To the Party bureau of S.I.A. “Informatika”

                                                                               From Academician A.P. Ershov

                                                                      Petition

Dear comrades!

On the 21^st of January of this year, at the public Party meeting of the Association, I came out with a
 criticism of erroneous (in my opinion) conduct of the Secretary of the Party bureau Comrade B.A.
 Kargin while performing a duty of Party assistance in decision on the important issue of foreign
 business trips that later caused damage to business. The main point of my criticism was that while
 reporting on the subject under discussion at the field session of the C.P.S.U. District Committee,
 Comrade Kargin substituted the collective opinion of the management, the trade union and the
 Party bureau by his own one and did not inform the interested party of the negative decision, which
 resulted in the loss of opportunity of timely and more extensive further discussion of the problem.

In his concluding remarks at the meeting, Comrade Kargin did not respond to the criticism to the
 point but only confirmed that in this situation he had done as he had considered necessary. Instead,
 he expressed his own opinion on the business trip file, and did it in a form hurting reputation and
 dignity of the persons concerned.

My position in this situation can be stated as follows:

1. The decision to deny two Computing Center fellows the trip to the scientific event important
    to them and to the business concern was a mistake.

2. Substitution of the Institute’s position when discussing the issue of the trip at the District
    Committee by the personal position of the Secretary of the Party bureau was a mistake.

3. Consent with the following private consideration of the problem was a mistake.

4. The arguments substantiating the personal position of the Secretary on this subject were
    erroneous.

The Secretary of the Party bureau, Boris Aleksandrovich Kargin, thinks differently. One of us is
apparently not right.

It seems to me that such a conflict of attitudes on such an important issue touching upon the
principles of Party supervision and people’s reputation, can not remain at the level of a difference  of personal opinion. In this connection I beg the Party bureau to discuss and define at its public
meeting its position upon the essence of the subjects touched upon in this petition.

January 25, 1988