Advisory voice

On November 16, the winners of the Enlightener award became known. In the field of natural and exact sciences, the book by Alexander Panchin “The sum of biotechnology. A Guide to Combating Myths about the Genetic Modification of Plants, Animals and Humans”, in the nomination of the Humanities – Sergey Kavtaradze’s book “Anatomy of Architecture. Seven Books on Logic, Form and Meaning. Vladimir Reshetnikov received a special prize for the book “Why the sky is dark. How the Universe Works »

The Enlightener Prize will be ten years old next year, that is, as Dmitry Zimin noted, now it is already possible to celebrate a decade since the start of its organizing committee. On his behalf and on this occasion, the founder of the award "once turned his advisory vote into a decisive one" and awarded one of the finalists of previous years. Both this intermediate anniversary and the special prize can be considered a symbolic gesture: the cause of enlightenment is not a series of single events that take place once a year, it is a continuous process, and there are not two winners in it, but many more - including us.

There has suddenly been a lot of enlightenment in general: in recent years, the number of public lectures, online courses, educational media has grown in leaps and bounds. This is obviously the most cultivated field of public conversation now, and it is hard not to notice that people who were recently known as journalists are migrating there en masse.

In 2015, the Colta.ru website organized the educational project "School of Citizen Journalism": a sad irony can be seen in the fact that the school was run by the guru of social and political journalism Maxim Kovalsky, who for twelve years brilliantly made the magazine "Vlast" until he was expelled from there with a memorable scandal for journalistic adherence to principles. In the same 2015, the Arzamas educational project was launched under the leadership of Philip Dzyadko, the former editor-in-chief of the Big City magazine. “Project 1917. Free History” has just been launched - Mikhail Zygar has become its chief editor (interview with him - on page 48), who previously headed the editorial office of the Dozhd TV channel.

The Illuminator Prize was among the pioneers in this field: for years it has been sending books to libraries, giving lectures and by its very existence encouraging authors to write: it has been observed that the inclusion of a book in the shortlist of this prize automatically increases reader demand dramatically. In May 2015, the Dynasty Foundation was declared a “foreign agent,” a personal insult to Dmitry Zimin, who for many years single-handedly did more for Russian science than the state. "Dynasty" was closed, but "Illuminator" continued to work with the support of the Zimin Foundation. And although in essence the award has not changed in any way, it suddenly seems to have acquired an actually imposed political coloring.

The laureates, a biologist and an art critic, spoke from the stage about the state “propaganda of blind faith” instead of funding science and about the barbaric demolition of architectural monuments. These are not laureates - this is life. The situation of recent years is pushing professionals out of citizen journalism into the field of education, and you can't even say that they brought a political platform there on their own soles. It's just that the pressure of the repressive machine - according to Pascal's law - is transmitted in all directions equally.

The situation of recent years is pushing professionals out of citizen journalism into the field of education, and you can’t even say that they bring a political platform there on their own soles.