Dmitry Livanov / E.Razumny for Vedomosti

Dmitry Livanov does not consider it important to justify how the new system of organizing Russian science that he proposed will be better than the old one. It is enough that the old one is full of shortcomings. For example, it is “archaic.” “The state of the Russian system of fundamental research is critical,” he and his co-authors wrote in one of the program articles in 2011. “The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) is a copy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which has degraded over the past 20 years under conditions of a funding deficit, self-isolation, and the absence of public and state control.”

In May 2012, Livanov became the Minister of Education and Science. A little more than a year passed and he uttered exactly the same epithet, “archaic,” at a press briefing after a government meeting that approved a bill on reforming the academies of sciences. Livanov called the situation with personnel in the academic sector a disaster: “In 2012, the share of scientists of retirement age exceeded 40%.” However, this rhetoric is not new. Livanov and his co-authors also wrote about the “irreversible degradation of the personnel potential” of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2011.

If the bill is supported by the legislative branch, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in their current form will cease to exist. Two new structures will appear: a community of scientists, which will include current active members and corresponding members of the three academies, and a government agency responsible for managing the property of scientific institutes. Almost nothing is known yet about how this agency will be organized and who will work in it.

The lightning-fast appearance of plans for such a large-scale restructuring was a real shock not only for many academics, but also for the public. Who will now remember what the minister once wrote about the nomenklatura style of management and the lack of public control?

Will Russian fundamental science now become at least less archaic? The scientific community will certainly not become younger: according to the reformers' plan, a three-year moratorium will be declared on accepting new people into the ranks of academics. And "for scientific institutes, for those people who work in them, no changes will occur in connection with this reorganization, they will continue to work as they have been working, their work will be paid, scientific research will be financed," Livanov reassured.

But the Minister of Education and Science did not explain how the transfer of property management functions would help to improve the situation with scientific personnel.

Person of the week Dmitry Livanov