Scholar-Elect Mike Martin will be studying the rhetorical history of federalism around the world.
Mike Martin has both studied history and been involved in historic developments in his home country, Russia.
Mike [2025] was forced to flee Russia after the invasion of Ukraine when, as former president of his university’s student council, he was interrogated about his anti-war stance along with his fellow council members as part of a clampdown on universities.
His journey to Cambridge has been far from straightforward, but in the autumn he will begin his PhD in History after completing his MPhil in World History on Australian federalism.
For his PhD he will delve deeper into the rhetorical history of federalism and the ways federalists used to persuade people of the benefits of their projects. He will broaden his scope from Australia to encompass other former UK colonies with federalist movements, including New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, where federalists had greater or lesser success.
He says his PhD is timely, given the revival in the federalist movement following President Trump’s second election and the push to increase the powers of the European Union, particularly in matters of defence.
Childhood
Mike was born on St Petersburg’s Vasilyevsky Island. He lived in the island’s southeastern part – Vas’ka – characterised by the area’s iconic imperial architecture and academic facilities, until he was 12 and then moved to the northwestern part – Prima – which mostly developed in the 20th century around the sea port, features brutalist Soviet-style buildings and is a place where underground music and street culture were popular. He says that dichotomy has meant he feels at home in a range of different settings.
Mike’s mother is a psychologist who works in HR while his late father studied engineering and business management and worked for international industrial companies. The family travelled a lot when he was young, spending summer holidays around the world. This, along with having relatives abroad, helped in building Mike’s fluency in English.
Mike was an A student at secondary school and remained at the same school for 11 years until his graduation in 2019, even though it specialised in Chemistry and he developed a passion for history from the age of 10. That interest came about after he started watching documentaries and playing strategy-focused video games, especially those related to ancient Roman history which was his primary interest throughout his adolescence.
At school Mike competed in various Olympiads and won the history one which almost guaranteed him university entry to study for a history degree. At school he also began to develop an interest in politics when he and some friends wrote a play which gently mocked the school’s pro-Putin head teacher.
Undergraduate studies
Before he started his undergraduate degree at St Petersburg State University there had been pro-democracy protests by students which had caught Mike’s attention. He joined the student council and was on the sports committee in his first year. Later he was elected president of the student council and also headed the cultural committee which involves running events and activities. The council, led by Mike and his fellows, opposed various proposals by the rector, a close friend of Putin’s, including an attempt to make students effectively take part in free forced labour. The council won that battle, but after the invasion of Ukraine the balance of power shifted.
The council drafted an anti-war statement which was signed by thousands of students within days. University officials, who supported Putin, published a counter-declaration which garnered little popular support. Gradually the pressure on students increased, with those who were struggling academically being the first to be expelled. Upon Mike’s expulsion, he had nearly finished his degree and had received excellent marks throughout his studies. He just had to defend his final thesis which had been preliminarily marked as ‘excellent’.
After more than a year of constant tensions, elections were held for the student council and its executive committee and anti-war candidates won every position. This triggered the university administration to implement an aggressive crackdown.
Mike recalls waking up one morning to his phone exploding with messages after his photo was posted on state media with accusations that he headed a ‘pro-Ukrainian organised crime group’. Student council members were interviewed one by one by the university’s ethics commission and each was asked about their opinion of the war. “I said I couldn’t support it, but they asked if I could at least not say that I was against it. I refused to recant in any way,” he says. “They wanted to make it seem that we were loyal to the government.” Most of the students maintained their anti-war position in the face of questioning.
Many of Mike’s peers and even acquaintances were interrogated by the police under new legislation outlawing ‘fake news’ about the Russian army. After several of his friends fled the country, Mike’s thesis defence was postponed for a second time. He knew he had to leave. He eventually made his way to Georgia, where he has family roots, and spent a year there learning Georgian. Through a contact at Cambridge he was encouraged to get in touch with Professor Saul Dubow at the Faculty of History about his research proposal which built on his undergraduate interest in federalism in Australia.
Professor Dubow advised Mike to apply for an MPhil in World History at Cambridge. He had the transcript listing all his marks, but no degree certificate and thought it was unlikely Cambridge would admit him. One day he was sitting on an online ‘Smolny Beyond Borders’ seminar in Georgia when an email saying he had been conditionally accepted came through. “I was so shocked, but delighted,” he says.
Federalism
Mike’s interest in federalism developed from his study of modern history at school and his particular fascination with intellectual history. “I randomly came across an article by Henry Parkes – the ‘Father of Federation’ – in the 1850s about colonial radicalism,” he says. Parkes was advocating for an ideology that was framed as being unique to Australia and as bringing free trade and political emancipation. Mike was interested in why Parkes was pushing the case for colonial radicalism and later federalism through nationalist rhetoric and the notion of uniqueness, when neither of those models were unique to Australian political thought.
For his MPhil he studied the intellectual context of Australian federalism. This was a progression from his undergraduate studies when he researched first the federalists’ economic agenda and then the political and cultural underpinnings of the federalist movement. He hopes his PhD will allow him to explore the history of a still topical issue in greater depth in a fairly global setting which provides him with a range of perspectives on the world.
