The idea of science as a progressive force was still to be found in dissident writings of the 1970s, but a less optimistic note could be found there too.
117 David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 43-64.
118 Marshal N. V Ogarkov, Chief of the General Staff,'Zashchita sotsializma: opyt istorii i sovremennost', Krasnaia zvezda, 9 May 1984.
119 Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 226-32.
120 Josephson, New Atlantis Revisited, pp. 264-304; Zhores A. Medvedev, Soviet Science (New York: W W Norton, 1978), pp. 162-96; the quotation is from p. 173.
121 Sakharov, Vospominaniia, pp. 528-38.
122 Gerovitch, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak, pp. 288-9.
Slanderer (Klevetnik), a character in Aleksandr Zinoviev's satirical novel The Yawning Heights (Ziiaiushchie vysoty), expresses the view that when 'one places one's hopes on the civilising role of science, one commits the gravest error'.[424]That is because science as an activity devoted to the pursuit of truth is subordinate to science as a social system. Slanderer declares that careerism has created a 'moral and psychological atmosphere in science which has nothing in common with those idyllic pictures one can find in the most critical and damning novels and memoirs devoted to the science of the past'.[425] The emigre science journalist Mark Popovsky painted a similar picture.[426] Far from exercising a civilising influence on Soviet society, science had come to embody the worst features of Soviet life: it was dominated by an overpowering bureaucratic apparatus; careerism, patronage and corruption were rife; there was a cynical disregard of ethics and morality; military and security considerations had first priority; the scientific community was riven by national antagonisms, and enmeshed in secrecy. In this disillusioned and perhaps jaundiced view, science could not serve as the model for a free or a moral society.
Early in the 1980s the party leadership decided, after years of putting off the idea, to devote a Central Committee plenary session to the scientific- technical revolution. Preparations began in earnest in the summer of 1984, but the plenum was cancelled.[427] Gorbachev, who had been deeply involved in these preparations, was persuaded of the urgency of the problem. Three months after becoming General Secretary, he told a conference on science and technology: 'an acceleration of scientific-technical progress insistently demands a profound perestroika of the system of planning and management, of the entire economic mechanism.'[428] He made it clear that he thought the transition to technology-intensive economic growth should have taken place fifteen years earlier.[429] Subsequent history showed, however, that he himself did not have an effective strategy for making that transition.
The nuclear accident at Chernobyl' on 26 April 1986, dramatised the Soviet Union's technological failings. In the worst nuclear accident ever, explosions at the nuclear power plant released millions of curies of radioactive particles into the atmosphere.[430] Secrecy and cover-up were the instinctive reaction of the Soviet authorities. It was only after sixty-eight hours - and prodding by the Swedish government - that they issued their first official statement. Once satellite pictures of the burning reactor appeared on television screens around the world, they could not deny that the accident had taken place. Glasnost' extended not only to the accident and its consequences, but to its causes as well. It was clear that poor reactor design and human error on the part of the plant operators were part of the picture. But the accident also resulted from the modus operandi of the Soviet bureaucracy, with its insistence on targets, pressure to meet those targets, neglect of safety considerations, secrecy and immunity from public opinion.
Only glasnost' would help to remedy the situation.[431] The Soviet press began to publish stories about past accidents. Environmental movements, often linked to nationalist sentiment in the republics, sprang up to oppose the building of new nuclear power plants and to draw attention to environmental damage caused by Soviet policies.[432] It became clear that, in its drive for modernity, the Soviet Union, which ruled one-sixth of the earth's surface, had imposed enormous costs not only on its people, but on its land, air and water too.[433] Chernobyl' - and the glasnost' it stimulated - delivered the coup degrace to the regime's claim that, guided by a scientific theory, it was creating a society in which science and technology would flourish for the benefit of the people.
Science in post-Soviet Russia, 1991-2000
Science in Russia entered what some scientists regard as its most serious crisis in the twentieth century when the Soviet Union collapsed.[434] The depth of the crisis is testimony both to the support that the Soviet Union had given to science and, notwithstanding the failings that critics pointed to in the 1970s and 1980s, to the quality of Soviet science. There was a threefold drop in total expenditure on civilian science in the 1990s, and this was compounded by the removal of price controls, which resulted in sharp increases in the cost of equipment, electricity and other services. The post-Soviet government made a sharp and sudden reduction in defence expenditure in 1992, with a corresponding cut in military R&D.[435]
One indicator of the depth of the crisis was the number of scientists who emigrated or quit science in order to pursue other careers in Russia. According to the Russian Ministry of Science, about 2,000 researchers a year left Russia between 1991 and 1996; after that, the outflow fell to under 1,500 a year. These are conservative figures, however; other estimates suggest that more than 30,000 scientists emigrated in this period. The internal brain drain is even more difficult to estimate, because many researchers remained formally on the staff of research institutes even while devoting themselves to non-scientific activities such as business. It appears that the internal brain drain was far greater than the number of scientists who emigrated.[436]
The international community did not want to see the Russian scientific community destroyed; it especially feared that knowledge of advanced weapons technologies would find its way to states hostile to the West. International organisations and foreign governments took steps to provide assistance to Russian scientists. The financier George Soros set up the International Science Foundation, which over the years 1993-6 granted about $130 million to support basic research in the natural sciences. Learned societies and philanthropic foundations gave significant help. The United States, Japan and the European Union established the International Science and Technology Centre in order to fund civilian projects by scientists who had been engaged in weapons research. By one Russian estimate, about half of Russian basic science was being funded from foreign sources in 1995.136
During the twentieth century the scientific community had shown remarkable resilience, and it was called upon to do so again at the century's end. The Academy of Sciences once again displayed considerable powers of survival. No radical reform of scientific institutions took place. Change was evolutionary: co-operation between the Academy of Sciences and the universities began to grow; the government set up a fund to support basic research; collaboration with foreign scientists increased. By the very end of the century there were signs that the situation had stabilised. It was still unclear, however, what shape Russian science would take. Would the universities and the Academy work more closely together? Would the universities become more important centres of research? Was a thoroughgoing reform of science and education needed? Would a capitalist Russia be more successful at commercialising science than the Soviet Union was? Would Russian industry develop advanced civilian technologies? Would the scientific community, which found itself on the sidelines in the 1990s, find a secure position in Russian society?
426
Mark Popovsky,
427
M. S. Gorbachev,
428
M. S. Gorbachev, 'Korennoi vopros ekonomicheskoi politiki partii', 11 June 1985, in M. S. Gorbachev,
431
Grigorii Medvedev,
432
Jane I. Dawson,
433
Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly Jr.,
434
V E. Zakharov, 'Predislovie', in B. M. Bongard-Levin and V E. Zakharov (eds.),
435
Irina Dezhina and Loren Graham,