Russian Academic Science Today: Its Societal Standing and the Situation within the Scientific Community

Abstract

This paper analyzes the present situation of Russian academic science, and explicates both the direct causes and the deep social roots of its recent crisis. The unfavourable position of Russian science is partly linked to traditional notions of the essence of Russian society, in which modern science exists as an inorganic, alien section, completely dependent on authorities whose current interests are not oriented towards modernization and the support of science. This approach suggests a way of understanding the social history of Russian science. A description of the spreading and growing crisis in the Russian Academy of Sciences after 1992 makes clear the background and atmosphere within which, in March 1994, a diagnostic study of the academic community was undertaken. This paper presents and interprets the survey's results in relation to major aspects of scientific activity: motivation, moods and intentions of scientists; their evaluation of the general situation in science and personal conditions of research; and current problems of science financing and organization. A compound picture derived from these data does not allow any definite predictions of the Academy's future: the processes revealed contain possibilities for both its positive transformation and its decay.