Novosibirsk, 630090,

                                                            Computing Center

                                               USSR AS Corresponding Member

                                                       Andrei Petrovich Ershov

                                                          November 15, 1979

To the Chief of Foreign Affairs Department

Of USSR AS Presidium

A.A.Kulakov

Dear Alexander Alekseevich!

As you probably know, an All-Union symposium of restricted membership (app. 50 participants) on
Algorithms in Modern Mathematics and its Applications took place in Urgench (Khoresm region of
Uzbek SSR). The symposium was conducted in accordance with USSR AS plan by UzSSR AS
Institute of Cybernetics with me being a symposium scientific program supervisor on the part of
Department of Mathematics. Symposium plan supposed participation of foreign scientists who
arrived either individually or as the Academy of Science guests, or as Intourist customers, or within
the scope of some exchange program. The issues involving the Academy of science guests I settled
with E.D.Tabakeyev, V.V.Davydov, B.N.Naidenov (SLD) and the guests and I would like to
acknowledge that everything went off smoothly.

Symposium as a whole was very successful and at many points our shares went up substantially. At
the same time, as you probably also know, a sad slip made it impossible for French delegation 
(three persons – Nivat, Gelenbe and Vuillemin) to get to Urgench  - the fact that rose a certain
resonance.

The enclosed letters show how this occurrence was apprehended by the other party. I can only guess
what actually happened because these guests went through all the formalities within a scientific
exchange program in informatics and neither Frenchmen no anybody from FAD asked me for
anything. According to my assumptions, a person responsible for their reception didn’t worry to
book in time their seats for the only Sunday flight to Urgench and instead of booking them
immediately for some alternate flight through Tashkent or Samarkand, he simply bought them
tickets for the next Urgench flight on Thursday and neither got himself into trouble to notify his
superiors nor had it out accurately with the guests on their arrival, but instead he sent to the airport a
girl who could not explain or suggest anything to them.

I don’t know whether FAD protocol requires any formal explanation or apology, but I am feeling
myself obliged to explain myself somehow, especially since when the Frenchmen returned to Paris
having got nothing for their pains, academician Marchuk was there and promised to look into the
situation.

I think that in this case we should manifest pliability at the same time not giving cause for general
conclusions. In my opinion the right answer would be the text like the one below.

The events resulted in impossibility for French delegation to arrive to the Urgench Symposium in
time have been caused by technical blunder committed because of the lack of experience on the part
of FAD employee directly responsible for organization of French delegation sojourn in the USSR.
The mistake lay in the fact that having failed to book tickets for the direct Sunday  (September 16)
flight to Urgench, he swapped the Moscow and Urgench parts of the sojourn program ad arbitrium
by buying tickets for the Thursday (September 20) flight and had not notify his superiors of his
decision. The absence of information prevented us from giving immediate explanations of prevalent
situation by the request of the French party. The FAD highly regrets this occurrence and takes all
measures to avoid any future misunderstandings in organization of reception of visiting specialists.

If you have no objections to the above text, with your permission in two weeks I will give a similar
reply to our French colleagues.

Sincerely yours,                                                                                                             A.P.Ershov

Enclosure: letters from Nivat, Jelenbe, Paterson