Frontiers of Science [antikvár]

Foreword JOEL L. LEBOWITZ Department of Mathematics Hill Center for the Mathematical Sciences Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903 This volume, which is the sixth volume in the Annals to originate from the Moscow Sunday Refusnik Seminar, brings to a happy end a unique chapter in the history of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. This chapter began with the publication in 1980 of volume 337, entitled Third International Conference on Collective Phenomena. I quote from my Foreword to that volume: In December 1978,1 participated, together with two other American, seven French, one British, and about thirty Russian scientists, in a most unusual conference in Moscow. Five other American scientists who wished to participate had their visas to the Soviet Union revoked ten days before the meeting. Some Russian scientists living outside Moscow were similarly prevented from attending; other Russians who participated did so in the face of threats and warnings from the Soviet authorities____ The conference was an extension of the Moscow Sunday Seminar, which is no ordinary seminar. Indeed, it is often referred to by Soviet authorities as the Nonexistent Seminar; the present conference was, likewise, flatly stated by the oflicial newspaper Trud to be a nonexistent Western fabrication. The conference described above "took place in a very warm atmosphere in the rather small living room of the apartment of 'rufusniks' Viktor and Irina Brailovsky on Vernadskova Prospect." The next publication, volume 373 of the Annals, entitled Fourth International Conference on Collective Phenomena, appeared in 1981. I quote again from the Foreword: The Fourth International Conference on Collective Phenomena took place, like the preceding ones, not in a well-appointed academic lecture hall but in a cramped living room in a Moscow apartment under the discomforting surveillance of the KGB. Yet the room, indeed, the whole apartment, was full to overflowing with both local and foreign scientists, and the papers presented, as can be seen in this volume, were of high quality and interest____ Unfortunately, the situation has worsened since the April 1980 conference. Viktor Brailovsky, the organizer and conference chairman, was arrested in November of that year and subsequently convicted of ''defaming the Soviet Union." He was sentenced to five years of exile. The charges against him were based on his role in the publication of a short-lived unofficial magazine lews in the USSR. The seminar itself, being "legal" by Soviet law, was not officially cited against him. There are, however, strong reasons to believe that the Seminar was, indeed, a cause of Dr. Brailovsky's problems. The Seminar has since been forcibly prevented from taking place on many occasions and its future is uncertain. There have also been other arrests of many dissident and some refusnik scientists.