2013 reforms of the Russian Academy of Sciences

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Overview

The 2013 reforms of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) is a plan made by the Russian government to adapt the venerated RAS to modern times. First announced in 2013 as a bill that merges the RAS with its two sister academies: the Academy of Medical and Agricultural Sciences by Russian President Vladimir Putin, it was not discussed by the Russian scientific community, it was amended, yet it was controversial. The bill was signed into law at the end of September, starting the reforms, but a one-year moratorium on the changes of RAS's staff and property was implemented following a storm of protests. Once this moratorium is over, the reform will proceed.

Background

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the RAS suffered a series of cuts in its funding. The output has largely decreased, and the age of its equipment doubled. While most of the scientists turned to the West, some stayed behind, starting to dabble in business, thanks to the readily available financing tools. The academy started leasing their properties to other bidders, and rented the others, generating the revenue.

However, the tools used by the Academy were a breeding ground for corruption, as the academy's institutes were said to have been unable to manage their own property for years. The prominent examples are scientists who criticized the academy's commercial projects were killed, beaten or received death threats. In 2004, a bank offered to build an office on the premises of the Lebedev Physical Institute, and institute head Oleg Krokhin and his deputy Yury Alexandrov opposed such plans. Soon, Krokhin was fired and Alexandrov was found dead in his apartment after treatment from hospital following his beating. The academy's vice president, Gennady Mesyats, replaced Krokhin and promoted the office project.^[1] Aside from that, it is this corruption that causes the failure of the Phobos-Grunt space mission, among many other factors.

There are many conflicts between people affiliated with the Kremlin and the academy. These set the stage for the Kremlin to exact its revenge. For example, Mikhail Kovachuk's entry as head of the crystallography institute was refused by the physical sciences department, while Viktor Petrik had his inventions, a graphene-based water filter, became a center of the Petrikgate scandal.

In June 2013, a bill merging three science academies to create one unified RAS was unveiled and approved by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. During the merging, the three academies were to be de-facto liquidated. It also transferred the institutes, properties, buildings and assets to a special body created to manage them, and the body's head would be accountable to either the President or the Prime Minister.[1] By considering the fate suffered by other institutions under control by the Russian government, any scientific project, including the repeat mission for Phobos-Grunt, can be blocked by government officials, and have no chance of being realized. Institutions are liquidated by combining institutions with similar names, dismissing hundreds of scientists, including 70-year-old former mission scientist Alexander Zakharov and those involved on the project at the academy's Space Research Institute, in the process, an intended objective for the planned Anonymous operation, entitled "Phobos-Gone". Then, a large part of the academy's property will be sold. These all will lead to closures of websites operated by the academy's institutes, including those hosted on its web servers.

The bill caused a widespread outcry from Russian scientists. Researchers stage protests, including a symbolic funeral of the RAS at the State Duma building and the main RAS building itself. Others want to quit the academy if the reform is completed. From July until September, hundreds of protesters took part in unauthorized rallies near the State Duma building, resulting in the government making some minor yet insufficient concessions. The reform bill has been heavily amended, and in October, Vladimir Putin proposed a one-year moratorium on the changes of the academy's property and personnel. Putin and other top decision makers deceived the scientific community by first agreeing to their arguments and then failing to remove some provisions of the reform bill that prompted the backlash. These include, for instance, the clause on the transfer of research institutes to the new federal body.

On September 7, the Kremlin-friendly TV channel, REN-TV, aired a 50-minute documentary, entitled "Diagnostics of RAS", which exposed the criminal empire that ruled the RAS, followed by a six minute report "Real Estate of RAS: Golden Meters Without Ties to Science" on the Vesti news program on Rossia One and the findings of violations detected by the prosecutor's office. Violations included embezzlement of state property and budget funds (including the budget of Phobos-Grunt) worth millions of rubles. Osipov, Nigmatulin and Nekipelov all refuted the accusations against the academy voiced on Ren TV and provided arguments against each of the claims, including the alleged fraud involving the academy's apartments, land plots, hotels and other property, as well as accusations of authoritarian leadership and physical attacks on critics. Despite this, the Duma voted the legislation into law which critics fearing the liquidation of Russian science.