Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Andrei Fursenko: biography, activities and interesting facts

The post of Minister of Education is one of the most difficult and ungrateful in any government. Everyone faces kindergartens, schools, universities. Any attempts to reform, update existing methods face great resistance from teachers, parents, students, students - in general, most of the country's population. All this bowl of popular dislike and disdain had to be drunk to Andrei Fursenko, the Minister of Education and Science in 2004-2012. Moreover, the official himself often poured oil on the fire , shocking the society with the desire to abolish the teaching of mathematics and the Russian language in the senior classes, transferring the Academy of Sciences to the direct management of officials and displaying truly diabolical zeal in the field of various reforms.

Son of Academician

The biography of Andrei Aleksandrovich Fursenko in the early years is no different from the biographies of ordinary Leningrad intellectuals. He was born in post-war Leningrad in 1949. His father was a famous specialist in the history of America XVIII-XIX centuries. Alexander Fursenko was an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he worked as a secretary of the historical department and had great authority.

Because of the specifics of the work, the academician's family often had to move from place to place, and Andrei often changed schools. However, this did not affect his academic performance, he instantly grasped everything on the fly, showing particularly good performance in the exact sciences - mathematics and physics.

In addition to studying in the biography of Andrei Fursenko, a hobby for filming was noted. Together with friends, they folded and wandered through an amateur camera, with the help of which they kept a documentary chronicle and even filmed feature films. In one of the productions, Andrei played the role of professor, which will become in a couple of decades.

From student to doctor of science

After graduating from school, Andrei A. Fursenko entered the leading university of the northern capital, Leningrad State University, in 1966, to the most complex mathematical and mechanical faculty. Shortly before that, the country experienced another reform of education, as a result of which it was in that year that the admission commissions simultaneously besieged the crowds of tenth and eleventh-graders. The contest was very tough, dozens of applicants claimed for one place, but the son of the academician managed to overcome his first life barrier.

In the university, Andrei Alexandrovich Fursenko specialized in mechanics. In addition to studying, he was interested in social life, he was a very active Komsomol member and joined the ranks of the CPSU, while still studying at the university. Fursenko organized voluntary squads, construction teams.

Parties, visits - all this passed by the lean Petersburg intellectual, his hobbies were books, he managed to obtain the rarest editions of little known in the USSR authors.

In 1971, he completed his studies at Leningrad State University and entered post-graduate studies. After seven years he received the title of candidate of science. In 1990 he defended his doctoral dissertation.

Career of a scientist

The career of the scientist begins in parallel with the continuation of education. Andrei Fursenko entered the Physico-Technical Institute in Leningrad in 1971 and went a long way from a research trainee to a deputy director for research.

Specialized young scientist in his research on mathematical modeling of gas-dynamic processes, plasma physics. The worker Andrei Alexandrovich wrote about a hundred scientific works, while not abandoning public activity, being an active party worker.

Fursenko's activity in the Soviet years is connected with the rise and sharp decline of the national science. In particular, he was one of the creators of the legendary Buran, the first and last Soviet space shuttle. Andrei Fursenko, working in a huge team, was responsible for the calculation of the communication speed of the ship.

In the new reality

There is a stereotype about Soviet scientists that this is a breed of impractical, naive people who do not know how to adapt to modern realities. One Boris Abramovich Berezovsky vividly demonstrated that one should not believe stamps. The active Komsomol member and party worker Andrei Fursenko also did not want to go to the bottom along with all Soviet science.

In 1990, together with Yuri Kovalchuk and the future chief railwayman Yakunin, he went to the head of the Physico-Technical Institute, Zhores Alferov, with the proposal to create at the institute a number of independent innovative firms that would deal with the problems of introducing scientific achievements into the real economy. However, the patriarch of national science and the future Nobel laureate refused to businessmen from science, not converging on the issue of combining the positions of research workers in future organizations and actually at the institute itself.

In 1991, Andrei Fursenko leaves the scientific work and goes headlong into business. He becomes one of the creators of the bank "Russia", which declares itself bankrupt after the August putsch. For some time the doctor of sciences was the vice-president of the "Center for Advanced Technologies and Development", after which he headed the "Regional Fund for Scientific and Technical Development", which he supervised during the nineties. These structures, according to the creators, engaged in attracting investments in production with high technology, as well as the reorganization of defense complexes.

Coming to the government

In 1994 Andrei Fursenko made a significant acquaintance with the future head of state Putin, who at that time was in charge of foreign economic relations of the northern capital. An official of the city administration provided a scientist-businessman with the transfer of defense complexes to the Fursenko funds.

Having headed the country, Vladimir Vladimirovich then will recollect the educated businessman and call him to work in the government. In December 2001, Andrei Fursenko became deputy minister of industry, science and technology. Already in 2003 he became a full-fledged master in the ministerial cabinet. A year later, a new ministry was created, which united the issues of education and science. The head of this titanic work, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov instructed all the same Andrei Fursenko, who will hold on to his new position until 2012.

Conductor of USE

Energetic and active, the doctor of sciences decided to take a radical turn for reforms in domestic science and education. The first loud step of Fursenko was the introduction of the USE, although the very idea belonged to his predecessor as Minister of Education. Initially, he was negative about the idea of a single state exam conducted in a test form, but then radically changed his mind.

According to Fursenko, the introduction of the USE would allow to reduce corruption at times when enrolling entrants to universities and exclude the human factor in the entrance exams. In response to the reins came the rectors of many of the country's largest institutes and universities. In particular, the head of Moscow State University Sadovnichy sharply criticized the EGE.

The Ministry went on this issue on some concessions and allowed individual schools to conduct student selection on the basis of specialized Olympiads.

OPK and OBZH for schoolchildren

Another loud step of the minister was the introduction of religious subjects into the school curriculum. Here Fursenko contrived to incur the wrath of both the representatives of the church and the secular intelligentsia. He spoke for studying the history of major world religions in schools and sharply objected to the fact that the methodology of the subject "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" was given to the regions without coordination with the center.

All the hated and spat politician went into rage and finally shocked the society with his new program of education for the senior classes. In the minister's opinion, only OBZH and physical education were required for the pupils, mathematics and Russian became additional subjects. People sensed that Fursenko was slowly planning the transition to education on a fee-paying basis, and almost jerked the imprudent minister into pitchfork. The president of the country, Dmitry Medvedev, had to disown himself from the hated Fursenko, and the new program was quickly wrapped up.

Higher education and science

Higher education also did not remain without attention Fursenko. He became an active conductor of the Bologna system and initiated the transition to a two-tier system of higher education - bachelor's and master's degrees.

One of the most notable steps of Fursenko was his attack on the Academy of Sciences. This branch of public activity really needed attention of the state, because, because of the outflow of young scientists to the West in the nineties, most academics had long crossed the turn of the seventy years, and they could hardly have become sources of daring innovative projects.

However, the Minister of Science and Education decided that, first of all, it was necessary to focus on the administrative and economic activities of scientific institutions and developed a reform plan, according to which the RAS, together with everything, was completely transferred to direct state administration.

Such a loss of traditional independence could not please academicians, and they declared a real war to the reformer. The matter ended with the fact that after a long struggle, after the former scientist left the post of minister, the parties agreed on a compromise.

In 2012, one of the most unpopular ministers of modern Russia resigned. Today Andrei Alexandrovich Fursenko is an assistant to the President of the Russian Federation for education and science.