Gennadiy N. Lepeshkin: My work involved studying the mechanism by which disinfectants affect microbe cells. I presented, collected data, worked over that data, prepared articles for publication, spoke at meetings and conferences, prepared... processed large masses of material. I put it all together in dissertation form. So that's what it was. And I found it all very interesting.
Slava Paperno: Were these open, civilian conferences and meetings?
Lepeshkin: No, it... All the work that was done in closed institutions, it was all closed, classified.
Paperno: And the fact that you couldn't talk with other scientists and other specialists about these topics didn't bother you?
Lepeshkin: No, we... we had our own system, our own institutions, we... we had intra-agency meetings, you know, but we didn't go out into the world at large. We weren't... we could go to conferences at the Academy of Sciences, for example, in our field, but there we were usually audience members, seeking information that we needed.