LaRouche Addresses
Moscow Conference on
P.G. Kuznetsov & V.I. Vernadsky
by Rachel Douglas
June 2—The auditorium of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow was the venue of the May 29 International Scientific Conference on Problems of the Sustained Development of Mankind in the System "Nature-Society-Man."[1] The event was occasioned by the 90th anniversary, on May 18, of the birth of Pobisk Kuznetsov, the late Russian chemist, philosopher, and engineer, known as the last of the great "general designers" of Soviet postwar economic recovery and scientific development.[2] Lyndon LaRouche, on invitation from the conference organizers, presented a video-recorded address to the opening plenary session, which we publish here.
A number of the 80 conference participants had been present at the public dialogue of Kuznetsov and LaRouche on April 28, 1994, which EIR titled, "Russian Scientists: How Did LaRouche Uncover Our Secrets?"[3] After Kuznetsov's invitation to LaRouche to make his first trip to Russia, he and LaRouche enjoyed a productive political and scientific dialogue for six years, until Pobisk's death in 2000.
The May 29 conference was organized by Kuznetsov's friend and co-author, Prof. Boris Bolshakov of the Dubna International University of Nature, Society, and Man. Co-sponsors were the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), including its Scientific Council on Eurasian Economic Integration, Modernization, Competitiveness, and Sustainable Development; the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences; the Congress of Education, Culture, Science and Technology Workers; the Moscow Society of Natural Scientists; and the Moscow State Institute of Physics and Technology.
Academician Sergei Glazyev, head of the above-mentioned Scientific Council of the RAS and advisor to President Vladimir Putin on Eurasian integration issues, had been scheduled to chair the plenary session. Glazyev was unable to attend, because of accompanying Putin to Astana, Kazakhstan for the signing of the Agreement on the Eurasian Economic Union that same day (see article, this issue). His greeting linked the legacy of Kuznetsov with both Eurasian economic development and the strategic defense of Earth from outer-space threats such as asteroids. Other greetings, published here, came from Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Science and Science-Intensive Technologies Valeri Chereshnev and international Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
Like LaRouche, other speakers on the life and work of Kuznetsov took the opportunity to discuss the great importance of studying the legacy of Academician Vladimir Vernadsky, whose writings Kuznetsov himself did much to promote. Dr. Vyacheslav Chesnokov of the RAS Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, who serves as Scientific Secretary of the RAS Commission on the Scientific Legacy of V.I. Vernadsky, noted that Kuznetsov had been a charter member of that commission in 1985.
Prof. Bolshakov and Dubna University's Rector Oleg Kuznetsov (no relation) gave an overview of what Kuznetsov himself considered his most important ideas. They cited an array of Pobisk's appeals to world leaders, including his 1995 memorandum to the UN Secretary-General, written after meeting LaRouche, calling for outlawing "speculative capital"—derivatives, in particular.
Bolshakov concluded by quoting Kuznetsov's short "Last Will to the Science of the Future, Concerning the Meaning of Human Life": "I have lived my life in a search for the meaning of our human existence. Our Patriarch Aleksy II helped me in this work, when he asserted that the Creator made mankind, to transform the Cosmos into the Garden of Eden. And if that is true, then all decent scientists must link their scientific work with 'the fight against the increase of entropy and against the Second Law of Thermodynamics.' That is the true task for mankind as a whole."
[1] The Russian expression that has become the standard translation of "sustainable development" is ustoychivoye razvitiye, meaning "stable," "steady," or "sustained" development. The understanding of the term as automatically meaning "limited" development is not generally present for Russian speakers, including scientists, who use it.
[2] Pobisk Georgiyevich Kuznetsov's life as "a Russian modern-day Leonardo da Vinci," an independent thinker and a political prisoner, was featured in EIR of Dec. 28, 2001.
[3] "LaRouche in Dialogue with Russian Science," full transcript, EIR, June 10, 1994.
