Valery Garbuzov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, who was fired from his post as director of the Institute for the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences after the publication of a column on the anti-Western myths of Russian propaganda in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, wrote another article for the publication, in which he spoke about the «large-scale harassment» organized by against him by federal TV channels.
Thus, on August 30, propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, in his program on Rossiya-1, called the employees of the Institute for the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences «agents of the American special services.»
Nezavisimaya Gazeta also published a collective appeal from the institute's staff. According to colleagues of the dismissed director, the facts from Solovyov's program «are built on blatant lies, presented in the form of disgusting classical Goebbels propaganda, producing an extremely miserable and wretched impression.» At the same time, the newspaper deleted the statement of the collective (a copy was preserved only in the cache), the article by Garbuzov about harassment remained on the site.
“Allegations that I am connected by some invisible but strong threads with the White House, the Capitol and other “Washington masters”, to whom I supposedly regularly report, are so primitive, artless and comical that I will leave them without any or comments,” said the doctor of sciences. — Presented in an extremely insulting manner, frankly false statements that the institute is undergoing a financial audit that revealed theft, and that, having accumulated dishonestly acquired millions, I myself am preparing to escape to the West, to my «masters», <…> ; absurd.»
“The Fulbright program, of which I, like many of my compatriots, was at one time, does not recruit Russian spies for the United States. And I myself am not a hidden agent of Western intelligence services, not an Anglo-Saxon spy, and not an internal enemy of my own Fatherland, ”the historian replied to the propagandists.
“What about the current main Russian enemy — the United States of America — a state with which Russia has had the most diverse palette of relations throughout history: from allied to sharply confrontational? Even by virtue of this fact, I dare to assume: someday another time will come, and they will change. Just because of banal patterns: evolution is inevitable in everything, including in this area, ”said Garbuzov.
He called anti-American and anti-Western sentiments «a very serious and even very dangerous disease.» The historian recalled that one of the main features of humanitarian knowledge is its open and controversial nature.
Instead of Garbuzov, the 33-year-old head of the Center for the Study of Strategic Planning at IMEMO RAS Sergey Kislitsyn was appointed as acting head of the institute.