Hazing

Dear editors!

In the last two weeks, the issue of the RFBR charter, which was supposed to be adopted on May 17, has caused a lot of fuss. After the publication of the draft charter leaked from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, there was a noise in the newspapers that the end had come for the foundation: science would be financed exclusively in priority areas and critical technologies for economic modernization. And they say that today they are one, and tomorrow they are different, so today we will put astronomy, zoology and mathematics under the financial knife, and tomorrow we will do something else. And as a result, we will be left with beans.

This is what I want to answer to all these libelous scribblers. Come to your senses, people! Go, mind your own business and don’t meddle in matters that are not of your mind. Who are you, actually, to discuss the RFBR charter, they sent it to you for discussion? The state appointed special people to discuss governing documents, such as the chairman of the foundation, Vladislav Panchenko, academician and laureate.

These are people who are personally allowed to see the leaders of the state and listen to them, to feel with all their skin, so to speak, the guiding fluids. Therefore, if they formulate something, there are probably important guiding reasons. And not every scientific worker can think through these government reasons with their meager minds. After all, they don’t understand how all these actions fit into the rotation of the state mechanism working to implement plans and strategies for 2020.

Understand, colleagues, after all, the foundation is a state organization, financed from the budget, it is up to the state, and only the state, to decide what it wants to get for its money - the results of important and priority research or all sorts of miscellaneous stuff that we try to palm off on it. Whether the state needs astronomers or not is up to him to decide, not the astronomers. If you don’t like the decision, let them go watch other people’s stars, not ours. We are being administered, and we are growing stronger - this is what the position of a healthy citizen and patriot should be.

And what happened as a result of your irresponsible actions, colleagues? An attempt to implement a reasonable government strategy of focusing on priorities was torpedoed. What does this mean, in simple terms? That's right, sabotage. At other times, for this...

However, let's return to our time. Think, colleagues, why is everything going so slowly here, despite the efforts of the authorities - the development of science, education, and economic development? Is it only because officials steal? No, not only. The worst thing about theft isn’t: let’s say they stole forty percent, but sixty percent went to work. The trouble is that there is often no twenty percent result...

And all because, my dears, many of you profess or even sow destructive skepticism and unbelief. The authorities are creating an innovative testing ground for the future, Skolkovo, and you are starting to insist that all the money will be cut down and spent on collapsing roads and Vekselberg’s development projects. They announce a nanoinitiative to you, create breakthrough national research centers, and you start whining that huge amounts of money are going to the Kurchatov Institute, and the number of scientific articles published by the institute is falling.

What is your business, after all? Maybe this is a secret state plan to confuse the enemy, to lull his vigilance, that is. And as the healthy NBIC forces become stronger and accumulate more results, all issues of Nature and Science may consist of only articles from the convergent NBIC center.

It would be nice for you to sit around in smoking rooms, where no one but the same idiots can hear you. No, you pour out your rotten pessimism in newspaper articles, and it then flows like cadaverous poison through the veins of our healthy social organism. Why do people give up and stop working? And instead of uniting and moving mountains, people are either wasting their tea or thinking about how to fit into what kind of cut.

In general, what am I talking about? Stop poisoning the environment with your bile, colleagues. Live by the regulations that are written to you, do not engage in hazing. And for those who cannot stop, I think the relevant authorities should take action. Modernization requires mobilization, so alarmists and saboteurs must not go unpunished.

Yours Ivan Ekonomov