Where is Russian higher education? The spatial imaginaries and realities of internationalization policy

The article considers how and at which recent historical and political junctures documents, experts and academics frame the internationalization of Russian higher education (HE) in the course of neoliberal reforms. Asking how new boundaries for Russian HE have re-emerged, re-imaged and aligned with internationalization policy, we explore whether the current trend of isolation for Russian HE is realistic. For this purpose, we examine the regional spaces and spatial imaginaries of Russian HE, investigate how and why they contradict with the principles and particularly, implementation of internationalization policy. We develop the concept of ‘shadows in internationalization’, exploring how a privileged internationalization, understood as a set of deliberately built decision-making mechanisms to provide the rent extraction for policy insiders, hinders quality and equity in Russian HE and its regional spaces outside. We outline how and why Russia’s leadership have incorporated quantitative evaluation criteria for internationalization policy amidst neoliberal reforms, and juxtapose them with implementation realities. In doing so, we focus on internationalization activities which Russian universities are obliged to develop in HE and dynamics of related publications of Russia-affiliated scholars to reveal their alignment with the spatial imaginaries. We conclude that implementation of internationalization policy based on Western criteria, coupled with monopolisation of privileges and a traditional rigidity of university governance, contradict spatial imaginaries of a globalising and internationalising of Russian HE in prioritised regional spaces and worldwide. We argue that this contradiction continues to undermine the quality and cohesion of national and regional spaces of Russian higher education from inside.