Power, science and the Academy

The discussion about the present and future of the RAS, started in TrV-Nauka No. 93 on December 6, 2011, with the article “The Problem of Choice” by Viktor Vasiliev, academician, chief researcher at the Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Steklova, continues Semyon Kutateladze, Dr. physics and mathematics Sciences, Professor of Novosibirsk State University, Chief Researcher of the Institute of Mathematics named after. Soboleva.

The Academy of Sciences was conceived by Peter I as a citadel of enlightenment and a counterweight to synodal dogmatism. And from the very beginning, since the times of Schumacher and Lomonosov, the academic conflict between power and science has been dragging on. Administrative functions for scientific leaders in the era of collective science are inevitable. However, no authority contributes to science. Papo-Caesarism and Caesar-Papism mimic leader-patriotism and patriot-leaderism, attributing managerial abilities to a major scientist and praising the ordinary scientific merits of a successful administrator, and identifying scientific leadership and primacy in the managerial hierarchy.

Aggressive weeds of lust for power easily sprout and sporify in each of the collectivist and egocentric varieties of totalitarianism, autarkism, oligarchism, scientific sycophancy, etc. The list of charismatic and ismatic forms of dominion is endless. None of them have a place either in science or in any other free human community.

Science is the soul of freedom, and this soul in Russia is being destroyed by tyranny, greed, stupidity and the desire to dominate in any small fragment of the scientific population. Among people of science, only those who are especially dull and servile do not see this, while others howl from melancholy and powerlessness.

The logic of most active scientists in Russia is the same as that of the doomed passengers of a falling plane. They have every reason not to see a worthy future for science in their homeland. One can express regret about this, but sympathy will not escape either the essence of the matter or the doom of science. It is not unusual for science to disappear or become dwarfed in some country.

The understanding that the process of degradation of science in Russia has passed the point of return evokes howls and harsh words from all those for whom science is salvation and service. Of course, the Academy is only as big as its members. Thinner or older members - thinner or older Academy. What can we say? Everything here is visible to the scientific plebs. The Academy changes only during elections. That is why the scientific community is quite concerned about the trends and mechanisms for updating the RAS. Of particular concern is the obvious trend towards abandoning the scientific principles of building a hierarchical structure of domestic science.

The first persons of the directorial corps of the USSR Academy of Sciences were rather experts in long-term planning, personnel managers, foremen and production managers than independent managers. The director's organizational behavior was absolutely not independent, but was determined by external circumstances. This was a special kind of “Soviet outsourcing”. In modern conditions of decentralization and economic independence, it is impossible to do without genuine outsourcing in the management of science. Sarcastic proposals for the creation of a Department of Directors at the Russian Academy of Sciences have, paradoxically, serious economic roots. The correlation of managerial functions with membership in the Academy these days is a destructive anachronism.

Scientists are financed by society, and the Academy can be closed by it. These circumstances limit academic freedom. However, neither science nor education can be eliminated by financial decisions. It is not so important who financed Euclid, Galileo, Euler, Lobachevsky, Gauss, Poincaré, Boulding, Hawking, etc. What is more important is the internal principles of self-organization of science, the ineradicability of people’s thirst for knowledge.

Science is profaned by the same people who create its greatness—scientists. The history of the Academy of Sciences from Peter to the present day does not contradict this judgment. The RAS bears responsibilities to the entire Russian society, which does not care who preserves and enriches science - young people, or old people, or middle-aged people. Elections to the RAS must be in accordance with the classic, proven requirement: members of the RAS must be people who have enriched science with outstanding scientific works or scientific works of paramount importance. This is stated in paragraph 16 of the RAS Charter.

Discounts and indulgence breed mediocrity. Someone chosen not on scientific merit - no matter how young or old, director or head of the laboratory - is not just a disgrace to the Academy.

Such people discredit science and academic titles that are given for life. Academic titles are a weapon of scientific influence, which should be given not to those who can or are appointed to raise it, but to those who know how to handle it. In our case, to those who have already made a contribution to science, and not to those who can lead such a contribution, or who can manage such a contribution, or who can, in principle, make such a contribution in the future. It’s not difficult to miscalculate here. We cannot forget that it was Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov who promoted the young man Trofim Denisovich Lysenko to the Academy back in 1934. Then Lysenko was not elected as a corresponding member. But he immediately became an academician in 1939, at the age of 41.

In short, in the organization of science one must first of all be guided by criteria that lie within the boundaries of science, and not by the principles of the vertical power structure. One can recall how Mendeleev, Gelfand, Kantorovich, Arnold, Rappoport, and Ladyzhenskaya were undermined by criteria outside of science, how many of today’s knights of science are undermined or hushed up. Meanwhile, people like those named hold the weapon of science even after death, just like Euler, Chebyshev, Luzin, Vernadsky, Semenov, Leontovich, Kolmogorov, Sakharov and many other immortal people of Russian science.

Truth, freedom and justice have no time boundaries.