Appeal

By Ivanova A.V.,
residing at…
Ph.D. chem. Sciences, Art. scientific co-workers RAS,
higher education,
fluent in English,
married with (so far) one child

Dear State,

The history of our relationship with you, although not very frequent, goes back almost three decades. Soon we can both celebrate another anniversary. But today I would like to talk about something slightly different.

I can remember few instances of communication with you from my childhood. As with other family acquaintances, the child only really gets to know them as he grows up. And he knows about the initial period of the relationship only from the stories of his parents. But we will omit these stories, because then, like you, it was different, and I could be wrong. I want now to remind you of several instances of our communication over the past ten to fifteen years.

The first case of personal communication with you, as usual among the “male population,” occurred in an institution called the Military Commissariat. Do you remember? At first you showed cold hostility, and after a couple of years you simply began to swear through the lips of your representatives in this disreputable establishment. And as is usual with stupid and uncultured creatures, this external rudeness simply concealed an unwillingness to fulfill their duties and part with me as a human being. You apparently thought that relationships could be built on strength...

After that, you and I simply coexisted, but did not directly intersect. You did a lot for this. When I was at university, I hardly noticed your presence. It seemed to be the best university in the country, but it looked like an abandoned basement. And now he is in the same condition. It always seemed to me that one of the responsibilities (of you and your colleagues in the world) is to pay normal alimony to those whom you have seduced. Education did not leave you, and you did not officially file for divorce from him. But your children, universities, institutes, grew up in poverty. They can't even look normal until now. There is something in common in the appearance of Moscow State University and the mathematician Perelman... But it still never occurs to you that those around you cannot understand how these successful children of yours can vegetate in such poverty. Perelman’s photograph is already being used in Ukraine as an image of a poor pensioner. But when I had to take Swedish professors around the university, they looked like a fairly successful resident of Europe who found himself at home with homeless people.

Then I entered graduate school, and simply continued to work at the Institute of the Academy of Sciences. Do you remember that you had very peculiar views on graduate students: pocket money - only for chewing gum (there was not enough scholarship for more), there was no opportunity to earn money in a human way - in the laboratory. Money came only from those roommates of your wife Nauka, who came while you were chilling out God knows where. The ISTC helped a lot then, and two Western companies too. But lately you have been prohibiting this too: the ISTC was expelled from the country and is not allowed back; contacts with Western companies are not encouraged. At the same time, you also prohibit normal payments to graduate students who hunch over you from morning to evening. The maximum is 17 thousand per month (in those months when there is money) you can pay graduate students and your grandchildren. And there are no more than half of such months in a year... In general, money is money... I wouldn’t want to reduce everything to them. I would like to tell you about the shock you gave me. You regularly measure space standards in institutes. And somehow, since the 90s, graduate students in most cases are not considered and not taken into account as people. Although, as my grandfather said, “the traces seem to be human...”

It was a joy that in the 90s and the first half of the 2000s, your old feelings towards Science, with which you had lived for a very long time, awoke. You even started giving her some money so that she could at least try to feel like a normal woman, desired and successful. The RFBR (Russian Foundation for Basic Research), which you invented, gave science the opportunity to slightly update equipment its , reagents and instruments, go to conferences, and just give you some pocket money. And you yourself seemed to rejoice at this luck: in the end, it’s good to see your wife next to you, whose eyes began to glow again after a long break and the haunted expression on her face had partly disappeared...

But why did you decide a year ago that your wife Science would get by? Why did you reduce the amount of funding? And will you reduce it even more in the future??? You decided to look at what this money is spent on - this is normal. But why do you insist that you are the one who can decide what to buy from “women’s little things” and what not? Understand that with your purely male perception you will never be able to assess what exactly a woman needs to look beautiful. After all, a man never commands a woman in a cosmetics store what to buy. And, of course, we need to remind you that the rule 94-FZ that you introduced in family life does not work here either. If your wife asks you to buy mascara, then by replacing the Loreal box with something of the same name and cheap from a subway passage, you will only make your wife Nauka look like a rural prostitute. Do you need it? In the end, you buy normal condoms for yourself, that is, the ones you want, and not the cheapest ones from the nearest stall of the “made in USSR” system!

You are constantly told about your responsibilities, about your vow given at the wedding with Science. Many letters have been sent to you, both about the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and about science. Remember, my name was there - these were letters from me to you too! But after reading these letters, you didn’t understand anything... Apparently, you don’t want to remember me... Well, your right...

Now let's remember my other letter to you - about orphan drugs. Rummage through your desk, almost several tens of thousands of people wrote to you at once. That time you defiantly insisted on your own, sharply limiting many of us’s right to treatment and to life.

I can remember many such episodes... Elections (to the Duma, mayor, etc.), police, traffic police (and this is at night)... Let's not continue, okay?

You may ask why am I saying all this? Here's what it's all about.

Today you suddenly remembered me. It came in the form of a copyist. The first time you suddenly needed me to tell you a little about how I lived these years, who I became. So, I already tried to tell you all this, but you didn’t listen. And they did not consult with me on any of the above reasons.

And now I'm just not interested. During the time you were gone, I grew up and became an independent person. I and many people like me have learned to cope with a lot on our own. So now I’m not really drawn to intersect with you. If you try to harass me, I might as well leave here for the hell of it...