Documents / FOIA release
This CIA-held JPRS report (JPRS-USP-89-007) is an English translation of an interview with academician Roald Sagdeyev. The interview ran in the Soviet magazine PRIRODA in January 1989. Sagdeyev talks about space research achievements, the Interbol project, and the Phobos mission to Mars, including the loss of contact with Phobos 1 in September 1988. He also covers competing designs for Mars 94, manned flight to Mars and democratizing Soviet science. He mentions UFOs only once, recalling a Gosplan lecture where every audience question was about flying saucers.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 ## Document 1 of 3 89. In many respects, we ourselves are to blame for the fact that a loss of interest in science and skepticism with respect to it are now being observed. And here, an enormous role belongs to the promotion of the achievements of science, since science and its importance are served by the mass media's resources. One idea is to publish a special USSR Academy of Sciences newspaper; the president of the USSR Academy of Sciences made such a proposal at the conference. 90. [Correspondent] Are you talking about one more popular science publication, of which, it would seem, there are quite enough, or something totally new? 91. [Sagdeyev] The basic aim is to make all the scientists and all the members of the scientific community feel that they are one family and to see to it that feedback is faster and not as slow as, for example, the feedback with the currently published magazines. This is why it is necessary to have, if not a daily paper, then at least a weekly paper. 5 92. But even that sort of newspaper will not solve the problem of the promotion of the achievements and role of science among the broad masses, since the scientists will basically be the ones reading it. Here also, I support the idea expressed recently by Academician L. I. Abalkin: it is necessary that one of our major newspapers, for example, PRAVDA, once a week, set aside a whole page for science. It is possible that IZVESTIYA would be better suited for this purpose (but not SOVETSKAYA ROSSIYA!). 93. In general, it should be noted with regret that there was recently a page in some publications for para-science. But it is not new. I remember, about 12 years ago, I gave a popular lecture in Gosplan's large lecture hall. An enormous hall, and hundreds of workers. My speech was devoted to the use of the achievements of cosmonautics in the national economy. At the end of the speech, they began to put questions to me--orally and in the form of notes. There were about 20 notes, and they were all devoted to one topic--flying saucers! I opened one after another, expecting a question actually relating to the theme of my speech. But when I opened the last one and saw that it contained that very same question, I could not take it anymore and shouted in a fit of temper: "'Now that I know what kind of space research interests Gosplan's workers the most, I understand why we have such a mess in the national economy!'" Academician M. V. Keldysh laughed for a long time when I told him about it all, but then he noted: "'But you really acted very carelessly--the financing of scientific research depends on them.'" 94. I think that, back then, we put ourselves too often in the position of the junior partner, and we did not courageously defend
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 21 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.