Russian Federation Boycott

   

1. Ukrainian Request for Boycott: There is an international boycott of education conferences in Russia, requested by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education. We are sometimes training people from the University system in Ukraine and have a commitment to supporting them at this difficult time, when a fascist nation is again invading Europe, and its leaders threatening the destruction of Berlin and London. I do not wish to support the destruction of Ukraine by supporting international conferences or trainings inside Russia at this time. 

Letter from Ukrainian ministry of education pleas for Russia boycott

2. European Government Commitment to Boycott: The governments of Germany, Nederlands, Poland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland etc have asked their educational institutions to halt all interaction with Russian educational institutions during the invasion (example reported in English below). Such interactions legitimate the fascist regime and endanger the lives of Ukrainian academics, and are potentially illegal in my country and many others. This is sad for me of course, as I have several books published in Russian, written both by people from the Russian Federation, and from Ukraine. I stand with my government position on this.

Germany halts academic collaboration with Russia over Ukraine war

3. Russian Government Control of all Academic Institutions and all such Online Conferences: Since July 2019, all Russians living in Russia are required to notify the government of any academic contact with foreign academics. Since April 2021, every online conference in Russia must be approved by the Russian government. This includes conferences conducted by posting on social media and YouTube. “The law is based on the need cited by lawmakers for broad state power to permit or forbid activities outside formal academic settings. They said that the law was essential to counter “negative foreign influence in the educational process.” “Anti-Russian forces carry out propaganda under the guise of educational activities,” …  “At the same time, the document establishes the authority of the Government of the Russian Federation to determine the procedure and conditions for conducting educational activities, and the forms of control over it.” … “The bill also provides for a ban on the use of educational activities to incite social, racial, national or religious hatred, including by providing students with false information about the historical, national, religious and cultural traditions of peoples.”  That is to say, it is illegal to discuss anti-war sentiments in such a conference; it is illegal to imply criticism of the actions of the Russian government in invading countries or trafficking thousands of children across borders; it is illegal to imply that there may be some intergenerational problems in Russian culture that lead to the development of fascism (which would be the subject of my talk, if I was giving it). Many Russian academics have been jailed for doing these things, so this is not an idle threat. To have a conference with the Russian government at this time betrays all those Russian academics who have spoken out against the war and against fascism in Russia. And any conference run online in Russia is a conference with the Russian Government.

Внесен законопроект, призванный не допустить негативное иностранное вмешательство в образовательный процесс

Russia Bans Unauthorized ‘Foreign Influence’ Educational Activities – The Moscow Times

4. The Dilemma for Russian NLP Trainers: On my own Facebook feed I had several cases of Russian NLP Trainers celebrating the invasion of Ukraine and saying that the killing of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians was a good thing at “a higher logical level”. These people use the jargon of NLP to justify massacres of children. I have blocked these people on Facebook. Such verbal celebrations of death have no place in academic freedom. Unfortunately, in a fascist system, people are required to support their government or face serious consequences ranging from loss of job to imprisonment and even murder. People are also required to seek international contacts that will support their government. This is no fault of theirs: no-one wants to die. But we in countries where we can choose to speak out against massacres of civilians owe it to them to refuse such offers. I urge us to learn from the experience of German academics in the 1930s, when, for example, Carl Jung said that he was required to describe “Jewish psychotherapy” as worthless because if he did not he would be killed and psychotherapy would be lost in Germany. In 1934 he had said, amongst other pro-Nazi claims “The Jew, who is something of a nomad, has never yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will, since all his instincts and talents require a more or less civilized nation to act as host for their development.” We cannot demand our colleagues in Russia to speak out against the war, because that would lead to their arrest. On the other hand, if we meet with them in this way, we are implicit in the pro-invasion academic fake news sweeping Russia, and history will remember us as part of the Russian aggression. 

The war in Ukraine ruins Russia’s academic ties with the West

Jung’s evolving views of Nazi Germany: From 1936 to the end of World War II

5. Suggested Solutions: Russian NLP trainers have access to VPN technology like everyone else in Russia (a program that hides their computer’s source country). At some minimal risk to them, they can attend foreign conferences online without divulging their name, and without speaking (so their voice is not recorded). Occasionally, I have had such people in some of my audiences online via Ukraine, where we are always teaching with translation into Russian. I therefore know there are many compassionate NLP Trainers in Russia who want to stay in contact with the NLP community. Let them prove their compassion by stepping back from working with the Russian Government until after the war. Let them make links with Ukrainian trainers to plan how to keep contact in an ethical way. Let us show that we stand above the invasion, and not collude with it. Let us encourage anti-fascist alliances. The following page on my internet site provides information that will be useful to them, with videos and essays in Russian. It is available to them if they use a VPN. To NLP Trainers in Russia: May you stay safe through this crazy time, and be part of building a free Russia in the future. And to those Ukrainian NLP Trainers who may eventually read this statement, my solidarity with you remains. I have been teaching psychotherapists, psychologists, and NLP Trainers working with the Ukrainian army and people as this horrific invasion occurs. The experience of fascism inside Russia at present is very difficult for Russian NLP Trainers. I can assure you it is nothing compared to the experience of NLP Trainers in Ukraine, where, as I teach, there are sometimes machine gun fights in the background behind my Ukrainian interpreter, and sometimes sounds of air raid warnings. I invite you to download and share, person to person, the English/Russian language videos from this page, talking about Resilience, Trauma Recovery, and NLP and Spirituality. (as they are on dropbox, you need to download them first or you’ll only see the first hour). To share them in a conference format would clearly be illegal in the Russian Federation. Person to Person, our unity in NLP is undeniable. We share so many values and beliefs. I hope these resources can be of use in all the separate, independent nations where Russian language is spoken.

Ukrainian and Russian Language Resources.

6. Support Russian NLP Trainers trying to access the internet: Below is also a link to Snowflake, which is a simple add-on that people outside Russia put on their internet browser. It safely enables people inside Russia to hide the fact that they are using VPN, by re-routing through thousands of such allies across the globe. If you are outside Russia, please use it.

How to help people inside Russia access the real internet

7. NLP Trainers Using their skills to Support Putin’s Regime.

There is an NLP Trainer in charge of Putin’s University Propaganda system. A certified NLP Trainer is running the redesign of Russia’s education system to recreate the kind of compulsory propaganda that “Introduction to Scientific Communism” («Основы научного коммунизма») courses once provided in the Soviet Union. Andrey Polosin (Андрей Полосин) developed the “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” program («Основы российской государственности») which he says will focus on creating a “patriotic intelligentsia”. Polosin is a political activist from the Union of Right Forces (SPS; Russian: Союз правых сил; СПС) and his NLP theories (he became a certified NLP trainer in 2001) are seen as being a more appealing way to introduce Fascism than Aleksandr Dugin’s (Александр Дугин). He will ensure every University student in Russia studies work by himself and by Alexander Kharichev, a Kremlin politician who organizes the fake referenda in the conquered territories and frequently meets with Dugin according to Meduza news. So it has happened: Putin has hired an NLP Trainer as his Goebbels. Every NLP Practitioner needs to think through what this means. All the skills we teach are potentially being used in the service of Fascism at the highest level. The article explains “In 2001, Polosin became a certified trainer in NLP — the pseudoscientific field of “neurolinguistic programming.” However, a career as an NLP “coach” wasn’t in the cards — by that time, Polosin was already working as a political strategist and had even opened his own firm: the Agency for Professional Management and Consulting.”

I don’t think we need to view Andrey Polosin (Андрей Полосин) and Alexander Kharichev (Александр Харичев) as bad people. They are already going to be sanctioned and unable to attend our conferences etc. Polosin was chosen because of his empathy, rapport skills and innovative thinking, and he has done what any NLP Practitioner would do given obedience to the instructions of the system he is operating in (and that is the problem). He and Kharichev got together 250 academics and, in a style strongly suggestive of Neurological levels, generated a list of 5 core identities that Russia has sustained across various historical epochs, 5 core values that it embodies that they believe the west does not, and 5 metaphors for Russia’s current action (One is, for example, that Russia is the messiah, the prophet, the guardian of the world).

Our task could be, rather than to condemn or justify these trainers as people, to clarify what we believe the appropriate ethical response is for an NLP Trainer operating in a system which is behaving unethically. This is what the APA did when they found out that American psychologist Bruce Jessen was training the CIA to torture more effectively. Independent APA reviewer David Hoffman “found that the leadership of the APA colluded with Department of Defense (DoD) to ensure that the APA’s ethical policies were no stronger than those issued by the DoD…. This willful ignorance was not unprecedented and follows a predictable pattern of knowing and not-knowing to which all psychologists should attend.” I have noted in an article about the “lie” that vranyo (враньё) – the pattern of wilful lying (I know that you know I’m lying, but I keep doing it) is characteristic of Vladimir Putins actions and, according to Dostoevsky of the Russian rulers even 200 years ago. The Hoffman report suggests that we, as a professional body, are best to step out of that game.

The twist in thinking that Kharichev does is to claim that “In the Russian case, self-realization or mission means that an individual contributes to the country’s development.” In an article which I link to below, University students report their resistance to Polosin, by the way. Here’s what they are quoted as saying: “He said that he himself studied in this direction and does not believe that psychology is a science. With such an approach, curating this program is, to put it mildly, strange. Although, nothing surprising – we have already read that he was an NLP trainer ,” the students say…. “ He said that the essence of political science is to get an idea of ​​​​how the state works, ” says a student in the corresponding direction , “but this is not at all the case. We studied the concept of the political in the first year, it goes far beyond the borders of the state. If a person reduces political science and politics to the state or to public administration, then he cannot lead a faculty where political science is taught .”

NLP Leadership Summit responded to this supposed NLP Trainer hired by Putin:

Andrey Polosin, who is claimed to be a certified NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) trainer, was recently hired by Vladimir Putin to build a new university curriculum that will “fall in line with the Kremlin’s programs to build a new patriotic intelligentsia.” https://meduza.io/…/2023/06/10/an-experienced-strategist

The Neuro-Linguistic Programming Leadership Summit (LS) is a group of over 150 NLP trainers from around the world, committed to training others to use the NLP tools for the betterment of the world in ethical ways. http://nlpleadershipsummit.org/

Andrey Polosin is not known to the NLP LS and therefore has not agreed to our values. NLP is a powerful set of communication tools. How these tools are used depends upon the values and integrity of the person using them. Therefore, the LS does not endorse this use of NLP tools; we expect that practitioners of NLP will be respectful toward all people, creating a world to which we all want to belong.

NLP was created as a tool to improve personal communication, achieve life goals, support health and relationships. It was never designed to influence politics, religious belief systems or Dogmas in this way. NLP was designed and has been used over the last 50 years to propagate peace, a society where diversity and equality are welcomed as well as freedom of speech this is why every member of NLP LS without exception condemns any misuse of NLP to further tyranny, political gain or war between Nations.

Richard Bolstad

Dmitry Skurikhin (Дмитрий Скурихин), Russko-Vysotskoye, stands in front of his store, which calls for peace in Ukraine and freedom in Russia, and acknowledges “Memorial”, the academic organization that exposed Stalin’s massacres. Memorial was first labelled a foreign agent and then banned. Dmitry is under house arrest after several brief jail terms.