FW: Russian TV calls for science sector reform in wake of brain drain

[Elena Gapova]

BBC Monitoring
Russian TV calls for science sector reform in wake of brain drain
Source: NTV Mir, Moscow, in Russian 1018 gmt 23 Jan 05

Russia's underfunded science sector needs root-and-branch reform in the
wake of the brain drain of scientists lured abroad by better pay and
conditions, but a proposed privatization of research institutes will fail
to solve the problem, according to a documentary on Russian NTV Mir
television on 23 January.

The documentary, in the "Top Secret" series, said 800,000 scientists left
the country in the first 10 years after the easing of emigration rules in
the 1990s.

Investing in Western science

"Their training in Russia had cost 60bn dollars. That is the sum we
invested in Western science." And yet science is not just a matter of
prestige, "but also the national security and sovereignty of the country".

The programme said skilled physicists, biologists, chemists, mathematicians
and programmers are in particularly high demand abroad.

Interviewed on the departure of the country's scientists, Sergey Kapitsa,
vice-president of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, said "our
country sacrificed science for the sake of political ambitions that are
quite incomprehensible to me. Or they wanted to decapitate the country."

Kapitsa said the training of one student at the Moscow Physico-Technical
Institute would cost the equivalent of 1m-2m dollars abroad. Thus, "the
cost of the roughly 1,500-2,000 students - graduates - that the Moscow
Physico-Technical Institute has sent to the USA amounts to several billion
dollars".

The programme quoted foreign intelligence sources as estimating that 70,000
scientists and specialists from Russian defence institutes and
military-industrial complex enterprises have left the country.

"The nuclear physicists, experts in electronic equipment, virologists and
biotechnologists did not leave empty-handed. They took secrets with them
and presented their former foes with the weapons they had themselves
developed."

The documentary went on: "According to CIA data, in the first half of the
1990s thousands of Soviet specialists in the field of nuclear and missile
technology left for the Middle East. They worked there in violation of the
treaty on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. From the
Arzamas-16 centre several people went to work in Iraq. Russian scientists
worked in Iran and Libya. Forty nuclear scientists emigrated to Israel.
Thousands of Russian specialists in the field of nuclear and missile
technologies developed programmes to improve armaments in China. Our
scientists are willing to work anywhere they are paid."

Lost generation

The programme said Russia had a missing generation of scientists, noting
that the average age of scientists who leave to work abroad is 20-30.
"Russia today has virtually lost a whole generation of specialists. There
are almost no scientists of middle age - the most productive and
professional age - left in science. Continuity has been broken. Traditions
are being lost. The chronological links in fundamental science have been
lost. In many institutes the scientists are over 60, even though just a few
years ago the average age was 38. According to statistical forecasts, only
pensioners will remain in Russian science in the near future."

Echoing this theme, Kapitsa commented that "in our higher educational
establishments and universities, the grandparents are teaching the
grandchildren".

Funding

The programme noted that while large numbers of scientists rushed abroad
when the iron curtain collapsed, those who stayed tried their utmost to
obtain research grants allocated by the Russian Fundamental Research Fund
[RFRF], set up in 1992 to finance science.

"The authors of 9,000 research projects take part in RFRF competitions each
year. Of these, an expert council selects the best 3,000. But the value of
contracts in Russia and abroad cannot be compared. If successful in the
competition, a team of 10 scientists can count on a grant of R150,000. This
money is supposed to cover not just salaries, but also the research."

"Modern and competitive science cannot be done for this sort of money, of
course," commented Professor Sergey Nedospasov, who has a position at the
USA's National Cancer Institute: "You can only survive. That is roughly the
level at which the majority of laboratories have been existing over the
past 10 years."

Lev Nikolayev, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Natural
Sciences, echoed this idea: "It's a question of organizing science. We
continue to exist according to the blueprint that existed in our former
political system. Hundreds and thousands of scientific institutions are
existing and surviving, but the absolute majority of them are no longer
capable of developing anything."

Reform

"In the new conditions," the programme said, "the whole structure of
science needs to be reformed in Russia". The number of Russian inventions
being patented has slumped in recent years. and "the country's best minds
and talents are depressed by one thing: our society's indifference to
science".

It said "legions" of scientific workers are deciding to switch to other
careers in what is known as the "internal brain drain". "The number of
people engaged in science in the 1990s has gone down by more than
two-thirds. In one of the departments of the Institute of General Physics,
15 of the 20 staff have left science to work in business. Of the five
remaining scientists, three went to work abroad. Only two continue to work
at home."

Russia remains the "main donor" meeting the growing "appetites" of US
corporations for qualified scientists from abroad, the commentary said. And
only high pay and good career prospects can bring the scientists back to
Russia.

The programme recalled that in September 2004, the Education and Science
Ministry had issued a proposal for "attracting private capital and
auctioning off a number of research institutes". "Out of 2,500 scientific
enterprises, 100, or 200 at the most, will remain. Only the property will
be valued for auction purposes, and it will end up in the hands of the
science generals."

The programme expressed disappointment that "this sort of privatization
will bring rank-and-file scientists neither money nor an improvement in
their working conditions".

This was echoed by Nikolay Petrakov, member of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, who said the scheme "will lead above all, it seems to me, to
scientific organizations being definitively destroyed". "There will simply
be no science because after the privatization no-one is being obliged to
invest in research."

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