Editing Akademgorodok (section)

==History==
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[[File:Akademgorodok House of Scientists.jpg|thumb|right|The House of Scientists is the cultural centre of Akademgorodok]]
[[File:Akademgorodok Morskoy Prospekt.jpg|thumb|right|Residential houses at [[Morskoy Prospekt, Novosibirsk|Morskoy Avenue]]]]
The town was founded in 1957 under the auspices of the [[Russian Academy of Sciences|Academy of Sciences]] of the [[USSR]]. Academician [[Mikhail Lavrentyev|Mikhail Alexeyevich Lavrentyev]], a [[mechanician]] and mathematician, the first Chairman of the [[Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences|Siberian Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences]], played a prominent role in establishing Akademgorodok. At its peak, Akademgorodok was home to 65,000 scientists and their families, and was a privileged area to live in.<ref name=graun16>{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/05/silicon-forest-putin-secret-weapon-global-tech-race-siberia-russia |title=Step into Silicon Forest, Putin's secret weapon in the global tech race |newspaper=The Guardian |date= 5 January 2016 |author= Oliver Wainwright |access-date= 5 January 2016}}</ref>

During the Soviet period (1961–1991), due to the peculiarity of the Soviet economic system, monetary rewards did not always translate into a higher standard of living. To offset this, a special compensation system was devised in Akademgorodok for its residents and leading scientists. For example, residents of Akademgorodok had access to special food ration distribution outlets (''{{transliteration|ru|stoly zakazov}}'') that provided, most of the time, an access to some basic subsidized foodstuffs, which were not always easily obtainable elsewhere. Scientists who had obtained a doctorate (a post-Ph.D. degree under the Russian system) were rewarded by the authorities with the special food delivery service (''{{transliteration|ru|doktorskiy zakaz}}''), which provided access to a wider selection of groceries than available to the general population; some of the scientists, despite being eligible, refused it on moral grounds.

Full and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences had access to still higher level of service (''{{transliteration|ru|akademicheskiy zakaz}}'') and were eligible to live in [[single-family residence]]s (called "cottages"), considered luxurious by Soviet standards, as most of the population lived in apartments in nine- and four-story multi-apartment buildings.

During the early years residents enjoyed great freedom from the rules and restraints of the Soviet Union, with a modernist cultural centre exhibiting works by banned Soviet artists, risqué poetry evenings, and other activities allowed nowhere else. Scientific research in areas dismissed as dangerous [[pseudoscience]] in [[Moscow]], such as [[cybernetics]] and [[genetics]], flourished. However, freedoms were severely curtailed in the 1970s during the [[Brezhnev]] era.<ref name=graun16/>