Russian Science After Ten Years of Transition and Foreign Support

Moderator: Andrew Kuchins
Presenters: Irina Dezhina and Loren Graham

On February 19th, 2002, Irina Dezhina and Loren Graham delivered a presentation on the state of Russian science to launch their working paper just published by the Carnegie Endowment, "Russian Science After Ten Years of Transition and Foreign Support." Irina Dezhina is a senior researcher at the Institute for the Economy in Transition in Moscow, Russia. Loren Graham is professor of the history of science at MIT. Their paper was initially presented at the conference "International Support for Science in Russia and Ukraine: A Ten-Year Retrospective and Look Ahead," held in London on October 22-23, 2001. The research and writing of this paper was supported by the U.S Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF).

Loren Graham opened the presentation with a short introduction on the basic structure of the Soviet scientific establishment inherited by the Russian Federation. The Soviet system was composed of three separate institutional "pyramids": the university system, the academy system, and the military-industrial complex. Of these three, the military-industrial complex enjoyed the lion's share of the funding, receiving some 80% of all resources devoted to the sciences. The remaining resources were split unevenly between the university system, which received 7% of the funding available, and the academy system, which received 13%. Unlike its western counterpart, the university system of the Soviet Union placed a low priority on research and was mainly a pedagogical system. In fact, almost 60% of all fundamental research was done through the academy system which was large enough and powerful enough to warrant the title of "empire of knowledge." This academy system has no western analogs; it was both a learned society and an administrative bureaucracy.

The Soviet scientific system possessed both advantages and disadvantages. It enjoyed generous financial and psychological support, a strong educational establishment and had the ability to concentrate on a few high-priority projects through centralized control of research. However, the Soviet system was negatively impacted by its insistence on rigidly segregating research from education and fundamental research from applied research as well as the over-emphasis placed on the military and the low productivity engendered by the absence of genuine peer review and other factors.

The abortive putsch of 1991 allowed critics of the system the opportunity to engage in genuine reform, which they did by establishing a new Russian Academy to serve as a Western-style learned society in competition with the existing Soviet Academy. Initially, the two academies coexisted, however, the privileges and prestige of the old Soviet academy proved too enticing and the two academies were fused into a single entity by December, 1991. The result was a Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) that was basically the same as the Soviet Academy except for a reform of the presidium election process and the introduction of a limited system of peer-review.

The failure to reform the institutions of Russian science was quickly overshadowed by the financial and human crisis that developed. As Irina Dezhina explained, the statistics from 1991 to 1999 reveal a drastic decrease both in the amount of funding provided for research (which fell from 1.03% to .32% of GNP) and in the number of personnel involved in R&D in Russia (which was cut in half). This general collapse was accompanied by a massive "brain drain" that was both internal and external. According to Dezhina, exact numbers are difficult to come by and estimates of external flight range from 7,000 researchers for the period 1993-1996 to 30,000 for the same period. Moreover, it is estimated that only ten percent of all researchers in Russia are working full time in science, while the rest of Russia's scientists continue to list themselves as staff members but spend most of their time in activities outside of science as part of a huge internal "brain drain."

During this period of tumultuous upheaval, foreign support of Russian science constituted a very important source of financing. This support has taken many forms over the past decade, progressing from emergency help extended to individuals in the early 1990s to cooperative support and research during the mid 1990s with an emphasis on the development of infrastructure (libraries, telecommunications, laboratory equipment). From 1997 on, foreign support has been geared towards supporting the institutional reform of Russian science, strengthening the bond between basic and applied research and between research and education, and supporting underrepresented groups like women in science and young researchers. Foreign initiatives have not been large enough to fundamentally reorganize Russian science.

Rather, they have provided "demonstration models" that have helped the scientific establishment adapt to the new economic and political environment of Russia. Specifically, foreign assistance has helped Russian science by teaching better planning strategies and better proposal writing skills, improving the material resources available to Russian scientist and by reducing the extent of the brain drain.

Graham and Dezhina are cautiously optimistic about the future of Russian science. While it may still be in trouble, there are a few bright spots on the horizon. In the last two years, the Russian government has delivered the sums it promised, and the decline in the number of researchers in Russia has halted. It seems likely that the worst period has past. Moreover, Russia has not lost its interest in science, as demonstrated by the rise in enrollment of graduate students in Russian universities. In Graham's words, "Science is not the delicate flower that we thought it was. Rather it is more like a hardy weed." But he cautioned that, "Although science may be resistant to poverty, it may also be resistant to reform." In the view of these two scholars, if reform of Russian science is to occur, it will be evolutionary, not revolutionary. In this process, the impact of foreign influence has been great and positive and should be continued if not simply for the sake of science, than for the sake of international security and the future of a civil society in Russia.

Summary by Karlis Kirsis, Junior Fellow, Russia & Eurasia Program.