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Prof. Dr. Bernd Seidensticker Sprecher Zentrum Grundlagenforschung Alte Welt Tel. Fax E-Mail Bearbeiter +49 (0) 30 +49 (0) 30 bs1@mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de

To: the President of the Russian Federation, Mr. Putin, the Minister of Education, Mr. Livanov and to the Rector of St Petersburg State University Professor Kropachev

18. November 2012

Betreff: Reduction in state-funding for students at the Faculty of Philology

Dear Presidents, my colleagues in St. Petersburg have informed me that it is planned to reduce the classics program at the university of St. Petersburg by not admitting students every year. Such a decision would be a heavy blow both to a number of departments at the university and to the only secondary school in St. Petersburg that teaches Greek and Latin. I am sure that you are aware of the fact that St. Petersburg has a great history of classical scholarship. Over the last years the joint effort of several departments at the university and at the Academy of Sciences, the Bibliotheca Classica, founded by Alexander Gavrilov, and the Classical Gymnasium have done much to renew this glorious history. Not only individual, but also institutional connections to schools, university departments, and academies have been built up and lectures and conferences, longer and shorter stays of Russian colleagues in the west and vice versa, have led to a lively exchange of ideas and to a number of joint projects. As the chairman of a fairly large circle of international colleagues and institutions, which have tried to support this development, I can assure you that this development has been followed all over the world with great interest and admiration. The envisaged cut of academic funding and the resulting reduction of the classics program at the university would put everything at risk that has been achieved: it would not only weaken the university as a who-

le, but also impair the other classical institutions of St. Petersburg, which would all three be seriously affected, if fewer students were to graduate from the university. In the light of these negative effects, I beg you to reconsider the plan and continue to admit classical students to the university every year. Yours sincerely Bernd Seidensticker (Professor of Classics at the Freie Universitt Berlin and member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences)

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