Ecological specialization as a desirable future for Russia[«Я Благодарю Судьбу За То, Что Она Толкнула Меня На Путь Аграрной Проблематики»]

In the interview to the Russian Journal of Peasant Studies, Elmira Nikolaevna Krylatykh, an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a famous researcher of the agrofood sphere in Russia and Europe, an author of more than 250 scientific works, a professor that supervised more than 30 doctoral and PhD theses, considers the milestones of her life and scientific career, and defines the key thematic and institutional transformations of the Soviet and post-Soviet agrarian science. Thus, she describes the Soviet scientific approaches to the study of agrarian economy that determined the strong points in the research of the All-Union Institute of Agricultural Economics, in which E.N. Krylatykh studied the costs of the collective farms production. The interview also focuses on the development of economic and mathematical modeling of agrarian economy in the All-Union Research Institute of Cybernetics of the USSR Ministry of Agriculture, in which E.N. Krylatykh wrote and defended her doctoral thesis “Agricultural production planning based on the system of economic and mathematical models”. E.N. Krylatykh makes interesting estimates of scientific developments and their authors when considers the features of organization and development of science at the Faculty of Economics of the Moscow State University, the Agrarian Institute of the Lenin’s All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Academy of National Economy that later turned into the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Throughout the interview, E.N. Krylatykh emphasizes the significance of random circumstances that determine the fate of the scientist.