One hundred years in the networks of bureaucracy. Review of the book by V. V. Ogryzko “Pod nadzorom Kremlya: izryadno potrepannaya, no utselevshaya Akademiya nauk” [Under the supervision of the Kremlin: a fairly battered, but survived Academy of Sciences]

An excursion through the pages of the book by V. V. Ogryzko “Under the supervision of the Kremlin: a fairly battered, but survived Academy of Sciences” is given. The history of uneasy relations between the government and the Academy of Sciences can be traced from the first post-revolutionary years to the present day. The mostly detailed description relates to the efforts of the Soviet government to tame (“to Sovietize”) the Russian Academy of Sciences in the first post-revolutionary years. In his research, based on unique archival sources, the author operates with a large number of sources and a large number of activehistorical figures, from academics to employees of special services. It is noted that over the past hundred years, not only the Academy has changed, the methods of state influence on the academic community have changed, and the goal setting of the state has also changed. In the first decades, the Soviet government was faced with the task of introducing as many loyal communists as possible into the academic community, and after the collapse of the USSR, the task of “depriving” the Academy from material assets became firmly on the agenda. The author of the book – V. V. Ogryzko – comes to the conclusion that many discoveries andachievements of our scientists were made not thanks to the support of the state, but rather in spite of it.