Slashdot Mirror
Russian Government Takes Over Country's 289-year Old Scientific Academy
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."
"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!!"
Life, ultimately, boils down to the Four Fs: Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding, and Mating.
Wall Street Journal
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.
Why is Snark Required?
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.
Sent from my PDP-11
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.
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."
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.