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Russian Aristotle scholar Svetlana Mesiats put under house arrest (UPDATED)

Brian Leiter

From Oxford historian Georgy Kantor on Twitter:

The best Russian expert (and genuinely important scholar) on Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, Svetlana Mesiats, has been put under house arrest in the investigation of ‘fraudulent translations of Aristotle’. https://iphras.ru/messiats.htm

He explains:

About 10 people been called for interrogation, there are searches in the Institute of Philosophy building. Apparently a revenge for the refusal to elect Anatoly Chernyaev, an ideologist of the Ukrainian war, as the Institute director. Truly back to 1937.

I hope it’s not really back to 1937, or they’ll be excecuted, and not only harassed and arrested. What a disgrace.

(Thanks to J.J. Loo for the pointer.)

UPDATE: More details here. (Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

I’m opening comments for readers to provide more information and links.

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3 responses to “Russian Aristotle scholar Svetlana Mesiats put under house arrest (UPDATED)”

  1. J.P. Loo

    Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii

    Reply
  2. Ancient scholar in the US

    The treatment of these scholars is atrocious and terrifying. Perhaps it is worth comparing Vladimir Putin’s conception of scholarship and scholarly integrity:
    “In 1997, Putin received a degree in economics (Candidate of Economic Sciences) at the Saint Petersburg Mining University for a thesis on energy dependencies and their instrumentalisation in foreign policy.[41][42] His supervisor was Vladimir Litvinenko, who in 2000 and again in 2004 managed his presidential election campaigns in St Petersburg.[43] Igor Danchenko and Clifford Gaddy consider Putin to be a plagiarist according to Western standards. One book from which he copied entire paragraphs is the Russian-language edition of King and Cleland’s Strategic Planning and Policy (1978)” [Source: Wikipedia]
    https://web.archive.org/web/20240225145253/https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Putin-Dissertation-Event-remarks-with-slides.pdf

    Reply
  3. J.P. Loo

    Andrei Rodin is circulating a letter demanding the liberation of Svetlana Mesyats: https://philomatica.org/2026/05/open-letter-in-support-of-svetlana-messiats/.

    The prosecution has demanded a sentence of ten years for Mesyats: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8692394.

    Reply

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