By IPS Correspondents
MOSCOW, Mar 8 1996 (IPS)

Russian scientists say the foundations of scientific activity could be ruptured unless the government increased support for suffering scientists and underfunded laboratories.

Wages and salaries for scientists are over two months in arrears, explains Valery Sobolev, Chairman of the Russian Academy of Sciences trade union. The government has provided only 60 per cent of budget allocations from last year and now owes staff of the institutes and the Academy of Sciences R266 billion (56 million US dollars), he says.

“We also cannot agree to the government’s proposed budget for the Academy for 1996,” he adds. He says the allocated sum of 2.44 million US dlrs should be at least doubled. “Only then will our science be able to perform adequately”.

High technology projects account for only 5-15 per cent of budget financing. In the former Soviet Union it was one-third of a much bigger overall outlay. Many projects are being cancelled for lack of funds.

Presidential aide Alexander Livshits has promised that 38 million US will be paid into the Academy’s central department and 59 million US to its regional divisions to take care of immediate needs. However Sobolev warns that protests and strikes will increase unless a new budget is adopted.

Financing of science now is 15 times less than in 1990. Many institutes saw the new year in with arrears of payments amounting to five to six months budget financing. They face the prospect of having their heating and electricity supplies cut off.

Instruments and equipment are becoming obsolete. There has been a sharp drop in fundamental research. “Young people are quitting science,” says Sobolev.

“The percentage of personnel under 30 has declined to five per cent,” according to Academician Vladimir Strakhov. “Another five to 10 years of this treatment of Russian science will result in its total degradation and loss of prestige in the world”.

Protests have also come from the Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch in the form of an open letter to President Boris Yeltsin. The letter says it appears the President receives only “distorted information about the real state of affairs at the academy and Russian science, in general.”

In the past five years the budget financing of the Siberian Branch has decreased to a seventh of its previous total and the number of the Branch’s personnel has been reduced by 30 per cent. Wages are little more than unemployment benefits because normal scientific activity is impossible without energy resources, materials, equipment and the maintenance of infrastructure.

Chairman of the Presidium of the Siberian Branch, Valentin Koptyug, warns that science complex towns and centres like Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk are facing ruin.

Overall Russia spends less than 0.5% of its GDP on science. In 1991, budget allocations for science amounted to 3.8 per cent of the total. Last year it had fallen to 1.8 per cent. Wages are on average only 63.2 US dlrs a month. Analysts warn that about a million researchers and scholars may leave the country before the year 2000.

Yet Russia’s Minister for Science and Technical Policy, Boris Saltykov, says the situation has begun to improve.

He says there are more than 70 extra-budgetary funds established to conduct R&D activities in Russia financed mainly by industry. “The Ministry has been supporting a vigourous regional 50:50 policy to financially support major research centres situated in major cities like Moscow, St Petersburg, Samara, ” he says.

Meanwhile, various charity foundations, including foreign ones, have been working actively to support Russia’s science as well. Many Research and Development (R&D) institutions have done very well under the new competitive environment.

“All state research centres, for example, are spending close to 30 per cent of their budget to carry out foreign R&D orders. However, fundamental research projects cannot be made wholesale subject to such policies.”

One area of major concern, however, is the future of unique projects such as the thermo-nuclear plant Tokamak-15, the deep water neutrino telescope on Lake Baikal and the radio-telescope Ratan-600 among others.

“Some of those projects are doing well, some are still being developed, and others require support,” says Saltykov. The Ministry is compiling the list of unique R&D plants that require urgent state financial assistance.

Over the coming year, efforts will be made to develop legislation in order to switch to a contracting system within the science sector. New laws are also needed to properly protect intellectual property. “Because of inadequacies in these areas we are losing a lot of money in dealing with our foreign partners,” he says.

Another major focus for 1996 is the need to step up the restructuring of the R&D organisations. A list of the research institutions not slated for privatisation (almost 1,000 organisations) has been drafted.

“However it is very hard to determine the fields of knowledge that may yield good results and which could be privatised,” he admits.

“Researchers must be ready to restructure their operations, resulting in the loss of some activities and the closure of some institutes — measures increasingly unpopular within the scientific community,” he warns.

But Saltykov echoes the pleas of scientists that adequate finance is essential and notes that only space exploration programmes have not been affected. “If the money is given only to finance space programmes, those programmes will eventually close because they will lose their ground support,” he warns.

Overall, the salaries paid to scientists are inadequate, he admits. “Russia’s scientific community has already shrunk by close to 40 per cent. The best specialists and experts are seeking better lives abroad. But our research activities cannot be interrupted even for one day or it will take years to catch up.”

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