More than one

A phone call interrupts the interview. When he comes back, Miloshev begins with a joke; "A professor does research and reports on the results. At some point, one of his colleagues asks ‘but where are you going to apply that?’ ‘What do you mean where?’ the professor answers; ‘in my professional folder.’"
Serious again, Miloshev continues; "we are expecting a report from the European Scientific Foundation, which will help us greatly by showing us where we stand and where we should be."

He expects change to pick up speed once the report is out.
"Science and higher education in Bulgarian in the past 20 years have seriously decreased in quality. This is true for BAS, for the Sofia University, the Technical University, and all the others," Miloshev says.

Blaming a 20-year lack of political vision regards science and higher education, Miloshev says he now sees things improving.
"This country has vulgarised incredibly in the last 20 years. Someone has to put an end to this," he says.

To explain what he means, Miloshev quotes a Bulgarian saying; "акъл не ми давай, пари ми дай" (Don’t give me advice, give me money) and offsets it with a paraphrased translation of an American version;" дай ми акъл, аз парите сам ще ги изкарвам (Give me advice, money I can make). "I think that last one is more valid," Miloshev says.

"One way or another, we have to justify the money society provides us. This kind of thinking is lacking here. They do not want to understand there is no such thing as a free lunch, that it is no longer the communist party that decides how much money we will get," Miloshev says.

He says "the worst inheritance" from Bulgaria’s socialist era is the attitude "that we should not think, someone else will think for us and we only have to comply".
Miloshev sums up what BAS should be. "We have to be the intellectual elite of this country. We should be marching ahead and hand society things that will prove themselves with time, even if these things seem unrealistic at first. That is our work, our role in society."