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The historic decision taken last week by the Congress of People’s Deputies
to scrap the old Soviet power structures has thrown the country into turmoil.
One of the inevitable consequences of the reshaping of the union will be
a fundamental rethink of science in the successor states.

As central planning and central funding come to an end, scientists will
have to search out new sources of finance and new cooperation agreements.
The arrival of new paymasters will almost inevitably herald fresh priorities
in both pure and applied research.

The future is also uncertain for the elite who make up the membership
of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the tens of thousands who work
in its research institutes. For them, political devolution raises the vital
question of what will become of their academy as the USSR breaks up.

During the short life of last month’s coup, there was no concerted response
by the academic community. A few scientists did make their own personal
stand against it. For example, on the day the coup began, the Byelorussian
nuclear physicist Stanislau Suskievic, deputy speaker of the Byelorussian
Supreme Soviet, publicly condemned the action as unconstitutional. But the
only scientific institution which seems to have opposed the takeover bid
was the Moscow Eye Microsurgery Institute, which sent a first-aid team to
the Russian parliament building.

The bid for power came at a time when a large part of the Soviet scientific
workforce was on holiday, or attending conferences abroad. The entire leadership
of the all-union Academy of Sciences was out of town when the ‘gang of eight’
seized power, a spokeswoman said. But even when they began to return, she
added, they made no official comment. Whether this silence will affect their
future is unclear.

Ivan Silayev, premier of the Russian Federation and the man temporarily
in charge of the Soviet economy, has shown some tendency to brand as traitors
all those in authority who did not demonstrate their commitment to democracy
during the coup.

The Russian Minister of Health has likewise condemned the all-union
medical elite, since some of its leading members connived in declaring President
Gorbachev to be ill, providing the pretext for the coup. The newspaper Izvestiya
commented that the all-union Ministry of Health and the medical academy
are now ruing their failure to issue a statement during the coup.

Soon after the collapse of the coup, rumours of a purge of the scientific
community were rife. But, says Moscow psychiatrist Pavel Kachalov, ‘so far,
no symptoms of a purge of science have appeared’. Kachalov works at the
Serbskii Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. The day after the coup, the institute’s
director Tatyana Dmitrieva, announced her resignation from the Communist
Party, and a few hours later, the institute’s party cell, in Kachalov’s
words: ‘committed suicide – the cell, that is, not the members’, and handed
over its kitty of about 3000 roubles to the ‘Fund for liquidating the consequences
of the coup’.

But even without the threat of a purge, the leaders of the all-union
academy may come to regret their absence at this crucial time. Criticism
of scientists is likely to be heightened by the fact that Soviet society
expects scientists and scholars to take a public stand on political issues.
(At worst, this requirement has generated a breed of scientists prepared
to rubber-stamp decisions of the Communist Party. But at best it has produced
prominent dissidents, such as Andrei Sakharov.)

By staying silent during the crucial three days, Guri Marchuk, president
of the all-union academy, has lost a supreme opportunity for improving the
organisation’s public image. Throughout the Gorbachev era, the all-union
academy has resisted reform and has come under repeated attack as a bastion
of scientific conservatism, privilege and cronyism. Attempts by Gorbachev
to rejuvenate it, by pensioning off the oldest members and setting upper
age limits on new members, failed to change this image.

But while research funds continued to come from the central, all-union
budget, and the academy played the role of chief research coordinator, its
position seemed safe. Although Gorbachev’s reforms had consistently encouraged
self-sufficiency in science, through direct contracts with industry and
agriculture and the establishment of commercial research cooperatives attached
to leading academy institutes, central funding of research remained a fact,
right up to the coup.

What had been expected to be the final draft of the proposed union treaty,
published only three days before the coup, implied continuation of the existing
system – an all-union academy, with subordinate academies in the republics,
and responsibility for education, health, environment and science-related
industries shared between the centre and republics.

But the signing of this treaty was aborted by the coup, and the ‘common
economic space’ now being negotiated aims at maximum devolution. What role,
if any, there will be for the present all-union academy in this space is
far from clear.

As the Congress of People’s Deputies convened last week, the thousand-strong
workforce of administrators at the academy faced an uncertain future. ‘The
academy exists today,’ one remarked, ‘but what will happen tomorrow or the
next day, no one knows.’

The most likely outcome, according to rumours in Moscow, is that the
academy’s network of institutes will be broken up on a territorial basis
– with the Russian Federation, by virtue of geography, getting the lion’s
share.

This solution has a certain historical basis, for the all-union academy
is, in effect, the historical successor to the old St Petersburg Imperial
Academy of Sciences. In 1920 the all-union academy took over all its assets.

It is an anomaly of Soviet science that although the 14 non-Russian
republics possessed their own academies, the huge Russian Federation did
not. Until 1957, the all-union academy was considered sufficient for the
needs of Russia and the bill was paid from central funds. Only in 1957 did
the all-union academy set up a Siberian branch in Novosibirsk, and Russia
start to contribute to the cost of the research network.

In April of this year, the Russian parliament passed legislation to
establish a separate Russian Academy of Sciences, and approved the appointment
of a temporary president and chairman. But this new academy has had no time
to develop research institutes of its own.

The all-union academy, however, may not vanish completely. It could
survive as a supranational coordinating body for joint research projects
within the common economic space, possibly retaining responsibility for
shared ‘big science’ facilities in nuclear physics and astronomy.

One role that such an academy would almost certainly not retain is the
traditional monopoly on international exchanges. This was already on the
way out before the coup. In December 1989, for example, the academy signed
a deal empowering the Royal Society to conclude exchange and cooperation
agreements with the individual republics.

The Royal Society now has direct links with the Lithuanian and Georgian
academies and has agreements with Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine in the pipeline.

With luck, the new arrangements will remove altogether the bureaucratic
barriers of the old system, such as the political checks on Soviet scientists
wishing to travel abroad, and the refusal to allow institutes to publish
details of their research activities.

‘We are moving towards operating with the Soviet Union in the same way
in which we operate everywhere else in the world; that is, with less central
bureaucracy and more informal contacts between scientists,’ says Stephen
Cox of the international affairs office at the Royal Society.

For the non-Russian republics, the course of devolution is clear; they
will simply take charge of all scientific institutions within their borders.
This will mean the end of central funding, particularly if there is no provision
for this in any joint treaty. But it will also allow greater freedom to
establish contacts outside the common economic space.

Aleksei Sozinov, president of the Ukrainian Academy of Agrarian Sciences
based in Kiev, is optimistic. His academy was established last year by combining
those insti-tutes of the all-union academy of agricultural sciences located
in Ukraine into an autonomous unit. He maintains that Ukrainian independence
will leave his institute financially much better off.

The Kiev government is working out a Western-style funding system based
on peer review and competitive grants, and there will be extensive opportunities
for cooperation with the West, Sozinov says. His academy is planning new
research programmes in crop selection, and a major upgrading of agricultural
education.

However, the wealthy Ukraine, with abundant energy reserves and some
of the richest agricultural land in the Soviet Union, is in a privileged
position. For Lithuania, the outlook is much grimmer. Its territory is far
smaller, its agriculture less productive. The republic’s industry and research
centres, specialising in fields such as electronics, semiconductors and
computers, have for decades been closely tied to Soviet military programmes
and are now losing their contracts and funding.

Algirdas Silejka, Vice-President of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences,
says that up to now the major part of the academy’s finance came from the
all-union budget. This will no longer be the case. ‘The Lithuanian academy
has not been disbanded, but the institutes formerly subordinate to it are
now independent,’ says Silejka.

The urgent need is for hard currency, particularly for new equipment,
he says. As a consequence, fundamental research is having to yield to applied
research and engineering. Other needs are for Western cooperation and contracts,
with the Scandinavian countries seen as the most likely partners. But the
universities are already tightening their belts. This year’s student intake
to the Vilnius University has been cut by 20 per cent.

In a few areas, however, the common economic space will still need some
supranational authority. One obvious field – environmental protection –
is already covered by the Kishinev agreement, signed in February this year
by all 15 republics.

Another area where coordination may be needed is military research,
which accounted for at least 50 per cent of the pre-Gorbachev all-union
research budget. Representatives from the non-Russian republics have let
it be known that any military research they take over will be converted
to civilian use. If it happens, this could leave Russia as the sole purveyor
of military technology to those republics that sign the new treaty.

Space research will almost certainly suffer cutbacks. The programme
has long been considered by the non-Russian republics, and latterly even
by Yeltsin’s Russia, as a waste of money. Existing cooperation agreements
through the international science organisation Interkosmos, and the commercial
Glavkosmos agency, could well be adapted to cover participation by interested
republics. Kazakhstan is willing to allow launches to continue from the
Baikonur cosmodrome, which it has taken over, providing a commercial rate
is paid for its facilities and to compensate for environmental damage.

Regardless of the political and structural reorganisations, there is
another crucial issue which has tended to be forgotten during the recent
drama – the crumbling Soviet economy.

Silayev, during a phone-in programme on Russian television last week,
said that money must be found to fund research, despite the country’s ‘budgetary
difficulties’. It is far from clear where that money will come from. Among
rank and file scientists, afraid for their livelihoods, these questions
are of fundamental importance.

‘As far as scientists are concerned, we don’t really mind whether our
institute gets funded by the all-union budget or the Russian republic or
God-knows-what budget,’ said Pavel Kachalov. ‘We’re just afraid that the
economy will go further downhill and that there will be no money at all.’