A Martyr of Science, or How Scientist Sutyagin Became a Beria Accomplice
Article by Sergey Leskov: "A Martyr of Science, or How Scientist Sutyagin Became a Beria Accomplice"
It was announced on the eve of Cosmonautics Day that preparations for
razing the aging and crumbling Space Pavilion at the former Exhibition
of the Achievements of the USSR National Economy are under way. And in
that same week, sentence was pronounced in the case against Institute of
the USA and Canada sector director Igor Sutyagin. While the public had
doubts about his guilt, the court didn't even feel that the
scientist-spy deserved condescension. The disconnectedness and
dissimilarity of the events notwithstanding, there is something of a
relationship between them.
Many years ago, it was in the Space Pavilion the we used to receive our
blessing as we crossed into higher education. First-year tutor Aleksandr
Serebrov, who never even thought that he would become a merited
cosmonaut, grandiloquently concluded: "And these ships will fly ever
higher, and this pavilion will grow ever richer." Inasmuch as our ships
have been flying increasingly lower and less often in the last decade,
it's no surprise that the showcase of cosmonautics -- the Space Pavilion
-- has also fallen into neglect. Cosmonauts that have been discarded on
Earth's shores are doing what they can to survive. One Buran spacecraft
pilot left for America, where he worked as a consultant to former
supostaty. Another cosmonaut, a Hero of the Soviet Union and a native of
the Caucasus, I myself saw being searched meticulously before the eyes
of the public by gallant Highway Patrol officers, following all the
rules. Many cosmonaut brothers went into politics and joined, apparently
out of nostalgia, the Duma Communist faction, which soon became of no
consequence politically. Most cosmonauts, however, are seeking their
purpose in life in the business world, where they are becoming not so
much the engine of their companies, including Western ones, as their
face. Even Boeing has "adorned" itself with one of our cosmonauts. Had
things turned out otherwise, what would Gagarin be doing today?
The brain drain from science (of which cosmonautics is a part) is one of
Russia's most painful problems. We distinguish between the drain of our
brains into Western science and an internal drain -- out of science
altogether. And then we also have the scientist-spy -- an extreme and
abnormal consequence of the situation that gave birth to this
phenomenon. American and English professors don't go into spying --
there's no cause for such a job option. At the dawn of the atomic age,
Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs passed information to Soviet agents not
for money, but out of pacifist considerations. In Soviet times, military
personnel were the most dangerous spies: Colonel Penkovskiy and General
Polyakov were both put in front of a firing squad. Oleg Kalugin,
whatever the controversy about his case, was also a general.
Now the time has come for chasing down scientist-spies -- Professor
Soyfer from Vladivostok, Professor Danilov from Krasnoyarsk, Professor
Babkin from Moscow, ecologist Nikitin from St. Petersburg.... Up until
this moment, indictments against scientists crumbled in court --
Sutyagin took the hit for all of them. Including the American
philanthropist George Soros, who
pulled hundreds of millions of dollars out of his pocket in support of
science when it was down and out, for which he was labeled a spy by
jingoists.
When state orders are not to be seen at the bottom of the well, all you
can do is drink from Western grants. Sutyagin the Spy is not destined to
witness the Century of Freedom -- he was sentenced to 15 years'
confinement. Not every murdering maniac is going to see such severe
punishment. We have here the paradox of the ages: why do we, who declare
that life is what is most precious, sooner pardon a bloodthirsty robber
Barabbas than someone who washes our dirty linen and public or says
things we don't want to hear?
Before Sutyagin, the most famous English spy was Lavrentiy Beria, who
worked at MI-6. Some people feel that Beria and Sutyagin are kindred in
the doubtfulness of their indictments. Others, on the other hand, think
that Sutyagin knew what he was doing, and that such a practice in the
preparation of analytical surveys is abnormal for a scientist. But what
is indicative is that in all of his time in the world of espionage, Igor
Sutyagin received only $20,000 from those successors to James Bond. This
is
the cost of a moderately priced European car. Western tourists pay
thousands of times more for a flight into space aboard a Russian
spacecraft. And without going broke.
If Igor Sutyagin is really a spy, then it's shame on the government.
Things have come to the point where our scientists are ready to sell
themselves for a Hershey bar. And what is also shameful is that we got
the market price for our military secrets. There are two ways to keep
information safe. The first is to jealously guard it. The second is to
create new technologies unattainable by those with long noses. The
harder it gets to do the latter, the more attention should be devoted to
the former. The
General Staff admits that new equipment makes up less than 10 percent of
the Army's inventory. When there is no work for designers, special
services join the fray. And this is one of the reasons why
"scientist-spy" sounds as commonplace as "physician-saboteur" used to.
We need only recall that as we learned later on, physician-saboteurs are
not found in nature. It was simply advantageous to create them. But as
for scientist-spies, we shouldn't be growing them artificially.
