Russia’s aggressive policy and its deepening economic isolation of the recent years, especially noticeable in its relations with Europe and the United States, seem to have little effect on the academic sphere. Russian scientific community discusses a recent international exchange as if nothing were wrong. Representatives of Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod and the Perm National Research Polytechnic University (PNIPU) visited the United States with the intention of developing international cooperation and attracting potential investors. Was it young scientists’ daring venture or a “special operation” in the context of which agents were supposed to infiltrate the enemy’s territory? As for the latter speculation, one should let the secret services comment on that. As for the former one, however, one feels the urge to warn the scientists, who have come forward with such an admirable initiative, against the danger hanging over them. After all, there is nothing the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) likes better than exposing spies just to “check the box.”
In the early 2015, Russian society was shocked by a rather peculiar though typical incident. Svetlana Davydova, a housewife from the Smolensk region and mother of seven children, was arrested and jailed on charges of treason in Ukraine’s favor. The details of this case provoked an unprecedented wide-scale public response. The charges were eventually dropped, but, as they say, the aftertaste remained. Paraphrasing Lenin’s well-known words that “every cook can govern the state,” the Federal Security Service seems to believe that housewives can sometimes divulge state secrets.
However, the most common victims of the Russian secret services suffering from spy fever are researchers involved in scientific work. According to the media, since the 1990s, the number of cases against “scientists spies” has not been diminishing, and in 2012, several high profile cases have been launched. In different Russian regions scientists were accused of trying to sell or divulge state secrets to potential enemy states. It is also worth noting that, according to the Russian secret services, counteragents of “traitors of the Motherland” included the United States (Igor Sutyagin, Anatoli Babkin, China (Vladimir Schurov, Valentin Danilov, Vladimir Vetrov and Boris Goldshtein, Svyatoslav Bobyshev and Yevgeni Afanasyev), and even South Korea (Valentin Moiseyev, Oscar Kaybyshev). All the aforementioned cases resulted in sentences with different terms of imprisonment. Only a few, like, for example, Professor Oleg Korobeynichev, managed to get criminal charges dropped. As for Yevgeny Afanasyev, a former professor at the Voyenmekh military university in St. Petersburg, his fate was tragic: he died at the age of 62 in a penal colony in the Ulyanovsk region.
Although the aforementioned scientists were prosecuted under different articles of the Russian Criminal Code, such as high treason (art.275), espionage (art.276), and disclosure of a state secret (art.283), there are a few important facts the presence of which in all of these cases proves the far-fetched and unjustified character of the repressive persecutions of these people. First of all, the researchers made no secret of their interaction with the global scientific community. They openly traveled around the world, gave lectures and participated in symposiums and meetings. Second, in practically all the cases the accusation was based on expert evidence compiled on the prosecution’s request that allowed a rather vague interpretation of the secrecy level of the documents that the accused had allegedly disclosed to foreign intelligence agencies. Naturally, as it usually happens in Russia, prosecutors and judges did not deviate much from the accusatory position of FSB investigators. It is also worth noting that in most cases scientists were accused of using the information that had previously been open to the public and thus could not be treated as secret by definition.
The researchers accused of spying suffered an unenviable fate. Some of them are still serving their prison sentences; others received a suspended sentence and chose to forget about the incident. Valentin Moiseyev, former deputy chief of the Foreign Ministry’s first Asia desk, decided to seek justice at the European Court of Human Rights, and in 2009, the Court acknowledged that the sentence that sent the scientist to prison for four and a half years was biased and unfair. In 2012, having acquired an abundant experience in dealing with Russian law enforcement bodies, Moiseyev declared that Russia’s current political system sees enemies everywhere.
In late April 2015, Vladimir Golubev, a former employee of the Federal Nuclear Center in Sarov, was arrested for having presented a scientific report at an international conference in Prague in 2013. The FSB believes that the physicist’s public report contained secret material despite the fact that the information used in the report was available in open sources that date to the 1980s.
It appears that FSB operatives are suffering from spring fever amid anti-Ukrainian hysteria. Their inflamed minds suggest looking for spies not only among scientists but also among housewives. Hopefully, they will not be able to make this fact a secret too.
