Interest in science is growing in Russia

From October 9th to 11th the All-Russian Festival of Science will be held in Moscow. It will take place in the Shuvalov Building and the Fundamental Library of MSU, as well as in the Expocenter on Krasnaya Presnya Street. The exposition of the central exhibition in the Expocenter will be built according to thematic and cluster principles – Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Robototronics.

“This is the most important scientific event of the year. This festival originated at the initiative of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University and the first time existed as a Moscow festival, and five years ago it scoped beyond the boundaries of Moscow, it became a pan-Russian festival, and the number of people of all ages participating in the Festival, indeed, is striking. The events of the Festival have just finished in Ufa and Krasnoyarsk, they have been visited by almost 90 thousand people. These are just two cities. Therefore, there is no doubt that this year's total attendance at the Festival by our citizens will exceed last year's record, and last year, in my opinion, it was more than a million, about 1.5 million people. That is, the interest of the people participating in the festival, as with interest in science in our country, is growing. And a festival of science is one of the very powerful factors that stimulate this interest,” Dmitry Livanov, Minister of Education and Science, says.

According to him, “the Festival plays a vital role as a propaganda tool for modern scientific knowledge, as a tool to combat false science, anti-science, as a tool of promoting scientific activity among young people, and most importantly, it is the establishment of a dialogue between science and people who are engaged in science on the one hand, and society on the other. It is important that scientists know how through simple understandable language to explain what they are doing, what the value of their results is, and why it is so important to develop social science to the people who are not professionally engaged in science.”

Viktor Sadovnichy, Rektor of M.V. Lomonosov State University, said that “Many countries have been holding science festivals for many years; even special associations conducting the science festivals have been created. And at a meeting with journalists of the Western countries writing about science, I was asked why Russia does not conduct science festivals. So we have decided to do it at the level of Moscow University. It was visited by about 80 thousand students, researchers, young scientists, and we saw that this idea would live. We asked the Moscow city government for help with logistics, transport, advertising for the Second Festival. So the festival was gaining scale. Then, five years ago, I suggested the idea to the President that it would be good to make an all-Russian Festival. And Science Festivals have become a beautiful mass phenomenon in our country.”