russian scientists

Viktor Sadovnichy, the 85-year-old rector of Moscow State University, has been reappointed for a seventh term. This is not quite a typical situation: today the average age of a rector is under 60. T-invariant has studied the biographies of the heads of Russian universities in detail and realised that the problem with the rector corps is different: it is remarkably monotonous, as if they have specially selected people according to the average statistical pattern. Both the rector of Moscow State University and the heads of unremarkable regional universities have similar biographies and typical careers.
Recently, American scientist Sam Payne received a review of his own article published three years earlier, but now its authors were five employees of Sechenov University. So the world scientific community learnt about the Russian company "International Publisher", which is engaged in the production of fake scientific articles and places them for money in major foreign journals. More details - in the material T-invariant.
As of 30 November, Russian scientists will no longer have access to the facilities of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. This is not the only scientific instrument to which access has been closed due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. T-invariant takes the example of the European XFEL free electron laser to understand what this means for science and what scientists who have lost access to this state-of-the-art research method are doing.
The harsh sentence for the scientist is not an exception to the rule, but the current norm. It was not by chance that the prosecution asked to give Shiplyuk the maximum possible 20 years: the cruelty of the repressions is directly related to the war in Ukraine. Moreover, in the summer of 2023, amendments were made according to which life imprisonment can be given for high treason.
The FSB has been persecuting members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Abramov and Oleg Kabov for several years now. Their criminal cases are so unprecedented that the American Physical Society, one of the largest in the scientific world, is worried about their fate. Its representatives are sending letters to the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
At the end of June, acting Rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities named Andrey Loginov, ex-Deputy Minister of Justice of Russia. This happened against the backdrop of a public scandal around the “Higher Political School” named after Ivan Ilyin, headed by Alexander Dugin, created at the university. T-invariant analyzed Loginov’s biography and found that he has no less importance than Ilyin and Dugin, grounds to claim the title of the main ideologist of the “Russian world”.
Even before the war with Ukraine, about 150 young Russian scientists became Fulbright scholarsand got the opportunity to study at American universities. In March of this year, the IIE and Cultural Vistas organizations sponsoring the program were declared undesirable in Russia. T-invariant looked into what awaits fellows in their home countries and what alternatives young scientists see for themselves.
Academicians turned to Vladimir Putin with a proposal to head a new body of the Russian Academy of Sciences - the Board of Trustees. But not everyone was able to vote for this decision. FSO employees blacklisted more than twenty scientists and did not allow them to attend the General Meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In Novosibirsk, they are considering the criminal case of corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Kabov, which was initiated by the FSB. This is the first case in Russia when a scientist is being tried for his allegedly unsatisfactory work, and scientific and technical expertise forms the basic part of the charge. The very fact that you can go to prison for poorly conducted research is a new page both in the history of Russian science and in the history of domestic jurisprudence. Kabov's case is a challenge to the entire scientific community. It will show whether science in Russia can defend its right to exist.
University Transparency Laboratory (Lupa), with the help of the free online community Dissernet, analyzed the activities of expert councils of the upper house of the Russian parliament. It turned out that 10% of experts advising senators on the laws they pass have violations of academic ethics.
Over the course of two years, several thousand scientists left Russia, sometimes entire teams were evacuated. Some of them managed not only to survive, but to be reborn in a new reality. In February 2024, the Agency for Control and Quality Assurance of Higher Education of Montenegro decided on state accreditation of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (FLASH), which was created by former employees of the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences. Teodora Shanin. And this is not the only example of how fugitive Russians are reassembling academic projects.
In 2023, the FSB began subjecting dissenters to punitive psychiatry. Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Abramov left the psychiatric hospital after the examination and became familiar with the updated version of the charges. T-invariant spoke with the scientist about his life with the “extremist” label, his political views and the reasons for the security forces’ attack on the Russian supercomputer industry.
New detainees in the case of Siberian scientists from the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITPM) named after. Christianovich of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, accused of treason, was scientist Vladislav Galkin from Tomsk. The human rights organization First Department is confident that the repressive campaign is growing and the next victim of the FSB could be absolutely any scientist who has worked on this topic as part of international collaborations.
The Russian Federation's leading specialist in supercomputer systems was first checked by the FSB “for treason”, then kept under house arrest for six months on suspicion of “financing an extremist organization”. After fruitless attempts to plant according to the proven Soviet tradition, the “fool” is used. Sergei Abramov, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, founder of a number of innovative companies, is planned to be sent to a psychiatric hospital for three weeks on November 30 for “conducting an inpatient examination.”Because the outpatient motivation of the scientist who organizes the supercomputer forum in Pereslavl-Zalessky, even while under investigation, the FSB could not understand even after eight months.
In Chicago, at the annual conference of the Russian-speaking American Scientific Association (RASA), sociologists who have recently been living in the United States chose for their presentations topics that can now hardly be discussed publicly while in Russia. Sergey Erofeev (Rutgers University)presented a brief overview of the most interesting presentations for T-invariant.
In Chicago, at Northwestern University, an annual conference was held, organized by the Russian-American Association of Scientists - Russian American Science Association (RASA). Mutual support, academic solidarity, political context and political division in the scientific community - in report by Denis Cheredov.
The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) "Alabuga", which has already hit the pages of all the world's media this year with a series of high-profile scandals, this time swung at the solar system and acted as a collective Ostap Bender for all the money - namely 491 trillion rubles . Leading Russian astrophysicists responded by recalling the gravitsappa on the Yubileiny satellite (a loud anti-scientific failure of Roscosmos from 2008).
Behind the names in the “Chronicle of the Persecution of Scientists”, which is jointly conducted by T-invariant and CISRUS, there are specific people forced to fight for their civil and academic freedoms. We decided to tell in detail who and why decides to go against government pressure in science and education. The first material focuses on the history of Novokolledzh, one of the largest colleges in Russia.How did the institution begin to work, despite the refusal of accreditation and the resignation of the director, candidate of historical sciences Sergei Chernyshov? Why do the new director Yuri Lobanov and Sergei Chernyshov himself not give up their professional and civic positions? Yulia Chernaya spoke with the former and current leaders of Novocollege - Sergei Chernyshov and Yuri Lobanov.
Within the project "Creators" T-invariant together with RASA (Russian-American Science Association) continues to publish a series of biographical essays about people from Russian Empire, who made a significant contribution to world science and technology. The essay is dedicated to astronomer Alexander Vysotsky. He had worked at the observatory of the University of Virginia. There he compiled the first catalogue of red dwarfs and experimentally confirmed the rotation of our Galaxy.
Sergey Abramov, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has been under house arrest for two months now. He is accused of "financing an extremist organization." Details of the criminal case remain unpublished, but T-Invariant found out that Abramov had previously been investigated under the article of law on "state treason," and the scientist had a security clearance for state secrets.
Three physicists were arrested in so called "Novosibirsk case". It wasn’t the first time. Previously, four scientists were also accused of treason in different years. All of the scientists accused in all these cases participated in the projects of the seventh framework program of the European Union "TransHyBerian" (coordinator — Von Karman Institute of Hydrodynamics, Belgium). However, the interlocutors and sources of T-invariant suggest that the contacts of scientists with China and Iran are only an excuse, not the reason for the arrests.