Shifting Academic Paradigms in Response to Global Crises: Opportunities and Pitfalls

ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPS through paradigm shifts, which can be facilitated by world-changing events.I am writing this piece thinking about my own research on an earlier shift, spearheaded by scholars from Eastern and Central Europe a hundred years ago, when old certainties were productively questioned in a range of academic fields. 1 Some epistemological issues that are raised today echo what was said in the early twentieth century, when Euro-/West-centric understandings of cultures began to be creatively critiqued. 2World War I facilitated imperial disintegrations and early Soviet actors used decolonization discourse to describe the demise of the tsarist empire. 3 During the 1928-31 Soviet 'cultural revolution' decolonization discourse reached its peak, while also acquiring destructive forms under intense political pressure.Notably, it is not only under totalitarianism that ideologically charged campaigns can affect academic research.I remember how the heightened politicization of what used to be called Soviet Studies played out in Western academia in my lifetime.This contradictory history informs my response to the article by Byford, Doak and Hutchings in relation to the three main issues it raises: the relationship between political activism and academic research, what 'Russian Studies' is and the field's relationship to the 'decolonization agenda', which is salient again.In the context of world-changing events, the scales often fall from our eyes, encouraging a reassessment of what used to be taken for granted and allowing us to see what was previously ignored.Russia's war on Ukraine is such an event.One of my thoughts in February 2022 was how scholars of Russia failed to account for the nature of its current political system.We should have also attributed a greater significance to the mainstreaming, under Putin, of the irredentist visions of 'Russian nationhood' that had been regarded as extreme in the 1990s.The glorification of Russia's imperial legacy, as well as the Russian media campaign against Ukraine, should have been more systematically studied.The list of reasons for selfrecrimination can be easily expanded.At the same time, I recognize how difficult it is constructively to rethink the state of a discipline when dramatic events are unfolding.One can recall theories of democratic transition in the 1990s. 4 Which student of Russia would subscribe to them now?