Russian Government Takes Over Country's 289-year Old Scientific Academy 192
ananyo writes "Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved controversial reforms to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) on 18 September. More than 330 members of the Duma voted in favor of the law, with only 107 against, in a move critics say will deprive the 289-year-old body of its independence and halt attempts to revitalize Russia's struggling science system. If, as is widely expected, the parliament's upper house and Russian President Vladimir Putin approve the law, the 436 institutes and 45,000 research staff of Russia's primary basic-research organization will be managed by a newly established federal agency that reports directly to Putin. The agency will manage the academy's 60-billion-rouble (US$1.9-billion) budget and extensive property portfolio, which includes lucrative sites in Moscow and St Petersburg, and will also have a say in the appointment of institute directors. 'This is not a reform — this is a liquidation of science in Russia,' says Alexander Kuleshov, director of the academy's Institute for Information Transmission Problems in Moscow."
Neat! (Score:5, Funny)
My big take-home from this article is they have an "Institute for Information Transmission Problems" - a whole Institute just devoted to resolving poor communication.
They really got their message out!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
My take-home is that there may be excellent Russian scientists working on all sorts of interesting projects who could be willing to work for the US instead - provided they can slip out of the country.
Re: (Score:2)
My take-home is that there may be excellent Russian scientists working on all sorts of interesting projects who could be willing to work for the US instead - provided they can slip out of the country.
The harder they make it for people to go about their life and jobs the easier it be makin' it for them t' jump ship. Arrr! ox)P-)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong academy.
The science freak academy is the "Russian Academy of Natural Sciences".
Re: (Score:2)
Institute for...
Information Transmission Problems in Moscow.
Avast, Putin be planning some rebadgin - Information We Have No Problems - Is Only You Institute. Arr. oX)P-|
Re: (Score:2)
It's probably their kind of Bell Labs/NSA University program. So what was your criticism again ? That Russia has a serious sword which they can stick in you nice, pink ass ?
"
The Institute for Information Transmission Problems established in 1961 (in November 2004 the Institute was named after A. Kharkevich) is part of the nanotechnology and information technology department of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The main purpose of the Institute is to perform basic research and applied developments regarding pr
And Putin continues (Score:4, Insightful)
in his quest to turn Russia into a theocracy.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Edward Snowden must feel so proud of his newly adopted homeland.
Re:And Putin continues (Score:4, Informative)
Since he was only granted temporary asylum, and is currently awaiting decisions on permanent asylum in 19 other countries. it is not clear how you get "his newly adopted homeland."
Re:And Putin continues (Score:4, Insightful)
What basis do you have to believe that if he is granted asylum in one of those countries, Russia will allow him to leave?
Re: (Score:3)
Edward Snowden must feel so proud of his newly adopted homeland.
Name a country from which he could reveal secrets about how the US government has been spying on its citizens and not get extradited and sent to jail which isn't on our "bad guys" list.
Yes, Snowden chose countries like China and Russia to make his stand from, but it's not like he had any other choices that would keep him from ending up like all the other whistleblowers this administration has gone after hard.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you somehow mistake me for praising China and Russia? They're terrible places from the perspective of freedom.
But the bigger issue is that none of the countries that supposedly love freedom will stand up for him. The choice for Snowden is (a) keep silent about abuses of our rights, (b) throw himself on a grenade by staying within arms reach of the US government, or (c) make his stand from a country which is even worse but which won't lock him up for it.
The least terrible choice from both the perspecti
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that Snowden didn't just expose rights abuses. He exposed *everything* that the NSA did.
(Unless you live in the fairy land where idealistic heroes defeat Evil Doers, in which case, what Snowden did was a good thing. Too bad we don't live in fairy land.)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that Snowden didn't just expose rights abuses. He exposed *everything* that the NSA did.
Actually, no. Barton Gellman of The Washington Post has said that he made sure that he had people he could trust [arstechnica.com] not to release everything recklessly before he made his leaks. Glen Greenwald of The Guardian has also asserted that Snowden wanted people with discretion to have his data.
(Unless you live in the fairy land where idealistic heroes defeat Evil Doers, in which case, what Snowden did was a good thing. Too bad we don't live in fairy land.)
It's a bit closer of a neighbor to reality than the imaginary kingdom in which an agency that repeatedly lies to Congress can be trusted with the totalitarian power to watch everything everyone does because they're all just s
Re: (Score:2)
Then you're confusing the NSA with the FBI.
Re:And Putin continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Edward Snowden must feel so proud of his newly adopted homeland.
As if hiding from a blood-thirsty mob in a ditch constitutes an endorsement of ditch-living.
Snowden's first goal was to expose the NSA. His second is to remain alive and unimprisoned, and sadly his only options for that appear to be oppressive states. That's not an indictment of Snowden, it is an indictment of the so-called "free world."
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Snowden's first goal was to expose the NSA.
The NSA's job is to spy. So they spy. The country's borders are so open; they make a colander seem waterproof. Unfortunately for all and sundry, those who would do harm to the country don't walk around with flashing red lights on their heads. Thus, since it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, they collect lots and lots of stuff, even on people living in the US. I AM UNAPOLOGETICALLY GLAD THEY DO SO, since they do not appear to share it with the FBI nor state+local police.
(The problem is that
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sooo... because you don't trust your fellow man... you... put your trust in a group of your fellow men self-selected for a career in the spy game? *golf clap* Well played sir. THINK man... spying is separated into different agencies (foreign/domestic) etc... for a reason, and there's a reason those (now subverted) oversight courts exist.
There's only one thing that makes people put on an approximation of trustworthiness - accountability. Noone is arguing borders should be guarded, but the watchers s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
but we haven't heard the FBI screaming very much about this invasion of their turf - that's a scarey sign.
That's an excellent point. :(
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, I can't believe you got modded up for that. It is just a big ball of hate, all invective, no reasoning at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Allow me to correct your false statement. There are both facts and reason there,
Allow me to clarify - no relevant facts and lots of poor reasoning all wrapped up in a big ball of tribal anger.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
With himself as god, most likely.
Re: (Score:3)
With himself as god, most likely.
Avast! That scalawag Putin will most likely immanentize the eschaton or claim he has. Arr. ox)P-|
Re: (Score:2)
nope not a theocracy.
ALL HAIL TSAR PUTIN. Heir to the Romanav's.
He even has secret palaces being built.
Re: (Score:2)
You'd think Russia would have learned by now.
Apparently not.
Re: (Score:2)
I think Putin is just going to push us into another cold war. He will likely die of heart failure before WW3 breaks out. I don't think anyone wants to put troops on the ground, but having an arms race will spur spending without the negative death aspects. I'm not saying that our USA's efforts aren't pushing for this either. We are giving foreign nations plenty of excuses to grasp for less open infrastructure and mitigate negative public opinion.
Re: (Score:2)
I see that russian part of slashdot has modpoints (I got mod down to troll for this fact). The fact is the fact.
This is not a question of when, since it has already happened. Now they are banning and making enemy out of homosexual people (both men and women). This is just the first step. Next step is to create some big foreign enemy, so far Putin has not yet done that since he is not ready. His military is not yet ready for such actions. In the meantime he is going to continue to increase his power in Russi
True Bummer for our friends in Russia (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I have to ask the obvious question: If everything was perfect till now, why there is no known famous Russian scientist?
Just because you were taught that all important discoveries were made by citizens of your country doesn't make it true. Go google "famous Russian scientists". On the Wikipedia page you'll find, grep "Nobel prize" and count the number of entries it returns. Then, come back here and apologize for asking an incredibly uninformed question.
Re: (Score:2)
During the Stalinist era, the official party line was bat-shit crazy non-science.
It depends on which science. On biology, definitely. Also on history, linguistics (though Stalin himself ended up labeling the japhetic theory as pseudoscience in the end), and some other stuff. OTOH, most hard sciences - math, physics, chemistry - were developing quite well and receiving considerable funding from the state. There were some late half-hearted attempts to start a Lysenko-style campaign in physics against theory of relativity (the usual spin - bourgeois imperialist lackey Einstein inventing a
Re: (Score:3)
I guess you might have heard of a few of them, actually. Quite a few things are named after Russian scientists, mostly in Physics and Biology. Why, I don't know. But if you spend some time looking at genetics and nuclear physics, you can't help but stumble upon quite a few of them. A lot of stuff in that area is named after Russians. Like, say, Pavel Cherenkov who discovered the radiation named after him (and actually earned him a Nobel Prize).
Re: (Score:3)
Just because a Russian didn't invent the smartphone, it does not follow that there are no famous Russian scientists. Broaden your horizons. Quite a number of 20th century math fields are almost entirely Russian. And hey, those rocket scientists, the ones that keep boosting out American astronauts into space - they're exclusively Russian.
Or, if you insist: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=famous+russian+scientists [lmgtfy.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How can you say there is no known famous Russian scientist?
Trofim Lysenko ("Lysenkoism")
Aleksandr Oparin ("Oparin hypothesis")
Ivan Pavlov ("Pavlovian conditioning")
Pafnuti Chebyshev ("Chebyshev polynomials")
Leonhard Euler (OK, Swiss by birth, but did lots of good math in St. Petersburg)
Andrey Kolmogorov ("Kolmogorov complexity")
Aleksandr Lyapunov ("Lyapunov stability")
Andrey Markov Sr. ("Markov chains")
Andrei Sakharov (thermonuclear weapons)
Heinrich Lenz ("Lenz's law")
Alexei Yuryevich Smirnov ("Mikheyev
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Recent Russian Nobel prize winners in physics:
Andre Geim, 2010
Konstantin Novoselov, 2010
Alexei A. Abrikosov, 2003
Vitaly Ginzburg, 2003
Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, 2000
Re: (Score:2)
Recent Russian Nobel prize winners in physics:
Andre Geim, 2010
University of Manchester
Konstantin Novoselov, 2010
University of Manchester
Alexei A. Abrikosov, 2003
Argonne National Laboratory
Vitaly Ginzburg, 2003
P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute
(OK, this one you can keep. He's dead though...)
Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, 2000
Ioffe Institute, St. Petersburg
Two out of five.
None out of three for "still working in their field" though (Alferov is 83 and a politician).
I'm not even saying that you don't have a point. But you haven't made it so far.
Re: (Score:2)
Grigory Perelman?
Re: (Score:2)
Putting Lysenko on the list kind of undermines your point.
Re: (Score:2)
How can people forget Dmitri Mendeleev? That table of his has become mighty popular.
Re: (Score:2)
The rest of the world still cant do what Lysenko did 50+ years ago. Because it was all bullshit. Command economies are broken.
Re: (Score:2)
In other news, Putin inaugurates Ministry of Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
"NYET! We will no longer allow science to tell us what the laws that govern the universe are! Starting today, it is the law that will govern science!!"
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be ridiculous! That would only make it difficult for the mathematically-challenged! It should be rounded up to 3.2 [wikipedia.org], as has been proposed before by logical Americans who understand that natural law cannot be allowed to supersede the legal sensibilities of wrong-headed yammerheads!
Government Revitalization of Science (Score:3)
Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
They probably noticed that scientists can do things like prove [pnas.org] that Russian elections are rigged.
I guess they're following in Canada's footsteps (Score:5, Informative)
Harper has been muzzling Canadian scientists for a long time, cutting their budgets, axing research, and so on.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. Funny enough, people in my country always say that long-term investments in R&D and etc are the last places you want to cut in a crises because they garantee our future.
That's stupid. If you're in a crisis, you make sure everybody has food on the table, you get people into jobs, the economic going .. then you re-invest in the long-term stuff. This is obvious in a household. But for whatever reason it doesn't follow for some.
Maybe because a household =/= a whole goddamned state?
Czar Putin (Score:5, Insightful)
Wall Street Journal [wsj.com]
The article states that he's 61 years old, so this is more or less "president for life". If he lasts another 10 years he'll just do it again, or not even bother to hold an election.
Russia's slide will continue if this happens. Of course the US has a similar problem with entrenched elites wrecking the economy for their own personal gain [chicagotribune.com].
Re: (Score:2)
The article states that he's 61 years old, so this is more or less "president for life". If he lasts another 10 years he'll just do it again, or not even bother to hold an election. Russia's slide will continue if this happens.
Slide upward, you mean? Yes, that has to be stopped by any means possible.
In most areas of expertise once we find a capable engineer, a good manager, we tend to keep them employed. But the rules of democracy say that such a manager has to be kicked out after a certain number of y
Re: (Score:2)
Because like a baby's nappy, a politician who is around for too long starts to get smelly and stained. Not literally (like the nappy) but they do tend to get increasingly out of touch and increasingly damaging to their own nation.
We've seen this happen in recent British history. Thatcher was prime minister for too long and her policies became more and more out of touch with reality towards the end until her party finally had to force her out of office, and the same thing happened with Tony Blair. Term limit
Re: (Score:2)
Some of us prefer a slightly messy democracy to a slow strangulation of discussion and dissent.
OK. That is fine, and it is actually true. But here is another question. Are those who prefer the other option wrong? Not merely wrong from your point of view, but wrong from some external, absolute reference plane, so that we can declare people A to be undeniably right and people B to be undeniably wrong?
If you say "yes, there is a way to declare them such" then you deny them their own way of development, an
Re:Czar Putin (Score:4, Interesting)
One can do oil upsliding without Putin just as well.
You are forgetting the oligarchs. Do you think any money would be spent on social needs or on defense or on reserves or on external debt or on stimulating the economy? Yeltsin's years are a good illustration of that situation: none of the above was done; all the money was taken by oligarchs, and the people were left to fend for themselves as they may.
I won't say that Putin is flawlessly doing all that; however he is doing better than Yeltsin. Oligarchs know their place. Perhaps someone else would do it also pretty good; but the theory of probabilities is against you. If the incumbent is doing something at a good enough level, the newcomer has to explain why he, an untested politician, will do better - and how is he going to guarantee that. Russia is the origin of the game of Russian Roulette, but despite that not every voter is interested in a chance to buy a small incremental improvement if, if things go south, he can equally likely buy himself a large problem. In essence, Putin is "good enough" for most voters; a devil that you know. The only exception is voters who want "their man" in power, or who are simply thinking that people at the top should change every other week. They, poor souls, have no clue what they are asking for. There are people like that in every society. Hell, half of the USA is always against the sitting President, no matter if he is R or D. So what?
Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The TFA seems to imply the RAS has been wholly independent for 289 years, which is obviously not the case... It was founded by the tsar who I'd imagine had some sway.
That and oh... it lived through the soviet union, which certainly had control.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Even so, historically, it was surprisingly independent even at worst time. E.g. under Stalin, there were many things that Kapitsa said to him that no-one else dared - and got away with it.
It also had one interesting quirk: the academic titles that it awarded could not be stripped by anyone else - and every government to date has respected this, and didn't pressure the Academy to strip the title even when a particular person was persecuted for his political beliefs. It is said that Stalin joked at some point
Truly a shame (Score:5, Insightful)
This is truly a shame. Back during the Cold War the question was often posed, is Russia the most backward advanced country in the world, or the most advanced backward country in the world. However, despite being cursed with horrid systems of government and an inability to make washing machines, anybody who knew anything admired their accomplishments in science and math. Now Putty Poot wants to kill that? He's a traitor.
Re: (Score:3)
Back during the Cold War the question was often posed, is Russia the most backward advanced country in the world, or the most advanced backward country in the world
The "rule of thumb" breakdown was like this: Anything that required physical equipment (powerful computers, test rigs, etc) they sucked at, because they didn't have it. Anything that did NOT require physical equipment (mathematics, optics, theoretical physics, etc), they excelled at.
I remember when I was doing my linguist course while in the Navy, back in '82. One of my instructor's husband had PhD in physics - they were Jewish, and had only been able to leave the Soviet Union the year before. He saw th
In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Interesting)
In Soviet Russia... this academy had more freedom than it does now.
Wow.
Re: (Score:2)
Please, read something about sharaga's [wikipedia.org], and think about reconsidering your statement.
a new place to send the bribes to? (Score:2)
60-billion-rouble (US$1.9-billion) budget and extensive property portfolio, which includes lucrative sites in Moscow and St Petersburg
So it is not about the quality or independence of science. It is about who will be collecting, hmm what's the word ... "royalties"?.... on the management of the budget and the properties.
Re: (Score:2)
Reform is unavoidable, and has to be done quickly. (Score:5, Informative)
I am not a supporter of Putin and his little auto-/pluto-cratic system of government, but this reform is something long-needed, almost essential for our science. With the 40-50 years old mindset you cannot innovate, you cannot truly create something new, perform some cutting-edge experiments and achieve true breakthroughs. Only with adaptation of new policies, with adequate pay and real prospects of work for the young scientists we can hope to see our science pull itself out of its current horrible state. And this time, as preposterous as it sounds, Putin is on the side of progress. Of course there is no clearly defined "good guy" in this whole situation, but RAS in its modern form is much worse than almost anything that can replace it.
Re:Reform is unavoidable, and has to be done quick (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that everything you wrote is false, but even if every single word of it was true, it still doesn't make the reform good. There's certainly corruption in the Academy, but there's also still plenty of real science being done. With control transferred fully to government bureaucrats, corruption is only bound to increase, and everything immaterial to the goal of enrichment through fraud will be promptly get rid of. What's even worse is that the Church is also raising its head and demanding a say in education and other spheres of life run by the state, and, so far, they have been mostly getting what they want... and now that the state controls scientific institutes directly, I would not put it past them to start stalling or even outright suppressing the lines of research that are contrary to Orthodox doctrine or the prevailing beliefs - evolutionary biology, say, or human cloning.
So, yes, this will spell the death knell of science in long term, unless a great many other things change.
Re: (Score:2)
Putin is not a dumb man, but there's considerable evidence that he does not have the best interests of the country and his citizens in mind.
The Academy of Science had a lot of independence in terms of how it organized itself, and, to a considerable extent, on its research. The commie "iron fist" did apply, but even that was significantly less binding on the Academy even under Stalin compared to most other state institutions.
I don't know why you bring up MiG-31 and S-400. These are Soviet scientific and engi
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Erich Fellgiebel was in his 50s when he ran the German government's R&D programs as General der Nachrichtentruppe (Signal Corps/Military Intelligence). Under his watch they developed the A4 missile (which is the basis of all liquid-fueled spaceflight to the present day), the jet engine, TV-guided smartbombs and quite a few more things. Allegedly they also invented the semiconductor diode.
So maybe you general statement of "people in the 40s to 50s don't innovate" is not true in its totality.
Re: (Score:2)
in soviet russia (Score:2)
we take over you!
Who runs Russia? (Score:2)
Liquidation of science (Score:2)
TFA quotes:
This is not a reform — this is a liquidation of science in Russia
Wasn't that supposed to have been done during the Boris Yeltsin era?
Stupid is as stupid does... (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this whole damn planet just gonna get stupid now? This is not at all what they showed us in Star Trek. Damn, 40 years ago we are putting people on the moon, now it's just global navel gazing from here on out. Yeee haaawww.
Fuck, we are screwed.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Is this whole damn planet just gonna get stupid now? This is not at all what they showed us in Star Trek. Damn, 40 years ago we are putting people on the moon, now it's just global navel gazing from here on out. Yeee haaawww.
Fuck, we are screwed.
Australia's new Prime Minister just abolished the cabinet position for Science Minister. First time since the 1930s we've not had a member of parliament charged witha science portfolio. The world has gone insane.
Strange bedfellows (Score:2)
Pope Urban VIII is now beaming in heaven, being vindicated. Politics and religion has emerged victorious over truth.
Here Comes Lootin' Putin.... (Score:2)
After he separates them from their liquidateable assets, do you suppose he'll let the R.O.C. start officially deciding what it and isn't science?
scientists on the cheap (Score:2)
Imagine if the US were to reinvigorate its sciences. Double the current research budget - drop in the box if they passed a tax measure - invest in their trained talent, and pick up some Russians too. Some country would be smart to pick them up before they jump ship to other professions.
The true reasons behind this (Score:2)
The first reason behind this "reform" is to steal and sell Academy's real property, the only Soviet legacy which has not been stolen until now. The scheme is traditional to Putins' friends:
1. Pour state money into property, paying for its repair, landscape development and luxury buildings. All paid by simple Russian citizens.
2. Name the property as "unuseful" and sell it to the pocket company for a laughable sum.
3. Resell the property for its market value. Share millions of $$$ between government officials,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Same as there is no U in Rossiya, or no 'Greece' in Ellada. English has it's own name for some things, instead of direct transliteration.
Re: (Score:2)
--
Sent from my Intersil 4004
Re: (Score:3)
there is also no WE or US in TEAM, either,
But ME certainly is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not just English. It was common in Europe to have multiple names for various cities and regions, because they'd change ownership often, or the language would change locally but foreigners would keep the old names, etc. Ie, Frankreich, Allemagne.
(oblig pirate: Arrr!)
Re: (Score:2)
The funniest part about this is the edit wars it occasionally leads to on Wikipedia. E.g., the Great Gdansk/Danzig Edit War [what-when-how.com].
Re:Rouble? (Score:4, Insightful)
Historically, the Russian letter "y" - which is equivalent to Latin "u" - was actually spelled as a digraph "oy", up until Peter the Great's alphabet reform of 1708. And the reason why it was spelled that is because Cyrillic alphabet was designed based on Greek, and in Greek the same sound is rendered as "ou" (omicron-upsilon) - so that was mapped as a digraph in Cyrillic, even though East Slavic languages didn't have a sound corresponding to standalone u/y, so it was never a letter in its own right. At some point, they started to write the digraph vertically, with "y" on top in line with other letters on the line, and "o" below it overlapping the tail; and then eventually "o" got dropped, leaving just "y", which is the shape that was codified by Peter in the Civil Script, and remains to this day.
So the Russian (and before that existed as a distinct language, Old East Slavic) word was indeed properly written as "roubl" up until 1708. And if it found its way into European languages at that time - which is very likely, since the word itself dates back to at least 13th century, and there was healthy trade between East Slavs and the rest of Europe - then this is the spelling from which the Latin transliteration was done.
Re: (Score:2)
That's very interesting, thanks. Only thing I'm curious about: are you saying that in Greek, the sound made by the omicron-upislon dipthong was only made by the dipthong? My understanding--recognizing the limitations of our knowledge about ancient pronounciations--is that "ou" and "u" make basically the same sound.
Re: (Score:2)
It depends on which Greek you're talking about. Originally - in Archaic Greek - yes, upsilon was just IPA [u], and omicron-upsilon more or less faithfully represented the corresponding diphthong. In Classical Greek, upsilon shifted into [y], while omicron-upsilon became [u]. In Modern Greek, it is pronounced either as [i] or as [v], depending on position, and the name of the letter is, correspondingly, "ipsilon".
[y] and [u] are fairly different sounds, though depending on your native language, one might sou
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for that. I'm curious, are you a linguist or...?
Re: (Score:2)
No, but Russian is my native language, and I like to explore some aspects on it, including the rather convoluted history of its writing system. Pretty much all of this is available on Wikipedia if you know where to look (or if you start reading at a high-level article like "Cyrillic script" and then chase down the various link chains to their logical ends).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem isn't who pays, it's who calls the shots.
But, since you were either incapable of that basic bit of reading comprehension or chose to intentionally attempt to make this a politics issue, nothing you say is worth paying attention to anyhow.
Re: (Score:2)
"He who has the gold, makes the rules."
And try to laugh more.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Single-Payer Science (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe his point was that there those who argue that governments should have bigger stakes in certain endeavors like NASA in the US, but everyone here seems to be lamenting that this is the end of science because the state is taking full control of this program - which being russia I'm assuming was fully government funded before anyway, just more autonomous from direction by the duma.
The Russian Academy of Sciences has had moderate autonomy in terms of spending. They've never been funded to a level commensurate with perceived need (sound familiar?) but they had quite a bit of leeway in terms of funding individual projects. That has never been completely true, of course - the military has often worked through the Academy on projects they're interested in (and funded). The Politburo has had significant input into how various fields are funded. What appears to be the issue is that the Institute Directors will be potentially political appointees, responsible to His Glorious Putiness. We may be seeing many more studies on wrestling and tigers.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems possible that government funding is as responsive to the private sector and there will be more money available to researchers when they can more easily accept corporate donations. That is just my 2 ruble opinion.
You can bet the private sector funding to science will start to explode in Russia. Especially for scientific analysis to prove that there are no problems with the mega project models of everything currently being planned by the new economic titans of Russia.
These involve corporations set up for wholesale cutting of the forests in the Urals, southern Siberia and the Kamchatka and then selling whole logs on world markets at fire sale prices. Or the upgrades to the Siberian railway to move oil to China and th