Interview with SciHub Founder Alexandra Elbakyan

Alexandra Elbakyan’s Personal Page:

Abrisham

I’d Like to start off with a quote by Saadi Shirazi:

‘Roam abroad in the world, and take thy fill of its enjoyments before the day shall come when thou must quit it for good.’

What do you think this quote means to us as humans and how to live our life?

Alexandra

That quote in my opinion means a person should not be narrow-minded but instead try to acquire a broad knowledge about various parts of this world; learn different views and opinions by traveling a lot.

I have looked up a Wikipedia article about Saadi Shirazi, and he indeed was an avid traveller, talked to many people and that is how he became a wise person.

In ancient times, travel was the only way to get knowledge. Today, we can explore various people and sources without leaving our computer table.

However, the quote is still true – metaphorically. Travel in literary sources is a metaphor for studying.

Abrisham

Your work for Sci-Hub helps people all over the world access academic literature without a paywall creating a truly global and equitable scientific community, how did the passion for this project come about?

Alexandra

I have many inspirations to draw upon!

I was inspired by an idea of a Global Brain, that emerges on our planet out of a network of all people exchanging information.

Sci-Hub is a project that enables this information exchange and hence creates a Global Brain in the planet.

For me it is connected with the idea of a global community of people sharing knowledge with each other, which is connected to the idea of communism.

In Soviet ideology, communism is a greater good, a goal to which society is moving forward. I have been also inspired by science, and Sci-Hub is a project that moves science forward. Finally is that all these things: information, communism, and science – are connected in form of a god.

I studied ancient societies as a small research project at the university. What I found was that in ancient times, people have had many gods, each of them having different responsibilities, and what is most interesting that there always have been a god of writing, knowledge and science. These writing gods are numerous, and most famous of them is Hermes or Mercury. If we look at Mercury in they mythological ancient world, they was a god of travel too!

Knowledge is connected to travel since ancient times but in general Mercury was a god of communication, or having something in common.

That is how science is connected to communism.

Abrisham

I’d love for you to share about your travel experiences either abroad or in your home country, and how you have ‘take[n] thy fill of its enjoyments before the day shall come when thou must quit it for good’?

Alexandra

When I was a little kid, I traveled to United Arab Emirates because mother and her colleagues received free travel tickets at the job as a bonus.

I loved the place although I do not remember a lot.

Later in summers my family used to travel to Kyrgyzstan to Issyk-Kul lake, it took a few hours by bus ride to arrive here from Almaty. I loved these vacations.

When I was about 20 I got a chance to travel to Europe and United States, supported by my mother, and visited various places. But I did not appreciate traveling then. I took travel as some kind of a job: when you arrived at some place, you must visit all tourist attractions and make photos. That was quite tedious.

Today I do not travel to US or Europe anymore because of Sci-Hub, for example they suspect in the US that I’m a Russian spy, so it is possible that I will be arrested when arriving there. I have a dream to travel around the whole of Russia, it is a huge country stretched from western Crimea to Soviet harbour on its far East, and I want to travel along this path and visit all cities.

In almost every Russian city there is a big avenue named after Lenin and a Soviet avenue.

Abrisham

Have you ever had any spiritual or profoundly awakening experiences whilst travelling?

Alexandra

Well no,but what is a spiritual experience? Some say that dreams are spiritual experiences since we can somehow receive information about the future or insights in our dreams. For example, a prominent Open Access advocate Harold Varmus was going to become an English teacher, but on one night he saw a dream that he got ill and every student in his class was very happy about that!

Then he switched to medicine. He received a Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine later.

So dreams indeed can be very awakening.

I launched Sci-Hub on 5 September 2011, but three days before that I’d seen a dream that I was inside the Russian Academy of Sciences and there is darkness everywhere. So I wanted to switch on the light and turned on the light switch. Suddenly the light switches on, not only on my floor but in the whole building on all 12 floors. People that were sleeping in random postures everywhere are waking up and very happy.

And indeed when I launched Sci-Hub everyone became extremely happy!

Abrisham

How these spiritual experiences or any others shaped you as a person?

Alexandra

It gave me confidence in doing what I do!