Yes, we can

On June 28, 2017, a rally organized by the Trade Union of RAS employees was held on Suvorov Square. The rally participants accused the government of non -fulfillment of the May decrees of the President of Russia regarding science and, in addition to the requirement not to forget about the objectives of the increase in the internal costs of research and development of up to 1.77% of GDP, the need for a significant increase in funding of fundamental research. Three months later, on September 29, 2017, the Russian government introduced the draft law on the federal budget for 2018 and the planning period of 2019–2020 to the State Duma. The costs of fundamental research are planned to increase by 33 billion rubles. - Up to 151.7 billion rubles, that is, compared with 2017, they will increase by 28%. In 2019 and 2020, funding fundamental research is also planned to increase slightly.

It is supposed to significantly increase Fano funding - from 76.1 billion rubles. This year up to 93.8 billion rubles. next year. The budget of the RFFF will increase almost double - from 11.6 to 21.1 billion rubles.

The bulk of additional financing is allocated to increase the salaries of researchers: instead of previously planned 18.4 billion rubles. About 40 billion rubles will be allocated for these purposes, including about 24 billion rubles. will be sent to the institutes of Fano.

The increase, albeit significant, will not solve all problems. But the situation with an increase in the salaries of researchers will change for the better qualitatively: instead of an extremely tough scenario with abbreviations and transfer to more and smaller bets, which was very likely, it will be realized much less rigid. Many hundreds of scientific groups will receive Grants of the RFFIF next year, which otherwise would not receive. Especially if the leadership of the RFFIF decides to restore the traditional level of selection of projects for the most massive competition of initiative projects in areas of knowledge - 1 out of 3.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter HOC

“After that, it means, as a result,” a common logical error. Yes, the Trade Union of RAS employees with the participation or support of a number of public organizations actively fought for the scientific budget: a rally was held, many appeals to the authorities were sent to the authorities with the requirements for increasing the financing of science, representatives of the trade union actively worked with the media, publishing articles, conducting an interview, etc.

But does this mean that the authorities listened to the public's voice? Maybe officials during the budget process increased financing “in a planned manner” - in connection with the onset of 2018 and, accordingly, the deadline for the implementation of some requirements of the May decrees in terms of science: to increase the average salary of researchers to 200% of the average in the region and increase financing of state scientific funds to 25 billion rubles.

We turn to the facts. The increase in expenses for fundamental science by almost 30% is planned not against the good background of universal growth of budgetary obligations: the expenses of the federal budget in 2018 are planned to be reduced by about 0.5% compared to 2017. And in related areas of rapid growth, it is not visible: budget financing of civil applied science is planned to be reduced by 3%, higher education costs - increase by 5%. The latter is significant: the salary May decree concerns not only science, but also higher education-the salaries of researchers, and the salaries of the faculty should reach 200% of the average in 2018.

Officials of relevant departments honestly did their work, applying for requests to increase science financing; Especially it is necessary to note the efforts of Fano, which worked competently and actively. But the Ministry of Education and Science is represented by the Ministry of Education and Science, and only the profile minister, Olga Vasilieva, is present at the key meetings of the budget commission of the government and the government. The capabilities of Fano in terms of influence on such a serious department as the Ministry of Finance are generally quite limited: for the Ministry of Finance Fano, no more than one of the dozens of departments, and far from the most influential.

It is hardly possible to imagine a situation where a senior official publicly admits: a rally passed, noise rose - I had to allocate money. Therefore, it is possible to understand whether an attempt to connect the financing of science with our active actions is an attempt to connect, if you look more closely at the history of the issue.

A little story

During the budget process, the Ministry of Education and Science presents its proposals to increase science financing every year. Last year, Olga Vasilieva did this, in 2014 and 2015 - Dmitry Livanov. The results are known: the applications of the ministry, which assumed a significant increase in financing, were not satisfied. Although the total amount of federal budget expenditures in 2016 was higher than in 2015, and in 2017 - slightly higher than in 2016.

Since the beginning of 2016, when it became obvious that the reduction in financing of science is not a one -time event, but a long -term government course in the new conditions, the Trade Union of RAS Workers began to seek changes. At the same time, we drew the attention of the authorities to the fact that in a situation where the state de facto abandoned attempts to increase the internal costs of research and development to 1.77% of GDP, scientific and educational organizations do not have the opportunity to increase the salaries of researchers to 200% of the medium-sized abbreviations without mass reductions. And therefore, you need to either allocate additional funds, or adjust the text of the Decree, at least replace the average salary for the average in Russia in the region. In response to all appeals, unsubscribes came.

In the summer of 2016, the government approved the schedule for the achievement of targeted indicators established by Decree No. 597 of May 7, 2012, which provided that from October 1, 2017, the average salary of researchers should reach 180% of the average regional, and from January 1, 2018-200% of the average regional.

It became clear that more active actions were needed. At the beginning of the second decade of September 2016, the trade union of RAS employees held a “protest week”: meetings were held in a number of cities of Russia, at which resolutions were adopted with the requirements for increasing financing of civil science, rallies were held in some regions. The protest week on September 15 ended with an emergency meeting of scientists in Moscow, in which about 300 people took part.

The Ministry of Education and Science quickly responded to the past action: already on September 16, 2016, recently appointed Minister Olga Vasilieva met with the leadership of the RAS Workers Trade Union and spoke about the budget request of the Ministry for 2017. We were told that the Ministry of Education and Science will achieve an increase in the RFFI financing in 2017 to 21.3 billion rubles. (against 11.6 billion rubles in 2016), RNF - up to 25 billion rubles. (15.2 billion in 2016) and the amount of funds allocated to increase salaries to researchers - up to 30 billion rubles. (5.2 billion rubles in 2016).

The last assessment, obviously, was made based on the real need for funds to increase the salaries of researchers of budgetary organizations, taking into account the approved schedule for raising salaries. Organizations subordinate to the Fano usually received about half of the amounts allocated for these purposes. In addition, the Ministry of Education and Science supported the request of Fano to provide an additional 3 billion rubles. to the development programs of subordinate organizations.

It looked promising, but the ministerial request was not satisfied, despite the fact that the total amount of federal budget expenditures for 2017 exceeded the level of 2016, as mentioned above. Nothing came out with the development programs of the institutions of Fano, the financing of the RFFIF in 2017 remained at the level of 2016, the RSF (after the meeting of the leadership of the Fund with President Putin) added 2.5 billion rubles. 11.8 billion rubles were allocated to the competitive program for supporting leading laboratories and youth to increase the salaries of researchers.

In 2018, it was planned to increase expenses for these purposes to 18.4 billion rubles, which is 3.5 times more than allocated in 2016. Therefore, we can confidently say that the Ministry of Finance considered the issue of increasing the salaries of researchers closed, assuming that scientific organizations, like universities, would have to comply with the salary decree “by attracting extrabudgetary financing” and “at the expense of internal reserves”, that is, due to dismissal and transfer to the share of bets.

The case was even worse with the RFFI: in 2018, it was planned to maintain the budget of the fund at the level of past years, and in 2019 - even reduce to 10.4 billion rubles. Forming such plans, the Ministry of Finance did not experience the slightest discomfort. When on November 3, 2016, representatives of the Trade Union of RAS employees at a meeting of the Duma Committee on Science and Education dedicated to the discussion of the federal budget, asked the representative of the Ministry of Finance the question of why the government did not plan to fulfill the presidential decree to increase the financing of the RFFI to 25 billion rubles, she calmly answered that this was due to a difficult financial situation. When it improves it, the question of the growth of the RFFIF budget can be considered in the process of planned budget adjustment for 2017.

However, despite the improvement of the economic situation, the government was not going to look for money for the RFFI. The report on the implementation of the May decrees, published on May 4, 2017 on the government website, was said: “ Along with the Russian Fund for fundamental research, the main system -forming scientific fund that supports fundamental and search research research is the Russian Scientific Fund ... The total amount of funds for financing the Russian Fundamental Studies and the Russian Scientific Fund from the federal budget funds and the federal budget and the Russian Scientific Fund and the Russian Scientific Fund and extrabudgetary sources are planned in 2017 in the amount of 29.3 billion rubles. ". Thus, the government wanted to create the impression that the plans were even overfulfilled on this paragraph, although in 2012 the RNF did not exist and the decree concerned only the RFFIF and the RGNF.

On May 26, 2017, the government made amendments to the budget for 2017. Despite the fact that expenses were planned to increase by more than 360 billion rubles. And even a little added to fundamental science, additional funds for the implementation of May decrees - increasing the financing of the RFFIF and an increase in the salaries of researchers - not allocated a penny . Although there were possibilities for this (see my article in the TRV-FUCK “ Is there any money for science? ”). The RAS Workers Trade Union proposed amendments to the bill, indicating a possible source of funds (financing of Vnesheconombank), but they were rejected.

The only opportunity to reach the authorities remained protests. The reaction to the media widely covered in the media on the Suvorov Square was not forced to wait: within a week after the rally, it was decided to increase the amount of funds sent in 2017 to increase the salaries of researchers from 5.6 to 6.4 billion rubles. And this was only the first swallow.

The actions of the Trade Union of RAS Workers created significant discomfort for the government: it is one thing to write smooth reports and not comply with the requirements of the May decrees, hoping that scientists will independently “wipe and reduce”, and quite another is a loud noise around the failure to fulfill the decrees when the presidential election is already on the horizon. If there were no noise, most likely, the budget financing of fundamental science would have grown by the same 5%as financing of higher education, due to the previously planned increase in the amount of funds allocated to increase the salaries of scientists (from 11.8 to 18.4 billion rubles). In the worst case, this would not have happened: according to media reports, this year the volume of inconsistent applications of departments for budget financing reached record values.

To the issue of standardization of activity

Often, as a reason for the unwillingness to show some kind of activity (to go to the rally, write an appeal to the president or prime minister, etc.) people called the meaninglessness of these actions. This is an erroneous and very harmful position.

Recently, leading instances have been concerned about the problem of standardizing and evaluating effectiveness: the state assignment of scientific organizations is planned in the norms having a certain value, which depends on the direction of scientific research. By paying tribute to this trend, you can try to roughly assess the cost of the norm-hour of the “activist”-a person who took at least some participation in the struggle to increase the financing of science-based on the result achieved.

It is easy to do this. In the key event-a rally on June 28, 2017-about 800 people took part, the time for participation in a rally for one person can be estimated at three hours (an hour at a rally and two hours to travel to the rally venue and from there), that is, in general, 2400 human hours were spent. Several small rallies conducted on their own initiative by regional organizations of the trade union can add another 1000 man-hours.

Of course, the matter was not limited to rallies. It is necessary to take into account the time spent by the initiators of the campaign related to the organization of the rally, the preparation of the mass of appeals to the authorities, the press conference, communication with journalists, the preparation of materials for the media, meetings with officials and deputies, etc., which trade union and public organizations, individual representatives of the scientific community who prepared their appeals to the president and other representatives of the authorities, spent it. To prepare their appeals, also quite large. But the total amount of time spent did not knowingly exceeded 10 thousand hours.

On this basis, we can assess from below the cost of the normochs based on the result. Compared to preliminary plans for 2018, funding for fundamental science is planned to increase by 27.5 billion rubles. Accordingly, the price of the “activist Normochs” is approximately 3 million rubles. Not so bad for the "meaningless" activity!

Of course, one should not seriously treat this comic assessment: it is useful only as an illustration of the fact that reasonable and consistent activity bears its fruits, and the result of collective efforts can be unusually high in relation to the spent forces and time. Therefore, it is sometimes useful to spend a few hours of its time to participate in public actions - this is very pragmatic and reasonable behavior.

Evgeny Onishchenko
scientific. sore. Fian, member of the CS Trade Union of Workers of the Russian Academy of Sciences