Maybe "Caller ID" Would Help.  Frank Kuznik.  Air & Space/Smithsonian;
June/July 1992.  [ISSN 0886-2257]

     For 30-odd years the lingering aftershocks of Sputnik and a
steady stream of tabloid headlines had the West--well, maybe just
a handful of radio astronomers and UFO nuts--worried that the
Soviets would score the first discovery in the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).  Now the truth can be told: 
the Soviets never had the time, money, or cosmic contacts we
thought they did.

     Take it from Vladimir Strelnitski, an esteemed Russian
astrophysicist and the number-two man in the former Soviet
Union's SETI efforts.  At a Smithsonian-sponsored lecture in
Washington last March, Strelnitski made a persuasive case for
intelligent life elsewhere but admitted that he and his
colleagues haven't had the hardware to mount a serious search. 
"This is the biggest [radio astronomy] antenna in the Soviet
Union," he said as a slide displayed a huge haystack in front of
what looked like a tottering aluminum fence.  Then he delivered
the punchline:  "This haystack reminds us that the search for
extraterrestrials is like searching for a needle in a haystack." 
Strelnitski characterized the Soviet SETI program as essentially
a hobby for a small coterie of scientists who are perpetually
begging for funds and time on radio telescopes.  Still, that
hasn't kept them from doing some first-rate theorizing. 
Strelnitski was part of a group that developed the Zodiac
Strategy, which calls for looking out along the line of the
ecliptic twice a year for signals hat an advanced civilization
might be beaming our way.  And a colleague of Strelnitski's
developed the "convergent strategy of observations," the idea
that SETI monitoring could be more productive if synchronized
with a highly visible celestial event like a nova or other sort
of cosmological exclamation point.

     The first question from the audience brought the lecture
down to earth with a resounding thud.  A grandmotherly type
wanted to know how come we're looking for aliens hundreds of
light-years away when they're right here on Earth, operating UFOs
out of a secret underground base in Nevada.  Strelnitski sighed
and said, "I thought maybe this lecture would be an exception,
that the first question would not be about UFOs."  He went on to
say that while he believed in them, having seen one himself, it
was wrong to equate UFOs with extraterrestrials or even consider
them as anything more than a cultural phenomenon until some
genuine scientific evidence is in hand.

     "UFOs are always the first question, and sometimes the
middle and last ones when I speak on this subject," Strelnitski
later explained.  "I am not opposed to this activity.  But it
gives people the illusion that other problems are more important
than their terrestrial problems."  Anyone looking for answers
from the skies, he says, would do better to take up religion.  He
regards the seaRch for extraterrestrials as an intellectual
exercise with no reward beyond satisfying Earthbound curiosity. 
Even if we someday make contact, he says, it would be a mistake
to look to our new acquaintances for solutions to Earthly
mysteries.  Should we ever start plying them with such questions,
he hopes they'll radio back:  "Figure it out for yourselves."