RUSSIA: Scientists on Strike for Funds

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Andrei Ivanov

MOSCOW, Oct 9 1996 (IPS) - Russian science is facing extinction, says Vladimir Khlebodarov, chairman of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ trade union, currently holding protests across the country and which intends to stage a general strike on Nov. 5.

The Academy of Sciences includes 336 institutes and 122,000 people. But it has been unable to pay out any wages for several months. And when they do get paid, scientists’ wages today are less than many industrial workers.

The average pay at the Institute of Geophysics, for example, is about 125 dollars a month. Institute Director Vladimir Strakhov has been on hunger strike for a week. Science is facing “a threatening situation”, he says.

“Our salaries have not been paid for four months now, and payments to research workers in any case are less than subsistence level. This year the Academy has received only 50.8 percent of the funds allocated it in the federal budget and there is practically no funding for research, even for secret research.

“In another two years our science will cease to exist,” he warns.

Another serious problem is the ageing of the nation’s scientists, points out Vadim Kozlov, President of the Association of State Scientific Centres and Director of the All-Russian Electrotechnical Institute.

“The average age of personnel in a majority of scientific organisations is now 53 years,” he says. “With salaries significantly lower than those in industry and commercial structures, it is very difficult to attract talented young researchers.”

A presidential decree in June 1993 conferred the status of State Scientific Centre (SSC) on scientific enterprises, organisations, and institutions having “unique experimental-design facilities and highly qualified personnel, whose research results have received international recognition.”

Some 61 institutes were selected and for some time enjoyed rather better state support than the rest. But even this is now failing.

In an attempt to increase the number of young scientists, a fund for their support is being set up under the auspices of the Association of State Scientific Centres, but no-one knows where the money will come from.

The Academy of Sciences Trade Union has sent a number of demands to the government, not only for the payment of salaries, but also for increasing and indexing to the cost of living them. It is also demanding an increased budget for the Academy and a separate budget item for the financing of research.

In response to this the government has instructed the Finance Ministry to find a way to pay all of the government’s debts to scientific institutions.

This followed a meeting between Academician and deputy prime minister Vladimir Fortov, prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, president of the Academy of Sciences Academician Yuri Osipov and deputy finance minister Vladimir Petrov. Osipov pointed out that funding for science has been cut to one thirtieth of what it was a decade ago.

Last week the government endorsed a federal programme of priorities for scientific and technological development up to the year 2000.

The programme requests use of about 10,000 billion roubles (1.8 billion dollars) from the federal budget to add to another six percent from ‘extra-budgetary sources’ like private sector initiatives.

This should be directed into eight fields: fundamental research, information technologies and electronics, production practices, new materials and chemicals, living systems’ technologies, transport, fuel and power industry, ecology and rational nature utilisation.

Competitions will be staged to select projects for the programme. Projects which prove profitable will be expected to reimburse any initial funding.

But few expect anything practical to come from the programme. Thousands of Russian scientists have emigrated or moved into more lucrative jobs in commerce or taken second jobs. Researchers have no money for scientific journals, equipment, or new technology.

“Every day, Russian science seems to fall farther behind,” says Strakhov. “Our computers are hundreds of times slower than those used in the West,” he says.

Last year he predicted the total collapse of Russian science within a decade unless something was done. Now he has reduced the period to three or four years.

For the last several years some institutes have kept ticking over on international aid and foreign grants but this is not a solution — just a stop-gap measure. “From time to time the government announces a programme to save science but the funds never materialise,” says Strakhov.

“The government wants to shut us up by allocating small sums of money and no doubt they will try to persuade us to call off the strike.

Some in the upper echelons of the Academy of Sciences also object to taking to the streets in protest. But Strakhov and many of his colleagues do not want to beg for money any longer. “We wrote thousands of begging letters. We’ve had enough! Now we have to beat on the table.”