Translated material
Kholuyuy and cowardice
We publish a replica of mathematician Semen Samsonovich Kutateladze , doct.fiz.-Mat.Sauk, professor of Novosibirsk State University, chief researcher at the Institute of Mathematics named after C.L. Sobolev, who is an answer to the article of the Novosibirsk journalist Irina Samakhova “Pas accepted!”. The last article, in turn, was a replica to the idea of a professor at the University of Montreal Joseph Polterovich to introduce state life scholarships for outstanding mathematicians.
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Theoretical Physicist Mikhail Vissarionovich Sadovsky in Vestnik RAS (No. 12 for 2010) noted “Kholuy and cowardly behavior of some leaders of our science and education”. The characteristics are unpleasant and unusual in the lips of the academician, but few will call them unreasonable.
For the degradation of culture in Russia, not officials, but cultural figures are primarily responsible. In the center of culture is science and inextricably linked education. In the Center for Science and Education of our country is the Russian Academy of Sciences. RAS - the phenomenon of the organization of domestic science, a unique Russian phenomenon with a peculiar history and traditions.
The successes of science in Russia are firmly related to the wounds. Over the centuries, the Academy has changed a lot, but tried to maintain both the most important elements of its own uniqueness, as well as the general academic principles of internal self -government, the continuity of traditions and composition, universality in approaches to various branches of knowledge, etc. According to Peter I, the Academy in Russia is primary, and the university and gymnasium are under it.
This is not about the forms of ownership and the procedure for financing the Academy, but about the features of the functioning of science and education in Russia. The centuries -old principles of the Primat of the Academy played a decisive role in the creation of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences - a unique project for the modernization of the East of Russia, carried out in the middle of the last century. The fact that the Russian Academy of Sciences is not an alternative in Russia is an ordinary and indisputable truism. It is not the need to preserve the current state of the Academy, but the exceptional responsibility of the Academy for the state of science and education in the country.
Scientists are people, and people are different. Some scientists, acting as mechanisms for self -regulation of science, flirt with the authorities, have cooled and resonate with reformers on political vocation, forgetting the main thing. Science and politics are opposed to each other in tasks, attitudes, values and preferences. Science is a mighty instrument of freeing a person from all power over him, and politics is a mechanism of short -term acquisition and retention of power some over others.
Society delegates part of its functions to the government is so. But we must not forget that the peoples of Russia associate the main hopes for the state of science and education with scientists and, above all, with employees of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is to them that society voluntarily and with joy conveys all the rights and obligations to manage science and education. The company contains employees of the Academy of Sciences as independent scientists and experts, and not the service tools of politicians.
Scientists are hired by the people solely to preserve and gain knowledge. The taxpayer is of little interest to the relationship between the Academy and the ministries, he is indifferent to the traditions and internal problems of the Academy. When scientists do not provide the proper level of science and education, with them the taxpayer and demand. If the Academy of Sciences states obstacles to the development of science and education in Russia by officials hired by the people, the Academy is obliged to the people and appeal. It is the Academy of Sciences that it is necessary to build a clear dialogue with society on the problems of science and education, to seek and offer ways to overcome the degradation of culture in Russia. There are no serious attempts by this kind.
The scientific community is not a corporation or a factory. The Academy of Sciences is not a ministry or a department. The orders in the academic world are special. The measure of responsibility of the scientist is peculiar - it depends on the status and the place occupied by scientists in the scientific hierarchy. For scientific successes and failures in Russia, scientists of Russia and, above all, the Russian Academy of Sciences are responsible to the peoples of Russia. The general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences delegates its powers to elected leaders. This circumstance does not change the principle of universal responsibility lying throughout the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as on other mechanisms of self -government science and education in the country.
The absence of an alternative to wounds does not mean that the wounds cannot be closed or broken. It must be remembered that the main event in the latest history of the Academy of Sciences is a way to create its current option in the early 1990s. A third of members appeared in the Russian Academy of Sciences, who were not chosen by their predecessors, and in this sense the former academy ceased to exist. It is worth emphasizing that scientists took the decision to participate in the Reformation each for themselves. They were not forced - it was a matter of personal choice and their own conscience.
It is incorrect to believe that a co -optical member of the Russian Academy of Sciences is worse than an scientist than uncooped, or that he could not be chosen as a former procedure. However, scientific continuity was violated, and the desire to participate in this destructive process prevailed over other considerations. New members who made their moral choice came to the academy. What are the members - such is the Academy.
Many see the threat of science that the current reformers from the outside indicate the need to reduce wounds. Meanwhile, the reduction of the wounds does not matter, trouble - the rejection of scientific principles within the wounds. It is impossible not to see the liquidators within the science itself. Self -government in the Russian Academy of Sciences is not lost, but given. It was given not so much to the ministry as in the air around and inside the bosses. The general meeting is largely decorative, and a third of the new wave turned into a voting majority. These are the realities of the day.
You should not look for reserves or origins of degeneration only in members of the Russian Academy of Sciences or only in employees of the Russian Academy of Sciences, different from academicians. The bacilli of degradation of academic titles are not distinguished. Everywhere you can meet people who hold on to their places in science and education until the last opportunity, but they have not been introduced to science or education for a long time. By age, or by inability, or in poverty and lack of conditions, it is not so important for society. Among those who do not fulfill their duty, there are academics, professors, associate professors, and ordinary researchers. Talking that pensions and salaries are small do not withdraw responsibility. The probability of meeting loafers by age or inability to the Academy is no more than at institutes and universities.
Conformism, stupidity, unprincipled and profanity live not only within the walls of ministries and departments, but also the heads of many scientists - from academician to graduate student. Only scientists themselves can leave everything as it is or change in the scientific world. The Academy of Sciences degrades not so much by the efforts of ministerial officials and politicians as by oblivion of the fundamental principles of science and ethics of scientific self -government. Science does not instill morality. A good scientist can be an insignificant administrator, a sugary, a vile coward and a disgusting politician. Science does not serve justice. Management of science is different from science as such. We cannot ignore these banality.
Cowardice and lashing - the properties of one order that do not decorate either the elite or the plebs. Their correlates are conformism, selfishness and irresponsibility. All these phenomena that destroy our cultural environment are not localized in bosses, but live everywhere in the academic community of Russia. It is clearly not worth preserving them.