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Russian scientists denounce damaging 'spymania'
January 30, 2003
AFP

Leading Russian scientists denounced Thursday a wave of "spymania" by state officials they said was creating serious problems for Russia's scientific community and damaging the country's prospects as a centre of research.

A "Soviet mentality" is largely responsible for the prosecutions and trials of prominent researchers that have led several of them to spend years in jail and induced many to avoid sensitive areas that could lead to them falling under suspicion, the scientists told a press conference organised by the Helsinki Group on human rights.

The panel of scientists, including two members of Russia's prestigious Academy of Science, cited the case of a colleague, Igor Sutyagin, who has been in jail since late 1999 awaiting trial on charges of passing state secrets to the United States while he was working for the USA-Canada research institute. Sutyagin faces a prison sentence of 12 to 20 years if convicted, but a date has still to be set for the trial.

The panel, among them Valentin Danilov, a former space researcher who was arrested in February 2001 and is charged with passing on information to China, welcomed a statement last week by President Vladimir Putin who criticised "obsessive spymania" that he attributed to "excessive bureaucratisation."

Putin said the activities of the Russian security services were limiting foreign experts' access to nuclear installations and complicating the country's compliance with international arms treaties.

Other notable spy cases have involved former naval officer Alexander Nikitin, accused of espionage for divulging information on nuclear pollution by the country's submarine fleet and acquitted after a four-year legal battle.

Grigory Pasko, also a former officer, who received a four-year jail sentence for exposing the dumping of radioactive waste at sea, was last week released on parole after an international campaign for his release.

Academician Vitaly Ginzburg told reporters that the obsession with espionage was damaging to Russian science as a whole.

Already deterred by low salaries and poor working conditions, young researchers were shunning high-tech sectors where secrecy is involved where they could come to the attention of the FSB intelligence services, Ginzburg said.

"The FSB is persecuting researchers. This is an anti-state activity," he said.

Another Academician, Yury Ryzhov, warned that a recent extension of the list of "dual technologies" -- of potential use in both the military and civilian sectors -- meant that Russia was missing out on several international cooperation programmes.

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