After Sergeev’s speech, academicians called for unity in the elections
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Only two candidates remain for the post of President of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The real moment of truth has come for the Russian Academy of Sciences. Whether or not the new President of the Russian Academy of Sciences is elected on Tuesday by academicians will mean what the academy means to them, whether its continued existence is important. On Monday, the first day of the General Assembly of the Russian Academy of Sciences, three candidates for a high post were to present their programs, and those present were to discuss them and ask questions. However, as predicted by MK, the current president of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev withdrew his candidacy. From his final speech at the meeting, annoyance at some of the “events of the last days” sounded.
“The events of recent days are forcing me to withdraw my candidacy from the elections,” Sergeyev said. “This is a forced decision. I do not call on my colleagues who support me to vote (for other candidates. – “MK”). I urge everyone to make a decision in accordance with our academic traditions and values.”
“Sergeev’s words are a spit on the academy, a call for a boycott of the vote,” one of the RAS members said after the meeting. – If we knew him as an intolerant fighter who defended the honor of our organization, then we could assume that he became undesirable to the authorities. But all the five years that Sergeev was president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he, on the contrary, gained fame as a functionary who was too flexible in relations with the Ministry of Education and Science and the government. True, his “consensus” worked for the most part in one direction, not in favor of the academy.”
The academy was already prepared for its boss’s announcement of resignation. Moreover, as MK wrote earlier, 9 out of 15 departments of the academy nominated a completely different candidate as their candidacy. And he didn’t have a chance to win. Leading academicians of the country demonstrated this even before Sergeyev’s frank speech. From their uncomfortable questions, Alexander Mikhailovich was clearly uncomfortable.
Questions poured in from members of the academy immediately after the speech of the acting chief scientific secretary of the academy, Dmitry Bisikalo, on the results of the activities of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences for 2017–2022.
Academician Yevgeny Kablov asked the President of the Academy why he did not respond to State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin to his reproach to the academicians for “doing nothing.”
– We were reproached for the fact that we only want to have life-long scholarships and a free funeral service! – the academician was indignant.
Alexander Mikhailovich recalled that there were “retaliatory” actions, in particular, his report at a meeting of the Committee on Science and Education. True, he did not explain whether he had any communication with Volodin after that.
The following speakers noted what they felt was missing from Bisikalo’s report. Academician Aleksey Semenov spoke about the work on the examination of school textbooks that had been left out of sight, Academician Mikhail Ugryumov spoke about the serious underfunding of science, Academician Sergei Stishov, among other things, spoke about the loss of the RFBR – the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
There were also speeches (apart from Bisikalo’s report) in which the successes of the academy under Sergeyev were noted. But they were much less.
Everyone was waiting for what one of the most authoritative academicians would say – the general designer of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering, and in fact – the country’s strategic nuclear forces, State Prize laureate Yuri Semenovich Solomonov. Five years ago, he just voted for Alexander Sergeyev in the hope that he would justify the trust. “I did not know Alexander Mikhailovich personally, I trusted the recommendations of my colleagues about him …” Now the academician, apparently, got to know him better and urged the audience to vote for the one whose results he has no doubts – for Gennady Krasnikov. The academician also addressed the one who will win the elections: as long as the leadership of the academy, each of its members does not realize that the only criterion for the success of science can be only one: “cost – efficiency”, there will be no work. “Neither officials nor the president himself will believe any memorandum papers,” Solomonov summed up.
At the end of the first difficult day of work, the chairman of the general meeting, Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation Vladimir Starodubov, reminded the members of the Academy that on Tuesday the RAS should show its unity in choosing a new president. “We need a quorum – at least 1,005 people out of 2008,” said Vladimir Ivanovich. “And if there is no quorum, we will show our impotence,” Starodubov concluded his speech.
Newspaper headline:
The third pretended to be superfluous
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