XENOPHOBIA….

Sergei Kovalev, a member of the State Duma and a tireless advocate of human rights, revealed that the presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences has ordered directors of its research institutes and special department to “carry out constant control over trips abroad” by researchers “who have access to state secrets.” The Academy also wants tighter control over scientific conferences that foreigners attend in Russia and more “control over researchers’ filing of reports about their trips abroad.” Academic and scientific contacts between Russians and foreigners have led to charges of espionage in several recent cases: Valentin Danilov, a physicist at Krasnoyarsk Technical University, was accused of selling secrets to China; Igor Sutyagin of the USA-Canada Institute is on trial as a spy for the United States and Britain; military journalists Grigory Pasko and Aleksandr Nikitin, who dealt with foreign press and environmental organizations, were both accused of espionage; visiting American Fulbright scholar John Tobin was denounced as a spy and later convicted on drug charges.