"It's a topic that's been quite actively researched now, at least for decades. And it turns out that my fascination with life stories fits well with the main motivation for this annual conference. It was organized by Veniamin Ioffe, one of the creators of the Leningrad Memorial, and it was always held on the premises of this organization, which later, for political reasons, was renamed the Veniamin Ioffe Foundation. Accordingly, a large part of the themes of this conference was devoted to repression - people who had gone through the Gulag or died in the Gulag. And so it also motivated me to reflect on my own conception of history - in terms of how the Soviet period of Russian history affected people's destinies."
"In my opinion, it was a natural reaction. Because we couldn't do anything, but at least we could express our position. The next day I gave a lecture at the University of Pisa. Although I am almost certain that the local students had hardly heard about it at that time and were certainly not interested in what was happening in Russia, I told them before the lecture that there was war in Europe again, that Russia had started the war and that I felt very uncomfortable as a citizen of that country. At the same time, almost on the same day, I wrote a letter to the Union of St Petersburg Scientists, of which I was a member, suggesting that we should express the position of this organisation on the events taking place. At the very least, I wanted to express some of my moral, if not political, position on the war that had begun. It's not that big a community, but nevertheless I sent out letters to about sixty-five members of this association. About twenty replied. And the response was almost exactly split down the middle: while some agreed with the idea, the other half said even then that it was completely incompatible with the tasks of the association or with the way its members assessed the current situation. I therefore officially said that if no statement was issued I would resign from the union, which I did. So I am no longer a member of this society."
"In 1991 I went abroad for the first time. The tickets were very cheap. There were no problems with travelling abroad. But it took about a year. Then the salaries started to be absolutely negligible and the air tickets became more expensive. And to go abroad, you had to earn extra money. In this case, with a few classmates, we formed a team that worked on small construction sites around Leningrad. This earned good money - such work was - at least in our case - valued at ten rubles a day. That was quite a good income for those days. At least for the next international congress in Berlin in 1993, I saved money for a plane ticket in this way. Fortunately, the Soros programme was already in existence then, and thanks to it we later got all that money back."
Sergei Ivanovich Fokin (born August 1, 1952, Tula, USSR) is a well-known Russian zoologist, historian of science, doctor of natural sciences, researcher at the University of St. Petersburg and professor at the University of Pisa. He graduated from the Faculty of Biology and Soil Sciences of Leningrad State University in 1975, defended his PhD thesis in 1978 and became Doctor of Natural Sciences in 2002. He specializes in protistology, functional morphology and biodiversity of infusoria and studies bacterial symbiosis in protozoa.
Since 1991, Fokin has lectured and worked in laboratories at universities in Germany, France, USA and Japan. In 2004, he became a professor at the University of Pisa, Italy. Since 1999, he has been actively engaged in the history of science, including researching the biographies of forgotten scientists - emigrants who left Russia after the 1917 revolution. He is the author of nine books and many articles on the fate of Russian scientists.
Throughout his life, Fokin showed independence of judgment: he did not join the Komsomol or the Communist Party in Soviet times. In contemporary Russia, he has openly opposed the war that Russia launched in 2022 against Ukraine. He resigned from the St Petersburg Union of Scientists and left the biology department at St Petersburg State University, which refused to condemn military action, and eventually decided to stay abroad, describing himself as “irredeemable”.
In 2023, he lived in Jurmala, Latvia, and continued to write books and work on projects in the history of science.
At a performance for the children of the staff of the Biological Scientific Research Institute at St. Petersburg State University, Peterhof Station, 1992
At a performance for the children of the staff of the Biological Scientific Research Institute at St. Petersburg State University, Peterhof Station, 1992
