Director of the Institute for the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences Valery Garbuzov has been removed from his post, which he has held since 2016. The doctor of historical sciences told TASS about this.
“Yes, yesterday an order was signed to terminate the contract with me. The reason as such is not indicated there, there is such an article in the employment contract — at the initiative of the founder,» Garbuzov told the agency.
The day before, two of Garbuzov's acquaintances told Meduza about his dismissal. On the website of the institute, he is still listed as director. On August 29, Nezavisimaya Gazeta published a column by Garbuzov in which a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences described the anti-Western myths used by Russian propaganda.
«It's no secret that the charge of foreign policy expansionism has never left Russia, pursuing it throughout its historical development,» wrote Garbuzov.
“Today, on the wave of anti-Western sentiments, in an atmosphere of pseudo-patriotic frenzy that has gripped those who regularly listen to “old songs about the main thing,” the population of Russia, which with amazing ease, naively and thoughtlessly perceives the theses of total state propaganda, new myths are created, and with them the modern utopian consciousness is being formed. These myths are being propagated day and night by a new generation of well-paid professional political manipulators and numerous television talk show hosts,” continued the doctor of historical sciences.
According to Garbuzov, «under the conditions of the creeping restoration of Stalinism,» propaganda creates myths «about the crisis of globalization, of everything 'Anglo-Saxon'; peace and a new anti-colonial revolution. The director of the institute called the goal of creating these myths «the indefinite retention of power at any cost, the preservation of property and the political regime by the current ruling elite and the oligarchy integrated with it.»
As Meduza noted, Sergey Mardan, host of the Komsomolskaya Pravda propaganda radio, compared the column of a doctor of sciences with the posts of the former “Minister of Defense of the DPR” Igor Strelkov (Girkin) and was indignant that Garbuzov runs a specialized scientific center, which , in his opinion, «should be completely in the structure of the FSB.»
In a conversation with TASS, Garbuzov did not specify whether his dismissal was really related to the Nezavisimaya Gazeta column.
«Discourses on the brink of Nazism». What kind of subject is this — the foundations of Russian statehood