You will, of course, see for yourselves that we are having an incredible number of very bad news items from the State Duma these days

You will, of course, see for yourselves that we are having an incredible number of very bad news items from the State Duma these days. Today amendments to the law “On Education” on the control of any educational activity were passed in the first reading. The appalling bill proposes to control activity “outside the framework of educational programmes, aimed at the dissemination of knowledge, skills, abilities, value orientations and experience for the purposes of the intellectual, spiritual and moral, creative, physical or professional development of the individual”. All enlightenment projects, any education outside schools and universities, will have to be agreed with the authorities under the pretext of countering the “dissemination of unlawful information and anti-Russian propaganda in school and student circles”. Courses, lectures, student laboratories, seminars, discussion platforms, open schools, educational workshops, popular-education festivals will all come under attack, and the list could easily be continued. The organ of power to which this sphere is handed over to be plundered will decide how one may enlighten and how one may not; in effect this means complete and direct censorship of the non-state segment of educational activity, and I think you yourselves understand the scale and the ruinous consequences. Most independent educational projects will simply be destroyed. So far the bill has passed only the first reading, but is there any reason to doubt that it will be adopted, and is there any hope that it will be rejected?