Dear Mr. P. Kurtz!

Let me propose to you a project of more intimate cooperation than before between American and Russian secular humanists.

The point is to convert the site of the St.-Petersburg department of the Russian Humanist Society (RHS) "Secular Humanist" (http://www.humanism.al.ru), the only live and permanently refreshed with new information Russian Humanists' site, into a joint one with your Research Center.

This means that on this site not only Russian authors' articles (as it has been before) but also translations into Russian of annotations and texts from humanistic magazines and sites of the USA (first of all - from the magazine "Free Inquiry" and the site www.secularhumanism.org) will be published, as well as inverse translations by Russian authors (first of all - from the magazine "Common Sense" and our site).

Such a common site will break at last the language barrier that hinders more intimate and permanent communication between us, it will make possible fruitful dialogs, common search for difficult solutions, exchange of experience and so on.

We have already made some attempts of realization of the project. So, we've published translations of the three articles from the "Free Inquiry": Theodore Schick "Can Science Prove that God does not Exist?" (vol. 21 No. 1), Edward Tabash "An Open Letter to George W. Bush", Herb Silverman "Silverman?s Wager" (vol. 21 No. 2), some of your articles, as well as translation into English of Russian professor G. Givishvili's book "The Phenomenon of Humanism".

But we were forced to confine ourselves with it, because a translator's job calls for payment, and we've got no money.

Sincerely yours,
Gennady Shevelev, chairman of the St.-Petersburg Branch of the Russian Humanist Society.
31.07.03

Hello Dr. Kuvakin,

I am an American reader of the Skeptical Inquirer (where I found your e-mail address) and also a translator of Russian. Please contact me if you would like to have any Russian articles translated for CSICOP's database or for your own purposes. I intend to do this for free in my spare time (I am semi-retired). I have translated articles from the Soviet and Russian press in the past for CSICOP (such as about UFO sightings, Dzhuna Davitashvili, etc.). I do not have the translations anymore (I typed them since this is before the Internet became widely available and send the sole copy to CSICOP).

I do not wish to get honoraria for my translations.

S uvazheniyem (regards),
Gary Goldberg.
25.08.03

Dear Mr. Gary!

Mr. Kuvakin forvarded me your message with proposal to translate our articles. Thank you very much! I proposal you to visit our site. Please read our articles, select independently and translate whereupon we are ready to place them on our site.

Gratitude and best wishes to you, our american friend.

Sincerely yours,
Shevelev Gennady.
26.08.03