The birth injury of the Russian Academy of Sciences

It is very good that a conversation about the Russian Academy of Sciences began in society. You just have to try to talk about it calmly and reasonably, and not rush about the slogans about the "imminent death of science" and that "there are no sciences without the Academy of Sciences." It is necessary not only a serious conversation about what the Academy has turned into during its existence and what to do with it now, but also a clear understanding: from the very beginning, at the time of its birth, the RAS received a serious birth injury, which caused its current deplorable state.

It seems to me that it is useful to recall how and in what way the wounds arose. Now few people know about this, and even less - those who remember. Therefore, we will try to eliminate this “white spot” and return to the first elections in the RAS.

Then, in 1991, scientists in Russia had a unique chance - to create a true scientific Olympus on the site of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the club of minds, where different schools and regional departments intersect, where adjacent scientific disciplines are joined, mutually enriching each other. The club, free from the dictatorship of officials and control of the party, from the pressure of the "only faithful teaching", which works closely with the world scientific community. However, it turned out completely different - the citadel of bureaucrats and Grantsov with managers. With small, rare islands of true scientists representing an endangered look.

What prevented? As usual: the ambitions of some and the self -interest of others, the political considerations of the third and the separatism of the fourth. The first and, perhaps, the main mistake was made in the process of the first elections in the wounds. And then the layer behind the layer of new errors began to be superimposed on it. From the very beginning, “something went wrong,” and the process was no longer stopped. As a result, even the academicians themselves - especially members of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who became members of the Russian Academy of Sciences - indicated in those years that the first elections in the Russian Academy of Sciences cannot be considered absolutely legitimate. By the way, most of the most active academicians who now have a piercing the uniqueness of the Russian Academy of Sciences themselves received this status only in those first (and subsequent), illegitimate elections. For example, the new president of the Academy Vladimir Fortov.

The title of Academician or even a corresponding member of AN has always been honorable. It at once satisfied the vanity of the scientist and increased his financial capabilities. The power of the RSFSR, who was born in 1989-1991, was in dire need of the support of the scientific community. The Yeltsin and the Supreme Council signed a number of decrees to create his own, Russian, academy. All these decisions were concentrated by populism and filed in the following concept: we (the Government of the RSFSR, then Russia) will give you property, add tax benefits, allocate money from the budget and will not control. And you will support us for this in confrontation with the leadership of the USSR and create us as soon as possible. Looking ahead, I’ll say that promises remained promises and at least some financing of science was established only by the beginning of the “zero”.

And from whom was it to create? The organizers of the new academy, among which were many members of the Union Academy of Sciences, recalled those scientific groups that have not yet been covered by their attention. Powerful design and research institutes, designated under the ministries, are all powerful “defense”, its NGOs. In addition, high school, universities and institutions, especially in the regions, especially natural science and humanitarian.

In turn, the regional scientific elite played on the contradictions of the center and territories, hoping to receive money from two pockets at once: union (for capital construction) and Russian (for scientific research itself). “The Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR already in 1989 showed excessive political obedience and paid for this, at least by the fact that he received the inheritance of the Russian Academy of Sciences with a clearly swollen and intellectually recruited composition. Part, i.e. RAS, turned out to be more than the whole (USSR Academy of Sciences). And this is a worthy reward for political alliances unusual for science, ”writes Sergey Romanovsky in the book“ Science under the oppression of Russian history ”.

The final scheme was like this: electors from scientific and educational organizations choose 160 new academicians, and academics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, world -famous scientists who should “make a decision”, give the necessary prestige of the Russian Academy of Sciences. There was no doubt in the “right” choice of allied academics: in 1989-1991, Soviet science first encountered a “brain leak” and the need to earn money. And to think faster, the Government of the Russian Federation (the USSR did not have money then) did not pay them a subscription to scientific journals for 1992 - for the first time in 70 years!

By the way, I will give some numbers to understand the scale of the then “Brain leakage”: on March 20, 1990, the main scientific secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences Igor Makarov noted that in 1989 252 people left the academy, of which 131 physicists, 69 biologists, 29 chemists, 23 humanities. And at the annual general meeting of the Academy, on March 13, 1991, the following data brought: only 534 specialists left from academic institutions abroad, of which 74% are persons from 30 to 45 years old (the most productive age for science) and 18% are young scientists, up to 30 years.

Already during the elections themselves on December 3-6, 1991, Russian scientists realized that they were deceived. So, they were promised to give a choice to academics and members of the quota of regionals, and conducted through sections in scientific areas. The organizers of the founders of the Russian Academy of Sciences had more influence than on scientific institutions. The study of newspapers and scientific journals of that period gives a clear understanding: the first “genuine” elections in the Russian Academy of Sciences were held according to the rules of playing preference - “who writes, he wins.” How legitimate this procedure is, of course.

The famous physicist Viktor Maslov, the academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the head of the Moscow RAS region, wrote in Izvestia (No. 298, 1991): “The Organizing Committee on“ Restoration ”, which at the forefront of his activity set a certain goal: first of all, to become academics of the organizing committee themselves.” The organizers, according to Maslov, wanted to spend among the new academics of those who had previously been nominated in the elections to the member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, but failed. “A much more sophisticated and dangerous plan was really implemented: to appoint electors themselves, who, among others, will ascend to the academic pedestal and members of the organizing committee. The danger of such a plan was that if you appoint obedient, and therefore, as a rule, of incompetent electors, they will choose not only members of the organizing committee, but also other incompetent persons, so that they, in turn, choose the electors themselves in the future. ”

List of electors of the first composition of the RAS donkey in the archives. However, the organizer President Yuri Osipov himself reported then how many electors there are: "approximately 270 people." There are 110 of them - academics and member scores of the USSR Academy of Sciences. And who are the rest 160? The scope for the elections was huge, in Russia at the end of 1991 there were more than 30 thousand doctors of sciences (Osipov data, cited by the messenger of the USSR Academy of Sciences, No. 12, 1991).

“The difficulty was that the share of electors from the regions was small, and the final word remained behind the sections. So, the Moscow region proposed 25 electors in the engineering section. The chairman of the section V. Shorin first agreed to take only 7 of them, but then did not include them either. ... The incompetence of the electors selected by the section of V. Shorin was demonstrated at the general meeting of the Academy. It did not approve 22 out of 25 recommended. (Which, however, did not prevent the latter unanimously and immediately “apply” to the corresponding members that is allowed by the temporary charter of the Russian Academy of Sciences!) Even a well-known odious figure was chosen in the section in academics. V. Shorin himself went through a general meeting, gaining only the minimum required number of votes, ”the academician Maslov illustrates the bastard.

Who was chosen? Many members of the USSR Academy of Sciences finally became academicians-this was the first fee for loyalty. For example, the current elected President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Fortov became an academician. Together with him, Vladimir Shorin, the head of the relevant commission of the Parliament of the Russian Federation at that moment, went to academics. The corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences became the head of the Supreme Council Ruslan Khasbulatov, the head of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for Science Nikolai Malyshev, a scandalous popularizer of history-adviser to the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Volkolonov, “decision specialist” Boris Abramovich Berezovsky and many other representatives of the scientific community, the road to the Academy of Sciences of which was previously closed.

Academicians of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who were forced to become academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, also completely understood the essence of the problem. At least, this is evident from their speeches at the very last general meeting of this academy, published in No. 2 of the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences for 1992. “In some departments (regional) the composition of the electors is quite decent, in some it is very bad,” said Evgeny Velikhov. “The organizers of the New Academy yesterday confirmed that its level will be lower than that of the current (union) academy / ... / after the mass emergence of new academicians, who can take this rank seriously? What will become his international prestige? " -Academician Vladimir Keylis Borok asked. “The situation is as follows: to choose these 150 academics according to not worked out rules, for example, among the electors there are a lot of people who are not quite authoritative in the scientific world, and sometimes even unknown to him. What reasonable foundation do they have to choose full -fledged academics of our Russian Academy? ” - the famous biochemist Alexander Spirin was indignant.

However, the legitimacy and prestige of the Russian Academy of Sciences were sacrificed to circumstances - political, financial and, as already mentioned, personal ambitions. The results were not slow to follow: a year after these elections (in December 1992), the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrei Gonchar admitted that in "recently, an increase in the number of composition of the Academy was not controlled." They began to look at the elections to the Academy as if “through the charter” - they elected more than the vacancies allowed, and then increased the number of vacancies. When all science collapsed into poverty, RAS continued to increase the number of its members: in 1992, it contained 437 academicians and 611 corresponding members (now, in 2013-500 academicians and 746 members). Speaking at the general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences on April 8, 1992, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Osipov noted with satisfaction that the union collapsed, and the Academy resisted, it was not touched, only the name was changed. That is, the Academy as a bureaucratic “headquarters”, of course, resisted, but science - “infantry” - did not survive ...

Already in 1992, the leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences developed a very convenient position in which it still stands, using it as a “protective umbrella”: despite all the difficulties of the present time, we retained the Academy as a core of Russian science, it is a “national treasure”, we can’t touch it. In 2013, we hear the same words.

However, the “national treasure” has such a serious birth that she postponed the imprint on all her further activities and led to the fact that the Academy became a kind of “feeder”, entering not only scientific merits, how many “political” resourcefulness. And the further - the more, because earlier the “elect” select the subsequent ones, and even for life.

Management systems, which are based on an illegitimate power and opaque selection system from the very beginning, come to one end-complete inefficiency, states of state and inability to do anything. The only purpose of the existence of these systems is to preserve itself. Alas, such systems are not subject to reform, since any attempts to change only to aggravate internal problems.

Photo by ITAR-TASS/ Artem Geodakyan