Vol 89, No 3 (2019)

This article is dedicated to the distinctive features of A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s self-determination in the context of 20th-century culture. The ties and interactions of his artistic system with Russian and world classical art, modernistic poetics, and the socialist realist canon are analyzed. The evolution of the mysterial‒epic origin in the writer’s prose is emphasized. The final part of the article considers the current state of mastering the scientific editing of Solzhenitsyn’s legacy. The article is based on the report of V.V. Polonskii at a meeting of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) on December 13, 2018.

This article briefly discusses the features of the education system in the former Soviet Union, known to rely on the concept of mass training personnel in exact and natural sciences, for them to be capable of generating new fundamental and applied knowledge and technologies for the development of strategic industries. As a result of the liberal market reforms in 1990–1992, the education system in Russia switched towards training users, or consumers, of the technologies and products that already exist in global markets. The modernization of the education system in the new millennium is completing the agenda put forward in the 1990s. The educational reforms of recent years are moving towards a permanent end to the economy of industrial production of complex engineering systems in favor of a service economy, which does not create material wealth. The obvious consequence of this agenda is the collapse of the education system inherited from the former Soviet Union and the complete loss of hope for restoring economically and socially relevant high-tech industries.

The current era of the fourth industrial revolution is inevitably leading to a widening gap between actively and passively developing countries, and the strategy of scientific and technological breakthrough announced in the Russian Federation is the only way to achieve the status of a world power. Modern progress is based on infinite growth rates of computational and informational capacities of the post-petaflop scales, which provide previously unthinkable opportunities for acquiring new fundamental knowledge and introducing innovations in production, natural resource management, and the economic and social spheres. The key role here is played by predictive mathematical modeling of processes and phenomena, including theoretical and applied research, supercomputation, and large-scale computer experiments, operations with large data, and artificial intelligence. Emerging super problems require huge amounts of new-generation intelligent software, which is impossible without the formulation of concepts and paradigms of activity, architectural solutions, and constructive technologies. Global trends are leading to the development of integrated computing and information environments that form an instrumental environment for automating the construction of models and algorithms, their mapping onto supercomputer platforms, and the creation of comfortable interfaces for users with different professional backgrounds. Such an ecosystem is designed for a long life cycle with the continuous development and coordinated participation of various groups of developers, as well as widespread demand, thereby leading to the formation of a new industry with mass professions with a high level of supercomputer literacy. The listed scientific and technological challenges require competent organizational and infrastructural solutions, including the interdepartmental coordination of academic, educational, and production teams. Mathware and software of supercomputer modeling should permeate all spheres of human activity similarly to the circulatory or nervous system and transmit the value of new productive forces that improve the quality of life and ensure the sustainable development of society to become knowledgeable on intensive technologies.

This paper presents the results of a scientometric analysis of the publications of Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, over a 60-year period (1958-2017). The current research used the SciAct information system, and the WoS, Scopus, CAPlus, and RSCI databases. The main types of catalysts and catalytic processes studied at the Institute are specified, together with the number and citation dynamics of publications, grants supporting the research by domestic and foreign funds, types and languages used in publications, the locations of publications and where they were issued, their authors and affiliations, each publication’s mission and remit, as well as their main bibliometric indicators.

Plague, which is infamous for three devastating pandemics, remains to this day one of the most dangerous human diseases. Its pathogen, the microbe Yersinia pestis, is a priority agent in the arsenal of possible bacteriological weapons, which requires increased attention to the preventive development of systems of biological (bacteriological) security. Deep knowledge of the natural processes that caused the emergence of the causative agent of plague in nature might contribute to it. In the problem of the origin of Y. pestis, there are currently two alternative approaches, molecular-genetic (MG) and ecological. MG data led to the innovative idea of the saltational transformation of a clone of the ancestral psychrophilic saprozoobiont pseudotuberculosis microbe Y. pseudotuberculosis O:1b into a population of the plague pathogen Y. pestis by means of horizontal transfer of two plague-specific virulence plasmids pFra and pPst from the external environment or from other bacteria and inactivation/deletion of genes that lost their functions in a fundamentally new habitat, the vole (Microtinae) populations in Asia. The ecological scenario is based on the Darwinian idea of the adaptogenesis of the plague microbe with the rapid “quantum” formation of its properties in the marmot- flea (Marmota sibirica and Oropsylla silantiewi) parasitic system under the conditions of the Central Asia psychroarid climate at the turn of the Pleistocene and Holocene periods. Three important factors of quantum speciation of the plague microbe were identified: marmot heterothermy during hibernation, an oxidative burst of macrophages in the body of repeatedly awakening hibernating marmots, and stress-induced muta-genesis of the evolving microbe due to the oxidative burst of macrophages. This paper argues the principle of complementarity between the environmental and MG approaches. The prospect of solving the problem of quantum speciation of the causative agent of plague and the development of tools and methods for treating and preventing this disease is seen in the synthesis of the ecological and MG approaches.

The results of studies that have been carried out at the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences (USSR Academy of Sciences) and data obtained by other institutions are used to assess the impact of various types of economic activity on the water resources of Russia and its aftereffects. The impact includes an indirect, i.e., through the relief, soil, and biota (activities in the nonirrigated agriculture, forestry, and urbanized landscapes) and the direct component (hydroengineering construction, diversion of runoff, water withdrawal, and wastewater discharge). The impact of the complex of anthropogenic factors on the volume and quality of water resources is evaluated. The characteristics of water use in Russia and different parts of the world are compared. The main approaches to solve water problems are proposed.

The identification of the chain origin of gas combustion at atmospheric and elevated pressure has opened up new aspects of the theory and wide-ranging possibilities for effectively managing the processes of combustion, explosion, and detonation by controlling the branching and loss rates of active intermediate particles, such as atoms and radicals, by using inhibitors and promoters. In this paper, we briefly describe methods for preventing fires and explosions of methane-air mixtures, including those in coal mines, ignition and explosion of hydrogen-air mixtures, and the transition of combustion to detonation in the current ramjet engine model. The results of interdepartmental tests and experimental data illustrating the destruction of a stationary detonation wave by the small impurities of the lower hydrocarbons are given.

Two books recently published abroad by prominent historians of biology on Lysenkoism acknowledging the revival of interest in this phenomenon among the international scientific community are considered. The first book in two volumes, The Lysenko Controversy As a Global Phenomenon, edited by W. deJong-Lambert and N.L. Krementsov, combines modernized old and new approaches to the study and understanding of Lysenkoism. The author shows the merits of the two volumes, demonstrating the progress reached in recent years in works on this topic, and focuses on several drawbacks of the edition. The other book analyzed is L. Graham’s, Lysenko’s Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia. In this book T.D. Lysenko’s activities and their consequences for scientific culture in general and for contemporary Russian science in particular as well as some problems of Lysenkoism in the country’s current political context are considered. In the opinion of the reviewer, the polemical character of the book gives a serious reason for reflections on the fate of not only Russian science but also of the country.