by Yana Grinshpun and Mikhail Kostylev
In our (Soviet) youth, France was nicknamed the "16rd republic of the USSR". Emigration was a cruel disillusionment: the French hardly read, drink their vodka without snacking (the savages!) and their supreme leaders do not try to calm international crises with big kicks on the table.
Fortunately for our cultural sensitivity, a small corner of the USSR still resists the capitalist invader: French research. If the academics (massively communist since the 1945s) have not succeeded in transforming France into a popular democracy, we can say that with their universities, they have done a superb job!
Who knows, for example, that the CNRS was founded on the model of the Soviet Academy of Sciences? The militant surges after 1945 and 1968 only encouraged the phenomenon.
Khrushchev promised an apartment to every Soviet: the unions, for their part, guaranteed every French researcher a closed ecosystem where their left-wing convictions would never be called into question by the terrible Reality.
France is therefore dotted with amusing little kolkhozes, each with its high-sounding name, its exhausted working masses, its sleepy management committee... and its chronic lack of resources.
Welcome to our Laboratory of Excellence!
(the cart will soon be removed, we lost the credits)
Like a kolkhoz farmer, a researcher (if he is a civil servant) has a guaranteed salary – but a perfectly pitiful one. As for the equipment, it is literally falling into ruin (if it exists!)
And as in the Soviet Union, it is customary to pass off poor working conditions with grand declarations about the nobility of the teaching cause. That's it, we don't have oil, but we have the Sorbonne. It only costs a little saliva, and the protests stop in the face of such conviction...
…for a while, at least. And everyone's frustration translates, not into concrete demands and actions, but into the formation of an unhealthy and intrusive group dynamic, always looking for a scapegoat.
The researcher is constantly worked by unwritten collective obligations and must bear the pressure of the collective which explains to him how to better sacrifice himself. The community has: for example, when you attend a defense of a master's degree that you did not direct, you have nothing (you are not paid). You have attended 15 defenses that you did not direct, you have spent time reading these theses (a few good hours in general), listening to the candidates and... nothing, you have nothing. It must be done in the name of solidarity between colleagues, of the "proper functioning of the institution". And if you say no, watch out!
Please correct this thesis voluntarily, comrade, in the name of collegiality!
Like the kolkhozians, researchers and students are supposed to be an avant-garde… in the grandiose speeches of officials on inclusiveness (obligatory), the fight against discrimination (often imaginary), the hunt for the enemy of the people (this dominating white bourgeois filled with many privileges… including those of being a teacher). And to be the first to hold this kind of speech to ensure its visibility on the media scene.
And on the side of reality? It's quite the opposite. Critical thinking is systematically discouraged. Teachers who try it quickly come up against reprimands from colleagues (you are, take your pick: racist, polemicist, fascist, anti-feminist, far-right and obviously reactionary, conservative and enemy of progress, sometimes Zemmourized, Bolsonarized or Trumpized Nazi), the weight of political correctness (deconstruction and consensus, as Comrade Khrushchev used to say) and an administration with all Soviet heaviness.
A victory over appalling capitalist greed, the latter rarely concerns itself with the value of the results obtained (otherwise, gender studies departments would close immediately). It has been replaced by a much more equitable criterion: adherence to bureaucratic rituals, absurd managerial standards, and endless reporting. A Soviet bureaucrat would feel right at home!
I am now going to read the 302nd circular on the integration of methods for deconstructing gendered and heteronormative dimensions in the inclusive and caring university space....
However, as is the way of the times, today's kolkhozniki are much more docile than those of the past. The idea is the same: under the guise of protecting them from the external enemy, they are dumbed down, stupefied, and infantilized… well, no, excuse me! They are deconstructed, decolonized, and taught to be inclusive. That sounds much better!
This "research elite of tomorrow", our students... the ideologues ask us to spare them "micro-aggressions", to create "a safe space" for them to treat their emotional traumas and various phobias, to take into account their dys/praxia/orthography/calculia etc....
In short, everything so that they do not face reality.
Better yet! University apparatchiks now do not consider them mature enough to know how to take precautions before going to class! It is therefore officially recommended to:
The infantilization of citizens is a tried and tested technique for creating a submissive and assisted mass. The most malleable among them will become researchers… and the cycle repeats itself.
Finally, for those who have the means to go all the way. Because, another very kolkhozian characteristic, French research is based on the compulsory and almost free work of students and young non-tenured researchers.
In summer, the Soviet Union sent its teachers to the fields: the French University sends its M2 interns to the labs… for a salary lower than the RSA. Rejoice, moujik of science!
M2 intern delighted after her pasta dinner
Like any good kolkhoz, a French university can lack everything… but not a “red corner”, a political indoctrination center. And as in kolkhozes, it is composed of people who do nothing productive, but receive the most generous funding (IDEX, Gender Institute and other VSS training courses…)
There are people who are incapable of useful work, such as bringing in a bale of hay or calculating an asymptote, but who are always ready to issue an ukase on matters of behavior, thought, and now sexuality, in short a whole illegible and incomprehensible bric-a-brac. But very virtuous and moralizing.
The only difference is that they used to be called “political instructors”: now they are called “Equality and Diversity Officers”. What progress!
In the USSR, they also claimed that their ideology was a science… and besides, very often, these people (ours here) are also Marxists (or “post-Marxists”). But we must not confuse: it is a Marxism " different " (Sic!). Nothing to do with the other 70 or so attempts, which all ended in dictatorship and massacres...
No, this time, "it's finally going to work" ! Just need to get rid of the black sheep…
It must be recognized that in the USSR, calls for lynching had much more force...
Added to this, as in a kolkhoz, are "unions" mainly concerned with guaranteeing perks to their friends, or aligning themselves with the dominant ideology. And who willingly send messages of solidarity to the fashionable dictatorial regime: formerly Cuba or the China of the Maoists, today all the authoritarian excesses of the extreme left (cancel culture, racialism, anti-Zionism).
Including, in the name of the fight against "Islamophobia", to defend amiable religious fundamentalists who would slit their throats in a second once they came to power. The bearded men of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have just secured the support of... Sud Education.
It is only surprising in appearance.The first are Marxists disguised as religious figures (Amin Maalouf demonstrated this masterfully), the second are Marxists… disguised as teachers. Forty years ago, they were already supporting each other, with beautiful posters daubed in red.
Anti -Semites of all countries, unite!
In the USSR, we boasted of "catching up with and surpassing the West." Little did we know that a few years later, it would be the West that would be chasing us. Welcome to our past!
