What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

It was my first visit to the Moscow Planetarium to a lecture about Giordano Bruno and an attempt to count the number of rays to a star in the sky (I was six years old at the time).

Can you describe the results in your paper and their importance for your field?

The paper gives the proof to the possibility of stable existence of hypothetical objects known as wormholes whose discovery and investigation appear to be the only way to test and further analyze available models of multi-element Universe. This model predicts infinitely long life of the Universe in the past and in the future, as well as infinite diversity of forms assumed by life and information.

What research projects are you working on at the moment?

At the moment our institute, in collaboration with some other organizations, completes the preparations for the launch of a Ground-Space Radio Interferometer (Project Radioastron) which will allow us for the first time to study galactic nuclei and other astronomical objects with a resolution of a millionth of a second of arc. This will provide us with, among other things, images of regions in the vicinity of the visibility horizon of supermassive black holes; or perhaps we might establish that some of these objects are entrances to wormholes.

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

It is possible that the discovery of an entrance mouth to a wormhole will constitute a breakthrough in studying many fundamental problems of modern astrophysics and cosmology.

What book are you reading right now?

The book by R. Penrose, F. Shimony, N. Cartwright and S. Hawking "The Large, The Small and The Human Mind").

If you could have dinner with any 3 people, past or present, who would they be and why?

These would be I.S. Shklovsky, S.B. Pikelner and A.D. Sakharov - I wish I could learn their opinion of the status of terrestrial civilization and especially the one in Russia.

What has been the most exciting moment in your career so far?

I had my most significant moment when becoming a student of the Mechanics and Mathematics department (Astronomical division) of Moscow University in 1950, despite the fact that at the moment my parents were in Stalin's slave labor camps.

What would you like to say in connection with the 90th anniversary of "Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk" journal?

I wish the entire editorial team of the UFN to maintain and enhance the journal's fame so that, as in the past, its pages would be among the first to announce the expected and totally unexpected discoveries.