Anatoly Chubais is creating a center for Russian studies in Israel, said two of the Agency’s interlocutors who communicated with him over the past months.
Details. Chubais has received an affiliation with one of the universities in Tel Aviv (Israel) and is working on a certain project in which he will tell how Russian liberals allowed what was happening in the country, one source said. He is creating a center for Russian studies at Tel Aviv University, another source said.
▪️As part of this project, the former head of Rusnano has been in contact with many researchers involved in Russian studies in recent months. To do this, Chubais visited Riga, where, in particular, he met with historian Yuri Slezkin (a photo of the meeting was published by journalist Ilya Barabanov), and in the USA, where he visited universities on both coasts. At Stanford, for example, he talked with the famous scholar of Stalinist repressions, Stephen Kotkin.
▪️The head of the Center for the Study of Russia and Eastern Europe at Tel Aviv University, Vera Kaplan, told the Agency that she does not know about the creation of an organization for the study of Russia headed by Chubais. Chubais did not have and does not have anything to do with its center, Kaplan emphasized.
▪️Slezkine earlier told that he discussed research on Russian topics with Chubais when they met in Riga. “There was a conversation about studying Russia. About who studies it, how it is studied, what institutes exist for the study of Russia,” he said. To a clarifying question about whether Chubais wanted to create an educational initiative, Slezkine replied: “Yes, he thinks something about such things and he was interested in hearing how institutes for the study of Russia are organized in America and in the West in general.”
▪️The VChK-OGPU telegram channel reported in October that on July 7, 2023, a closed seminar was held with the participation of Chubais and his close associates. The channel did not specify where the event took place. At it, as the channel wrote, the preparation of work on the “post-personalist period of Russia 2025-2040” was discussed. The channel also published a transcript of the speeches at this seminar. According to the transcript, Chubais is talking about the creation of the Center for Russian Studies (CRS). He does not specify where or when the center will be created, but says that the organization, on an interdisciplinary basis, should create “a list of possible scenarios for Russia in the post-personalist period.” The text also says that economists Grigory Glazkov, Vyacheslav Shironin and Sergei Vasiliev spoke at the seminar.
▪️Shironin refused to comment to the Agency about the creation of the center. It was not possible to contact Glazkov and Vasiliev. The Agency sent an email with questions to Chubais’s email on Thursday. However, at the time of publication, the news had not received a response.
Context. Chubais is one of those with whom the reforms of the early 90s are associated, which came as a shock to Russians. Until December 2020, he headed the Rusnano corporation, and then worked as the special representative of the Russian President for relations with international organizations. A few weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine, he resigned and left Russia.
▪️Israeli media reported in May 2023 that Chubais and his wife Avdotya Smirnova allegedly requested permanent documents of Israeli citizens. Chubais is denied. In June in the Russian scientific journal “Problems of Economics” came out article by Candidate of Economic Sciences Anatoly Chubais “Non-payments in the Russian economy of the 1990s: an unforeseen institution.” In it he was introduced as a “Glasgow explorer”.
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