Academy of Sciences in its present state is semi-feudal coalition

The Russian Academy of Sciences in its present state is a semi-feudal coalition, Russian Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov told Echo of Moscow radio on Thursday. “Today the Russian Academy of Sciences looks like a semi-feudal coalition, and a new reform is underway to change the situation,” he stressed. “Thus the bill on revamping the Russian Academy of Sciences pursues three goals. The first one is to draw a line between ‘the club of outstanding scientists’ and the system of institutions. At the present moment the same people are making decisions on what to develop, how much money to allocate for that and how to do this. After that, academicians award themselves for the success they have achieved,” he noted. According to the minister, the second task is preservation and the targeted use of property of the academies that “earlier was simply squandered”. “And the last task facing the ministry is to unite the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences,” the minister stressed. According to him, after the setting up of the research institutes’ property management agency, academicians will be able to continue influencing the decision making. “The decision making in the new structure will depend not only on officials, but also on ‘the active scientific part’. This will be accomplished through the setting up of special scientific councils and so on,” Livanov marked. According to the minister, such activity arrangement will be worked out within the next few months. “This system of work will be legislatively fixed,” he added. Livanov said that ‘work on the bill began in the summer of 2012”. “In mid-autumn the fundamental position of the ministry on that issue was already formed,” he said. The minister explained the speed of submitting the bill to the State Duma lower house of parliament by “professionalism of those people who developed the reform”. “I am ready to assume responsibility for every letter of the bill,” Livanov added. “However, I am not an author of the bill in the full sense of this word,” he added. He said he had taken part in developing the reform, in numerous discussions and was also initiator of submitting the bill to the Duma.