Disagreement among Scientists: Academy of Sciences Under Unfounded Attack

This article needs to be analyzed in the professional community. I will only note that when assessing the strengths of different states (and Garbuzov compares Russia and the United States), one should keep in mind the popular index of Ray Dalio, an American billionaire who studies economic cycles. This index is calculated for each country based on seven indicators, namely: quality of education, mastery of new technologies, competitiveness in the world market, share of world trade, share of capital markets, reserve currency strength, GDP per capita and military strength.

According to the Dalio Index, the US is, of course, the most powerful country in the world. But this power declines rapidly after 1970. By the way, the Dalio Power Index is falling for Europe as well, but is growing rapidly for China and India. But the main thing that should alert us is that the Russian Dalio Power Index is half the size of the American one and it has been falling since 1975. Although it should be noted that some of the indicators that determine the Dalio Index are ambiguous.

I decided to write my article because I was immediately struck by the inappropriately harsh reaction to V.N. Garbuzov’s article. Two days later, the author was fired from his post as director of the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, without even waiting for the article to be discussed at the Academy. And in the media, people who have nothing to do with the Academy began to say that the RAS “is an outdated organizational structure, it needs to be recreated,” and the Academy of Sciences itself is a nest of liberalism.

You can’t do that with scientists! Members of the Academy are no less patriots and no less concerned about the state of the country than officials of the Ministry of Education and Science.

And even before the publication of Garbuzov’s article, absurd accusations appeared from the Academy of Sciences that it had become a “terry nest of liberals” because several dozen members of the Russian Academy of Sciences signed a collective appeal against the SVO.

Firstly, only 10 academicians and 21 corresponding members out of 2000 members of the RAS signed the appeal. But almost all the former deputy prime ministers of the government, at one time appointed by the president of the country himself, left the country. But almost all of them uncontrollably enriched themselves and destroyed our economy, contrary to the recommendations of academics.

Secondly, it should be recalled that almost all the country’s outstanding scientists are concentrated in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Therefore, it is necessary to call on the accusers, in particular on television, the accusations must be supported by facts, otherwise it can be interpreted as slander.

In the history of our Academy there have been attacks by impatient and “true believers” officials and propagandists who demanded reform of the Academy of Sciences because it did not correspond to their political views.

This happened in 1918, when Lunacharsky proposed rebuilding the Academy of Sciences. But V.I. Lenin answered him: “Don’t joke with the Academy.” Then Lenin called the permanent secretary of the Academy, S.F. Oldenburg, and told him to contact him directly in case of serious problems. In the winter of 1918, Oldenburg asked for firewood to heat the Academy of Sciences. And the firewood was delivered. We must recommend that denouncers of the Russian Academy of Sciences listen to Lenin. But Oldenburg, in addition to being an outstanding orientalist, was the Minister of Education of the just overthrown Provisional Government, a member of the Central Committee of the counter-revolutionary Cadet Party. But Lenin, nevertheless, not only defended him, but also worked with him.

In 1929, the Academy, with the participation of the famous academician Ivan Pavlov, voted out the so-called three nominees of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, communist candidates, in the elections. Immediately the party officials in power made a fuss, and the academicians surrendered and the nominees were elected.

In 1958, the propagandists of that time set society against the writer Boris Pasternak. In 1994, I came across a writer who in 1958 signed the shameful article “Crawl away, cockroach” against Pasternak, and in the 1980s headed the commission on Pasternak’s creative heritage.

Then Nikita Khrushchev in 1960 threatened the President of the Academy of Sciences A.N. Nesmeyanov to rebuild the Academy for not electing T.D. Lysenko’s protege as an academician. Khrushchev also initiated the transfer of some academic institutions to the subordination of line ministries. This is why these institutions suffered greatly.

In the 1970s, there were stormy and nervous attacks in connection with the appeals of Academician A.D. Sakharov, an outstanding scientist, creator of thermonuclear weapons, who came up with the concept of the convergence of socialism and capitalism, as well as in defense of the rights of dissidents.

Then there was persecution of the writer A.I. Solzhenitsyn, who was later elected academician. And in the end: what memory remains of Pasternak, Nesmeyanov, Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and what of their persecutors?

And now about the collective appeal against the SVO, which was signed by 10 academicians and 21 corresponding members. We must admit that they have the right to do this. You can criticize the appeal, but there is no need to excite the public and the authorities with the threat of liberalism emanating from the Academy of Sciences.

Take the example of the Russian President, who calmly commented on the departure of his government appointees from the country. They, unlike the members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, enriched themselves and caused real damage to the country, which they then abandoned.

It is time for the public, officials and their propagandists to conclude that interference by non-professionals in the affairs of the Academy of Sciences, which is a professional scientific organization, has never been beneficial. Never! But they always caused only harm, and first of all to the country.

The absolute majority of RAS members do not intend and have never signed collective political documents. Especially when hostilities are ongoing. The vast majority of members of the RAS realize that no matter how we feel about the North Military District, no matter how worried we are about those who are dying in this war, we do not have the right to harm or wish for the defeat of our army, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks did in 1914–1916.

But it is sometimes necessary to criticize the government, and only in the name of correcting mistakes that we have been talking about for a long time. After all, even President Vladimir Putin admitted the mistake that the government treated the economy as an imported supermarket where everything can be bought, contrary to the recommendations of academics. And such recognition helps correct the government’s mistakes.

The ability to tolerate dissent in public life only testifies to the strength of the state and the confidence of its leadership. And very often, intolerance of dissent led to the fragility of the state and mistakes, sometimes fatal, as evidenced by the fate of our Fatherland. It is especially significant how single-mindedness led to disasters at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, and half a century later, the inability to overcome single-mindedness and harmonize differences of opinion led to the collapse of the USSR.

In conclusion, I will cite the statement of Vyacheslav Pleve, the Minister of Internal Affairs in the tsarist government and the chief of gendarmes, killed by a bomb thrown by a Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist: “The Russian intelligentsia has one … feature: it … enthusiastically perceives every idea, every fact, even a rumor aimed at discrediting the state …power. But she is indifferent to everything else in the life of the country.”

We also need to keep this idea in mind when criticizing the authorities, so that, on the one hand, we do not become involved in discrediting the authorities, and on the other, in order to overcome indifference and dispassion.