EDITORIAL
Polina Surina doles out a Real Russian “Education”
The Moscow Times reports:
Polina Surina, 26, an instructor at the School of Government at Moscow State University, has been hit with new fraud charges in a case that has rocked the educational establishment. Surina, whose father is the dean of the school, was detained on April 26 and charged with accepting a bribe of 35,000 euros ($46,000) from a prospective student. But the district prosecutor’s office dropped the charge, which carried a maximum punishment of five years, drawing criticism from the Investigative Committee. Nina Ostanina, a State Duma deputy with the Communist Party, has accused Vyacheslav Volodin, a senior United Russia official and a professor at the School of Government, of intervening with investigators on Surina’s behalf. The city prosecutor’s office reopened the case on a new charge of fraud carrying up to 10 years in prison after a video of Surina accepting the money leaked onto the Internet, Interfax reported Tuesday. Her father, Alexei Surin, dean of the School of Government, will leave his post Friday because his term has expired, Interfax said.
Let’s be crystal clear: the sordid case of “Professor” Surina is in no way an aberration. This is simply the Russian education system in microcosm, and nobody who has spent any serious time in Russia would dare deny that. And it’s richly fitting that, of all things, Surina is a professor of government, that most corrupt of all Russian institutions. Not long ago, we reported on a massive scandal involving bribery at the Russian prosecutor’s office.
La Russophobe 