Grigory Shekhtman literary newspaper. I will burn myself under the windows of the publishing house... Approximate word search
06:20 08.12.2018
Weapons of mass destruction have become the only possible means of salvation
The Israeli nuclear program has always been reliably protected by the domestic and foreign policy of the Israeli government, the so-called “nuclear uncertainty”. This clever concept was supposed to indicate that Israel does not admit to having nuclear weapons and is thus not subject to the corresponding political, economic and inspection sanctions. On the other hand, this concept does not deny that Israel has a powerful means of deterrence, since for other countries the existence of these weapons has long ceased to be a secret.
NO RIGHT TO DEFEAT
Since the legitimate creation of the State of Israel, threats of its destruction have been constantly heard, and from responsible leaders. I will give examples of some such statements.
When British troops finally left Palestine after the declaration of the State of Israel, five Arab armies (Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq) immediately invaded Israel. Their intentions were eloquently proclaimed by Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League: “It will be a war of extermination followed by a massacre that will be said to be similar to the Mongol massacre and the Crusades.”
On March 8, 1965, Egyptian President Nasser made the following downright bloodthirsty statement: “When we enter Palestine, its land will not be covered with sand, it will be soaked in blood.” A few months later, Nasser described Arab aspirations this way: “We seek the destruction of the State of Israel.
Our immediate task is to complete the Arab military build-up. Our national task is to destroy Israel."
Iraqi President Abdur Rahman Aref did not remain aloof from the threats and said the following: “The existence of Israel is a mistake that must be corrected. Now we have an opportunity to erase this shame, this shameful situation in which we found ourselves after 1948. Our The goal is clear - to erase Israel from the world map." On June 4, 1967, Iraq joined the military alliance of Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
Belligerent rhetoric was accompanied by the mobilization of Arab military forces. Israel was surrounded by an armada of 250 thousand people, which had more than 2 thousand tanks and 700 aircraft. This was accompanied by a naval blockade: the important sea route through the Gulf of Aqaba was blocked. In this situation, Israel had no choice but to strike first. On June 5, 1967, the order was given to attack Egypt. If Israel had waited for the Arabs to take action first, as happened in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and not launched a preemptive strike, the magnitude of the losses would have been much greater, and victory itself could not have been guaranteed.
After winning the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel hoped that the Arab states would begin peace negotiations. These expectations were not met. In August 1967, at a meeting in Khartoum, Arab leaders approved the formula of “three nos”: “no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel.”
Israel's first prime minister, Ben-Gurion, assumed that the Arabs could afford to lose as many wars as they wanted with Israel, but Israel, having lost only one war, would simply disappear from the world map. The Arabs had a burning desire to attack Israel and certainly destroy it constantly. This encouraged Israel to do something that would deprive them of this very opportunity. Nuclear weapons were chosen as a kind of deterrent force.
Israel was also encouraged to start creating nuclear weapons by another reason - nuclear blackmail from the Soviet Union. Every time the Arabs suffered another crushing defeat during the wars against Israel, Moscow immediately issued threats against Israel. In 1956, during the Sinai campaign, the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, Nikolai Bulganin, threatened to use nuclear weapons against Israel. One of Egypt's reasons for starting the Six Day War in 1967 was to attack Israel before it could use nuclear weapons. And after this war, in the last few months of 1967, Israel, according to the famous journalist Seymour Hersh, received information from American intelligence that the USSR had included the four main Israeli cities - Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba and Ashdod - to its list of nuclear targets. In 1973, when the Israelis surrounded the Egyptian 3rd Army during the Yom Kippur War, the USSR threatened Israel with military intervention to save the Egyptians from complete destruction.
HOW ISRAEL'S NEW WEAPONS WERE CREATED
In 1949, France and Israel began joint nuclear research. Soon enough uranium reserves for nuclear production were discovered in the Negev Desert.
In 1956, France and Israel entered into a secret agreement to build a 24 MW plutonium nuclear reactor in the Negev desert near the settlement of Dimona. In the construction of the reactor and underground complex on an area of 36 square meters. km, 1.5 thousand Israeli and French engineers and workers took part. French military aircraft secretly delivered heavy water to Israel from Norway, which was a key component in the functioning of the plutonium reactor.
In 1958, construction work in Dimona was recorded by American U-2 spy planes. When asked by the American government about the purpose of the facility under construction, Israel first stated that it was a textile factory, and then a metallurgical research complex. Two years later, the Americans unambiguously identified this complex as a nuclear reactor. The CIA said it was part of Israel's nuclear weapons program. At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion informed parliament about the construction of a nuclear reactor, emphasizing its exclusively peaceful orientation. This was the first and only statement by an Israeli leader about the Dimona complex.
It is noteworthy that in 1961, US President John Kennedy convinced Israel to allow inspectors into the nuclear facility. A group of American inspectors who visited the complex in Dimona noted that the reactor meets previously stated goals and is peaceful in nature. Over the next few years, the Americans repeatedly visited the nuclear complex in Dimona and each time reported the absence of any traces of a weapons program.
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Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel's secrets to the world
and paid for it. Photo by Eileen Fleming
In 1965, Israel received its first batch of military-grade plutonium. At the same time, France and Israel developed the Israeli solid-fuel missile Jericho-1 with a range of 500–750 km and a warhead mass of 500 kg. In 1975, the United States transferred short-range Lance missiles (130 km / 450 kg), capable of delivering nuclear warheads, to Israel.
On the eve of the Six-Day War of 1967, Israeli engineers allegedly succeeded in assembling two advanced nuclear devices. By early 1968, Israel had a nuclear weapons program. This conclusion was reached by Carl Duckett, deputy director of one of the CIA departments. His conclusion was based on conversations with Edward Teller, the father of the American hydrogen bomb, who visited Israel more than once and supported its nuclear program.
US-Israeli contacts on the nuclear issue have a long history based on mutual trust. In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, while visiting the United States, admitted to President Richard Nixon and National Security Assistant Henry Kissinger, who was participating in the negotiations, that Israel possessed an atomic bomb. This information did not go beyond the White House, and severe sanctions against Israel did not follow. The contracting parties reached a compromise, as a result of which Israel promised not to openly flaunt its nuclear weapons, and the Americans promised to tactfully avoid this issue.
Presumably in 1979, Israel, together with South Africa, conducted nuclear weapons tests in the southern Indian Ocean; In 1987, Israel successfully tested the Jericho-2 (1,450 km/1,000 kg) solid-propellant missile, and in 2000, the first Israeli tests of submarine-launched missiles were carried out in the Indian Ocean.
Sensational reports about the Israeli nuclear program with references to the testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Israeli nuclear center in Dimona, appeared in 1986 in the London Sunday Times. The woman, an Israeli intelligence agent, then lured Vanunu from London to Rome, where he was kidnapped and taken to Israel. He was accused of treason and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Officially, Israel has never conducted open nuclear tests, replacing them with computer simulations and tests on non-nuclear materials. It is also believed that Israeli nuclear weapons tests could have been carried out within the framework of secret agreements at testing sites in the United States and France.
NUCLEAR MISSILE POTENTIAL
According to data from various sources, Israel currently has 400 nuclear weapons carriers. These include the Jericho-1, Jericho-2 and Jericho-3 ballistic missiles, which have a flight range of 500 km to 7000 km. Dolphin-class submarines purchased from Germany, equipped with missiles with a flight range of up to 1.5 thousand km, make it possible to strike the enemy from points remote from the borders of Israel. In addition, Israel has the Shavit rocket, which was originally designed to launch satellites into space orbit. According to American experts, it is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead weighing up to 500 kg to a distance of 7–8 thousand km.
There are different expert estimates of the amount of weapons-grade plutonium produced in Israel. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), as of 2011, Israel could have produced 690–950 kg of weapons-grade plutonium. According to SIPRI, the production of weapons-grade plutonium in the country still continues, which indirectly indicates the intention to increase Israeli nuclear potential.
Available expert assessments of Israel's nuclear arsenal range widely. According to SIPRI, the Israelis have approximately 80 assembled nuclear weapons: 50 warheads for missiles and 30 bombs for aircraft. There are also more maximalist estimates, according to which by the end of the 1990s Israel had 400 ammunition, including aerial bombs and warheads for ballistic missiles.
Israel has created a full-fledged scientific and production base for the nuclear industry, which makes it possible to maintain and increase its nuclear potential. However, an insurmountable obstacle on the path to the development of thermonuclear weapons is the need to conduct full-scale tests. Israel signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, so it would likely be hesitant to violate it.
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Shimon Peres in front of the nuclear facility in Dimona.
Photo from the website www.iaec.gov.il
Israel has a nuclear triad based on dual-use carriers, which include tactical aircraft, mobile missile systems and diesel-electric submarines.
F-4, F-15 and F-16 fighters, as well as A-4 attack aircraft supplied from the United States, can be used as carriers of atomic bombs. Of the total fighter fleet, 40–50 aircraft and 8–10 attack aircraft are certified to perform nuclear missions. The F-15I and F-16I fighter jets modified in Israel at the beginning of 2012 were capable of being armed with Popeye nuclear air-to-ground cruise missiles. This significantly increases the capabilities of the aviation component of the nuclear triad, since the launch range of these missiles can exceed 1 thousand km.
In building up nuclear potential, the emphasis is on the development of the naval component of nuclear forces, which has the highest survivability. This is extremely important for Israel due to the small size of its territory.
ATOMIC STRATEGY
From the very beginning, Israel's nuclear arsenal was intended to deter and intimidate potential adversaries. Nuclear weapons are seen as a guarantor of the country's security. It can be used first in the event of an armed attack on the country, if the very existence of Israel as a state is jeopardized. In the event of a nuclear attack on Israel or other types of mass destruction, the remaining nuclear capabilities will be used as retaliation. Israel is trying to prevent the emergence of a real possibility of a potential enemy creating nuclear weapons, while allowing the use of force. Targeted bombing of nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria clearly demonstrated this.
It appears that the hostile environment will not allow Israel to give up nuclear weapons any time soon. The fact is that only two neighboring states concluded a peace treaty with it - Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). The rest of the Middle East countries have not yet recognized Israel's sovereignty, and Iran generally denies it the right to exist as a state. In 2003, Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, said: "Israel will not be able to approach nuclear disarmament proposals until after two years of complete peace in the Middle East. Only then will we consider changing our nuclear strategic program".
Despite all the secrecy of the nuclear program, the “father” of the Israeli atomic bomb, Shimon Peres, said in the mid-1990s that his country was ready to give up the nuclear warheads stored in Dimona in exchange for real peace in the region and the refusal of all Middle Eastern countries to produce weapons mass destruction. This proposal may have been the basis for awarding Peres the Nobel Peace Prize.
CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER GENERAL
The late former Brigadier General of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Yitzhak Yaakov (Jacobson) was born in 1926 in Palestine. He took part in many military operations carried out by Israel in its struggle for independence. He then graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion, graduating as a mechanical engineer. In the early 1960s, he was sent to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The general was directly involved in the technological revolution in the IDF, thanks to which the Israeli army became the most powerful and modern in the Middle East. He took part in the development of Israel's nuclear program at its initial stage and oversaw the development of air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles, and in 1973 he headed the department of scientific research and development in the Israeli Defense Ministry. Then he headed the scientific research department at the Ministry of Industry, continuing to work on issues of a military-strategic nature. In the late 1970s he moved to the United States, where he started the arms business.
In 2001, Yaakov was arrested while on a work trip to Jerusalem. The reason for his arrest was his connections with a “Russian woman”, who was allegedly an employee of the Russian special services and gained access to his official information. He was initially charged with attempting to maliciously disclose state secrets, but he was acquitted of this charge by the court, but was found guilty of transferring classified information to third parties and was sentenced by the court to two years of suspended imprisonment. The accusation was based on the fact that Yaakov wrote two autobiographical books, which allegedly revealed some state secrets related to Israel's nuclear programs. Although he did not publish his books, he sent several copies of them to private individuals who did not have the right to access classified information.
Yaakov made an interesting admission in 1999 in one of his conversations with historian Avner Kovner, an expert on the Israeli nuclear program. When Yitzhak Yaakov was the senior liaison officer between the Israeli government and the military command during the Six-Day War in 1967, he proposed a plan for Operation Samson. An Israeli special forces group was asked to use two helicopters to deliver components of a small nuclear bomb to the territory of the Sinai Peninsula. The bomb was to be installed on a mountain in the Abu Agheila area, located near the Israeli border and Egyptian military positions. It was assumed that it would be blown up if there was a real threat of defeat for the Israeli army in the war with the Arab states. This explosion was supposed to put to flight the Egyptian army, as well as the armies of the allied states - Syria, Iraq and Jordan. However, the war ended with a crushing Israeli victory over the Arab countries, and the nuclear device did not have to be detonated.
In this conversation, Yaakov made the following confession, which is still relevant in Israel today: “You have an enemy. He says he is going to throw you into the sea, and you believe him. How can you stop him? You must scare him. If you can do anything that will instill fear in him, you will frighten him.”
DEBATE WITH IRAN: NO NUCLEAR CHARGES SO FAR
Israel, however, is capable of more than just intimidating its potential adversaries. This is evidenced by the conflict between Israel and Iran, when in May 2018 both sides exchanged missile strikes and found themselves on the brink of war.
The conflict began when Iranian armed forces stationed in Syria fired about 20 missiles at IDF positions in the Golan Heights. The Fajr-5 and Grad multiple launch rocket systems were used.
The Israelis responded an hour and a half later, and before launching strikes on Iranian targets, Moscow was notified of the impending operation. The attack lasted two hours and involved 28 F-15 and F-16 fighters, firing 60 missiles. In addition, objects on Syrian territory were attacked by 10 surface-to-surface missiles. One of the missiles destroyed the Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile and gun system of the Syrian army. Among the destroyed facilities were military bases and warehouses of the Iranian Quds Force, the special forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used in combat operations abroad.
The conflict did not continue. Israel said it considered the incident settled. However, the Israeli Defense Minister edifyingly stated: “Iran must always remember that if it rains here, they will have a flood.” Iran, which has repeatedly announced that it was going to destroy Israel, showed prudence and the military conflict did not turn into war. For a country burdened with a lot of problems, the “flood” is completely useless.
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In our family, who never lacked a sense of humor, it was customary to give many nicknames. My mother received the playful nickname “Altychka” in her not yet quite old age after, once peering at her image in the mirror, she blurted out with a sigh: “Shen an altychky!..” (“Here, she’s already an old lady! "). She didn’t take offense at us for this nickname. But now I understand how tactless we all were in calling her that - me, my daughter, and my wife. Most of all, this nickname helped my wife, who, soon after the wedding, hurried to call her mother-in-law mom. Having gotten to know her better, my wife was fully imbued with respect and love for my mother and no longer choked on this word. Especially when her own, by the way, Russian, mother set us downright enslaving conditions for caring for our still tiny daughter, her granddaughter, and we were forced to send her from Moscow for a long time to another grandmother - to Kyiv.
Mom, when she was not yet Altychka, often loved to look in the mirror. This began with her from her youth, when, having discovered theatrical talent in her, she was taken to the People's Theater of the city of Vasilkov, near Kiev, where Jewish and Ukrainian performances were staged, mainly musical. Mom never studied music, but she had an ear for music and an excellent voice. She got married early - at the age of 16. Her husband did not interfere with her passion for theater. However, when one fine day a delegation from Moscow came to Vasilkov in search of talent and insistently suggested that my mother go to the capital to study as a professional actress, my father categorically opposed. Maybe that’s why, after graduating, he went to work in the city of Obukhov, where there was no theater. But there were nurseries and courses where my mother received a completely different profession - “children’s teacher.” She still managed to manage a large household and raise two children - me and my older brother Semyon.
When the war began, we drove away from the advancing Germans in what we were wearing. During the evacuation there were many difficulties with food and clothing, but my mother did not really regret the belongings abandoned before departure. What did some junk mean compared to the loss of loved ones who died at the front or were killed by the Nazis?.. Babi Yar became a mass grave for her mother, sister, nephews and other relatives. However, sometimes she still lamented that she left behind the mirror given to her for her performance in some play. In subsequent years, after the war, all sorts of mirrors came across in stores. I wanted to buy her a mirror similar to that one. But this never came across... After the “funeral” for her husband, my mother simply couldn’t morally go to Obukhov, where we fled from the Germans and where our house with all our things remained, and my brother and I were still small.
I remember the long evenings when my mother told us about my father, who died at the very beginning of the war. I hardly remembered him, but thanks to her stories and the remaining photographs, I was able to quite clearly reconstruct his image for myself. Mom also happily told my brother and me about the performances in which she participated. She not only remembered them, but reproduced entire pieces from them. She sang not only her parts - it was essentially a one-man show. These improvisations of hers instilled in me a love for Jewish and Ukrainian melodies. In addition, these were, although not directly, my first lessons in the Yiddish language. And when now I hear the phrase “mame-loshn”, I involuntarily remember my mother and the melodies that she sang in her native language. When, on one of my visits to Moscow, I took her to a Jewish performance, it became a real holiday for her. She, unlike me, understood everything that was said on stage, and sometimes shook her head sadly. During the intermission she explained: the young actors clearly had learned Yiddish, and not very diligently.
After the war, nothing like the former folk theater in which she played was revived. And who and for whom was there to play in it? Some died during the occupation, some did not return from the front and from evacuation... Her brother, who once played on stage with my mother, after repeated wounds, almost lost his leg and returned from the war disabled, he had no time for the theater. But on holidays, mom and uncle Grisha, having shed their fatigue and worries, staged unforgettable performances for us, accompanied by songs and jokes. Our “auditorium” did not require much space: usually it was my mother’s two sisters who had lost their only sons at the front, Uncle Grisha’s wife, and my brother and I.
Almost everyone cooks well in Ukraine, especially Jews, whose cuisine is unique. Mom cooked with pleasure and very easily, and always hummed. “Varnychkys” is a must, but not only this song. She put her soul into every dish and every song.
At home, my parents spoke Russian or Ukrainian and very rarely Yiddish. These languages became native to me and my brother. The people around us were not divided according to nationality. I early understood the meaning of the word “laytysh”, it means “delicate” or “intelligent”. Mom treated people who corresponded to this epithet with the greatest respect. The point, of course, was not the level of their education, but their good manners and sensitivity. Our fellow tribesmen, mired in prejudice, ignorance and squalor, also suffered from it. “Small-townism” in her understanding was combined not only with a certain charm inherent in this concept. Mom also combined with the epithet “kleinshtetyldyk” the negative things that Jews inherited from many years of living in the notorious Pale of Settlement.
Our family was not religious. Parents also did not always observe Jewish traditions. Life was such that it was impossible to hear the word of a living rebbe. But my mother still retained her respect for the Jewish sages, who were able to answer any question. Reading these lines in the first version, my brother remembered one of the humorous songs she sang, dedicated to the rebbe. In it, the heroine laments that her neighbor’s daughter poured milk into her pot, intended for meat food. The Rebbe was able to calm her down, advising her to clean the pot, taking “abisele ash” (a little ashes) for this...
And my mother really loved beautiful people. This literal cult of beautiful people was quickly learned by our little daughter, who was in contact with her grandmother almost constantly. I remember how she suddenly fieryly declared to her housemate coming down from the top floor: “Uncle, you are so ugly!”, which baffled both him and us.
My mother worked as a teacher all her working life, mainly in orphanages for minors called “Children’s Home”. I remember one curious story related to her work as a teacher at the Children's Home immediately after the war. It was in Vasilkovo, where our few surviving relatives who lived here on the eve of the war gathered. We lived in the rickety house of our ancestors. Half the house was occupied by neighbors who moved in during the war. Our relatives did not want to evict them, and we lived crowded in small rooms. In one of them, under the table on the floor, there was also my sleeping place. And then one fine day, a blue-eyed creature named Sveta appeared in a trough that was placed on the table under which I slept at night. It was our mother who convinced one of her sisters, Aunt Fenya, who lost her only son in the war, who volunteered to fight, to take a foundling girl from her children's institution. Everyone literally doted on the girl. She thawed and became prettier day by day. However, after some time, the mother of this girl, who was tracking her fate, finally showed up to us and began to beg on her knees to give her her daughter. I had to give it away. After some time, they again took the blue-eyed girl Katya, also a foundling from her mother’s “Children’s Home.” I remember the girl with her crooked, rickety legs. Together we brought out this child. Massage, vitamins and fish oil did the trick. And again the same ending: her mother was found, and Katenka had to be returned to her. This is where the story with the foundlings ended; there was no longer enough mental strength for another such experiment. I remember this story more than once when, in our relatively prosperous times, I hear conversations about how people do not have enough money to have their own child. As they say, these are the times these days... In fairness, I note that both girls and their mothers in subsequent years did not lose touch with the people who once sheltered the children.
In one of the Kyiv orphanages, in a tiny room, my mother and I lived for some time, and at times I could see her literally surrounded by children caressing her. Everywhere she was greatly appreciated, loved and respected, first of all, for her love for children and people in general. The children reciprocated by calling her mom. Their birth mothers, most often single mothers, came infrequently. Many of them barely made ends meet in those difficult post-war years, and they literally bowed at Altychka’s feet for her work. She was awarded the medal precisely for this valiant work. Many of her pets treated her like family for the rest of their lives. I remember how some of them invited Altychka to their wedding. And when she died, on the day of the funeral the space between the houses, in one of which she lived, was filled with mourning people. And among them there were many of her former students with their relatives and friends. Mom never allowed the thought of moving from the USSR to any other country. After the war, returning to Ukraine, we encountered great difficulties in obtaining housing. I remember how, tired after fruitless visits to the officials in charge of housing distribution, she asked me to go to one of them. This was my first encounter with a dignitary boor. When, to his question: “Where did you live before?”, I answered that you lived in evacuation in Tajikistan, he edifyingly told me: “You could have lived there, and there was no point in returning here.” I didn’t fully understand all this then, but I remembered it well. It was then that everything came into focus in my head. My mother perceived cases of anti-Semitism that did not even happen to us with disgust and told me this: “You know, all this makes my soul feel so bad!..” Now, many years later, it is difficult to even imagine how she would react to the relocation of people close to us not just to a foreign land, but to Germany. My wife and I, without interfering with such a step, mentally consulted with Altychka. She always, when advising to do or not do something, adhered to the principle of “do no harm.” And she was a tolerant person in the true sense of the word, meaning not only tolerance, but also generosity. Mom did not like advancing old age with its ailments and limitations. She would be 95 now, but she passed away 20 years ago. During this time, a lot of things happened that, in terms of nervous stress, would clearly not be for her. She suffered from heart pain for many years, but died from another, becoming a victim of a medical diagnosis error - “diverticulum”, but it turned out to be cancer. She underwent a serious operation, and more than one, but it was too late due to metastases. I spent many days next to her, on duty in the ward alternately with people close to her. She didn’t know that these were the last weeks of her life, and she thanked me very much for my help, saying: “Only you can put me back on my feet!” But I knew the truth, but I didn’t dare tell my mother. I had to end my vacation and leave without waiting for her death. He could, of course, put aside his work, take another vacation and immediately return to it. But there was no strength to continue lying to her, seeing how she, without losing her good spirits and natural humor, was melting. I arrived in Kyiv for the funeral. To this day I regret trusting the diagnosis of one doctor without involving others. And also in the fact that I deprived myself of communication with the person closest to me in his last days and minutes. After the funeral, I didn’t dream about her for a long time and appears in my dreams very rarely. Knowledgeable people who believe in mysticism explained this phenomenon to me by saying that the deceased had no questions for me during her lifetime, which is why she did not appear in a dream. I think that this is not entirely true. Such a mother is able to forgive her children a lot, even being in another world. If there is one. She never reproached us for anything; on the contrary, she was proud of my brother and I’s successes in our conversations with people. Our higher education seemed out of reach for her... I often ask myself the question - what could I do for my mother that would prolong her life? And it’s a shame that the list of these good, failed deeds is so long. But she can't be returned. All that remains is to look at yourself from the outside and act in such a way that you are not ashamed in front of her memory. Looking into this memory like into a mirror.
Editors are rarely loved and appreciated by writing people. The editors reciprocated, blocking them with the not entirely intelligent phrase: “Manuscripts are not reviewed and are not returned.” The authors, sending texts to the editor, were for a long time in complete ignorance about the fate of their brainchild, not daring to call the editor. Mikhail Weller wrote very eloquently about the feelings the author had for the editor while waiting for his call: “I thought about how I would kill him. As soon as I pour gasoline into a bottle, I put in a tow plug and throw it into his apartment with fire. Like chaining myself to a radiator in a publishing house and throwing the key to the lock out the window. And even how I’ll burn myself under the windows of the publishing house.”
For incompetent critics, the writer composed the following formula, reinterpreting a well-known joke: “Criticism is when he, the critic, teaches him, the writer, how he, the critic, would write what he, the writer, wrote, if he, the critic, knew how to write.” .
“Cannot be edited!”
Editors and critics annoyed Weller so much at the stage when he was still a young, but quite accomplished writer, with a philological education, that, having become a fairly famous writer, he began to put a stamp on his manuscripts with a strict instruction: “Not subject to editing!”
I think that the writer was overzealous in his categoricalness, relying on the “author’s edition.” I like Mikhail Weller, but the historical mistakes he makes, which are not so rare, are downright surprising, and a competent editor would have eliminated them...
But even before Weller, Mikhail Bulgakov, in his novel “The Master and Margarita,” brutally dealt with the hero of the novel, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, editor of a thick art magazine and chairman of the board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations, called Massolit for short. The author's hatred of the editors was sublimated in the fact that the scoundrel and idle talker Berlioz in the novel had his head cut off by the wheels of a tram.
Editing on websites
The ability for authors to publish anything on literary sites, except what is prohibited by existing laws, opens the floodgates to such a flow of “premature” or even flawed publications that some editors are taken aback. The editing process, if seriously attempted, turns into a truly Sisyphean task. The hope of many authors, especially beginners, is in site readers who have the right to comment on their texts. Great luck if you are lucky, as they say, on your opponent. This is when the review is constructive, and not accompanied by unnecessary denial of the plot of the text, or even attacks on the author. Such attacks, bordering on rudeness, are especially characteristic of people who are downright ignorant, who take it upon themselves to judge what the author “wanted to say” and did not say it the way the critic seemed to like it. The confused arguments and arguments of the “critics”, who barely have the ability to coherently and competently formulate their own thoughts, look quite amusing. The origins of rudeness on sites lie in the impunity of anonymous people trying to “lower” those around them to their unenviable intellectual level.
The solution for website editors, in my opinion, is not to do it wholesale (they really can’t do it), but to selectively edit those texts in which they notice the “divine spark.” The haste of authors who post obviously crude works on websites is usually punished by the indifference of readers. The reader is not so omnivorous: he will avoid authors who are inclined to feed him “bullshit” next time.
Wait and catch up
It is no secret that publishing houses prefer to publish exclusive texts that have not been published anywhere before. Authors who are familiar with this condition do not send their opuses simultaneously to different newspapers and magazines. However, they rarely, if at all, receive a timely response to their message. In the age of computer technology, the formula “manuscripts are not returned” has ceased to be relevant. But it would be quite appropriate to somehow inform the author about the fate of the text, first informing him of at least the receipt of it by the editors. But texts, as a rule, lie in editorial offices for months, and a decent author, being in the dark, hesitates for a long time to contact another publishing house. Having waited a uselessly long time waiting for a verdict, the author is forced to make up for lost time, again starting his countdown from the beginning of contacts with the next editor. Samizdat, of course, in this sense is a pleasant exception, taking into account, however, the inevitable costs for the nervous system noted above, due to the saturation of sites with boors who do not really know how to write, but are fluent in taboo vocabulary.
What about science?
The relationship between authors and editors in scientific and technical literature is characterized primarily by intense feedback, ending with the author’s approval of the final layout of his article before sending it to print. This is difficult to imagine in newspaper publications, although more than once I had to have my article “combed” by the editor and then sent to print.
In science, it is customary for texts to “rest” before being sent to a journal. A carefully prepared article is easy for an editor to work with, who delicately edits the original author to the extent necessary. However, there are often articles written in a hurry and sent to the editor from the pen. Their authors are likened to chickens that cackle loudly as soon as they lay an egg...
A special category of authors consists of unscrupulous people who slip dubious data into the editorial office. They fail the editor and then try to blame him. I once had to be a reviewer of a monograph of one of my colleagues. I had a lot of comments about him, but he brushed them off with the words “everyone has their own style.” His “style” was such that the editor of his book preferred not to argue with him. When the book came out and it began to be criticized by readers who had difficulty making their way through the heavily written text, he explained this by saying that it was I who “edited” it, although I was not an editor at all, but a reviewer.
In science, mutual understanding between the author and the editor is an indispensable condition for their joint work on the text. Their collaboration is successful simply because the leading role by default belongs to the author. The editor, most often a philologist by profession, still requires a certain effort in terms of understanding the meaning of the article he is editing, as well as competence not only in the field of linguistics and grammar. Experience shows that acquiring these qualities is a matter of acquisition; they come with time. But still, a “techie” turns into a competent scientific editor much faster.
Controversy
or discussion?
Polemics mean a verbal competition that is tantamount to war. There are situations in which the persistence of opponents does not lead to mutual sympathy. In the dispute that accompanies polemics, truth is rarely born, but polemics can become a “midwife” in its birth. Whether the polemic will be followed by a friendly and constructive discussion is a difficult question, and it depends mainly on the honesty of the polemicists and their genuine desire to comprehend the truth, and not to substantiate “their own truth.”
The author and the editor may well act as polemicists, and it largely depends on both what will ultimately prevail - mutual understanding and cooperation or alienation and hostility.
Sophisticated requirements for applicants for the title of professor can lead to a nervous breakdown.
At one time, a real commotion among bureaucrats was caused by the phenomenon of St. Petersburg mathematician Grigory Perelman, who was given a million dollars on his head for proving “some kind of theorem,” but he refused to take this huge money. So, there are not just smart people, but geniuses who do not live for money and pleasure?.. And it was completely incomprehensible to many ordinary people that the Jew Perelman refused to take advantage of lucrative offers to “get over the hill” and until recently remained loyal to his native northern Russian capital.
As for the material side of life for unpretentious scientists, everything seems to be clear: not all of them are drawn to big money, preferring interesting work and minimal comfort. There are, however, also non-material incentives for the activities of scientists related to academic degrees and academic titles.
I once attended a banquet given by a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Science on the occasion of the successful defense of his dissertation. He was not young, and his colleagues praised him for having decided to come forward to defend himself. He smiled slyly in response, and then announced that the credit for this belonged not to him, but to his wife. At some point, she decisively told him: “That’s it! Take up your dissertation, you are no more stupid than your mature colleagues, whom I have seen enough of.” Further - more. Having become a doctor of sciences, he reached for the title of professor. By that time, he fully satisfied the requirements imposed by the Higher Attestation Commission on applicants for the professorship. This did not give him anything financially, but his wife, now a “professor,” calmed down and no longer pressed him.
The general exodus of specialists abroad in recent decades has baffled the country's leaders. Not knowing how to stop this flow, which had long ago exceeded a million people, they began to test the “symmetrical option”, intending to invite foreign specialists to our country in return for those who left. In response, skeptics, still hesitating whether they should pack their suitcases, were perplexed: “Why invite people from abroad for salaries that exceed their foreign ones (otherwise they won’t come here), and pay their own people, who have not yet left, a penny? ?!” Such an obviously artificial “circle” did not take place; the far-fetched scheme turned out to be clearly unviable.
There are many reasons why scientists who become professors prefer to work in their homeland rather than abroad, where they pay much higher salaries. But if applicants for the title of professor in Russia are discouraged from becoming one or made practically impossible to achieve, then it is quite possible to imagine that a person might get tired of it. An obstacle on the path to a well-deserved title can play the role of a “knot in a shoelace” known to psychologists, because of which a suicidal individual can throw himself out of a window...
In 2013, new requirements for applicants for professorships appeared. Many authoritative and competent people agreed that these requirements created unjustified difficulties for applicants for this title. For example, the Science Council under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation made a statement in December 2015: “The Science Council under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation regrets that the currently valid “Regulations on the assignment of academic titles”, put into effect by the resolution Government of the Russian Federation dated December 10, 2013 No. 1139 “On the procedure for conferring academic titles” not only does not contribute to improving the quality of training highly qualified scientific personnel in our country, but also unjustifiably complicates obtaining the academic titles of associate professor and professor by leading Russian scientists actively involved in training of scientific personnel."
Has anything changed since then? Nothing. Such opinions have the same effect on officials as on the notorious cat Vaska, who “listens and eats.” An applicant for a professorship, in addition to quite reasonable requirements (at least five defended applicants or graduate students, etc.), now, if he works in a research organization, must hold a certain position in it and, at the same time, teach at an educational university, also being listed in it as a position and receiving at least a quarter of the salary. Well, what if there are no extra fees, and the applicant for a professorship is ready to give lectures for free? No, such a person, according to officials, does not have the right to be called a professor.
In addition, an applicant for a professorship must publish a textbook himself or three textbooks in co-authorship. But why "allowance"? What if he already has a monograph, and more than one? No, he will also not be confirmed as a professor.
At the Center for Advanced Studies of one of the Moscow universities, I gave lectures for a long time, and listeners more than once asked me to write a textbook for them. I was ready to do this, but I ran into unexpected obstacles. The management of this university did not allow me to publish my manual in their publishing house, since I am not a full-time employee of this university. But it turned out to be impossible to become a full-time employee even at a quarter of the salary, since the staff cuts that had taken place before this in connection with the increase in salaries for the remaining teachers excluded the hiring of people from outside. The same situation has developed in other metropolitan universities.
When I asked the head of the Department of Exploration Geophysics at Moscow University, M.L., about attracting external teachers. Vladov, he just looked at me sadly, threw up his hands and said: “Where can we get money for these quarters of the salary?” He, of course, is not against the fact that outside experts will give lectures to students on current topics, but there is no one willing to do this for free.
Of course, there would be people willing to do so, who are not yet professors, but while they are carrying out the noble task of educating students, not only will they not receive money for this, but they will also be denied a professorship. Because they must certainly be on the payroll, receiving “at least a quarter of the salary” for this...
On the academic mobility of Russian scientists
In Russia, the level of participation in international exchange of researchers remains extremely low, scientists from the Higher School of Economics have found. The share of R&D sector organizations participating in the international exchange of employees on fixed-term contracts is less than 3%.
What professions will be the most in demand?
On September 1, about 5 million students will come to universities. Of these, 304 thousand entered this year for budget places in specialist and bachelor’s degrees. 64 percent of these places went to future engineers, teachers, and doctors.
Vladimir Filippov: the program for promoting Russian universities in the world must be continued until 2030
The program to increase the competitiveness of Russian universities among world universities (the “5-100” project) must be continued until 2030. This opinion was expressed to TASS on Thursday by the rector of the Russian Peoples' Friendship University (RUDN), head of the Higher Attestation Commission Vladimir Filippov on the sidelines of the XX seminar-conference of the project "5-100" at RUDN.
What have 5-100 universities achieved and what should they expect next?
What the universities of the “5-100” Project have achieved, why they want to reduce the number of universities in the project, and what the Minister of Education and Science Olga Vasilyeva and Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets argued about, Indicator tells.
The Higher Attestation Commission commented on Vladimir Filippov’s idea to introduce a PhD degree
The proposal to introduce the PhD degree in the Russian Federation does not imply replacing the already existing Russian system, but assumes full equality of the PhD degree of Candidate of Sciences and the preservation of the Doctor of Science degree, Vladimir Filippov, head of the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC), told RIA Novosti.
The attention of officials to the research of scientists only results in increased bureaucratic pressure
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about plans to lure the most successful Russian scientists back to Russia. The new President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Sergeev, who was elected in September 2017, energetically took up the matter (last January, both presidents met and were satisfied with each other).