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SOVIET SCIENCE UNDER GORBACHEV
Abstract
Gorbachev has exposed science to the same pressure for restructuring as all other sectors of Soviet society, as there has been an increasing recognition of poor scientific returns on a major investment. Some of the key problems of Soviet science are examined, in two basic categories: problems which are internal to Soviet science itself and problems of its relations with the outside world. The first category includes planning and funding difficulties, management style, and management-staff relations; the second, backwardness in key technologies and isolation from the world scientific community. The analysis of each of these areas of difficulty includes an account of current attempts at reform.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
I do not wish for a moment to belittle the immense importance of these issues or the extremely high quality of the Western research devoted to them. As exceptions to the neglect of Soviet research performance, see T. Gustafson, ‘Why doesn't Soviet science do better than it does?’ in L.L. Lubrano and S.G. Solomon (eds), The Social Context of Soviet Science, Westview, Boulder and Dawson, Folkestone, 1980 and P. Kneen, Soviet Scientists and the State, Macmillan, London and Basingstoke, 1984, ch. 4.
Fortescue S.. 1990. . Science Policy Making in the USSR . , p. 165––6. . London : : Routledge. .
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Poisk, 12, July 1989, pp. 1–2.
Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, 4, 1989, pp.31–4.
See Roald Sagdeev in Physics Today, September 1988, p. 98; the oceanologist Andrei Monin in Izvestiia, 13 Septmber 1989, p.4; and Zhores Alferov in Izvestiia, 10 August 1988, p.2.
Irvine J. and Martin B. R.. 1985. . Basic research in the East and West: a comparison of the scientific performance of high-energy accelerators. . Social Studies of Science . , Vol. 15:: 293––341. .
Narin F. and Carpenter M. P.. 1975. . National publication and citation comparisons. . Journal of the American Society for Information Science . , Vol. 26:: 80––93. . Federation ProceedingsJournal of the American Society for Information ScienceSocial Studies of ScienceSocial Studies of ScienceNatureVestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, 5, 1988, p. 79; Izvestiia
H. Balzer, Soviet Science on the Edge of Reform, Westview, Boulder, 1989. The survey's data have been extensively used in R. F. Miller, ‘The role of the Communist Party in Soviet research and development’, Soviet Studies, 37, 1, January 1985, pp. 31–59.
Blazer, ibid., p. 163.
M. A. Popovskii, Science in Chains: The crisis of science and scientists in the Soviet Union today, Collins and Harvill, London, 1980 (a revision of Manipulated Science, Doubleday, New York, 1979, a translation of Upravliaemaia nauka, Overseas Publications Interchange, London, 1978).
For example, Z. Medvedev, Soviet Science, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979; M. Ya. Azbel, Refusenik. Trapped in the Soviet Union, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1982; R. L. Berg, Acquired Traits. Memoirs of a geneticist from the Soviet Union, Viking, New York, 1988.
New Scientist, 10 November 1983, p. 442.
Sinclair C.. 1987. . The Status of Soviet Civil Science . , Dordrecht : : Nijhoff. .
C. Kaysen, chairman, Review of US-USSR Interacademy Exchanges and Relations, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, 1977. For commentary, see Science, 27, October 1978, pp. 383–90; Lubrano, ‘National and international politics in US-USSR co-operation’, Social Studies of Science, 11, 4, November 1981, pp. 451–80; C. P. Ailes and A. E. Pardee, Cooperation in Science and Technology: an evaluation of the US-Soviet agreement, Westview, Boulder, 1986.
Physics Today, October 1988, pp. 73–6.
op. cit., p. 32.
I. Wirszup, ‘Soviet secondary school mathematics and science programs’, in Sinclair, The Status, ch. 1.2.
Blazer, ibid., ch. 4.
The chemist Aleksei Baraboshkin recently suggested that data showing that 20 percent of Soviet fundamental research was above world levels, 20 percent at that level, and 60 percent below was not a bad result considering that the Soviets spent 5–6 times less than the US on basic science. Vestnik Akademii nauk, 8, 1989, p. 102.
L. E. Nolting, Financing of Research, Development, and Innovation in the USSR, Foreign Economic Report No. 22, Department of Commerce, Washington DC, September 1985, p. 19; Fortescue, Science Policy Making, pp. 1–7. Some Soviet commentators even dispute the Soviet lead in percentage terms. For example, Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, 3, 1989, p. 124.
Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, 3, 1989, p. 62.
Sobranie postanovlenii SSSR, 48, 1987, art.158, paras. 4 and 10.
Moscow News, 16 July 1989, p. 15. It should be pointed out that many Academy institutes have for many years derived as much as 50 percent of their budget from contract research, a situation which causes concern among many scientists.
For detailed examples, see Fortescue, Science Policy Making, pp. 150–4.
Moscow News, 16 July 1989, p. 15.
S. Fortescue, The Communist Party and Soviet Science, Macmillan, London and Basingstoke, 1986, p. 47.
Fortescue, The Communist Party, p. 52.
Fortescue, The Communist Party, pp. 46–9; P. G. Belkin, E. N. Emel'ianov, M.A. Ivanov, Sotsial'naia psikhologiia nauchnogo kollektiva, ‘Nauka;, Moscow, 1987, pp. 151–2.
Belkin, Sotsial'naia psikhologiia, pp. 147–9, 159.
For example, Izvestiia, 27 September 1989, p. 3.
For details on these factors, see Fortescue, Science Policy Making, pp. 162–76.
Physics Today, October 1988, p. 76.
J. Irvine and B.R. Martin, ‘Basic research in the East and West: a comparison of the scientific performance of high-energy accelerators’, Social Studies of Science, 15, 1985, pp. 293–341.
S. Kassel, ‘The outlook for Soviet advanced technologies’, in Science and Technology in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of a conference, Stanford University, July 1984, pp. 65–6.
Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, 8, 1989, p. 11.
Izvestiia, 2 October 1989, p. 3.
Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, 2, 1989, p. 15. For more details, see P. Snell, ‘Computers’, in M. J. Berry (ed.), Science and Technology in the USSR, Longman, Harlow, 1988, ch. 23; P. Snell, ‘Soviet microprocessors and microcomputers’, in R. Amann and J. Cooper (eds), Technical Progress and Soviet Economic Development, Blackwell, Oxford, 1986, ch. 3; S. E. Goodman, ‘Technology transfer and the development of the Soviet computer industry’, in B. Parrott (ed.), Trade, Technology, and Soviet-American Relations, Indiana UP, Bloomington, 1985.
Sotsialisticheskaia industriia, 15 October 1988, p. 4.
For an account of difficulties in materials research, see N. J. Grant, ‘Soviet science in the materials world’, in Sinclair, The Status, ch. 4.2.
I. V. Shul'gina, Infrastruktura nauki v SSSR, ‘Nauka’, Moscow, 1988, p. 81.
Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, 11, 1986, p. 25.
P. Kneen, ‘Soviet science policy under Gorbachev’, Soviet Studies, 41, 1, January 1989, pp. 67–8; Izvestiia, 15 August 1988, p. 2. On materials, see Izvestiia, 21 February 1989, p. 2. For a complaint over the recent failure to include scientific instrumentation as a national programme, see Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, 2, 1989, p. 6.
As a retired defence designer put it: “To expect people to pull off military exploits in peacetime is not only foolish but immoral.” Sotsialisticheskaia industriia, 13, November 1988, p. 2.
P. Hanson, ‘Technical chauvinism in the Soviet Union’, Radio Liberty Research, RL138/85, 30 April 1985.
Z. Medvedev, The Medvedev Papers, Macmillan, London, 1971.
Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, 2, 1989, pp. 24, 64.
Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, 8, 1989, p. 25. For details on information flows, including computer networking, within Soviet science and abroad, see Sinclair, The Status, part 3.