In early September, it became known that Dmitry Repin, Doctor of Sociology, who previously held the position of Advisor to the Rector of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, was appointed Acting Deputy Director of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems (IITPI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences . The appointment came against the backdrop of the ongoing public conflict between the scientific staff of the institute and the recently appointed acting director of the Institute of Information Transmission Problems Maxim Fedorov. T-invariant tells what is known about the new administrator of the institute.
Recall, in the summer of 2023 in one of the leading Moscow academic institutions – IPPI RAS named after A.A. Kharkevich – unexpectedly changed the director. Instead of a successful and respected in the scientific community mathematician A.N. Sobolevsky on the recommendation of the Department of Nanotechnologies and Information Technologies (DNIT) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Education and Science appoints Doctor of Chemical Sciences, corresponding member Maxim Fedorov, unfamiliar to the staff of the institute. Despite the fact that at a meeting with the staff the new director promised “not to fix what works”, the Institute began to undergo fundamental changes that caused serious dissatisfaction of the staff. This led to an open conflict and the virtual collapse of a unique and successful academic institute. As a result, many leading scientists were dismissed from the Institute or left on their own initiative because of their inability to work with the new administration. In order to realise his plans to reform the Institute and to confront the scientific community dissatisfied with the new orders, the new director gathered a team of deputies and assistants around him. Recently, Doctor of Sociological Sciences Dmitry Repin joined the team.
Maxim Fedorov, Acting Director of the Institute.Photo: ya-r.ru
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From public sources we know that Dmitry Alexandrovich Repin was born in Leningrad in 1984. In 2008 he graduated from St. Petersburg State Medical University named after Acad. I.P. Pavlov (speciality “medical business”, qualification “doctor”). From the first year of his studies Repin started his labour activity: he worked as a caretaker of the 1st category, a nurse, a laboratory assistant. By the time he finished his studies he received an offer to try his hand at public service and in 2010 he moved with his family to Moscow. In parallel with his labour activity, in 2011 he completed his studies at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), specializing in “state and municipal management”, qualification “manager”. In 2012, in the walls of the St. Petersburg State University of Economics (SPbSEU), he defended his PhD thesis in the scientific speciality “sociology of management” (and in 2017 – doctoral thesis in the same speciality). In addition, in 2012, from the position of Deputy Head of Division of the Department for the Development of Professional Education of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Repin moved to the Academy under the President of the Russian Federation as Deputy Director of the Sosnovoborsk Branch (Leningrad Region) of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Since 2013, he has been working at the central office of RANEPA (Moscow). As Assistant Vice-Rector, he was responsible for optimisation of the RANEPA’s branch network. Since 2016 – Deputy Director of the North-West Institute of Management of RANEPA (St. Petersburg).
Dmitry Repin. Photo: kommersant.ru
In 2018, he became head of the Ural Institute of Management of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (Yekaterinburg). Shortly after this appointment, in August 2018, between Dmitry Repin and the lecturer of the Department of Human Resources Management, 54-year-old Galina Makovich, a conflict arose, widely discussed in the regional media. Makovich was due to retire in the summer of 2019, but a year earlier her contract expired, and Repin did not renew it. At the same time, the university did not even announce a competition to fill the position of professor (which she held), so that Makovich could not take part in it. Later, the court ruled that this was a gross violation of the Labour Code, and the competition had to be held after all.
Then, according to colleagues, she had an unpleasant conversation with Repin, and a few days later a paper appeared in the director’s office with words along the lines of: “This is the last thing you see. If you don’t do as I demand, my men will kill you” – and a photograph of Makovich. Police detained Makowicz in the auditorium as she was giving a lecture to students.
Makovich immediately said she had nothing to do with the threats. “I saw this sheet too, there’s a picture of me downloaded from the website and these words. But I don’t have any ‘my people’, all my audience are intelligent people, they read books, we gather with them in the readers’ club. I don’t even know such words,” Makovich said in an interview with “URA.RU”. She also told the police about the same. After the police interrogation she was released. Later on, fearing another provocation from Repin, Galina was constantly accompanied by three students at the university. For this purpose, her students created a duty schedule.
In 2019, a new scandal broke out – this time related to Repin’s PhD thesis. Dissernet published an examination of the scientific work, which clearly demonstrated the presence of large-scale incorrect borrowings. It is with Repin’s PhD thesis that the mysterious story of its disappearance from the field of view of experts and the scientific community is connected: after its defence in 2012, it was not deposited in the Russian State Library, and appeared in the Russian State Library only in 2017 – five years after the defence, when Repin had already written his doctoral dissertation. Experts call such disappeared works “lost”, because the abstracts of the works were received by the library on time, but the corresponding dissertations were missing altogether. More than a thousand such “lost papers” were found. And almost all of them were defended at different times in St. Petersburg State University, where Repin defended. Igor Maksimtsev, the rector of SPbSEU, is a member of the presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, which apparently made it possible to “lose” dissertations with impunity. Some of the “lost” dissertations resurfaced several years after their defence. At the same time, their abstracts often did not correspond in content to the texts of the dissertations themselves. Repin’s PhD thesis also surfaced in the Russian State Library, almost a third of the text of which consisted of incorrect borrowings from other people’s earlier works. This fact was acknowledged by the Dissertation Council of the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education “Tyumen Industrial University” at the meeting on 18 October 2023 on the issue of depriving Repin of the degree of Candidate of Sociological Sciences. An additional check conducted by the experts of the dissertation council revealed “multiple hidden symbols in many fragments of the dissertation”, which may indirectly point to the author’s attempt to hide borrowings. As a result, the council unanimously decided to recommend to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation to deprive Repin of his academic degree of Candidate of Sociological Sciences.
In February 2024, a meeting of the relevant expert council of the Higher Attestation Commission was held, which was to approve the decision of the Tyumen dissertation council. However, in January Repin appealed to the court in advance, claiming that the decision to deprive him of his degree was unlawful. He argued that the content of the abstract and the dissertation itself did not match, claiming that the dissertation in the Russian State Dissertation Library was not his dissertation because it did not correspond to the structure described in the abstract.
The court took interim measures, prohibiting the SAC from considering the decision to deprive Repin of his degree, and due to the restrictions imposed, the expert council of the SAC postponed the examination of the thesis. Then followed several more court hearings. The case of Repin’s thesis is still hanging in the courts.
In November 2019, six months after the thesis scandal, Repin left his post and left for a promotion in Moscow, becoming assistant to the rector of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Vladimir Mau, who in the summer of 2022 was accused of embezzlement on a large scale. Mau was a defendant in a criminal fraud case against former Deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakova, Rector of the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (“Shaninka”) Sergei Zuev and others. on 30 June 2022, the court sent the rector of the Presidential Academy under house arrest. However, in October 2022 it became known that his criminal case was closed.
In early September 2024, Repin appeared at IPPI RAS as deputy acting director, replacing another scandalous deputy director for general issues – Sergei Chikirev. Meanwhile, the conflict in IPPI RAS continues, and the new deputy director Repin is hardly able to normalise the atmosphere in the institute. T-invariant will continue to follow the developments at IPPI.
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Text: Andrey Rostovtsev
Andrey Rostovtsev 26.09.2024