Discussion
In recent years, Russian scholars and educators forced into exile have not only sought safety and new affiliations abroad, but also founded their own organizations. These initiatives are more than temporary refuges: they represent attempts to continue valuable work while reinventing academia under new geographical and existential conditions. Situated between Russian legacies of higher education and the regulatory frameworks of host countries, they create what might be called
para-academic institutions – operating alongside, but not fully inside, established academic systems.
Organizational theory offers two main lenses for analyzing such processes. Imprinting theory suggests that founders draw on formative professional experiences when designing new institutions, while institutional isomorphism emphasizes how organizations adapt to host-country norms to secure legitimacy and resources. This paper applies these frameworks to examine how Russian academic organizations in exile navigate between inherited templates and external demands.
Drawing on interviews, public biographies, and organizational documents collected in July–September 2025, the paper shows that founders and active members did not simply replicate the earliest stages of their academic lives. Instead, they sought to reproduce practices from their most recent period of work in Russia or to realize projects previously left unrealized – such as “true academic cooperative” or “strong compact programs”. Yet these visions were consistently reshaped by external pressures: educational regulations, donor requirements, funding schemes, and migration policies affecting Russian citizens.
The paper argues that exile produces distinctive organizational forms shaped both by legacies and by adaptation. It tries to identify the conditions under which exiled academic organizations are more willing to compromise with environments, and when they choose to sustain less stable but more ideal-typical models of academia.
