"The annual moratorium will end soon"

What has become for leading Russian scientists a year after the reform of the Academy of Sciences announced by the Government of the Russian Federation ? What, in their opinion, are the first fruits of reform? What do they expect in the future? Askold Ivanchik , a well-known anti-people, doct, answers the questions of the TRV- science . East. Sciences, member of the RAS correspondent, professor, deputy. Head of the Council for Science under the Ministry of Education and Science, Scientific Director of the Department of the Study of ancient civilizations, the main scientific An employee of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Directeur de Recherche at the National Center for Scientific Research ( Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Middle Ages Ausonius, Bordeaux, France). Questions were asked by Natalia Demina .

- passed year CO Day announced Reforms RAS And others Academies . How would You appreciated this year ? What For You How employee Academy sciences With creation Fano And About Chimi perturbations Changed For the best side ? IN The worst ?

- This year was very nervous and difficult for me personally. I participated quite actively in activities, the purpose of which was to minimize the destructive consequences of the reform of academies for Russian science. This activity took a lot of time and effort that I would prefer to spend on classes by science itself; As a result, a lot of what I planned to do remained unconnected. But, looking back, I still do not regret the time spent and believe that this is participation in the attempts of scientists to withstand the expansion of officials was necessary.

Of course, in general, we lost, but we still managed to achieve some improvements compared to the initial reform project. Perhaps it is even more important that as a result of the events of the last year, a consolidation of a scientific community occurred on the basis of self -organization and its informal structures, such as a conference of scientists, a commission of public control in the field of science or club “July 1”, appeared or intensified. For me, a very important and joyful experience was acquaintance and joint work with a rather large number of like -minded people, beautiful scientists and people working in various fields of science. Without the events of the past year, our paths would hardly intersect.

As for the creation of Fano and the transition to it of many functions of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it seems to me that until ordinary employees of the academies have felt special changes. The reason is simple - the action of the moratorium. However, the annual moratorium will end soon, and then the changes will feel everything, and it is unlikely that this will be changes for the better. In the meantime, the administration of institutions - the director, their deputies and scientists of the secretaries, who serve as a buffer between researchers and officials of Fano, feels fully.

I myself do not occupy high administrative posts, but I hear the same thing from all directors of institutions: the bureaucratic load has increased sharply. A few papers come from Fano every day, requiring an immediate response, and most of them are quite meaningless. While the administration takes on this paper shaft, but gradually part of the cargo will inevitably be shifted to ordinary employees. This spring, some additional problems arose with the publication of academic magazines, since the Publishing House "Science" was transferred to Fano, and financing to magazines remained in the Russian Academy of Sciences, and these difficulties affected me as the editor -in -chief of one of the academic magazines.

- How reacted on these smack​ Yours Young Colleagues ? You grew up Lee "Suitcase" mood ?

- Many young colleagues responded to what was happening with indignation (they actively participated in protests against the reform), and the continuing uncertainty with the further course of the reform, of course, causes anxiety. As for the “suitcase” mood, I always believed that for a young scientist, at least in my field, the experience of more or less long -term work in foreign scientific centers as postdrok or doctoral studies is very useful and even necessary. The main thing is that they later return and find the opportunity to work in Russia on decent conditions. So far, the attractiveness of scientific work in Russia for young scientists, especially with experience abroad, has not increased at least.

- What Yours Expectations from approaching year , year After the "Moratorial" ? Eat Lee u You Obsya​ By reason possible reduction financing ? Others abbreviations ?

- My expectations are far from rainbow. I think that there will be no reductions, as well as a significant increase, financing of science, but there will be its redistribution. And I'm not sure that this redistribution will be fair. The following measures are caused by the greatest fears, the full or partial implementation of which I think is likely:

• destruction or sharp decrease in the number of permanent scientific rates in the institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the transfer of actively working employees to temporary contracts and a sharp reduction in the total number of researchers;
• Complete replacement of basic financing of institutes competitive. I believe that the dissemination of competitive financing on projects is useful, however, provided that the basic financing is maintained, which allows maintaining at the minimum acceptable level the scientific activities of employees and laboratories, which for one reason or another have not won the competition for increased financing. Losing the competition should not mean instant scientific death and loss of work;
• the unification of the institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences into large conglomerates of federal scientific centers on the model of the Kurchatov Institute and, in the future, their withdrawal from the Fano -RAS system;
• continuation of underfunding of academic institutions, where most of the scientific work is underway, with excessively high financing of megaprojects arbitrarily chosen by Skolkovo or Kurchatov Institute, who did not prove their scientific effectiveness;
• The application in the assessment of the work of researchers and institutions of primitive bibliometric indicators, without sufficient accounting for the applicability of the databases used for a particular field of science and to the detriment of expert estimates.

- Changes happened Not only With RAS , but And CO country . Not Disappointed Lee You reaction society on conflict With Ukraine ? IN how You See now most important , relevant The task For scientist and scientific journalist ? It doesn't seem Lee You , what We Hack we are ill Sizifov labor ?

- The changes that have occurred over the past year with our country bother me, perhaps even more than what they did with the Academy. The actions of Russia in Ukraine - both in the Crimea and in the Donbass - I do not support and consider it outrageous; I am outraged by anti -Ukrainian propaganda - both its form and content. What is the reaction of society to these events, it is difficult for me to judge - I do not think that the Russian media reflect this reaction adequately, and is not sure of the quality of sociological surveys known to me.

However, the reaction of many of my friends, colleagues and relatives, indeed, is disappointed. Some of those whom I considered like -minded people adhere to completely different views about this, and it is difficult for me to understand them. At the same time, it turned out that some of those from whom I expected a completely different position, share my attitude to Russia's policy in relation to Ukraine.

If we talk about the situation in Russia itself, then the main trend of the past year is its increasing isolation, including self -isolation, from the outside world, the reduction of the freedom zone, including freedom of speech, strengthening the power and influence of officials who often have very bizarre ideas about reality. There is a real danger of turning Russia into a rogue country. One can only hope that this will not happen.

As for the tasks of the scientist and scientific journalist, I do not think that they now have any specific tasks. To the current situation, they should react not as scientists, but as citizens - here their tasks do not differ from the tasks of other citizens. In their professional sphere, they should strive to do their job as best as possible, honestly do their work. But this requirement always exists. Nevertheless, science should not depend on the anger of the day - otherwise it is not a science. And scientific journalism should adequately reflect scientific life and serve as a bridge between science and society, i.e. wide circles of educated people who are not professional scientists.

- What Interesting V scientific Pla no succeeded do for summer ?

- Summer is always the field season for me. This summer I worked on three archaeological projects. The first is the excavations of the Scythian mounds in the Stavropol Territory, where sensational finds were made last year. Here, gold items were discovered with images of scenes from Scythian mythology, which in quality are not inferior to the best examples of Scythian gold, stored in the State Hermitage and the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine.

This year, together with the Stavropol and Berlin colleagues, we continued the study of these mounds. Two other projects relate to the territory of modern Turkey. Since 2008, I have been leading intelligence on the territory of the ancient city of Kolena, who later called Apameus Phrygias in Central Anatolia. This city played a huge role in ancient times - it was the residence of the Persian and then Hellenistic kings, and in Roman times - the second most important shopping center in Asia after Ephesus. Despite its significance, there are still no archaeological excavations there.

Our intelligence has already given important results that were partially published, and we hoped to start full -scale excavations there -there would be the first Russian excavations in Turkey. Unfortunately, permits for them could not be obtained, despite the support of both local authorities (at the level of the city and province) and Turkish colleagues, the reasons for this is political.

The Turkish authorities in every possible way strive to limit the presence of foreign, especially European, archaeological missions on their territory, and most of them are already closed. For example, now there are not a single French expedition in Turkey, the number of German has greatly reduced. There is no exception for Russia either. Therefore, we were forced to engage in only the clarification of the results earlier, and our work was very limited.

Finally, the third project is to participate in the publication of the results of excavations in the Gordonian, the capital of ancient Phrygia, known to the general public in that there Alexander Macedonian chopped the famous Gordian knot. Excavations of this interesting monument have been conducted by an American expedition since 1950, but their results are still published only to a small extent. The current leader of the expedition, one of the largest archaeologists in the United States, seeks to rectify this situation. Among other colleagues, he suggested that I process and publish part of the collections stored in the Gordion Museum, and I worked this summer on the study of these collections.