La Russie n'aime pas les scientifiques trop libres...

On le sait, la Russie et la Liberté , ça fait deux. Corruption, chantage, menace, torture, assassinats d'opposants et de journalistes trop libres et trop gênants pour le pouvoir, lois liberticides de plus en plus absurdes, guerre aux pays (dont l'Ukraine) voulant un peu trop d' indépendance et de liberté...
On sait aussi que la Russie n'aime pas les gens brillants et libres.  Quelques exemples :
- Le Prix Nobel de littérature 2015, Svetlana Aleksievitch, que les services de propagande du nain du Kremlin s'évertuent à dénigrer. (voir ici) . On a l'habitude... On a bien vu comment lesdits services ont dénigré à peu près tout ce qui était en rapport avec les ukrainiens libres :
     >> La Révolution de Maïdan ? Transformée en "coup d'Etat des Etats Unis" ;
     >> L' Annexion de la Crimée ? Transformée en "sauvetage de la Crimée en proie aux 'nazis de Kiev'") ;
     >> La guerre dans de Donbass ? Transformée en "action de séparatistes pro-russes combattant la junte fasciste de Kiev"
     >> La destruction du Boeing de la Malaysia Airlines par les pro-russes ? Transformée en "il n'y a pas de preuve" ou "c'est la faute aux 'fascistes ukrainiens' "  , etc etc etc
 -  Le prix Nobel de littérature 2009 , Herta Müller, qui a notamment déclaré : "tout ce qui arrive aujourd'hui en Ukraine provient des vieux démons soviétiques de Poutine"
- Un professeur d’histoire de la plus prestigieuse et la plus élitiste des grandes écoles russes (MGIMO),  Andreï Zoubov, 62 ans, a osé critiquer l'annexion de la Crimée en la comparant, avec raison, à l'anschluss.  La direction du MGIMO l’a immédiatement exclu.

 Aujourd'hui, ce sont les scientifiques qui sont dans le collimateur de la mafia russe. Les publications des scientifiques russes devront être approuvées par les servies de sécurité avant d'être diffusées.



 A biology institute at Russia’s largest and most prestigious university has instructed its scientists to get all research manuscripts approved by the security service before submitting them to conferences or journals.
The instructions, which come in response to an amended law on state secrets, appear in minutes from a meeting held on 5 October at the A. N. Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU).
The Russian government says that the amendment is not designed to restrict the publication of basic, non-military research. But scientists say that they believe institutes across the country are issuing similar orders.
“This is a return to Soviet times when in order to send a paper to an international journal, we had to get a permission specifying that the result is not new and important and hence may be published abroad,” says Mikhail Gelfand, a bioinformatician at MSU.
In 1993, the government passed a law obliging scientists in Russia to get permission from the Federal Security Service (FSB) before publishing results that might have military or industrial significance. This mainly covered work that related to building weapons, including nuclear, biological and chemical ones.

However, in May, President Vladimir Putin used a decree to expand the scope of the law to include any science that can be used to develop vaguely defined “new products”. The amendment was part of a broader crackdown that included declaring the deaths and wounding of soldiers during peacetime a secret; this was prompted by accusations that Russian soldiers are involved in conflict in Ukraine.
Since then, rumours have emerged that Russian universities and institutes are demanding that manuscripts be approved before submission to comply with the amendment. The minutes from the Belozersky Institute meeting confirm this. “Be reminded that current legislation obliges scientists to get approval prior to publication of any article and conference talk or poster,” they say. They note that the rules apply to any publication or conference, foreign or national, and to all staff “without exception”.
Scientists will need to seek permission from the university’s First Department — a branch of the FSB that exists at all Russian universities and research institutes, says Viacheslav Shuper, a geographer at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and MSU. He says that MSU geographers have been given similar instructions.
The minutes tell scientists to seek permission “despite the obvious absurdity of the whole situation”. Vladimir Skulachev, director of the Belozersky Institute, did not respond to Nature’s queries as to how the changes might affect research in his department.
Shuper and other academics say researchers across Russia have complained that their institutes are also asking for manuscript approval. “Many scientists in Russia don’t dare to speak openly,” says Shuper. “But I know that many are very unhappy about the degradation of their academic freedom.”
Letting bureaucrats decide whether any piece of science is a state secret is not just nerve-wracking, but also burdensome, he says. For example, at some institutes, scientists who have written papers in English for foreign publication are obliged to translate them into Russian for the sake of the security service.
The changes are also bad for science, says Fyodor Kondrashov, a Russian biologist at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain. “The problem is that it appears that all scientific output is being treated as potentially classified,” he says. “This creates an unhealthy research climate with some scientists preferring not to share information — not to give a talk at a conference abroad, for example. I fear that the authorities will choose to apply this law selectively against their critics.”
Sergey Salikhov, director of the Russian science ministry’s science and technology department, told Nature that the government does not intend the amendment to restrict the publication of basic research. He says that it is not ordering universities or security services to proactively enforce the law over civilian research.

But the amendment leaves interpretation to the security services and science administrators, who tend to be over-zealous, says Gelfand. “Basically, anything new and potentially useful can now be interpreted to be a state secret,” says Konstantin Severinov, a molecular biologist with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, who graduated from MSU.
The demand for approval runs counter to government efforts to strengthen and internationalize Russian science, says Severinov. The government aims to see 5 of the country’s universities enter the top 100 in the world rankings by 2020, and is keen to attract leading foreign scientists to Russia.
Gelfand says that he will not comply with the rules imposed by his institute, and he encourages others to follow suit. “A sad sign of overall deterioration here is that many are sheepishly following any absurdity instilled by the bureaucrats,” he says. “I am going to ignore it and hope that a sufficient number of colleagues would do the same.”

 http://www.nature.com/news/russian-secret-service-to-vet-research-papers-1.18602







Les interdictions touchent tous les domaines, jusqu'au plus absurde :

- Un woodstock jugé subversif en Crimée occupée? Interdit ! (L'Obs)
- Un film qui déplaît ("enfant44" par exemple) ? Interdit (Géopolis)
- Des ouvrages d'historiens réputés (tels que ceux d' Antony Beevor et John Keegan) critiquant l'Armée rouge ? Inerdits ! (Romandie). Un documentaire sur l'histoire des tchétchènes ? Interdit ! (waynakh)
- Un parti qui déplaît ? Inerdit ! (Le Monde)
- Interdiction de fumer pour les femmes de moins de 40 ans, des amendes en cas d'emploi de mots étrangers: les projets de lois controversées, voire "absurdes", se multiplient à la Douma, laissant beaucoup de Russes perplexes. (HuffingtonPostMaghreb)
- Interdiction de détenir des "objets dangereux" : la directrice de la bibliothèque ukrainienne de Moscou a été arrêtée pour détention d'objets dangereux : des livres (24today) :     

 
 The library after the search / Photo from twitter.com/toprt_ua