Lev Gindilis

Note: Leonid Gurvits was translating this interview in real-time. The pronouns have been changed in some places in this interview for ease of reading, such as during moments that Gurvits is speaking on behalf of Gindilis in the third person.

Charbonneau:

This is Rebecca Charbonneau on October 3, 2019, in Moscow, Russia at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute, interviewing…

Gindilis:

Lev Gindilis.

Charbonneau:

And he is being translated by….

Gurvits:

Leonid Gurvits, is helping to maintain this conversation.

Charbonneau:

Excellent. So, the first question is just, please tell me a little bit about your career.

Gindilis:

I graduated from this university, Moscow State in the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics. At that time, the Department of Astronomy was part of the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics. Nowadays, the astronomy division, the Department of Astronomy, is part of the Faculty of Physics. I graduated with [what was then similar to a] master’s degree in 1955. In the first years after my graduation, I was working on studying counter-glow, zodiacal light, and the glow of the night sky… it was optical astronomy studies of upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, in optics.

During the international geophysical year, in 1957, they organized a high-altitude mountain expedition. The site of this expedition was in Tien Shan. This is currently in Kazakhstan. But it was part of Soviet Union, of course, at that time.

In 1963, my friend, Nikolai Kardashev, showed me his paper on radio communication to extraterrestrial civilizations. This is a well-known paper which was published in 1964. So, Nikolai showed me this paper before it was published.

Gurvits:

Lev and Nikolai were in the same class of university here and so of course they knew each other, they were friends. And so, Nikolai shared this paper with Lev, before it was published.

Gindilis:

I was very impressed by this paper. I will try to explain why. We all, of course, used to read science fiction, of course we all had dreams about meeting extraterrestrial civilizations one day, but I had a subconscious feeling that it would happen, well, who knows when, a million years from now. And suddenly it turned out from this paper that, right now, right here, we would be able to receive a signal from extraterrestrial civilizations.

A caveat: Kardashev considered communication with a civilization of very high energy consumption. With such high power available, they can take liberty of beaming the signal in all directions, continuously.

So, it would be possible, in a very wide range of frequencies or bandwidth. Because it was in all directions and at very broad band, it would eliminate the necessity for the transmitting side to be concerned about the direction and specific frequency of the transmission. And also, since it would be continuous transmission, it would not be limited to specific time interval.

So, it was according to these calculations by Kardashev, it was clear that the civilization of the second type was able to pursue this strategy of communication, would be visible wherever they are in our galaxy, or even in nearby galaxies. And a civilization of the third type could not hide itself anywhere in the universe.

So, Kardashev suggested a classification of civilization according to the level of their energy consumption. So, the first civilization, of the first type, is the one which consumed energy comparable to that received by a planet from its star. A civilization of the second type consumes an amount of energy or power comparable to that emitted by its star as a whole. And the third type means a civilization which consumed energy equivalent to the total emission of all stars of a galaxy.

Gurvits:

Just a comment from me, it means that the ratio of power consumption is ten orders of magnitude between each type.

Gindilis:

There is one curious mistake related to the civilizations of the third type. There is some widely spread misconception that the third type means a civilization which colonized the entire galaxy. Well, this is impossible.

A civilization which occupies the entire galaxy cannot exist if we reasonably assume that characteristic time of its progress or some developments is measured, well, a hundred years or something like that, but the signal would go from one point of this civilization or territory or another one much, much longer. So, it just doesn’t work. Incomparable time scales. The size of our galaxy is, well, the distance to the center of our galaxy is 10 kiloparsecs, which would take 30,000 years to go one way.

So, Kardashev never stated that a civilization of the third type has colonized the entire galaxy. Simply because he understood that it was impossible, not feasible. So he considered a model of civilization of the third type as a sort of Dyson Sphere, surrounding the nucleus of a galaxy. Something around a quasar. Dyson considered his sphere surrounding a star. Kardashev suggested the same thing but surrounding the nucleus of a galaxy, or a quasar.

So, coming back to my own view on that type, once I realized that it is perfectly possible to try to detect this sort of communication signal right now, right here, I was so fascinated by that that I decided to switch to this topic of study.

Ok, so, until this point, I was employed by Sternberg Institute. I was on the staff of this high-altitude mountain expedition in Kazakhstan. And this expedition was controlled and managed by some department here at Sternberg. But at this point, after this immersion in the SETI problem, I managed to switch to the department of radio astronomy because Shklovsky was here, Kardashev was here, and they were working on this problem of SETI at that time.

I was the head of this high-altitude mountain expedition. And by then, I already had my PhD defended. And it was the…the thesis was on spectral photometry. But interestingly, the director of the Sternberg Institute at that time, Professor Dmitry Martynov, did not… advised me not to make this move [into SETI].

His argument was that, well, you have a very nice, your own area of research, why? But I persisted and in spite of this advice from Martynov, switched to the department of radio astronomy.

So, the main goal was to become involved directly in searching for civilizations. So, Kardashev formulated the task as follows: It is necessary to conduct a full-sky survey at centimeter wavelengths. According to his views at that time, this band, this range of frequencies was most suitable for communications. But radio astronomy at that time was mostly conducted at meter wavelengths. His view was that at shorter wavelengths, at centimeter wavelengths, there would be many unknown new sources, and some of them might be associated with extraterrestrial civilizations.

The idea was to build a special radio telescope for a full sky survey at centimeter wavelengths. It was thought that the most suitable design for such a telescope was the so-called “Krauss” telescope. It has a blade-shaped diagram and it allows you to conduct a full sky survey reasonably quickly.

They considered several design options for such a telescope. And finally, we picked out the following: It was at a time when a principal decision was taken by the government to build what would become RATAN 600. RATAN 600 in the end was built as a circular reflector with a diameter of 600 meters. That’s why it is named RATAN 600. And RATAN is an acronym, Radio Telescope of Academy of Science [Pадиоастрономический Tелескоп Академии Hаук].

So it was decided to add to the circular reflector of the RATAN 600 the basic concept of a wing reflector, circular, to the southern sector, a flat reflector. More or less in the same way as in the design by Krauss in his Ohio observatory. So as a result, the southern sector of RATAN 600 would be more or less a replica of a Krauss telescope. The design of this telescope was conducted by a team lead by Yuri Pariskii. And I joined this team. Pariskii was in the same class as me and Nikolai. So, we were all from the same class. And all were friends.

So, the effort, the design effort of RATAN 600 was already underway, and I joined the team led by Yuri Pariskii with the specific task to take charge of this SETI related flat reflector which would make, more or less, a Krauss telescope out of RATAN 600. Several years of my life were dedicated to that.

In addition, I was also involved in search of pulse signals. So, the approach for the search of pulsed signal was based under the assumption that the transmission in principle could be of two types: informative transmission and just, beacon transmission. Lighthouse transmission. And for the second type of transmission, it was assumed that the power might be very high. Therefore, this could be detected by reasonably modest receiving antennas. There were two groups working on that. One was led by Vsevolod Troitsky in a city called Gorkii. Now it is called Nizhny Novgorod. And there is an institute where Troitsky worked, NIRFI, Radiophysics Research Institute. And another group was in Moscow, led by Kardashev, and I was with the group led by Kardashev.

In order to mitigate possible local radio frequency interference, a method of synchronous detection at widely separated places was adopted. [The] Moscow group was also aiming to detect interstellar dispersion of this signal. That is a certain dependence on the time of arrival across spectrum. This is a fundamental physical property of radio wave propagation.

In addition to these two major fields of activity, I was also involved in some organizational work, in particular organizing workshop meetings on SETI topics. So, the first All-Union conference was held in Byurakan, Armenia in 1964. Major figures in Soviet physics, radio physics, and astronomy assembled at this workshop meeting. Kardashev gave a presentation on this strategy of radio communication. Other people considered different models of communication. For example, communication between civilizations of our level of development and how this would therefore necessitate highly directed transmission of signals.

Sometime at the end of the 1960s, Kardashev was on a business trip in the United States and somewhere there he met Carl Sagan. And they generated the idea of organizing a joint US-USSR conference on SETI. This idea was supported by the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in the US. This conference indeed took place, and it was hosted at the same place in Byurakan in 1971. The head of the Soviet delegation was academician Ambartsumian, Director of the Byurakan Observatory and also president of the Armenian Academy of Sciences, and head of the US delegation was Carl Sagan. There were two Nobel prize winners from the US. Crick and Townes, the radio physicist, radio astronomer.

Charbonneau:

Was Lev in attendance?

Gurvits:

He was one of the main organizers, yes you will hear about this. He was on the organizing team.

Gindilis:

I was a member of the organizing committee and also I gave my own presentation there. So my talk was about the specific type of pulsed signals for communication with inter-intelligence communications. Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

So, the attendance was very wide, unlike the first Soviet meeting which was relatively narrow in terms of the field of activity of participants. This meeting of 1971 was very broad. Sagan brought in people covering lots of fields outside of astronomy and radio physics. There were historians and linguists and biologists and many others.

So, after that, you can hardly find any conference on SETI after 1971 in which I didn’t participate. I participated in all, both in the Soviet Union and outside. In addition to purely technical problems of communication with extraterrestrial civilizations, I was very much interested in philosophical angle on the issue.

Charbonneau:

Can you speak more about that?

Gindilis:

There are several important philosophical issues, but among them I would point out two. The first one is a well-known problem of the silence of the universe, in terms of extraterrestrials.

And the second no less important issue is the issue of mutual understanding between civilizations. Can we actually understand each other? Maybe we have such a different set of basic principles or basic issues that we would never be able to understand each other.

Charbonneau:

Did the Soviet participants and the American participants have different ideas about these philosophical problems?

Gindilis:

Well, I didn’t notice a difference. I recall that it was Phil Morrison who presented his view on strategy of civilization, or, main ideology, let’s say.

Gurvits:

Just a comment on translation. You will hear the word “ideology”, which in the Russian context is slightly different from what ideology is in the street and newspapers. So, this ideology is rather a strategy and philosophy.

Gindilis:

There was one member of the Soviet delegation who was a professional philosopher. From Armenia. And he gave a very abstract philosophical presentation. So, after this presentation, perhaps during the break, Freeman Dyson took a piece of chalk and wrote on the black board in Russian, “Let Philosophy Go to Hell”.

Gurvits:

I told you [Rebecca] that Freeman Dyson can read Russian, so that’s why [he wrote it in Russian].

Gindilis:

Coming back to the first issue of cosmic silence, which is also known as the Fermi Paradox, at that time there were just some times when opinions were voiced that the reason for the absence of any communication, any signals, is one of two options, or maybe both. That either we are simply alone in the universe, or we are so much ahead of anybody else, that that explains [the silence]. I think that both opinions, both positions are very strange—wrong, simply to say. And the reasons for the absence of apparent signals might be multi-fold. Maybe we are not sensitive enough, maybe we are searching the wrong frequencies, the main time domain, maybe it’s simply not even radio, not even electromagnetic, but some other means of communication—there are many natural reasons for the absence of communication signals.

So, considering the second issue, the mutual understanding between civilizations. The basic principle here was related to the fact that we study the universe, and they study the same universe. And we firmly believe that the universe has objective laws of nature. And they study the same laws of the same nature. So, our mutual understanding might be based on that which is the same for them and for us. So this was the basic idea of the linguist’s language, which was created specifically for that and based on mathematical approaches.

Interestingly, a somewhat similar approach was developed at the end of the 19th century by a Russian scientist of Finnish-Swedish. He proposed an approach based on mathematical relations starting from very simple and developing them all the way to a high-level abstract statements and relations.

Gurvits:

A reference on this book is of course in the paper of Lev and mine, so you can find exact reference.

Gindilis:

So, some people thought, nevertheless, it is not impossible that mutual understanding would not be possible at all. For example, because another civilization might have no concept of natural numbers. My position is that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

My position was that, of course, this set of basic principles and some basic norms of different civilizations might be different, but nevertheless, it would be possible to bridge the understanding between them somehow.

Recently I came to a different position, another point of view. Actually, quite seriously different. It’s unpublished anywhere yet, but I don’t mind to tell you. I believe there is a hierarchy of civilizations of different levels. And each civilization is somehow linked to the civilization on the higher floor and lower floor of this hierarchy. And interactions between them follows the principle of interaction between teacher and pupil. And therefore, the immediate neighbor in this hierarchy would understand us perfectly well. Therefore, we should try to communicate first of all with our immediate neighbors in this hierarchical structure.

Charbonneau:

So, on the idea of structures and going back to Nikolai’s ideas of classifications of civilizations. It’s my understanding that that’s why he was looking for quasars, correct? And so, I know of course that you’re well aware of the CTA-102 observations. I’m wondering if Lev was at all involved since he was at that time with Kardashev’s group.

Gindilis:

I didn’t participate myself in these observations, but I know this story very well. Of course, I can tell this story.

Charbonneau:

I would particularly like to hear it from his perspective.

Gindilis:

To begin with, Kardashev considered the structure of this signal and he suggest the spectrum of signal transmitted by civilization to make it most efficient, most informative.

So according to his calculation, his model let’s say, the optimal spectrum for a transmitter would be very different from spectrum of natural sources. At that time, radio sources, cosmic radio sources, were known with a steep spectrum with lower flux density at high frequencies. Just steep spectrum. And according to Kardashev, optimal spectrum for artificial signal would look very different with a peak at particular frequencies.

So, Kardashev searched all available data on spectra, of course in radio sources, and he found that two sources, CTA-21 and CTA-102, by the way they are named after your [Rebecca’s] alma mater, Cambridge. Their spectra are unusual, different from what was known about many other sources. In addition, these two sources had very small angular sizes. And it was also one of the criteria for the artificiality of the source.

So, Kardashev asked the question: Well, are these sources artificial, maybe? So, he suggested: let’s monitor the behavior of these sources. And if the sources show some variability of their emission or flux density, that would be in support of the hypothesis of their artificiality.

At that time, Genadii Sholomitskii, the observer, was here at our department. At that time, he was conducting observations with large antennas of the Soviet Deep Space Communications Center. So, Kardashev convinced Sholomitskii to include these new sources in his observational program and in order to see if they include any variability, or not.

Sholomitskii was quite skeptical about Kardashev’s hypothesis. But he agreed, hoping that maybe he would see variability of more or less the same type as source Cassiopeia A. He was very able, a very experienced observer. So, Sholomitskii conducted observations of several sources intermittently and he compared flux density of target sources, CTA-21 and 102, with flux density of the reference source, 3c48.

So, CTA-21 had no variability. The ratio of flux density between 3c48 and CTA-21 was constant. So, the variability of CTA-102, or rather ratio of flux density of 3c48 and CTA-102, has shown an absolutely mysterious characteristic: variability with a periodicity of 102 days. That is the source CTA-102.

From this point there will be a dramatic turn in the story. So, there was a journalist from Telegraph Agency of Soviet Union who used to come here, just to talk, to learn what they knew, etc, etc. Just to make some summary and tell the stories about what scientists are doing.

So once, in one of his regular visits... [interruption]. So, once, he came here and somebody, in a very casual way said, “oh yes by the way there is variability of a source, a cosmic radio source.”

Charbonneau:

Was it Kardashev?

Gurvits:

No. That was not Kardashev. [Asking Gindilis in Russian] It was not Kardashev?

Gindilis:

No, no, it was not. It was somebody, just joking, smoking somewhere in a corridor. Absolutely nothing special. But the journalist, as a result, immediately switched on alert, thinking, “ooh, Soviet scientists discovered extra-terrestrials”.

So, later on, Midler, after he got this news, he wrote something down. And then in the evening, of this or maybe next day, he came to Sternberg but nobody was here but me. So, journalist Midler showed his reporting of this news to me.

So I said, “are you crazy or what, there is no [evidence for a] civilization yet, what are you writing here?” And well, his reply was, “well, you guys, scientists, you are never sure. You say ‘maybe or who knows’, with all the reservations. We, the journalists, say clearly, either yes or no. There is an effect, or there is no effect, and that’s it.”

In addition, he, Midler, said, “you know, I am 26 years old, and still, I have not yet done anything great.” So, I failed to convince, somehow, Midler. So, Midler left.

So, the next day, when I came to this very office, the first thing I saw in the office was a long telegram from Frank Drake to Iosif Shklovsky.

[interruption]

Gurvits:

I asked whether this telegram is somewhere here... Should be but...

Charbonneau:

Ah, well.

Gindilis:

So, in this telegram, Drake, basically asks Shklovsky, “what is going on?”. So somehow, we survived this first shock. And then there was a telephone call.

So, this was a telephone call from a journalist of the Associate Press. Who also was asking what was going on. So, we were telling him that this is still hypothesis, that this is absolutely not sure, that this is just absolutely exaggerated, etc., etc. Minutes later, a French press [calls], with the same question. [The] BBC. One by one we pick up the phone and try to explain the same thing to everybody.

So, the next was a telephone call, and very rough and with a seemingly very agitated voice, asks very simple: “Where is Shklovsky?”. That was Director of the Institute. So, a press conference is scheduled for two o clock. It was 13th of April, yeah?

So, this call from Martynov was picked up by me. And Shklovsky wasn’t around at that time. So, the order from the Director, from Martynov, was “find Shklovsky, wherever, from underground. Just get Shklovsky here.”

So, at that time, Shklovsky was actually attending a meeting chaired by Keldysh. Keldysh, at that time, was at a very high post. He had the position of Chief Theorist of Cosmonautics and this title was simply to cover up his real position. At the same time, he was President of the Academy of Sciences, and an Academician of course. And he was chairing the Council on Space Activity, or something like that.

Anyway, Keldysh was a big shot. Everybody knew, but it wasn’t announced, that he is responsible for cosmonautics. After Shklovsky suggested the use of a so-called artificial comet for positioning space craft in the sky, Keldysh developed great admiration of Shklovsky and he used to invite him for different discussions and meetings on space exploration. So, the meeting was in the office of Keldysh on Miusskaya Square, that was the headquarters of the Institute. Now named after Keldysh. And, by the way, this 6th entrance is in building of IKI—that is the Keldysh Institute.

So, somehow, I, I don’t remember how, was able to penetrate the high security at this building at Miusskaya, but I was able to get into this building and to reach the room where Shklovsky was participating in this meeting.

So, Shklovsky was not very excited by this situation. Well, they took taxi. And returned here [to Shternburg]. So, when they came here, they saw all these parking lots full of cars. Which never happens. Nobody drove their cars at that time, very few people. And there were cars with diplomatic plates, not Soviet cars. In 1965, all cars on the street were Soviet made cars, mostly. And here there were foreign cars and foreign plates. Very unusual.

Shklovsky was not knocked off by this view. And I think that he was even inspired or excited by this view. So, they went to the conference hall [interjection by Leonid to Rebecca: …Which I have just shown you.]. Kardashev came. And Sholomitskii happened to here as well. So, the press conference started.

The Director of the Institute took the stage as the first speaker. So first, Martynov, the Director, explained: "Well, variability of astronomical objects is well known. In optics there are all kinds of variable stars.

Gurvits:

By the way, my comment. Martynov actually was an expert in variable stars. He was an observer.

Gindilis:

So, he explained there was nothing unusual, there are known variable sources. And then Shklovsky took stage and said yeah, variability might have very different physical reasons and there is no way to say definitively that this is [an intelligent] civilization and then Kardashev basically repeated the same thing.

So, nevertheless, despite all these words of caution from Martynov, Shklovsky, Kardashev, and Sholomitskii, the next several days many mass media around the world carried this story that Russians, Soviets, discovered a signal from extraterrestrials.

So, this story was on the front pages alongside stories about Vietnam War, for example. I was trying to understand for myself why it happened that this news got so much attention and I think that one of the reasons could be that the story first was carried by Telegraph Agency of Soviet Union, TASS.

TASS was a source of high authority, so it was trustworthy. For example, nobody believed that the first artificial satellite would be launched by the USSR but it was TASS who was first to tell this and it was big news delivered first by TASS.

The same happened with the first manned mission, the flight of Yuri Gagarin. There was disbelief about it, but it was TASS who carried this news first. So once TASS says that something has been launched, it’s true, indeed, it has been launched.

Sadly, in this case, TASS says that there is an extraterrestrial civilization that was discovered. So, it should be true! Well I worried that maybe something bad happened to the journalist Midler who actually launched this wave. But no, nothing, nothing terrible happened to him.

The outcome was that the TASS bulletins were... they became more popular and in high demand, after this story. But then everything came to a calm situation.

Gurvits:

Maybe it’s worth saying that after this press conference, Shklovsky actually wrote several pages for Pravda, and Pravda carried this story without his name. So, it was sort of editorial. I have a copy of that. In fact, you have as well, it’s in the book [Mind, Life, Universe (2019)].

Gindilis:

The day after... immediately after this press conference, Shklovsky sat down and wrote an opinion [editorial], a well-informed opinion [editorial] on this situation. And it was published as an editorial by Pravda, the next day. Ok so...

Charbonneau:

What is the implication of it being published as an editorial?

Gurvits:

Implication or reason?

Charbonneau:

Both.

Gindilis:

There was not any dramatic implications of this publication in Pravda. However, it was clear that it was a very important scientific result and this short article in Pravda newspaper said exactly that. Nothing visible happened, we didn’t get more money or anything. Nothing.

Charbonneau:

So, I do have another question related to this. What changed after this event? Was there more interest in SETI? Or perhaps did you start coming up with ideas for post-contact procedures?

Gindilis:

There were no noticeable implications or consequences of this in terms of SETI as such. However, this discovery of variability had very important implications for astrophysical studies. Many observatories began observing programs of radio emission. Later on it was understood, it was discovered, that many radio sources, and in particular quasars, indeed were variable.

But interestingly, immediately after these events, the variability of CTA-102 was not confirmed by other observations. It’s telling, because Sholomitskii was very able, a very experienced observer, and he didn’t make any mistakes. Nevertheless, this result was not confirmed for many years.

Charbonneau:

Why is that?

Gindilis:

Only after a while. [Jeffery] Hangst confirmed it after several years and when he confirmed this result, he explained the fact that variability was first claimed by Sholomitskii. Then for several years, there was no variability, and then again confirmation that the source is sort of transient. So, sometimes it varies, sometimes it doesn’t. So, Sholomitskii was rehabilitated.

Charbonneau:

So, you mention that there was interest in variable sources after the CTA-102 affair. I’ve always been curious if there was any connection between Kardashev’s interest in SETI and his interest in VLBI. On account of them both having to do with very bright sources of small angular dimensions.

Gindilis:

So, the invention of VLBI was not triggered by the discovery of variability by Sholomitskii; it happened independently. And VLBI as such was introduced without relation to SETI. However, when the VLBI technique had become well-established, Kardashev indeed was interested in possible use of VLBI for detection of some signatures of extraterrestrial intelligence. And to that case it is not about detecting signals, but detection of, what it is called in Russian “астроинженерные”. Or in English, “technosignature”.

One of the reasons or basic motivation of the RadioAstron project was precisely that. Attempt to find technosignatures.

Charbonneau:

You don’t really see that very much in the RadioAstron papers and proposals.

Gindilis:

No.

Charbonneau:

Why?

Gindilis:

There are no such structures, maybe some other reason.

Charbonneau:

No, I mean, not why did it not detect them. But why is there no mention of the use of the telescope for technosignature detection in many of the proposals and documents.

Gurvits:

Ah ok, that’s a good question, yeah.

Gindilis:

I was present at several presentations made by Nikolai, including a couple made at meetings of the Academy of Sciences. And Kardashev did mention this option there.

Gurvits:

So, I explain your question, in the sense that, not that Kardashev didn’t mention, [because] yeah, he sometimes mentioned [it]. But there were no observing proposals suggesting precisely this sort of task.

Gindilis:

The reason for the absence of this might also be purely psychological. People are afraid of proposing or asking something that looks pretty crazy, or something of that sort.

Charbonneau:

So, I have one last short question, which is: To what extent did the Soviets working on SETI collaborate with their international peers? Especially during the 60s and 70s—beyond the Byurakan conference.

Gurvits:

SETI specifically?

Charbonneau:

SETI specifically.

Gindilis:

So, in principle there was very good mutual understanding between Soviet and American scientists and there were exchanges of opinions and exchange of information, so, all in all it was quite efficient and friendly collaboration. However, there was one particular event which had serious implications.

So, there was a conference on the search for life in the universe. The conference took place in Talin in the Soviet Union—it’s the capital of Estonia—in 1981. It was a very high-profile conference, with many scientists from many countries attending, including a large delegation of US scientists and Frank Drake, for example, was in attendance at this conference. And the conference was very fruitful, with very interesting discussions and many interesting presentations. But there was an event immediately after this conference.

There was a different view on the formal status of this conference. According to our internal view, in the Soviet Union, this was an All-Union conference with participation of foreign scientists, foreign attendees. However, Americans considered this as the second US-USSR SETI conference. So, ten years after Byurakan, another US-USSR conference.

So...yes. There were some issues of the Cold War. And after this conference, probably in the process of publication of proceedings... It happened that due to political tension between the US and USSR... well, there are many reasons. For example, in 1983, a passenger plane was shot down by Soviet air forces in the far East and all the people on board died and it was a flight from Anchorage, Alaska. So, that was in the beginning of September of ‘83. Things like that, of course, resulted in souring relations between the USSR and US. And sometime around that time, during preparations of proceedings, some US authors, scientists, withdrew their papers from the proceedings from this conference. Not all! For example, Jill Tarter left her presentation in place. But many withdrew their presentations.

So, I now think that it was this conference in Talin that Jill Tarter presented for the first time her idea, her model of the cosmic haystack, in which the needle is to be found.

However, after this unpleasant occurrence, the collaboration didn’t stop, and resumed. The next decadal conference, although there was no official name like that, was in ‘91. The US hosted a conference on SETI in Santa Cruz.

So, this was... the Soviet delegation was quite large. It was led by academician Kotelnikov. He was at that time... he was actually vice president of the Academy of Sciences for a very long time.

Charbonneau:

And Lev was in attendance?

Gindilis:

Yes. Ok, Kotelnikov, he held lots of high positions, Director and chair and all this and that. And he was a radio physicist by training. He was the leader of radar studies of planets. Actually, he was very supportive to radio astronomy; he was the chairman of the Council of Radio Astronomy. And he was head of the delegation, the Soviet delegation at this meeting in Santa Cruz.

In attendance was Kardashev, Pariskii… there were people from Ukraine. Yes, I was there.

So on the American side, presented by Drake, Tarter and Sagan showed up as well. He didn’t make a presentation, but he was there. Another attendee was Vladimir Strelnitskii, whom I suggest you interview as well, he is based in Massachusetts. He lives there.

Rudnitskii, who is here. Georgy Rudnitskii, or George if you like, who is now head of this Department [of Radio Astronomy]. He is Kardashev’s student. At the same time, he is the father of Alexander Rudnitskii, who is at AstroSpace Centre, you can see him there if you like. So, I gave two presentations. One with Rudnitskii and one with Strelnitskii. All that is published.

Charbonneau:

So, I actually, I have spoken with Frank Drake. And he mentioned at this conference... Perhaps he remembered incorrectly, but this was about around the fall of the Soviet Union, correct?

Gurvits:

I know the answer. The answer is yes and no, but I’ll ask Lev.

Gindilis:

Almost. Not quite. So, this, I’m not sure, but it seems to me that the conference in Santa Cruz was July? Can be checked. Now the most dramatic event in the process of dissolution of Soviet Union happened in three days from 19th through 22nd of August. A bit later. And the Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 25, 1991. So yeah, pretty close. Not quite.

It was the first time I saw a mobile phone. Cell phone let’s say. And it was used by Mrs. Drake. For the first time I saw a cell phone in action... And Mrs. Drake used this cell phone. Frank Drake invited several Soviet attendees to his place. In his backyard there was an antenna. Small but, yeah it was still there.

Gurvits:

Did you talk to Nadia [Drake’s daughter]?

Charbonneau:

Yes, Nadia is a friend of mine.

Gurvits:

Ah, fine. Pass on my regards.

Gindilis:

In ‘91 she was 14 years, no, maybe less.

Charbonneau:

She must have been younger.

Gurvits:

[To Lev, in Russian] Rebecca knows Nadia Drake very well. I met her several times.

Charbonneau:

So, before we wrap up, I just want to get your motivation for being in SETI. You mentioned earlier on that there was interest after having read Kardashev’s paper and there was also somewhat an excitement from previous dreams, or reading science fiction. But I’d be quite interested to hear you try to encapsulate your motivation for spending your life on SETI.

Gindilis:

So, motivation which lasted for so long a time, many decades, remains the same as the first moment after reading that paper or draft or manuscript of Kardashev’s. I believe that establishing contact with extraterrestrial civilizations is of utmost importance for our civilization. And I believe this would be a positive thing. And it is... It might be the most important thing in the history of civilization. So, this was my motivation then, and it remains the same up until now.

Charbonneau:

Ok... is there...?

Gindilis:

I don’t even understand some colleagues of mine, astronomers, who are well-established and accomplished professionals in astronomy. Yet, they are not interested in the SETI problem.

Charbonneau:

So, is there anything else you would like to add that you think is important for the historical record?

Gindilis:

No, nothing to add.

Charbonneau:

Nothing to add. Alright, [in Russian: This was very good, thank you].