Two jobs, two countries, two homes

by Hinke Osinga,
University of Bristol, UK

Yulij S. Il'yashenko considers himself very lucky. From January to August each year he has a great job as Professor at Moscow State University and President of the Independent University of Moscow in his beloved homeland Russia. Yulij spends two weeks of summer with his students at an outdoor summer camp, where he or his older students give lectures, mathematical problems are discussed intensively, and a program is drafted to help the students maintain the seminar on their own in the Fall semester. During the Fall semester, namely, Yulij lives in Ithaca and works at Cornell University. Since the iron curtain came down, it has been very difficult to hold an academic position in Russia. "If a Russian wants to be a mathematician he has three options: 1) get a position in the west; 2) starvation (more precisely, shortage in everything); or 3) lead a life of regular visits to the west to supplement the meagre salary." Clearly, Yulij has chosen option 3 rather than to quit as a mathematician. However, he views this life split between two countries as an opportunity; having been going back and forth for 12 years now, he feels at home both in the Russian and the American cultures. "In fact, I now have three homes! Helen and I just built a winter country house by a beautiful reservoir in Russia."

Yulij Il'yashenko in his winter country house in Russia, January 2009.		Yulij Il'yashenko at Cornell University, November 2008.

A Mathematics career under the communist regime

Mathematics was Yulij's favorite subject in High School. He was taught by I.V. Morozkin who was famous in Moscow for his inspirational mathematics teaching. In fact, V.I. Arnol'd had been in his class only six years earlier and Morozkin clearly felt he had been his best student. "Morozkin told us about Arnol'd many times. Arnol'd himself recalls how at age 11 he had worked on a mathematical problem that Morozkin had presented. Solving it had given him such delight that the experience stayed with him for the rest of his life." Yulij had this exact same experience. "When I was 11 Morozkin gave us a problem in the form of a poem. It was about flowers and bees visiting one flower after another. You needed fractions to solve this problem, but Morozkin had not said anything about that and we hadn't had fractions yet!" When Yulij did solve the problem he felt the same elation Arnol'd had experienced six years earlier.

Moscow State University (MSU) organized annual Olympiads in Mathematics, and Yulij won in 1957. "There were also mathematical circles for children at MSU. These were like small problem solving clubs where mathematics was taught by students who were about three years older than the participants. Arnol'd was teaching there when he was a freshman. I joined a circle taught by Boris Yefimov and Pavel Medvedev, who in turn had been taught by Arnol'd three years earlier." Yulij very much enjoyed going to these meetings and it shaped his mathematical career. As the winner of an Olympiad Yulij had no trouble getting accepted to MSU and he was also allowed to stay on to study for a postgraduate degree. "Despite the communist regime, the mathematics department at MSU was florishing at that time, largely thanks to the gracious efforts of its President I.G. Petrovski and supported by some great mathematicians like A.N. Kolmogorov."

As a child Yulij believed his school teachers who told the students that their country was the most just country in the world. "Then one day in 1956, as I was playing outside in the courtyard, another boy challenged me and said: `Do you know that Stalin was a rascal and killed 200 people?' I ran home to ask my father whether this was true." Yulij's parents were not supporters of the communist regime. In fact, some of their friends were in jail. Yulij's father told him about the Stalinist regime, the camps and the killings. Yulij felt deceived and disillusioned.

During his graduate studies Yulij recalls that books of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were circulating among the students. "These were typed copies that you had to read quickly and then pass on." Yulij read some of these copies and highly appreciated them. Unfortunately, if you wished to obtain a position as Assistant Professor at MSU, you should openly favor the communist regime. "Appointment decisions were taken by a Party Committee. Since I had not done anything to please them, it was obvious they would never offer me a position." However, at that time I.G. Petrovskii was President of MSU. "Petrovskii was an absolutely great person. Mathematically, he may well be compared with Kolmogorov, but probably his main achievements were on the administrative, better to say, on the humanistic side. He was strongly resisting the system. While the system broke down people, he would help them and support them as often as he could."
		Yulij on the staircase of Mountain Sekiranya that is described by Solzhenitsyn in "The Gulag Archipelago".

Yulij recalls the story of student I.S. who had been in a camp for five years, and who came back to Moscow after he was freed. "He tried to return as a student to MSU and addressed various Vice-Presidents. However, he was sent from one to the other, and no one was willing to take a decision. At last he met with Petrovskii, who merely asked him: `How did you get out of prison, was it amnesty or rehabilition?' Amnesty would mean that his crimes had been forgiven, but rehabilition meant that he had never been guilty in the first place. When I.S. answered: `Rehabilitation', Petrovskii accepted him without any further paperwork." Yulij learned about this story when he met I.S. almost 40 years later in Paris, where I.S. was a priest in an orthodox church. "Petrovskii always had cunning ideas to bypass the Party Committee. As President he had the power to stop the postgraduate studies of a student and accept him/her for a position at MSU; such an abrupt stop meant that one did not have to go through the usual procedures." Yulij was hired as Assistant Professor in 1968 and obtained his PhD only a year later in 1969. Indeed, he remembers several other talented young people who got hired at MSU in this way.

		As a young Assistant Professor, the restrictions of the communist regime began to become a serious burden. "I was in a category of so-called non-quit people. This meant that I could never travel to a foreign country." Yulij was convinced that the communist regime would never fail. "How could it end? I could only think of two possible ways, namely, like the Nazi regime ended, or like the tsarist regime ended, and I did not like either one of these endings." When Gorbachov gave freedom to Sakharov, Yulij understood that he might dare believe things would change.
The Solovetski monastery.

Permission to travel west

The intellectual interaction between communist and capitalist countries was, in fact, always rather active and fruitful. "Lectures in the 1960s included modern western mathematics. Arnol'd, Yu.I. Manin, Ya.G. Sinai, S.P. Novikov, A.A. Kirillov, and D.V. Anosov were the superstars of the young generation and at the forefront of creating new mathematics. They studied and taught us a lot the achievements by J.W. Milnor, A. Grothendieck, A. Haeffliger, Harish-Chandra, S. Smale and others. While this interaction was not personal, it certainly was very intense."

With the change of the political climate, the tsarist principle of `to hold and not to let through' seemed to disappear. "I got the feeling that times were indeed changing. I started to receive invitations for visits and conferences in the west. Thus far, the university administration had always ignored my question whether the doors were already open. However, when I asked again in 1989 to go to a meeting in Luminy (near Marseille) in France, I was told that there was a high probability that I could go... And, yes, I could go!!"

Yulij remembers the excitement about his first visit to the west very well. For years he had corresponded with western mathematicians through letters and now, finally, he would meet them in person for the first time! "I arrived in Luminy around 8:30 pm; everybody was still in the dining hall, but dinner had already finished. When I entered, I asked: `How far is the Mediterranian Sea?' Since it was not too far away, I suggested we go there. It was a romantic night, with a brilliant sky and the moon was shining over the sea. It was very impressive. We went swimming and that is how I first met Freddy Dumortier [Ed: see Freddy's interview in DSWeb Magazine] and Jean-Pierre Remis under the shining stars."
		Yulij, Jaume Llibre and Chendzi Li in Spain, 2006.

And this was only the beginning. Yulij began to make frequent short visits to the west to strengthen his many collaborations through personal contacts, rather than the occasional letters that used to be the only option. In those days, such short visits provided substantial support in comparison with incomes in Russia. Through the efforts of Bob Connelly, who was the Head of the Department of Mathematics at Cornell, Yulij received an invitation in 1997 to a position for one semester per year at Cornell University. He had visited Cornell the year before in spring, and gladly accepted the opportunity. He started with a five-year contract, which was renewed for another five years. Currently he is on a ten-year contract, which allows him to maintain his ingenious arrangement of having two part-time positions in Russia and the USA.

Yulij with his wife Helen (standing on the right), his students and relatives at the 10th Summer School held in Solovki, 2007.

"Even at age 12 I was dreaming about visiting the cultural capitals of the west, but never about leaving my country. I hated the communist state, but I am in love with my country." By now, Yulij feels he is an insider in both countries. "It is easy to switch. I am expected when I come." The only real difficulty is to support his seminar at MSU. Started by E. Landis (Yulij's PhD advisor) and N.N. Nekhoroshev in 1972, this seminar has been going for 36 years. Both Landis and Nekhoroshev have since passed away, and Yulij is following in their footsteps. In 1998 he invented the perfect tool to keep the seminar running through his annual five-month absence by taking his students camping for two weeks. This time of very intense communication is enough to let the seminar continue while Yulij is at Cornell University.

The Independent University of Moscow

The years 1968 to 1988 were a period of strong discrimination against Jews and talented people in general in Russian science and education. This was reflected in hiring policies and could obviously be seen at entrance exams at the levels of undergraduate and postgraduate admissions to MSU. "It meant that a number of students of Arnol'd, Manin and other great teachers did not get the opportunities they clearly deserved. For this reason, several of the more senior academics discussed the possibility of starting a new university." In 1991 twelve founders, including Arnol'd, L.D Faddeev, Novikov, Sinai and others, gave 100 dollars each to start the Independent University. Initially, there was no building and the university was more like a club; they convened in the evening hours in some cultural society building. Later on, High School 2, which is famous in Moscow for teachers such as I.M. Gelfand and E.B. Dynkyn, allowed them to use their classrooms in the evenings. In the end, Alexander Musykantski, who was the prefect of the Moscow central district, convinced Moscow's mayor Yu.M. Luzkhov to provide a building for the Independent University. Unfortunately, the city does not have the power to govern a university, and in order to get around this problem the Moscow Center for Continuous Mathematics Education was founded on the principle of providing high-school education. The Independent University was invited to teach there.

		Yulij Il'yashenko is President of the Independent University and responsible for its administration. "I like very much the spirit of Cornell University with its principle of an open door, open heart and open mind. I am happy to see this same spirit at the Independent University." On behalf of the Independent University Yulij took part in launching the Math in Moscow program, with AMS support from NSF and analogous support from Canada. Math in Moscow is a study-abroad program for US and Canadian students to spend one semester at the Independent University in Moscow. The initiative started at Cornell University whose foreign exchange office provided enormous moral support and sent its first student, Alex Smith, off to Moscow in 2001.
Swimming with Alexey Fishkin in Ithaca, 2008.

"I still have the feeling that my generation got a tremendous historical gift that we never expected. The present situation in Russia is by far the best in its history, despite all its shortcomings; people now have the opportunity to work towards individual goals and to achieve them according to their own capabilities; they can serve their country without asking for permission — this is something that had not been possible for a 1000 years!"