Decline of Science in Russia

["Ken Hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From Johnson's Russia list:

Russian science shrinks by 60 pct, faces post-Soviet collapse: expert

MOSCOW, June 2 (AFP) -
The number of Russian scientists has dropped by a staggering 60 percent in
the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the country's science
programme is itself on the verge of collapse, a top expert warned Saturday.

The number of researchers working in Russian science institutes had fallen
from two million in 1990 to 800,000, the head of the United Institute of
Terrestrial Physics told the first-ever meeting of the Revival of Russian
Science movement, Interfax said.

Vladimir Strakhov also highlighted other statistics that revealed the
Russian
science establishment was not only undergoing a crisis but in danger of
collapse due to lack of funds.

He told fellow scientists at the meeting that the hardware used in most
technical laboratories had not been replaced for eight to 10 years, while
the
average age of other equipment was 15 years.

As a result, Russia had fallen from its lofty pedestal as a Cold War science
superpower to the bottom rung of states with the least scientific potential
-- alongside Hungary, Spain, Poland and New Zealand.

Strakhov added that Russian science was literally dying out since state-run
academies were failing to attract a younger generation of researchers, with
the result that the average age of professors was around 70 and that of
doctors of science over 60.

Even the so-called "candidates of science" -- who occupy the next level down
in Russia's hierarchical university system -- were around 55 on average.

Strakhov told the meeting that the low level of pay in the academic world
was
to blame for Russia's scientific crisis, adding that the wages of
researchers
had dropped by 80 percent during the post-Soviet decade.

Average spending on a scientific researcher in Russia is already 25 times
smaller than in the world's other industrialised states, but Strakhov's
warning comes at a bleak time for Russian science amid reports that the
government is seeking to impose new restrictions on the intellectual
community.

Scientists warned of a return to Soviet-era restrictions in Russia under
former KGB spy President Vladimir Putin after documents requiring them to
report all foreign contacts became law this week.

A directive from the Russian Academy of Sciences obtained by AFP ordered
institutes to adopt a series of measures "to avoid any harm to the Russian
state in the sphere of economic and scientific cooperation."

Signalling the consequences for Russia's 800,000 scientists, the IOGen
genetics institute on May 24 issued an order requiring its employees to
inform the director by June 1 of any international agreements they may have
entered into.

The internal memorandum also told them to inform the foreign department of
any visit by a foreigner to their laboratories and of any application for
financial aid from organisations abroad.

This looks like "an attempt to impose real control on contacts between
Russian scientists and their Western colleagues, requiring them to seek
permission, and not just inform" about such links, said a leading member of
the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Mikhail Feigelman.

Under this scenario, the cash-starved Russian science community would face
"miserable prospects," he warned as young Russians now studying deserted it
en masse for lucrative work abroad.

"Fairly soon, within a few years there won't be any effective Russian
science
left," the scientist told Moscow Echo radio.

Last October, President Vladimir Putin hailed the award of a Nobel prize for
physics to Russian scientist Zhores Alferov, the first of his compatriots to
be honoured by the Stockholm-based jury since the collapse of Communism.

Yet the outpouring of national pride that greeted Alferov's award disguised
the fact that the scientist's prizewinning work in the field of
semiconductors and opto-electronics had been carried out in the early 1960s

under the Soviet system.

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