La science en Russie

Among the privileges granted by the Soviet regime to the nomenklatura, there was an institution that enjoyed the unreserved support of the state and immense prestige within society, prestige that was all the greater because it was in open rivalry with the United States and matched the Americans’ achievements in many fields: the scientific establishment. The ideological rationale is well known: in the former Soviet Union, science was declared to be at once a capital asset of the nation, a public service and a productive force. Similarly, the translation of ideology into action provided a model of organisation and support: Marxism invoked social theory and practice in making the state the unquestioned patron of science and science the obedient servant of the state. In reality, the more that basic research contributed to the defence effort, which was allocated the bulk of the investment in R&D, the more power, prestige and privileges were given to researchers.
With the collapse of communism, this model of patronage and organisation was drastically shaken up: funding was brutally cut back; there was a swift and dramatic brain drain of scientists (nobody knows how many emigrated to countries suspected of terrorist activities); the prestige that science had enjoyed was eroded, in particular because scientists were associated in the public mind with the decision-makers who were responsible for the economic failures and technological disasters of the old regime, ranging from Chernobyl to environmental pollution.
After a decade of criticisms, attempts at drastic reforms that came to nothing, of enormous losses to be recouped as a result of the brain-drain within the country and abroad, there are growing signs of a revival of basic research in Russia. They give the impression that, thanks to gradual reforms and above all to support from private foundations and foreign governments, the scientific establishment is slowly being rebuilt. Loren Graham, an expert on the history of the Soviet Academies whose whole career has been spent in investigating the various stages, developments and problems of Soviet science since the revolution in 1917, reports on this revival, along with Irina Dezhina. We publish here extracts from the in-depth study of the first phases of this renaissance that he has made with his Russian collaborator: the attempts to adapt the system to make it more like the American model, the structural and financial problems related to running laboratories, the persistence of institutional failures (especially the lack of peer review and the separation of the universities from the network of Academies), the renewed investment in scientific education and military R&D under Vladimir Putin. A new generation of scientists is taking up the torch, while the old guard cannot hide its nostalgia for the lost Golden Age of Communist times.