In the year of 2014 the 21st Century Science & Technology Associates celebrated 150 years of Volodymyr Ivanovych Vernadsky, by publishing the two-volume anthology of original translations of His works. Meghan Rouillard wrote a very nice Introduction in first volume of “The Biosphere”, under the title “150 Years of Vernadsky: A Scientist for Mankind's Future”. Nowadays, 159 years later, the existence of the biosphere is endangered like it never was since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. However, in that time, there were two very strong but, at the same time, very wise leaders of former USSR and USA. They were Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who both wisely and bravely pulled the “handbrakes”, almost at last moment before nuclear disaster.

So, let’s go back for a while on Volodymyr Ivanovych Vernadsky.He is definitely very important person for nations, the Ukrainians, and both for the Russians.Not just because he is considered as one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology. Not just because of his work and his formation in the company of Vasily Dokuchaev, the founder of soil science and, also in the company of Alexey Pavlov, famous Russian geologist and palaeontologist who became famous by his works in stratigraphy, but because of Vernadsky’s importance in scientific heritage of both now warring states, Russia and Ukraine. Volodymyr Ivanovych Vernadsky was born in the year of 1863 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His family moved from Kyiv to Saint Petersburg because of his father was Russian Imperial economist and he get the position of Active State Councillor in the Governing Senate in St. Petersburg, but it is very important to emphasize that his mother was a noblewoman of Ukrainian Cossack descent and even, according to some family legends the ancestors of his father were Zaporozhian Cossacks. In 1912 Volodymyr Ivanovych Vernadsky became a member of the Russian and later Soviet Academy of Sciences and in 1918 he founded the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.

Some historians of science will probably say, with irony, that Vernadsky had advisory role in Soviet atomic bomb project. Yes, he had, but this is not the point of this letter. However, considering the life of Vernadsky in constellation of current invasion of Russian military forces on Ukraine, everybody should wonder; - How many of our Ukrainian colleagues, with similar life stories, are right now under the fire of Russian tanks, jets, battleships, artillery and all the monstrous facilities and devices for spraying the death and destruction, and, how close we are all to nuclear war, considering the statements of President Vladimir Putin and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov? Moreover, right now the Russian forces occupied the biggest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, after the shelling the facility today morning (Friday, March 4, 2022) and that is happening 36 years after the world’s biggest nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in 1986.

My fellow Russian colleagues, please raise your voice against that war in Ukraine because of all your Ukrainian colleagues. Because of all the families you know in Ukraine. Raise your voice because of your country and your nation, because of freedom, because of world peace. Maybe you think there is nothing you can do. Trust me you can do a lot, because I am quite sure you clearly remember famous Russian writer Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, a strong critic of political repression in Soviet Union. Please, raise your voice because the scientists all over the world as intellectual elite of every country must raise their voices against any kind of political ponerology, and finally, raise your voice because "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." Thomas Jefferson.

Dr Siniša Srečec, Križevci College of Agriculture, M. Demerca 1, HR-48260 Križevci, Croatia. [email protected]

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