Inion without a head

On Thursday, the conflict between the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations (Fano) and the team of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) of the Russian Academy of Sciences entered the public field. The reason was the situation around the post of director of the institute, but the reason, as usual, lies deeper.

Recall that INION is a scientific institution and a huge library that specialize in social and humanitarian problems. On the evening of January 30, 2015, a fire began in the INION building near the Profsoyuznaya metro station, which could not be extinguished for 27 hours.

Fire in INION RAS. Photo: Artem Svetlov

People were not injured as a result of the fire, but the library funds suffered serious losses: almost 5.5 million copies of publications were destroyed, the investigation still lasts. Given duplicates, low -value and to be written off publications, difficultly restored library losses amounted to 2.3 million copies, about 20% of the fund.

On April 27, 2015, the director of the institute Yuri Pivovarov left his post, and a few days later he was charged with negligence. After Pivovarov, the Institute was headed by Dmitry Efremenko, who has been deputy director of INION since 2013. It was under the leadership of Efremenko that the employees of the institute and volunteers saved the still preserved books, raked the rubble and solved other problems non -trivial for scientists and librarians.

Volunteers prepare INION books for transportation. February 2015 Photo: INION

When the annual contract came to an end, the scientific council of INION offered Fano to extend the powers of Efremenko. The fact is that as a result of the reform of the Academy of Sciences, the so -called “system of two keys” was established - it was assumed that all the most important personnel decisions should be agreed between the Russian Academy of Sciences and Fano. From a purely formal point of view, Fano was in its right not to renew the contract with Efremenko. According to Kommersant, the scientist and reported at the meeting of the labor collective, and also promised not to nominate his candidacy for administrative positions at the meeting.

The labor collective of INION was more outraged by the style of solving the personnel issues of Fano. Although it was known that the term of the contract ends at the end of April, this was not condemned with Efremenko or with anyone at the institute, and a notification of the refusal to extend the agreement of the acting The director of INION generally came by e -mail.

On Thursday, the meeting of the labor collective INION turned to the Presidential Council for Science, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the head of the Fano and the trade union of the Russian Academy of Sciences with a request to leave Efremenko as the director of the institute. At the same time, some employees of INION speak out much more frankly. “On the great Thursday - for the upcoming holiday, for May vacations, as it became the style of the current fighters with science - a bureaucratic collision was committed on INION,” wrote Svetlana Pogorelskaya, candidate of political sciences, senior researcher at INION.

At the same time, Kommersant, citing Wiiona’s employees, suggests that the cause of the conflict is in the project of the new library building. Employees of the institute, of course, are counting on the construction of a new building on the site of a burned -out building or its reconstruction. But in Fano there is a project to transfer the institute to the Moscow region - which is cheaper, allows you to free a huge plot of roads of land at the Profsoyuznaya metro station, but greatly complicates logistics.

In general, the reform of INION came back immediately after the fire, but then the team managed to defend its right to exist and acting The director was appointed a native of the institute. Now, obviously, Fano decided to return to the discussion of this topic.

President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Fortov told Kommersant that he was not notified of the change of leadership of INION, a commission on this issue will now be created, which will in the near future will discuss the problem with Fano. So the struggle will still go.