Scientists Run For Office To Back Reforms, Aid Gorbachev

MOSCOW--As embattled Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev struggles to keep perestroika alive, he has turned time and again to Soviet scientists for political support. In return, Soviet scientists have found themselves fixtures in the Kremlin corridors of power, as parliamentarians, advisers, and, especially, gadflies. A recent manifesto by a group of these scientists declared, "There is a revolution under way in this country. We know that a revolution is worth something only when it knows how to defend itself. Today, we must defend our perestroika and consolidate all democratic forces of the society around it." Ever since Peter the Great established the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1724 - importing all its members from the West - scientists have held positions of power in Russian political life. Today, they are guaranteed a role in the Congress of People's Deputies, the first democratically elected political body in Soviet history, with 22 seats set aside for members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the direct descendent of Peter's institution and the principal scientific organization in the country. These deputies were elected by their peers working in laboratories throughout the Soviet Union. Lay people sent another 80 scientists to the congress in elections organized, like U.S. congressional contests, by regional districts. In all, there are 39 full members of the Academy of Sciences in the 2,250-member congress. (Soviets, however, consider a scientist anyone with an advanced degree, including lawyers and economists, who make up much of the academic delegation. Although no one has tallied the number of deputies who are researchers in the physical or life sciences, they are a conspicuous element of the congress.) This new power in congress represents a resurgence in the position of Soviet science. Despite the appearance of scientific participation in government during the Leonid Brezhnev era, the role of intellect in the solution of the country's problems was a sham. With rare exceptions, scientists gave the advice they were ordered to give and were afraid to take initiatives. This is because an entire generation of scientists was scarred by events in 1965, shortly after Brezhnev took power, when more than 200 students and professors at Moscow State University were arrested for having discussed the virtues of multiparty democracy. After being freed, these intellectuals were expelled from their universities and the all-important Komsomol youth organization. Their careers as scientists were ended in a moment. It was an impressive example of what government could do, a lesson no scientist of that era ever forgot. Today, members of the Academy of Sciences can express their opinions fearlessly. Despite the predominant role given to the Communist Party in the Soviet constitution, political pluralism is a fact of Soviet life. Most of the congress' scientist-deputies have joined a progressive bloc: chemist Vitali Goldanski's 104-member Academical Deputy Group, which issued the properestroika declaration (see Opinion, page 15). These scientists find themselves on the front lines of democratic change. Astrophysicist Vitali Ginzburg, who was elected academician in 1966 and is also a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has pressed for the democratization of society, for building legal structures, and for constitutional guarantees to prevent the Soviet Union from returning to the times of terror and fear. Ginzburg frequently writes for the press and is on the editorial board of Poisk, a new weekly newspaper published by the Academy of Sciences (The Scientist, Jan. 22, 1990, page 5). In his articles he has criticized the Soviet bureaucracy, especially the bureaucracy that plagues scientific institutions, and he has joined a special Academy committee meant to fight it. Ethnic conflict involving non-Russian people - the majority of Soviet citizens - spurred debate long before the events in Lithuania and Azer-baijan. The Soviet Constitution provides for 15 independent republics, but in practice all important decisions were made in the Kremlin, a situation opposed by the scientists. Physicist Roald Sagdeyev says, "National relations in our country are now very serious. Our future is as a union of republics with equal rights." He has also called for elected representatives to be involved in military decisions. "The building of the defense system must be controlled by the people. All defense projects must be discussed by the [Defense] Commission of the Supreme Soviet," he says. "We mustn't match Pentagon spending, but think instead about making scientific arguments for peace, addressed to the intellectual and political leaders of the West." He adds that there should be an open discussion of the Soviet space budget. Sagdeyev, together with deputy biologist Alexei Yablokov and Alexander Yanshin, believes that the problem of ecological survival is now as serious as the threat of nuclear war. On this point, as with others, many scientist-deputies have found themselves in opposition to Gorbachev. A recent plan to build two plastic factories in the Siberian region of Tyumen has drawn the ire of Yablokov and 26 other deputies. The ecology of the region has already been severely damaged by the oil industry and, as this reporter learned on a recent visit, its inhabitants suffer under terrible living conditions. Yablokov's group has written a letter to Gorbachev, demanding that government spending on social development come before further industrial development in the region. Perestroika, after all, is supposed to help people. As of late last month, the letter was unanswered. The scientists also seek to use their political positions to improve the way science is done in the Soviet Union. Ginzburg, the astrophysicist, says: "I think that we must fulfill several important tasks: Kill the bureaucracy; reorganize postgraduate studies; publish in the Soviet Union magazines and books in English; democratize the elections in all scientific organizations; and improve international communication services. I also support the idea of the Association of Scientific Workers in the USSR." This proposed association, he explains, would make it possible for scientists to pursue projects on their own, without the approval of the institutes for which they work. Many Soviet scientists complain that they are not given enough freedom to pursue their ideas. He has been joined in his campaign on this issue by physicist Yuri Osipian, one of the scientists closest to Gorbachev. Zhores Alferov, director of the Leningrad Physicotechnical Institute and an academician, wants to increase the ties between science and education, building specialized schools that would be attached to the academy's large scientific centers. He also offers a short list of proposals to revitalize Soviet science: "Academic science must be free from the government. Scientific proposals must compete with each other for funding on a peer-review basis, in order to concentrate resources on the most important spheres of science. In order to stimulate scientists, Lenin Prizes [each worth 20,000 rubles] must be given in all the main scientific fields. For the development of international scientific cooperation, Soviet scientists must be given more opportunity to work in foreign centers on contract." Alferov also seeks the development of an infrastructure for the computerization of Soviet society, as well as more progress in microelectronics and solar energy. Yuri Rizhov, president of the Committee on Science, National Education, and Culture in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, says that for a dozen years intellect was considered to be a characteristic of "the home enemy" - in other words, that intellectuals were a kind of Fifth Column. A generation of people were told not to think. According to Rizhov, this is why the level of political dialogue in the Soviet Union is so low, and why the problem of education here is considered a political one. Despite the progressive representation of the academy in congress, the academy leadership itself - the presidium, appointed by the Party's Central Committee, is very conservative. For example, a recent petition to strike the name of Andrei Vyshinsky, Stalin's late chief prosecutor, from the rolls of the academy was successfully resisted. Tragically, the presidium, which decides the course of research throughout the country, is still composed of old men. Under the new democratization, however, scientists will be given the opportunity to vote this year for their own leadership. The Goldanski parliamentary group was organized only recently, so it has no successes to report yet. The deputies, however, are making progress toward establishing their own computer-equipped parliamentary headquarters. Ironically, although today's Soviet scientists are more outspoken than they've ever been, they are less concerned with international affairs, including issues such as disarmament, than they were early in the 1980s. They are much more interested in domestic problems. For a long time Soviet scientists merely wanted to play in the intellectual arena. Now they are trying to save our country from economic, social, and political tragedies. Aleksandra Mukhina is a staff reporter for the Moscow-based Soviet science weekly, Poisk.

Scientists Run For Office To Back Reforms, Aid Gorbachev

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