Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 9, 1991 TAG: 9104090144
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The Soviet Union's teetering economy has made for lean times at Soviet universities, a Soviet professor said at Virginia Tech last week.
Tech - which has its own budget blues - is host this semester to Valery V. Vasiliev, who is head of the department of strength of composite structures at Moscow Aviation Technology Institute. Vasiliev is teaching in Tech's department of engineering science and mechanics.
He and Soviet colleague Vitauts Tamuzh - in town recently to give a Tech lecture - spoke of a university system back home that reflects both the new freedom and the economic tumult of the changing Soviet Union.
Vasiliev spoke of the easing of university control by the Soviet ministry of education. The ministry in the past required professors to, among other things, prepare annual reports on various topics that often were simply shelved, he said.
That and other headaches have eased with glasnost, Vasiliev said - but money problems remain.
"The main problem in the Soviet Union now is the Soviets need money," Vasiliev said. It is easier in tough times, he said, to take money from education than from other areas because a decline in the quality of education may not be felt for several years.
"You cannot do anything without money. We're in a very bad position," said Vasiliev.
Asked if Tech's money troubles were similar to those back home, Vasiliev said he is isolated from money problems here.
"I do not feel their difficulties," he said of Tech professors. "I have no problems."
Two Tech professors slated to go to the Soviet Union next fall can likewise expect to be cushioned from budget woes, Vasiliev said. "We have a lot of problems in the Soviet Union, but those problems are not for guests."
It is not yet certain which Tech professors will go to the Soviet Union, said C.W. Smith, the Tech professor overseeing the exchange program that brought Vasiliev here.
Smith was host last week to Professor Tamuzh of the Latvian State University in Riga, Latvia. Tamuzh was slated to talk at Tech Monday on fatigue of laminated composite materials.
Tamuzh, who is on a U.S. lecture tour, spoke candidly of political change in the Soviet Union.
"No empire can stay forever. That is clear," he said. Recent unrest in the Balkan states "is our hard way to independence," he said.
Parliaments in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia passed independence declarations last year, which the central government in Moscow has pressured them to nullify.
Tamuzh said his university in Latvia has full freedom. One example is the resurrection of the study of religion.
"We re-established the theological faculty," he said. "Among the students it is not very popular at present. But religion is very popular."
The Christmas just passed "was the first time when Christmas was an official holiday" in Latvia, Tamuzh said. Latvians also celebrated Good Friday last month. "We call it Holy Friday."
Tamuzh said the tanks that rolled into Lithuania in mid-January, crushing Lithuanian citizens and making U.S. front pages, "were just an attempt of the local Communist party to make the counter-revolution again. But people were very united . . .
"Of course it is very hard to explain all what has changed," Tamuzh said. "But all what has changed has changed in the best way."
Vasiliev said it is hard to tell what the future holds for the Soviet Union.
"That's a difficult question to answer. In my opinion they [the Soviet republics] should have political independence. They should control their lives themselves. I think it's impossible for them to have economic independence right now."
Tamuzh agreed. Asked if keeping economic ties between the republics is important, he replied: "Absolutely. Mutual contracts and mutual exchange of goods."
Tamuzh said the European Economic Community, or common market, would be a good model.
Asked how Tech students stack up against those in the Soviet Union, Vasiliev laughed.
He said Soviet students don't always study as hard as their American counterparts.
"I wouldn't like to criticize my own university," Vasiliev said, "but their attitude to studying [at Tech] is much more responsible." Vasiliev said Soviet students are guaranteed both tuition and, upon graduation, a job.
"They know their future job a year before they graduate from the university . . . They do not pay anything. If you do not pay, you do not care," Vasiliev said.
by CNB