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RUSSIAN SCIENCE:
Academy Agrees to Post-Soviet Crash Diet
Bryon MacWilliams*

Faced with an aging membership and deteriorating infrastructure, the Russian Academy of Sciences accedes to government calls for reform
MOSCOW--It would turn out to be the most tumultuous meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) that anyone could remember. Many of the best scientific minds in Russia quietly seethed last May as science minister Andrei Fursenko told them how things were going to be different. The government would spend more on the sciences in return for a massive reorganization that would mean layoffs and many fewer research institutes.
But before Fursenko could finish, a shrill, stifling whistle pierced the air. Mathematician Yuri Osipov, the academy's president, immediately rose from his chair and said, "I demand that whoever whistled leave the hall." An elderly man with a thick, gray beard--a well-known specialist in artificial intelligence--stood and left. "The minister made my blood boil ... to such a degree that my fingers wound up in my mouth and a whistle came out," Vladimir Arlazarov later told the newspaper Izvestia.
Arlazarov wasn't alone in his outrage. But, in the end, RAS agreed to meet the government halfway in reconciling the scientific legacy of the Soviet Union with the realities of modern Russia. RAS plans by 2008 to close or reorganize dozens of its 452 research institutes and withhold funding from as much as 20% of its staff. Half of that workforce, some 56,000, are researchers. In return, the government has promised a 150% rise in state financing of the sciences, from $1.6 billion to $3.9 billion. That influx of cash would boost the average researcher's monthly salary from $240 to $1050, and annual per capita spending on labs and equipment would soar from $3200 to $26,000.
The academy comprises only 6% of Russia's state scientific workforce, but its roster of Nobel laureates and its commitment to basic research traditionally have made it the star of the country's scientific firmament. Russia inherited the best institutes and infrastructure when the Soviet Union split up. Since then, however, the fortunes of its scientists have withered as government financing plummeted, and RAS members refused to countenance any downgrading of fundamental research. Yet many institutes can no longer afford to do any science and lease their premises to businesses. Many of those researchers who have remained at their posts hold second or third jobs.
Last year, government officials began to argue that a country as poor as Russia could not afford a system of 2670 scientific organizations with few ties to Russian businesses. The Ministry of Education and Science drew up a secret plan to reform and modernize the sciences that would have all but abolished the academy, triggering protests nationwide by trade unions. Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov pronounced RAS akin to the Russian Orthodox Church: It neither could be, nor should be, reformed.
But hostility toward the plan began to soften as researchers realized that time was not on their side. With 69 as the average age of RAS members and only 5% under 35, "everyone came to the conclusion that reform is necessary and urgent, because any other way science will simply cease to exist," says RAS spokesperson Irina Presnyakova. Osipov and Fursenko began to talk seriously.
The final compromise preserves both the academy and basic science. But the brunt of the cuts will be borne by thousands of other scientific organizations--those engaged almost exclusively in applied research--largely under the control of state industries and various government ministries. Last month, Fursenko announced that, by 2010, the number of such organizations would be slashed to 1600. "Right now, the government is trying to restore control," says Aleksei Ananchenko, press secretary of the ministry's Federal Agency for Science and Innovation, who expects legislation spelling out the changes to be presented early next year in the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament.
The bulk of the institutes still left standing by 2010 will be compelled to compete for funds in seven priority areas including information technology, ecology, and research in security and counterterrorism. Ananchenko says that directors of these institutes would have to retire at 55, and heads of labs and departments at 60. Researchers would not be subject to age limits but would undergo annual reviews for the first 3 years beginning in 2006 instead of once every 5 years, as they do now. There will be special incentives for researchers between 30 and 35 years old, and inducements to return for those now working abroad.
After more than a decade spent defending their status and livelihood, the old warhorses of RAS are finally resigned to the inevitability of change. "Without science," says Presnyakova, "we'll become a Third World country with missiles."

Bryon MacWilliams is a writer in Moscow.