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The Soviet Academy of Sciences, which in the days before glasnost was
viewed in the West as a bastion of democracy in the USSR, has come under
criticism for failing to keep pace with the new trend towards openness.
In an attack published by the leading daily, Izvestiya, the paper’s science
and technology staff criticise what they call an ‘unprecedented event’ –
the exclusion of the media from the annual general meeting of the academy
last month.

According to the academy’s president, Gurii Marchuk, the AGM was the
‘internal business’ of the academy. ‘If it is of interest to you, then I
will tell you about it afterwards,’ he told the media.

The Izvestiya team’s reply points out that it is, indeed, of interest
to them and to millions of their readers. The latter, they say, do not only
want to know Marchuk’s official impressions of the meeting, but to see what
took place ‘through the eyes of different publications’.

The exclusion of the media (which included even the academy’s own newspaper
Poisk) has caused much speculation about the election of new members to
the academy.