Not so long ago, at the head of two Russian organizations included in the list of the most criticized in the country were people with the same surname Fursenko. The eldest of two brothers, Andrei, for several years was the Minister of Education and Science of Russia. And the youngest, Sergei, headed the RFU, the Russian Football Union. Having left their posts, both officials with a solid track record did not disappear, but quickly found new prestigious and highly paid posts.
Sons of the academician
The Fursenko brothers are connected not only by blood relationship, good education, current high posts and love for quite “loud” public statements, but also by the fact that they grew up in an “academic” family. Their father, Alexander Fursenko, was a well-known scientist in the USSR who specialized in US history of the 18th-19th centuries, was an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Brother 1
Andrei Fursenko was born in 1949 in Leningrad. In Soviet times, a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics of Leningrad State University worked for a long time at the Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology. Under the leadership of the future Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov, he dealt in it with the problems of gas dynamics and shock wave processes.
Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Andrei Fursenko made a serious contribution not only to theory, having written over a hundred scientific works, but also to practice. In particular, he took part in the preparation for the only flight in November 1988 of the Buran orbiter.
Sergey Fursenko was also a member of the group of engineers involved in the space Buran. The younger brother, in particular, provided the automatic landing of this ship at the cosmodrome in the Crimea.
The Minister
After the collapse of the USSR and permission for almost any commercial activity, a talented scientist began, and also successfully, to combine science and business. And at the beginning of the XXI century, Andrei Alexandrovich became a government official. The first high-ranking position in the Russian government for the eldest of the Fursenko brothers was the post of deputy minister of industry, science and technology.
He occupied him in June 2002, and in October of the following year, Andrei Fursenko was appointed acting minister. The main achievement of one of the leaders of the ministry is the appearance in the federal budget of the country of a line on financing the scientific support of the most important state innovation projects.
The Moscow-based Skolkovo innovation complex has become the most priority scientific and technological project. Andrey Fursenko began to exercise control over him, moving in the spring of 2012 to work as an assistant to the president of the country.
Before being transferred to the presidential apparatus, Fursenko managed to stay in the role of a full-fledged minister. From March 9, 2004 to May 21, 2012, he led the Ministry of Education and Science, with Mikhail Fradkov, Viktor Zubkov and his current boss, Vladimir Putin, in three offices in a row. Fursenko was remembered by many as an active participant in the reform of the country's education system and a supporter of the integration of universities and research institutes.
They also remember him as a minister who managed to achieve implementation, and as a priority, the national project "Education". It was under Andrei Fursenko in 2007 that the system of the Unified State Exam, the Unified State Exam, was finally introduced in the country. Although at first the Minister of Education harshly criticized her. But his idea of dividing school subjects into primary and secondary support did not find.
In the same year, the government approved the bill, which is being developed, including by the Fursenko apparatus, on Russia's accession to the Bologna Declaration. Its essence is to bring domestic higher education to European standards, the appearance of bachelors and masters in Russian universities.
Among Fursenko’s most reasonable proposals is, for example, studying in schools not the foundations of Orthodoxy, but the history of all world religions, which, incidentally, met with angry condemnation from the Russian Orthodox Church. He advocated the reform of the Academy of Sciences with the transfer of part of its employees to contracts.
One of Andrei Fursenko’s interesting reform proposals is the introduction of additional qualification exams for graduates of the country's law schools who wish to work in law enforcement agencies.
Brother 2
A graduate of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, Sergei Fursenko, is five years younger than his brother. Before the onset of the Russian period of his history, he, as a specialist in electrical apparatuses, also took part in equipping the military-industrial complex with new weapons. He worked in his hometown as an engineer and head of the laboratory of the Scientific Research Institute of Radio Equipment.
Fursenko Jr. got his first serious fame at the beginning of the 21st century, when he went into business and became the producer of the sensational documentary series “Secrets of Sunken Ships”, dedicated to ships lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The sponsor of the series, which received the prestigious status of the Russian National Film from the Ministry of Culture, was Gazprom, where the son of the academician was soon invited to work.
Fursenko in football
In December 2005, Gazprom, which actually owns the Zenit football club (St. Petersburg), sent one of its major managers to lead the FC Board of Directors. And after the abolition of this post, Sergey Alexandrovich became the president of the club, in the spring and summer of 2008, who won the UEFA Cup and Super Cup. However, formally, Fursenko’s team has no relation to these achievements. After all, shortly before the brightest victories of “Zenith”, he left the club, after which he headed the Russian Football Union.
Sergei Fursenko left the RFU, criticized by fans and specialists, after an unsuccessful performance of the Russian team at the European Championship 2012 and communication on this subject with supporters of fans Vladimir Putin.
The most memorable projects of the third president of the RFU were the invitation to the national team of the Dutch coach Dick Advocaat, the late transition of the national championship to the European autumn-spring system, the adoption of the non-viable Code of Honor, as well as the verbal promise to win the 2018 World Cup home for Russia.
Currently, a member of the UEFA Executive Committee, the Union of European Football Associations and the Presidential Council for the Development of Physical Education, Fursenko Jr. is again working in the Gazprom system. And at the same time trying to realize a new idea. This time, in the fashion industry, where he decided to help Russian women who dream of dressing and looking like real Italians.
