MOSCOW (dpa) – Russia’s scientists have a problem: they can’t live on miserable monthly wages of 50 dollars they get at state institutes – but the spare-time research for foreign firms that they do in order to survive is landing an increasing number of them in jail on spy charges.
“I did scientific research for more than 30 years and no doubt contributed some useful work to my country, and my reward is an accusation of treason,” space engineer Valentin Danilov told a newspaper recently from a cell in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.Danilov, 52, then suffered a suspected heart attack and was transferred to a local hospital where he was treated while handcuffed to his bed under armed guard.A grim example of what happens when overtime activities backfire, this specialist in radiation shielding of communication satellites was detained by the Russian FSB domestic intelligence service – the main successor agency of the Soviet KGB – in February for supplying data to a Chinese machine-building firm.The information he collated was not classified and was openly available, he insists, as do colleagues at his thermal physics research institute and experts at Russia’s leading satellite manufacturing and design enterprise.Everyone except the FSB, which is adamant that he helped speed up development of the Chinese satellite programme by 15 years and must face treason charges which carry a sentence of up to 20 years imprisonment.Now, and possibly at the instruction of the FSB, the Russian Academy of Sciences has quietly issued a directive telling institute heads to establish tight controls on staffers, including vetting all foreign grants they receive, what conferences they attend abroad, and ensuring full reports are submitted.“This is a return to the Soviet system (of strict controls on scientists),” U.S. financier and philanthropist George Soros said angrily at a recent news conference in Moscow.Soros said that had he known this would happen in post-Soviet Russia he never would have given 100 million dollars in grants to support the country’s struggling science sector.True, the FSB has a problem trying to define what does and doesn’t constitute a state secret among the mass of information that was suddenly released a decade ago from blanket Soviet secrecy acts.Much of this has already travelled far and wide on the global information highway, and tends to resurface years later and draw an excessive reaction from the security service.One science writer for a national newspaper was stunned to receive a threat of FSB action for “revealing state secrets” after he wrote a front page article using Internet sources about a cannon the Soviet military designed for use on the Mir space station in the 1980s.Another specialist facing a 20-year sentence for treason is Igor Sutyagin, an employee of the Russian institute for United States and Canada studies who has spent several months in jail during his trial.He is charged with providing secret information about Russian nuclear weapons to a London-based company the FSB says has links with foreign intelligence. Sutyagin’s defence also claims that all the information came from open Russian and foreign publications.Eduard Kruglyakov, deputy director at the institute headed by Danilov, described the case against his boss as “looking ridiculous”.He believes it is down to the country’s lawmakers, not the FSB, to clamp down on the grey areas and loopholes concerning technology and information that are naturally exploited by foreign competitors and governments – and not “to frighten scientists”.“I have unfortunately seen more than one case of wealthy and civilized states robbing our country on a fully legal basis,” he said.Meanwhile, those sitting out the months in pre-trial detention centres face another Russian syndrome – the FSB does not like to admit any mistakes or ambiguity in its work. As previous instances showed, it tends to let problem cases off the hook only when it can do so under a prisoner amnesty or on health grounds.The most prolific example was Edmond Pope, the U.S. businessman who was sentenced to 20 years last year for spying after he bought data about a modern Russian torpedo through what he claimed were legitimate and open channels.Pope, who suffers from a rare form of cancer, was released last December under a special pardon on humanitarian grounds from President Vladimir Putin.Danilov told the Kommersant newspaper before his hospitalisation that he believed the FSB would try to extend the investigation into his case “in the hope that it can be closed due to irreversible consequences for my health such as a heart attack or a stroke”.While not directly subject to intimidation or brutality, he claimed investigators routinely took him for interrogation in an overcrowded truck on the hottest summer days, resulting in rapid weight loss.
