RUSSIAN SCIENTIST IN CHINA

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30763, 29 May 1965, Page 4

RUSSIAN SCIENTIST IN CHINA

Soviet Scientist in China. By Mikhail A. Klochko. ’| Hollis and Carter. 192 pp. I Professor Klochko is a I Russian chemist with a dis- , ■ tinguished career and a (strong dislike of bureaucrats i who interfere with his work. I In 1958 he was much annoyed at being sent to China for six months as part of a scheme . I for Soviet specialists to bring . Chinese science in all . 1 branches up to the level of world science by 1967. He (was in some respects given !! better facilities in Peking ,' than in Moscow, and found ; i his Chinese colleagues likeable and eager to learn; but, once again there were too I many interruptions from ; Party officials. i After returning to Moscow Professor Klochko kept in touch with his new friends, and by their particular request was sent back early in 1960. expecting to stay for 110 months, but had to leave i in August 1960 when Russia recalled all Soviet advisers land technicians. He was not I happy to return home, because he had felt he was (doing constructive work, and ! that in spite of its defects ! China was a better place to live than Moscow. In 1961 he. managed to get to an international conference in Mon-, treal and there asked fori j political asylum. This book was written, I I Professor Klochko explains, | ! because he thought a record ! of what he had seen and done i I in China would be of interest

to Western readers, since he was not a tourist or passing visitor but a working scientist who travelled widely and talked to hundreds of Chinese I colleagues. In this he was undoubtedly right. There is no political or social theory in his account, with its detailed description of daily life, the universities and some factories—only an irascible scorn for officials who cannot see that scientists should be allowed to work without constant interruptions for political meetings, and a sardonic humour which surely is now exercised at the expense of the West. Over and over he criticises the waste of effort and time in misdirected or mismanaged campaigns, and at one point cites the Chinese attitude to the United States as an example of the inefficiency of propaganda: officially the people “bellowed and roared” but he never met a single Chinese who privately expressed the slight- ! est hostility to America. Campaigns also have their comic side: the latest Party ! slogan was painted up over a (maternity home, the slogan (being “More, better, faster, cheaper!” Besides Peking, Professor ■ Klochko visited Shanghai, Nanking. Hangchow. Kun- ■ ming and several cities in the ; north. His overall impression ! was that enthusiasm and research were hampered by the (constant changing of programmes and targets, and by! I the insistence that everyone! should work on the land for

part of the year. Only one department of Peking University was closed to him, the Physics Institute. “I understood they were working on nuclear physics there, and a visit by a Soviet scientist was not welcome at the time.” Had it not been so, and had it not been for his profound dislike of Chairman Mao. the professor might not have come to the incautious con-, elusion that China would not be able to produce nuclear weapons for many years, for lack of specialists and capital investment. It is to be hoped he was not equally mistaken in calling the Chinese a peaceful people.