Russia is sinking deeper into a legal darkness, where the law has ceased to be an instrument of justice and has become a weapon of intimidation. Under the pretext of protecting state security, the country is launching a crackdown not only on political opponents, but also on independent scientists whose only “crime” is conducting research, pursuing intellectual inquiry, and publishing academic papers.
A recent example is the sentencing of physicists Valery Zvegintsev and Vladislav Galkin in Novosibirsk. The court found them guilty of “high treason” and sentenced them to 12.5 years in a maximum-security penal colony. Their alleged crime was the publication of a scientific article on gas dynamics in an Iranian journal. The paper had passed two separate examinations before publication and was not found to contain state secrets. Yet even the absence of classified information did not save the scientists from prosecution.
Accusations of “treason” are becoming a universal tool of pressure against the scientific community. The absence of evidence no longer guarantees the absence of punishment. Independent thought and international scientific cooperation are effectively being declared threats to the state.
Russia increasingly resembles a country returning to the worst practices of the Soviet past. More and more often people recall the Soviet “sharashkas” — scientific prison laboratories created by the NKVD in the 1930s, where prominent scientists and engineers worked under the control of security services. Tupolev, Korolev, Petlyakov and many others passed through them. Today history appears to be repeating itself: instead of free science, there is fear, criminal prosecution, and show trials.
And this no longer looks like a series of accidents, but a pattern. As an old Eastern saying goes: when mediocrity and fear come to power, intelligent people begin to leave.
Against this backdrop, Russia is experiencing one of the largest waves of emigration in its modern history. Since Vladimir Putin came to power, around 2% of the population has left the country — a figure comparable to the emigration seen during the first twenty years after the February Revolution.
The country’s best scientists, engineers, and specialists are faced with a choice: prison and fear or emigration and work for the benefit of other nations. While some are sent to prison on politically motivated charges, others are helping develop the science, technology, and economies of countries that value intellect instead of treating it as a threat.
Since Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia has been destroying its own scientific and human potential with its own hands, driving out those capable of securing its future.