Opinion…

Editorial member's opinion

Pelevin also wrote that it’s bad when billionaires start reading about how they should live in glossy magazines that tell ordinary people about the lives of billionaires. From some passages of the President’s message, it seems that the myth that science in Russia is bad because the state has a bad attitude towards science has spread to the highest officials of this very state. And it seems that now the state will turn its face even more towards science, and scientific results will burst into flames and innovations will flourish.

Let's conduct a thought experiment. Let's take a successful, from a scientific point of view, country (say, Germany or Japan). Let's remove one hundred percent of the existing scientists from it. Now let’s take one hundred percent (key point!) of Russian scientists and move them there. The same procedure can be carried out with science officials, “entrepreneurs introducing new technologies,” etc.

And what? And, in fact, that’s all. There will no longer be science and innovation in this country at the same level as there was before the “great transfer.” Let the state there face science and look at it with all eyes. Our institutes have SSENs who have written one article for 15 years, to which no one has referred. And once every five years their contract is successfully renewed. It is extended by the scientific community in the person of its best elected (through free voting) to the scientific councils of representatives. In our country, university rectors have no hesitation in appearing as the first authors in articles where they did not have a finger on scientific results, and they continue to be loved by every single one (without “no” votes). The expert community does not work and will not start working from the bright gaze of the state. Few people support those young people by dismissing numerous slackers. And very little depends on “actions at the top.”

I think this is the main thing. A miracle will not happen because the scientific community itself is not ready for it.

Sergey Popov

Editor-in-chief's opinion

I may be an overly friendly person, but at the end of the President’s address there is a passage that slightly reassured me. Namely: D.A. Medvedev requests the support of those who agree with him and those who disagree, expecting a confrontation with part of the elite (I’m paraphrasing this). So, I think it’s worth saying that if this is not a figure of speech, then the President, despite all our skepticism, will receive our modest support.

Boris Stern

Opinion of the Internet people

The words are golden (though an ordinary citizen can now be declared an “extremist” for them), but there is no practical way out in sight. There was a good discussion today in ashpi magazine. Some see this as a game of “two investigators”, some see idealism, some talk about a split. Skepticism prevails. People will believe in change when they see real serious steps towards democratization and against corruption.

http://gazeta.ru/comments/2009/09/10_a_3258568.shtml?lj2&page=27#comment_177449

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We conducted a short survey in our team on the topic: “Your assessment of DAMedvedev’s statement on a five-point scale.” Even though the number of respondents was small, the results are worth thinking about, because the average score was 1.5. I would like to note that the assessments were given by well-educated and literate people. I think the main reason is the high pretentiousness of the statement and the lack of real proposals. We'll wait for the bugs to be worked out.

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Despite the fact that I myself was faced daily with the corruption of the court, and with officials without conscience and brains, I intuitively believe that Medvedev and Putin quite sincerely want to go down in history as the people who changed Russia. And the method of gradual and slow change is the most effective. Only a blind or biased eye will not notice that changes in the brain and in life have long been evident. People have become better at driving cars (don’t talk about crashing minibuses - I know), giving in and letting people pass, you can no longer see rudeness from officials at EVERY step, everyone who wants to works and earns money, and in general there is a whole country within the country that lives ALMOST sensibly and rightly so. We just need to gradually increase its population.

...I can now answer myself: guy, this country is a paradise or something, why are you proposing to increase its population? Look around - everyone steals; Anyone entering the president's office has no answer to the question of where his house and bank account came from. Do you think these people will let this feeding trough be taken away from them? It will always be like this in Russia!

And yet Medvedev is right, we still have a small chance...

http://gazeta.ru/comments/2009/09/10_a_3258568.shtml?page=26&lj2&