I fell asleep and crashed hard last night before I could make a post on this, but 4000 students protested in Moscow.

In the crowd were students from various Moscow universities and several groups from Lipetsk, Voronezh and the Moscow region. Some students came to the rally with their professors. Another rally of 2,700 students was held Tuesday in Nizhny Novgorod.

At the Moscow rally, students held banners and posters that read “Hands Off Free Education!” “A Hungry Student Is a Force to Be Reckoned With!” “How About Trying to Live on a Salary of a Young College Professor?” and “Enough of Dumb Reforms — Remember College Professors.”

Many protesters waved flags of the nationalist Rodina party, while others carried Communist, LDPR and Labor party flags. Rodina leader Dmitry Rogozin was among those who addressed the rally.
…
Professors who attended the rally said that nearly all schools that depended on state funding had a severe shortage of junior professors, as few graduates opted for a job that pays an official salary of 1,800 rubles ($65) per month.

“We have only elderly professors left,” said Galina Romanova, a veteran professor with the Moscow Aviation Institute. “It is not clear who will teach in our institute in five to 10 years’ time when they die.”

Andy comments further on this.

$14 is nowhere near enough to live on, even at Russian prices, and I honestly don’t know how many of these students survive. During my time living in a Russian student dormitory, I almost never saw a Russian cook a healthy meal. Stodge seemed to be the order of the day, with the mold being the closest I’d find to something green in our kitchen.

Veronica Khokhlova, having moved from Kiev and is now living in Moscow, took a stroll to witness the event but found nothing.

I heard about this comparatively huge student rally by the White House (the Government Building) today/yesterday and decided to go see it: 2 to 5 thousand students demanding – somewhat unrealistically – free education and stipends corresponding to the minimum maintenance rate.

There was not a trace of the rally when I got there – I was late, I guess, though I’m still wondering how such an impressive crowd could vanish so fast. (One of the clues to this riddle could be Zhirinovsky: according to Gazeta.ru (in Russian but with photos), he showed up at one point and started handing out 500- and 1,000-ruble bills (approximately $18 and $37), which pissed off the Rodina Party guys and caused a little fight between them and Zhirik’s bodyguards – but “the 500- and 1,000-ruble bills have played their role: the students quickly moved under Zhirinovsky’s flags, and that was the end of the protest rally.”)

Make sure to check out the rest of Neeka’s post.