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ASTRONOMY. Behind, but determined to catch up. The new Biurakan Observatory in Armenia has one of the world's largest telescopes, and one of the world's finest libraries in the field. The observatory's head: Viktor Ambartsumian, the first Soviet scientist since World War II to become a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Unhealthy Gamesmanship. Though generally impressed by the great spurts the Russians are making in some areas, Western experts have strong reservations about the Soviet scientific setup as a whole. The centralized administration has advantages, but also produces an unhealthy sort of gamesmanship among scientists. To make sure that they fulfill the "projects for the coming year" that they must submit to the academy, some institute directors have resorted to the ruse of submitting as their "plan" what has already been accomplished the previous year.
In the rank-conscious hierarchy of Soviet intellectual life, retirement is virtually unknown, and many important institutes and observatories are run by superannuated fuddy-duddies. The University of Rochester's R. E. Marshak was amazed "at how young Russian physicists did not hesitate to call to task distinguished academicians if points of difference arose," but in many fields it is the young who are apt to make the decisive leaps.
Don't Hold Aloof. Academy President Nesmeyanov seems the very model of the independent scholar and gracious host. But the academy's general secretary is a cop type named Topchiev, whose job it is to keep the "party character" alive within the academy. Through Topchiev, the party still belabors scientists with demands that they "must not hold aloof from the ideological struggle," and if deviating intellectuals no longer disappear from the face of the earth, they can still disappear from the pages of Vestnik. After accepting an invitation to The Netherlands recently. Physicist Landau asked if he might bring along a friend. The friend, though billed as a fellow scientist, seemed to Landau's hosts to be more of a political chaperon. Freedom, it seems, can still ebb and flow like the tide, and latterly it seems to be ebbing again. Reported Peter Scheivert, professor of Slavic history at the University of Cologne after his latest visit to Moscow: "Six months ago my Russian university friends used to come to my hotel to chat. This time not one of them dared visit me there."
The crash-priority psychology, which often achieves spectacular results, also produced absurdities. Though lavish, laboratory equipment is apt to be overengineered, clumsy and wasteful. Says a British physicist of one laboratory: "The men in charge just sat down with a catalogue and ordered whatever they wanted. There was one fine electron-microscope that they said they hadn't gotten around to using yet, though it had been there a year."