To new successes

Dear editors !

I don’t know how you, dear colleagues, and I personally, after a three -week series of New Year's holidays, starting with Catholic Christmas and ending in the old year, I feel a certain devastation and prostration. It seems that everything that happened in 2017 has already happened a long time ago, so there is an opportunity to look at the events of last year from the height of history.

Among the most important results of the year, of course, it is worth noting the continuation of the rapid growth of the productivity of Russian science, which can be judged by the annual increase in the number of articles of Russian scientists in indexed Web of Science scientific journals. No, it’s too early to draw conclusions in 2017, but I have a firm confidence that last year the trend has not changed: how could it be otherwise if the party and the government are steadily care about the development of science and technology?!

Other critics, however, say that the authorities for science do not care, that over the past year, not a single meeting of the Presidential Council on Science and Education took place, while two meetings were supposed to be held a year. Well, of course, they continue the old song about reducing financing science.

I'll start with the last. Science of science is discord, and even in the difficult years, sometimes a significant increase in financing of defense science has been observed, which right now has priority importance to the country. But even if you take a civil science into consideration, you should not attribute any reduction in financing to inattention and neglect. On the contrary, in our conditions, it seems to me, it is worth talking about the cutting of excess and a more thorough placement of priorities in the conditions of budget savings, which in no case leads to financial strangulation of science, but only eliminates that it is not worth financing.

As for the unpacked Presidential Council, I want to ask you, colleagues: is it worth it to sit when everything is already clear when you need not to chat, but work? Indeed, at the end of 2016, a document of epochal importance was adopted-the strategy of scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation for the period until 2035. This document determined large challenges and priorities, outlined a scheme for increasing the efficiency of our science, so the last year the officials were busy with the beginning of its implementation. And what, tell me, the point of discussing the beginning of the implementation of the document, when still little is done? Here in the coming year, I think the presidential council will gather and summarize the first results.

Again, others say that the leadership of the country, they say, did not respect the Academy of Sciences, tore off the elections at the beginning of last year, etc. Maybe so could think of ideologically unstable citizens in the spring of 2017, but not now. Because further events have irrefutably proved: the dear scolding - only amuse themselves. The September elections of the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences were held at a high ideological and political level, Vladimir Vladimirovich immediately after the elections accepted and approved Alexander Mikhailovich by the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

At the nomination of our beloved national leader, the presidential candidate of Russia is the first-I emphasize, the first-was the Academician-physicist who told the future generations inherited deep spirituality, strong science, army, navy and economics, and noted the merits of Vladimir Vladimirovich. And one of the three leaders of the Russian President’s campaign was an academician-medical.

I do not want to belittle my colleagues in university science, but still Russian science is personified by the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is it that is the highest scientific organization of Russia. Therefore, what is happening allows us to state that in relations between power and science, a honeymoon has now come.

Well, excuse me that I’m repeating, I can’t help but recall that from the first of January this year, the salaries of researchers and teachers should reach 200% of the average. I hope that at my native Moscow State University, the authorities will not forget about the modest worker of education and science.

So if we have a bad thing with, then with the heads of leisure critics, and not with reality. Therefore, it is time to finish with nagging and complaints: as they say, goals are defined, the tasks are set - for work, comrades!

Your Ivan Ekonomov