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Central Europe & Russia Task Force
Faculty Seminar in Russia
June 25 - July 13, 2002
Facilitators' Report
Narratives and Boundaries: Transition in Southern Russia and Its Environs
Kuban State University, Krasnodar, Russia
Report by Diane Nemec Ignashev and Michael Hemesath, Carleton College
(Click on the headings or scroll down)
As part of the ongoing Mellon funded Global Partners Project (GPP) twelve faculty from ten colleges participated in the Southern Russia faculty development seminar from 25 June through 13 July, 2002. There was significantly more interest than these numbers might indicate, but we lost no less than four seminar participants (it looked like it might be six at one point) for a variety of professional and personal reasons between the time we made the selections and the time we departed.
Faculty were drawn from all three participating consortia, Associated Colleges of the Midwest, Great Lakes Colleges Association and Associated Colleges of the South. As has been true of previous GPP programs, disciplinary representation was primarily from the social sciences and the humanities, but some attempts were made to lay the groundwork for future participation by scientists. The seminar was based in southern Russia, in the Kuban region, but also included brief visits to St. Petersburg and Moscow. The seminar addressed the theme of "Transition in Southern Russia," a topic broad enough to accommodate participants' discipline specific academic interests as well as to provide the opportunity for some cross-disciplinary interactions as well.
Pre-trip planning was surprisingly straightforward for a program in Russia. Diane and Michael were able to communicate easily, being on the same campus. The ACM office, Dan Sack in particular, was helpful and efficient as usual. Dan was exceptionally prompt and thorough in communicating with the facilitators and participants. The biggest surprise during planning was the ability of Diane to coordinate virtually all of the communication with Kuban State University via e-mail. This outcome was a function of Diane's extensive experience in Russia, her previous contacts and time in Krasnodar and the rare talents of Galina Nikolaevna Govorova from the International Office at Kuban State. Diane and Mike had both worked with Galina before when they were in Krasnodar with students and knew her to be extremely helpful and efficient. Galina proved to be the perfect contact for the GPP program. Not only did she do an outstanding job with the logistics of home stays and travel plans, but she also expertly matched program participants with academic colleagues from Kuban State University, carefully considering the personalities, language skills and academic interests in each academic pairing. It was Galina's organizational talents and skillful matching that made the program, especially the Krasnodar portion, so successful from the facilitators' perspectives. Additional details are provided below, but again it is worth noting that virtually all of this planning was managed by Diane and Galina through regular e-mail contact and the occasional phone call. We urge ACM to communicate our appreciation of Galina Govorova's organizing effort in a letter to Kuban State University rector, Vladimir Babeshko.
A one-day orientation in Chicago provided an opportunity for the group to meet and to share their goals for the GPP seminar. We began with a brief description of the GPP and participant introductions. This was followed by a longer discussion of each participant's Russian experience and their individual goals and plans for the program. The orientation also included an introduction to the Kuban region, a conversation about the logistical details of the program and an overview of the background reading that would be used in the opening days of the seminar.
Most of the group gathered in Moscow and flew to Krasnodar together. After one night in Krasnodar, the group was bused to the Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik (see the seminar schedule). For a variety of reasons the location proved to be an ideal starting point for the seminar. First, the relaxed setting in a modest hotel near the sea allowed participants to recover from jet lag. Second, the group slept and ate together, which facilitated getting to know each other better. Third, we were able to see and use the new Kuban State University satellite facility in Gelendzhik, as well as meet some of the staff there. Fourth, we got a nice introduction to the history, politics, culture, economics and even archaeology of the whole Kuban region which provided a useful context for our work with colleagues in Krasnodar. Through the connections and experience of the Kuban State University staff we enjoyed, among other activities, lectures from Kuban State faculty, a visit with city administrators, a lecture from a local historian and a field trip with a local archeologist. Finally, we also had the opportunity to get to know a number of our Kuban State University colleagues who joined us in Gelendzhik where they lead discussions and shared informal conversations.
After our three days in Gelendzhik we returned to Kransnodar for the most intensive part of the program (see the seminar schedule). In addition to our academic objectives, we were also interested in introducing (or re-introducing) participants to the social and domestic side of life in a transition economy. Toward this end each participant was housed with a local family during their time in Krasnodar. Galina made the necessary arrangements and matched participants with families on the basis of interests and language abilities. This arrangement proved successful at giving participants access to aspects of Russian life that would have been unavailable through more typical hotel housing arrangements. It also provided host families with cross-cultural social interactions.
The majority of our activities in Krasnodar revolved around the university community. The long-standing relationship between the ACM/GLCA Krasnodar program and Kuban State University provided the starting point for much of this academic activity. From Galina's organization, to Professor Louisa Petrovna Bashmakova's facilitating of discussions, to the participation of individual consultants, it was clear that the previous shared history of the two organizations contributed significantly to the success of the GPP seminar.
The academic program was loosely divided into group activities and individual projects. The group activities began in Gelendzhik when we discussed a number of readings that the whole group had been assigned at the orientation. These readings, including President Putin's autobiography First Person, the novel Inseparable Twins by Anatoly Pristavkin and several articles, were chosen to give the group an overview of the current situation in Russia. Our discussion in Gelendzhik was enhanced by the participation of several Russian colleagues who offered their perspectives on various questions.
This American-Russian dialogue was extended dramatically in our first roundtable discussion in Krasnodar. The roundtable was organized by Professor Bashmakova around the topic of Russian and American contributions to world culture, with a particular emphasis on globalization. The round table discussion occasionally threatened to spin out of control as the forty participants addressed in two and a half hours and two languages a series of questions that might more reasonably be addressed in two and a half years. With her strong arm on the tiller, Professor Bashmakova managed to keep our ship on course and participants were exposed to a variety of perspectives even if we did not manage to conclude what the world community should do about the challenges of globalization. The diverse group of roundtable participants, including some undergraduates and local citizens, was appreciated by the GPP participants.
Four other group meetings were held while in Krasnodar. We met with Rector Vladimir Andreevich Babeshko for an official welcome to Kuban State University. On the Fourth of July we were treated to a holiday program by students from the Kuban State University Southern Center for the Study of the USA. We also gathered for a second roundtable to discuss how different academic disciplines had been affected by the dramatic changes in Russia over the last decade. We concluded the Kuban portion of the seminar with a group dinner which, while primarily social in nature, included most of the faculty colleagues who had helped us in Krasnodar.
The second part of the academic program revolved around individual consultations with Kuban State faculty members. As part of their application for the seminar each GPP participant provided us with a detailed description of the project they planned to explore while in Russia. At the orientation in Chicago we gathered further details to enable Galina to find the best possible academic collaborator at Kuban State. Each participant was then matched with a Russian faculty member who served as their academic host, sharing expertise and making arrangements to help the GPP participant gather data or information about their topic. (Translators were provided when needed.) Each partnership was unique and the specific interaction was determined by the nature of the project, but the pair met at least three times, sometimes at the University and other times at off-campus locations in the city of Krasnodar. While not every match was perfect and some GPP participants did not get exactly what they had hoped for, we were pleased at the flexibility, enthusiasm and energy of the participants. Though the contacts were brief, there were some discussions of ongoing collaborations.
During the week in Kransodar we took advantage of location to offer the group an optional two-day trip to Taman (see the seminar schedule). This is an area that is rich in archaeological history and literary importance and is a regular part of the Krasnodar program for ACM/GLCA students. With one exception, all GPP participants choose to go to Taman where we visited the archeological museum, the Lermontov Museum, a local winery and several geological sites, including a "vent" in the earth that had just opened within the previous two months. We also visited a Cossack village where, Father Andrei, the vibrant and engaging local Orthodox priest, showed us his church and hosted us for lunch and traditional Cossack entertainment. The most unexpected part of our visit was sharing our accommodation, a traditional holiday "resort" filled with little wooden cottages, with dozens of children from the far north of Russia who had never met any foreigners before. A number of us were asked repeatedly for our autographs so the children could convince their parents that they had met and talked to Americans.
The nature of the seminar changed somewhat when we left Krasnodar, in large part due to the diverse character of the participants. We knew the group had a wide range of Russian experience and our plans in St. Petersburg and Moscow reflected this. For the experienced participants, the visit to Russia's two biggest cities was designed to acquaint them with the many changes that had taken place since their last visits and to allow them to pursue the personal and professional contacts they had made over the years. For the novices, St. Petersburg and Moscow provided a broader context with which to understand their time in southern Russia and to experience the diversity of Russia.
At the Chicago orientation we asked the group to pick out those places that they were most interested in visiting in St. Petersburg and Moscow and this list provided the basis for the program in those two cities. We arranged for city tours and visits to all the most important cultural and historical sights. GPP participants who attended the full program of activities got a thorough if brief introduction to both cities. We hired professional guides in both cities to provide expert commentary on the sights we visited. All activities were optional and approximately half the group spent a significant time pursuing their own personal research activities.
We felt that the contrast between Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as the differences between the north and south of Russia gave even the experienced participants a renewed appreciation for the complexity and diversity of Russia in this time of transition.
One further benefit of this portion of the trip was the chance to interact informally with Russian colleagues. Two colleagues from Kuban State University traveled with us during this time and in addition to invaluable help with logistics, they were able to offer perspectives on the cities, especially a southern Russian understanding, that the local tour guides alone could not give us.
Once the pairings of GPP participants and Kuban State University faculty were made, we took a fairly hands-off approach to these collaborations. One of the challenges of the matching process was to find a faculty member with the specific knowledge or background desired by the GPP participant. The American faculty were quite willing to be flexible in these arrangements, understanding that a perfect match was not likely. In some cases participants worked in small groups to take full advantage to the available Russian faculty. Likewise, most of the Kuban State faculty did their best to meet the needs of their new colleagues. While some worked harder than others, Galina did a very good job screening Kuban State faculty to meet our needs.
Each of the participants came with a planned project. Some, like Gitta Hammarberg's plan to study Russian spas, survived intact, while others like the economists' plans evolved into visits to various Russian businesses when the data or expertise needed for the original projects were not available. But everyone was able to pursue some project with their Russian colleague and at the end of the week in Krasnodar there were discussions about the possibility of ongoing collaborative work.
A brief note about disciplinary issues. This seminar was relatively evenly balanced between humanists and social scientists, something that has not always been true in consortial programs. Given ACM/GLCA contacts have been primarily in the humanities, it was slightly easier to find humanists to pair up with GPP participants, but in the end we managed to find the necessary social scientists. As we planned the seminar, we were excited to have a chemist interested in environmental issues and had managed to find a scientist from Kuban State to serve as a colleague. Unfortunately our chemist was not able to participate in the program, but there does seem to be some interest among scientists at Kuban State in this type of collaboration. In fact the Rector of Kuban State stressed his university's scientific collaborations with Western universities in his introduction to the group. So if there are scientists from consortia schools who have an interested in collaborating with Russian scientists, we believe there is likely to be interest on the Russian side.
There were no significant surprises in the budgeting process. Most of our initial estimates were accurate and our ability to do as much as we did was due in significant measure to the work of Galina, who used her knowledge of Gelendzhik, St. Petersburg and Moscow to get us very good prices for the services we required.
As is true of virtually all academic experiences, program outcomes are important, yet equally obviously, assessing these outcomes is a challenge. We will not attempt to predict how program participants will assess their individual outcomes but we are willing to venture some general and not too controversial judgments:
1. All participants were exposed to a variety of Russian environments -- beach resort, large provincial city, village, the two largest cities.
2. Participants presumably returned home with a general understanding of the current social, political, cultural and economic situation in Russia which can be shared with colleagues and students.
3. Each participant had the opportunity to experience Russian family life.
4. We all had a brief introduction to a Russian university and met at least several different faculty and staff members.
5. Each participant had the opportunity to spend a brief but intense period of time with a Russian faculty colleague. This time allowed American faculty to focus on a specific research topic and to learn a little about the life of a Russian faculty member.
6. GPP participants had numerous opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary discussions and informal conversations about professional and personal matters with Russian colleagues.
7. A final obvious but sometimes underappreciated benefit for participants was the opportunity to engage in conversations with American colleagues about disciplinary matters, as well as learning about how our various institutions function.
We were somewhat concerned about the wide range of interests and backgrounds on the GPP Russia Faculty Development seminar. We were not sure that we could meet all the participants' needs and worried (only a little) about how the group would mesh. In the end we were quite pleased about seminar and feel confident that most (all?) participants found the seminar to be a worthwhile way to spend three weeks. We believe that each of them found something of value to take back to their home institutions and to their own research. This is in part a tribute to those who helped us organize the seminar but primarily it is a tribute to the participants of the seminar themselves.
updated 10/2/02
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