New Soviet Weekly Pushes For Perestroika In Science

If the editors of Poisk, a lively new science newspaper published in Moscow, need historical justification for their project, they can point to Lenin, who on his deathbed in 1922 called for a newspaper that would provide a forum for scientists. Or the editors can produce the letter Soviet physicist Pyetr Kapitsa wrote to Nikita Khrushchev in 1958 on behalf of his colleagues at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Kapitsa, who would later win the Nobel Prize in physics, humbly wrote: "I would like to bring to Your attention the fact that for the successful resolution of scientific work in this country, creation of such a periodic newspaper has become increasingly necessary." Poisk, however, is clearly a product of the Age of Gorbachev. The 8-page, 5-kopeck weekly newspaper (about a nickel in U.S. currency), published since May, offers its 250,000 readers an engaging mix of investigative journalism, politics, and exclusive revelations about Soviet science's once-buried past, as well as chess problems and even science fiction stories. Poisk (meaning search in Russian) is a joint venture of the Government Committee on Higher Education, the Central Committee of the Education and Science Workers' Union, and, most important, the Academy of Sciences, now one of President Mikhail Gorbachev's principal allies in his drive for economic and national renewal. In a telephone interview from Poisk's offices in Moscow, reporter Alexandra Mukhina explains, "The newspaper is a platform for scientists who are interested in how to make progress and how to get out of the economic crisis." The head of Poisk's seven-member editorial staff is Alexsandr Mutroshenkov, a journalist who holds a doctorate in technical sciences. His most recent experience was as an editor for the magazine Soviet Russia. Under Mutroshenkov's leadership, Poisk has published articles that would have been impossible to find in an aboveground Soviet newspaper just a few years ago. Recent fare for Poisk's readers has included an article on the public's lack of information about radiation levels in the region near Chernobyl; an interview with a Soviet academician about the parallels between "immorality" in Soviet society and immorality in the conduct of Soviet science; another interview with a historian about Latvian nationalism; a series of exposés on the Soviet poor; and a study of what women prefer, headlined "A Husband Or Don Juan?" The paper takes on crusades against human rights abuses. In one of its early issues, it reported on the fall from grace of Gennadi Miropolski, who in 1983, as a senior at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, wrote a letter to a friend advocating the creation of an independent literary coffeehouse. When the letter was intercepted by the Soviet secret police - the KGB - Miropolski was expelled from the Komsomol, the Party-run youth organization, as well as the polytechnical institute. In several articles during the past year, Poisk has joined forces with the institute's physical and mechanical sciences department to call for the restoration of Miropolski's rights and freedom for him to resume his career. Poisk also champions the publication of once-taboo scientific subjects. For example, an October issue offered an excerpt from Sigmund Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis, which has just been published in the Soviet Union for the first time, thereby, according to Poisk, "closing the most gaping hole on the bookshelf of the contemporary reader-intellectual." Making up for the years in which the Communist Party and the government forbade candid reporting, Poisk energetically investigates the past. "People don't know the facts of our history," Mukhina says, adding that it was important to expose "the repressions of the 1930s and 1940s." But even more recent events have come under Poisk's historical scrutiny. In one of the earliest issues, the newspaper gave an account, unprecedented in its detail, of the death of cosmonaut V.N. Komarov during the reentry of his Soyuz 1 space capsule in 1967. Mukhina agrees that politics take up a remarkable amount of space in a newspaper ostensibly devoted to science, but this, she says, is a function of the times, which have heavily politicized life in the Soviet Union, and of Soviet science, which has always been heavily politicized. The Academy of Science holds a number of seats in the new democratically elected National Assembly, further emphasizing the role of scientists in advancing perestroika. Says Mukhina: "I think there is now a lot of interest in policy, especially among those in the Academy, and now that many are deputies." Mukhina herself has done advocacy articles on contemporary problems, including that of Soviets who are bomj - a new Russian word that is an acronym of the official designation "without a fixed place to live." Her story was headlined, "I, Homeless." A journalism graduate, Mukhina is proud that her newspaper reaches not only scientists, but students and workers as well. The "fantastic" stories that run on the last page of nearly every issue have won an especially large following - the result, Mukhina speculates, of there not being enough existing publications to satisfy Soviet readers' appetites for science fiction. In the new Soviet Union, consumer demand counts, so Poisk has now announced its first book-publishing venture: a science fiction anthology. The newspaper's address is 129010, Moscow; Bolshaya Kolkhoznaya Ploschad, 3; korp. 1.

New Soviet Weekly Pushes For Perestroika In Science

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