Absolutely – I couldn’t agree more. If the British Council wants to remain in Russia it has to, at some stage, start to oppose Russian government moves to shut it down. If not, its staff might as well just pack their own bags and head home under their own steam.

I’m not quite so sure that I agree when you say that the British Council is entirely apolitical. It can’t help but promote British ‘values’ which, in many cases, are directly opposed to current Russian ‘values’ (or, at least, the values of Russia’s government).

And the British government has weighed in on the side of the Council – Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in Parliament the other day that, if the Russian government were to close the British Council’s offices it would:

“constitute a serious attack against the legitimate cultural agent of the British government, would show a disregard for the rule of law and would only damage Russia’s reputation around the world.”

I worked for the BC Russia for four years. Indeed, it is a “harmless”, apolitical and law-abiding organization. The influence of BC in Russia is minimal. Their offices were a place of attraction for a tiny handful of people, mostly students. What’s important, though, is that these rare young boys and girls were very smart. Actually, BC was the place where I signed truce with the young ones — I learned that they are not really as stupid as they seem to be

As for the BC internals, I’ve never worked in a company that would care less about the employees. So, I have no especially warm feelings toward BC and if my views are biased, the bias is not favorable toward BC. From this position, I can say that the image of this organization in the Russian mass media is extremely distorted. The accusations of political or commercial activity are absolutely unsubstantiated.

Now, since the organization is so harmless, why would they engage in conflict with the Russian authorities? Why don’t they agree and close these two offices in St.Pete and Yekaterinburg? I think, it’s because they have already closed 11 (or so) offices.

In my years in BC, I witnessed the beginning of the Russian attack. Somewhere in 2004 (if I remember correctly), the tax police visited the offices, searched them, seized documents and interrogated the staff. They accused BC of tax avoidance and illegal business. These attacks never really stopped, but the British embassy managed to keep the offices running till in 2007 Russia finally demanded that some offices be closed. In Sochi, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Tomsk, Samara, Volgograd and other cities, the staff was fired and the libraries were transferred to the local universities. Now, Russia wants to close two more offices, leaving only one in Moscow. I think I can understand why BC decided to try a new tactics of opposing the authorities.

Do any of you out there have friends teaching at British Council? It is a remarkably harmless organization, and certainly not very political. To make it a focal point of the Lugovoi extradition spat seems quite misguided. London may as well start dishing out the parking tickets and zoning violations at Pushkin House?

But, one of the great things about Russia watching is how things happen that you didn’t anticipate.

So maybe something crazy will happen, like a team of ??????? will being sent in to take the British Council offices out.