Science is a luxury, not a means of promotion
Why do we need science?Ivan Sterligov, Slon.ru
Talks about reforms, priorities, the dispersal of academies and the creation of international-level R&D centers lack clarity.
It is good to precede them by clarifying more general attitudes.
The scale and forms of the existence of Soviet science were determined by the set of goals facing the USSR and the international situation of the country. The ideology of building world communism formed a specific scheme of the research and development sector.
Firstly, isolation from the West meant relying on one's own strength, creating one's own broad front of sciences. Moreover, it was not just about demonstrating the advantages of the socialist system, but also about an urgent practical need. The scale of official technological borrowings was extremely limited, so they came up with a lot themselves. Naturally, it didn't always work out, and we had to resort to reverse engineering. There are plenty of examples: IT specialists cloned IBM-360, and chemists from VNIHFI reproduced more than 170 key foreign medicines. Here is how the leading figure of Russian pharmacology, Academician Mashkovsky, wrote about it: "... the scientists of the institute closely followed the achievements of foreign science and with the advent of each new class of highly effective medicines sought to make these funds the property of domestic medicine."
Characteristic expressions such as "domestic medicine" and "property" well reflect the Soviet connection of practice and ideology. In order to catch up and overtake the capitalist West and build communism, it was necessary to create hundreds of academic and thousands of industry institutes, without which a technically isolated economy could not develop. The level of these institutions was different, and the effectiveness due to the noticeable isolation from world science was, on average, weaker, but achievements certainly arose. There was a twofold demand for them: both medicines and domestic assets were required.
Secondly, the confrontation with capitalism, or rather, the desire for geopolitical domination, was expressed in an arms race. Accordingly, significant industries for the defense industry were a priority. Let's not stop there, it's better to move on to the third factor.
Science served as the official foundation for building Soviet civilization. The key feature of Marxist-Leninist ideology is that it considered itself "the only scientific", "truly scientific", etc. This ideology was expressed in the creation of a totalitarian-planned state on a scientific basis. Of course, the forms of existence of "science" could be arbitrarily ugly – it is enough to recall the author of the monograph "Marxism and questions of linguistics".
Nevertheless, scientific and technological progress was the spiritual pillar of the development of the USSR. He visibly demonstrated the advantages of Soviet ideology and confirmed its superiority. Our Gagarin flew – there is no God. The main building of MSU is the Temple of Science. Our peaceful atom. KSP, physics-lyricists, Strugatsky and "Nine days of one Year".
Soviet children completely mastered the achievements of higher mathematics according to the textbook of the brilliant Kolmogorov, and parents built unique science cities like Novosibirsk Akademgorodok from scratch, whose residents were fed better than the rest of the population. As a result: there were much more scientists in the USSR than anywhere else in the world.
Now let's move on to modern Russia, which got the Soviet scientific system.
1. Technological isolation is over, and all the achievements of world applied science and engineering are available to us – except the most advanced ones, which are not sold. The state does not need to develop a full range of its own technologies to support its activities also because the planned economy has been replaced by a private one, and most socio-economic tasks can be solved on a commercial basis.
But before the genetically Soviet science, the task of earning money, which was not peculiar to it earlier, is persistently set. Moreover, it is often presented not as a task, but as the goal of all existence. Applied research institutes of the old type were created for completely different purposes, and the facts of their adjustment to market reality are predictably rare. But we continue to spend an indecent amount of money on them. Therefore, it is necessary not to wait until the gigantic system of state branch science finally decomposes, but to reform it immediately. There are no former reasons to keep it, and it will definitely not generate innovations.
2. The pace of the arms race on our part has noticeably decreased. Now the nature of the threats is different: capitalists have been replaced by terrorists. Nevertheless, the adopted direction of foreign policy requires maintaining (visibility) parity with past and new potential opponents. In addition, there is an active arms trade, and in order to continue this shameful occupation, it is necessary to update the Soviet assortment.
Therefore, it is necessary to maintain a certain level of science and technology in a fairly wide range of fields, and to develop fundamental science and closely integrate it with education. The spread of terrorism and local conflicts on the one hand, and a certain reduction in the role of strategic nuclear weapons on the other, mean that, in thematic terms, the priority should shift from nuclear physics to electronics and IT. They, plus materials science, are necessary if we want to continue to trade aircraft.
3. The authorities do not have a clear ideology, but they have declared goals: they say that we are building a welfare state with a diversified innovative economy. For the development of innovation, the presence of science is a secondary factor, my colleague blogger Roman Vishnevsky wrote well about this. But if something changes in terms of corruption and nepotism, it will be useful to have a basis for the emergence of potentially attractive technologies. World experience shows that young, well-educated specialists promote their ideas most actively.
If we talk about topics and forms, it is best for us to develop IT education in universities. Unlike nano, bio or green technologies, programmers require minimal initial investment. In addition, they face fewer problems with customs and material support (from connecting to the power grid to the supply of bioreactive substances). Already now our software industry looks good and sells products abroad.
"Sociality" remains, and it directly requires the state to develop the main branch of scientific knowledge for the modern Western world – biomedical research. In the USSR and the Russian Federation, their weight was and is frighteningly small in comparison with developed capitalist countries. In a certain sense, this is a consequence of the old Soviet reform, which separated the medical faculties of universities into separate universities, which contradicts world practice.
I would add that now the world is going through a real biomedical revolution and is moving to personalized medicine based on the decoding of the genome of individuals and the rapid development of diagnostics. This is another reason that dictates the need for the development of medical science in conjunction with medical education.
Almost everything else for the benefit of the population can be purchased abroad, including energy-saving technologies significant for the Russian Federation, solutions for mining and transport.
The government does not set any goals for society, which is quite normal. In the absence of a vector set from above, vectors of another level operate: instead of a bright tomorrow for everyone, personal happiness and satiety. The role of Russian scientists in achieving the personal happiness of most individual citizens is not obvious. Therefore, there is no respect for science comparable to the Soviet one now. If we discard the tasks listed above, then science is needed "to be", as a sign of a developed country. There is about the same logic that makes thousands of officials, including half of the members of the government, acquire doctorates. It's like an expensive gadget in your pocket. I really want a modern, but brighter – a Russian clone of the iPhone, the Skolkovo model. And there is enough functionality from the tube for a couple of thousand rubles.
Whether the current government needs to maintain a high intellectual level of the population is a debatable question. Whether society needs its own high intellectual level is a meaningless question. Without relevant fundamental science related to education and attractive to young people, this level cannot be maintained. However, this is not a fact, but an assumption. But the fact that the former academic scale is not needed by the new Russia is a fact.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru02.04.2010