Alexey Petrov offered to resign

His legal representative Vyacheslav Ivanets called the actions of the university administration illegal, and the historian applied to the Labour Inspectorate. This information published on the Facebook page of Vyacheslav Ivanets was confirmed by "IrkSib" and Alexey Petrov himself, but the latter refused to comment on it.

His legal representative Vyacheslav Ivanets called the actions of the university administration illegal, and the historian applied to the Labour Inspectorate. This information published on the Facebook page of Vyacheslav Ivanets was confirmed by "IrkSib" and Alexey Petrov himself, but the latter refused to comment on it.

Ivanets believes that what is happening is purely political in nature.

"At this point, it can be concluded that the denunciation from the "Trade Union of Independent Citizens" played its role as the ISU administration offered Petrov the opportunity to resign without waiting for any reply from the prosecutor's office. As an alternative he was offered to be "fired with cause", – Vyacheslav Ivanets wrote in the social network.

In his interview to "IrkSib" the human rights defender said that he considers this requirement illegal, since Petrov committed no violations of labor discipline within the framework of the obligations which he had to the university: individual plans on the work with students, teaching and research work were completed. "There is no reason to raise the issue of his dismissal from the university, and the attempts to force him to quit on his own will are, at least, premature," – said Ivanets.

According to the latest information, Alexey Petrov made a request to the university administration for the provision of copies of documents, and asked the Labour Inspectorate to verify the legality of the expressed claims for his dismissal.

Let us remember that the information on prosecutor's office inspections in ISU appeared on October 24th. Later it became known that it concerned only the Deputy Dean of the History Faculty, and candidate for historical sciences, associate professor Alexey Petrov. A representative of the "Trade Union of Independent Citizens" submitted a statement where he accused Petrov of truancy. The public activist does not exclude that the "informer" was only the executor of someone's political will.

Holding a PhD in Political Science, Petrov is the coordinator of the regional branch of the movement for fair elections "Voice", co-organizer of the popular education project "Walking through the old Irkutsk", the president of the club of young scientists "Alliance" and Deputy Dean of the History Faculty of ISU, associate professor of political science, history and regional studies. In addition, he remains one of the most popular political experts in the local media for his objective assessment and the absence of complementarity in addressing any participants of political processes.

Commentary from Stanislav Andreychuk, the expert of the project

The pressure put on Alexey Petrov can be seen in a series of events that have recently occurred. These are according to the information on the monitoring of "reliability" of teaching staff, and tracking the movements of these "unreliable" experts and public figures by law enforcement agencies which became known to public.

I am convinced that the event in Irkutsk is taking place at the direction of law enforcement agencies – no one in the city would not try to get even with Petrov, who is highly respected there. And, of course, of great concern is the readiness with which people started to write denunciations on people familiar and unfamiliar to them at the request of the authorities. Even if it is mainly done by marginals like activists of the National Freedom Movement, today we can see a light version of how political repressions and whistle-blowing become possible.

It is unfortunate that the university administration has already followed the organizers of this action and is willing to sacrifice its own reputation among the staff in order to dismiss a teacher disagreeable to the authorities.

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