We're waiting for a chance to do something. That's the reason I feel so young and so ready for action,” he adds.
Look for more profiles of fellows from the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative.
Post Date:
October 17, 2023