Vol 93, No 4 (2023)

Four articles prepared on the basis of oral reports heard at a meeting dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Stalingrad are presented.

Based on archival documents introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the process of postwar restoration of Stalingrad is discussed. During the Battle of Stalingrad, which became one of the key battles of the Second World War, Stalingrad suffered colossal destruction: not a single one of the 126 enterprises survived, while 48 factories were razed to the ground; the civilian population of the city was reduced to 1515 people. Already in December 1942 - January 1943, the city and oblast authorities decided to begin restoration. Although the fighting in the city was still ongoing, on April 4, 1943, a resolution of the State Defense Committee (GKO) was adopted On Priority Measures to Restore the Economy of Stalingrad and Stalingrad Oblast. The process of developing an urban planning concept and searching for an architectural and artistic solution was rather difficult. The best creative forces of the Soviet Union took part in this work: A.V. Shchusev, B.M. Iofan, K.S. Alabyan, E.V. Vuchetich, and others. The final project for the development of the center of Stalingrad was prepared by a group of the Academy of Architecture under the leadership of Alabyan in 1946; however, after the adoption in 1955 of the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee On the Elimination of Excesses in Design and Construction, this project was not implemented in full. An important milestone in the formation of the modern appearance of Stalingrad (Volgograd) was the construction of the memorial ensemble to the heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad on Mamayev Kurgan in 1959−1967 according to the design and under the direct supervision of the sculptor E.V. Vuchetich and engineer N.V. Nikitin.

This article is devoted to the photo and film chronicle of the defense of Stalingrad, stored in the funds of the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents. Its funds contain a huge array of documentary evidence on the history of the Great Patriotic War, including more than 3500 files and about 1 million meters of film. A special place among them belongs to materials dedicated to the Battle of Stalingrad. The archive contains negatives of photographs taken by leading wartime photojournalists; photo albums; films; canned news; and newsreels, produced directly in combat units that fought on the outskirts of the city and in Stalingrad itself.

Reforming the research evaluation system is essentially a struggle between the academic aristocracy, which professes expert approaches to evaluation, and the scientific bureaucracy, which seeks to ensure the dictate of numerical indicators. A representative example is the evolution of this confrontation in China, where a long-term commitment to international scientometric databases made it possible to achieve world leadership in terms of the number of publications. However, these achievements were accompanied by negative effects caused by deterioration in the personnel policy of universities, the reduction of academic freedoms, changes in the publication behavior of researchers, and violations of scientific ethics. This led to a reform of the national evaluation system, namely, the strengthening of the role of expertise, the priority dissemination of scientific information at the national level, and the restriction of open access publications. This considers the history of the formation of and changes in the research evaluation system in China, its positive and negative effects, as well as new scientific practices, their likely consequences, and the possibility to apply them in other countries.

There are about 1000 valid species taxa of dinosaurs in the world, 85% of which were described after 1990. Twelve taxa originate from Russia, and ten of them were also established after 1990. Over the past 30 years, the number of publications dedicated to the dinosaurs of Russia has increased by 6.6 times. The first finds on the territory of our country date back to the 1890s; to date, 34 localities of bone remains of dinosaurs have already been discovered in various regions of the Russian Federation, and their number has more than doubled over the past 20 years. This article provides a brief overview of the localities from the oldest to the latest. This is the first part of the review; further, the taxa of dinosaurs known from remains found in Russia will be considered in detail.

This article is dedicated to issues of improving the land reclamation and water management sector of the agro-industrial complex at the present stage of development of the water industry. This is dictated by the current needs of the socioeconomic development of the Russian Federation, dynamic climate change, and active progress in the field of information and digital technologies, as well as by new opportunities for mathematical modeling and software and the development of production and construction technologies, structures, and materials. The attention of the authors is focused on the role of climate change in the deterioration of agricultural conditions, which is confirmed by the results of a statistical retrospective analysis of observational data from weather stations in the Lower Volga region, the Ural basin, the Far East, and southern Western Siberia. Forecast calculations of water supply (consumption by the population, land irrigation, animal husbandry) for 2035 show that all regions of the Lower Volga and the south of Western Siberia, as well as some regions of the Far East, will experience a lack of water resources for irrigating crops. In the current climatic, economic, and social conditions, the innovative development of the water management complex of the Russian Federation necessitates elaborating a state-of-the-art strategy for the sustainable development of the land reclamation and water management complex.

This article is dedicated to the memory of the outstanding mathematician of the 20th century, Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov, whose 120th birthday is celebrated this year. The author describes in detail the formation of Kolmogorov as a scientist, the significance of Moscow State University in the scientific life and pedagogical activity of the famous mathematician. Kolmogorov’s contribution to such branches of mathematics as classical analysis, topology, geometry, approximation theory, functional analysis, and probability theory is analyzed, and the contribution of his scientific school to Russian science, including not only mathematics and physics but also the humanities, is shown.

A monograph by Novosibirsk historians of science N.A. Kuperstokh and I.A. Kraineva is reviewed.

V.P. Platonov was awarded the 2022 Chebyshev Gold Medal. V.P. Kolotov was awarded the 2022 Khlopin Prize. S.V. Razin, A.A. Gavrilov, and S.V. Ul’yanov were awarded the 2022 Baev Prize. V.L. Yakovlev, S.V. Kornilkov, and I.V. Sokolov were awarded the 2022 Mel’nikov Prize. L.N. Sindalovskii was awarded the 2022 Savarenskii Prize.