Russian doctoral and post-doctoral science degrees awarded: 1989: 33,734; 1995: 14,313; 1999: 15,204;
Alexandre Telnov, who left to study here six years ago, says Russia's strong science education system will help it recover Alexandre Telnov knows plenty of Russian scientists working in the United States. Their poverty has prompted proliferation fears; foreign programs to boost their economies have had spotty success. Still encircled by tall fences 10 years after the Cold War ended, Russia's 10 nuclear weapons cities have brand new names but an uncertain future. Life behind the fence Until recent years, Russia's nuclear cities didn't appear on maps. They were known only by post box numbers in nearby towns, such as Tomsk-7 or Arzamas-16. Residents were not allowed to leave to visit their families or travel. No foreigners were permitted inside. The cities and their research institutions were swept up in the stirrings of democracy and capitalism that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. They changed their names, held their first city elections and encouraged entrepreneurship. They allowed Westerners inside the fences for the first time. Several established close ties with U.S. laboratory towns, which have much in common with their Russian counterparts. Snezhinsk is home to a laboratory like its sister city of Livermore, site of Lawrence Livermore Lab.The end of the Cold War was also a time of pain. Gone were the perks and comfortable salaries of old. Russia's budget for its nuclear weapons facilities is one-seventh of what it was 10 years ago. Its average weapons assembly worker earns $56 per month. "There is a lot of resentment of the difficult economic times", said Eileen Vergino, deputy director of the Livermore lab's Center for Global Security Research and a sister cities leader who has visited Snezhinsk a dozen times. Dire conditions at these cities and throughout Russia's nuclear complex panicked many international observers. "We were literally worried about these people picking up stakes and going to bad places", explained Laura Holgate, who heads Russian nuclear programs for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, formed by Ted Turner to fight the spread of weapons of mass destruction. In the early 1990s, the United States and Europe set up stopgap programs to keep scientists from taking their knowledge to rogue states, and there have only been a few isolated cases of that happening. But the larger issue remains: Russia has too many nuclear sector employees - at 75,000 more than twice as many as the United States - and no money to convert them to peacetime work. Using resources As the United States did a decade ago, Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy (MinAtom) plans to convert its nuclear program from active weapons production to maintenance. It expects to shut three of six assembly plants by 2005. In all, half the nuclear work force - 35,000 people - will be out of work.For closed cities, especially those where plants are shuttered, this means massive unemployment. MinAtom has plans to help these cities by, for example, encouraging industry to develop software products or medical devices, said Alexander Antonov, head of the agency's department of conversion. "The main idea is to use the incredible intellectual resources that are in the closed cities", said Antonov from MinAtom's Moscow offices. "We have to organize a favorable environment for them to work". But MinAtom has little money. Because of this, Russians say they welcomed working with the United States on the Nuclear Cities Initiative, the only program specifically designed to help conversion of nuclear cities. This Department of Energy initiative aims to strengthen city governments, help weapons institutes turn to industrial work, and encourage entrepreneurship among Russia's well-trained, but market-illiterate, citizens. In three cities - Sarov, Snezhinsk and Zheleznogorsk - the initiative has opened business development and computing centers, funded training on proposal writing and career changes, and sponsored city leadership training. In its most touted success, the initiative moved a mile-long concrete fence inside the closed city of Sarov, opening up former weapons disassembly buildings to industrial development. Already, a kidney dialysis equipment maker has moved into this area. But the program has fallen short of its goals during its three years, directly creating 370 jobs instead of thousands and drawing criticism in the United States and Russia. The General Accounting Office has called the program ineffective, and a recent National Security Council review recommended dropping some elements and merging the rest with other initiatives. The two major sticking points are money and access. Funding for the Nuclear Cities Initiative has gone up and down constantly since it began in 1998, peaking at $30 million a year. President Bush's budget for 2002 bottomed out at $6 million, although Congress will likely give the program more. That is much less than the $550 million program managers had expected over a five- to seven-year period. Russians say sporadic funding tests their commitment to continue working with the United States. Worse, very little money - they say only $1 million total, although initiative officials dispute that - has gone to cities and instead goes to U.S. labs and the Department of Energy, which runs the initiative. Initiative officials say start-up years are hard and require more money for management. Now that the program is established, more money will go to create jobs in cities. "In my opinion, we have not given it time to work". Said Ken Baker, head of Russia nonproliferation programs at Energy. "The main thing is that we're in there. We're in Russian closed cities. It cannot be oversold right now". The stickiest problem may be access After a decade of relative openness, a new federal security service -- the successor to the KGB - and the cities are again clamping down. Foreign visitors must have approval to enter a closed city 45 days before their trip, a point critics say scares potential business investors. Even that notice doesn't get them in every time - GAO investigators didn't get into any closed cities, and neither did this reporter. U.S. lab researchers who have been visiting for nearly a decade are now having problems."We have to figure out how to do this differently", said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, a strong supporter of nonproliferation programs who has visited Snezhinsk. Many, including Tauscher, argue that opening the cities to business is essential to their turnaround. But the cities don't necessarily want to open. Staying closed has protected them from some of the widespread corruption and instability that has gripped the rest of Russia. "They are safer and more stable in some ways", said Oleg Bukharin, a researcher at Princeton University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. MinAtom officials don't think access is a problem. Researchers enter these cities every day, Antonov said, and they are far more open than during the Cold War. They say having too many visitors turns into a form of "nuclear tourism" rather than meaningful visits. Despite access fights, Baker said an overarching agreement should be completed soon, although that settlement has been weeks away for five months. The agreement would allow businesses and lab researchers into the cities to work on the serious threat that remains. Until these programs begin to work, officials in Russia and the United States alike agree the threat of closed cities' researchers continuing to work on weapons, either for Russia or rogue countries, hasn't waned. "We are there trying to do not just a job for Russia and the United States but for the world", said Energy's Baker. "It is like a low-cost insurance policy for national security". * * * Nuclear legacy Published Sunday, September 9, 2001 Proliferation worries persist AKADEMGORODOK, Russia -- To uncover the impact of nuclear nonproliferation programs here, drive south past solitary ice-fishers, empty bus stops and leafless Siberian birch forests to a muddy field where rusting metal machines lie like old Datsuns in a mechanic's back yard.
Then wait for the shaking to begin. A nuclear history At the entrance to Russia's founding nuclear laboratory stands a somewhat startling 10-foot-tall likeness of Igor Kurchatov's head, complete with his distinctive long, rectangular beard. The Soviet nuclear program began in earnest at this institute named for Kurchatov, the father of Russia's weapons program, whose presence looms as large as the statue in what was once the birch-forested outskirts of Moscow."Everything that turned out to be a massive nuclear industry started here", said Victor Tufyaev, a technician in a tight white lab coat. The lab's control room has been preserved since the moment of that first chain reaction, down to the notebooks on the tables, the chair where Kurchatov sat, the black-and-white wall clock, which still marks 6 p.m. Even the reactor is still running 54 years later. "You'll have to help us get this in the Guinness Book", joked V.S. Dikazev, the lab's head of nuclear safety. In 1946, a year after two nuclear bombs devastated Japanese cities, Russia created its first plutonium here in the country's first nuclear reactor. Fed by the best of Russia's scientists, generous funding and help from U.S.-based spies, the Russian program soon caught up with the United States'. It even surpassed the United States in the total number of people working on weapons projects, and the number of bombs created. "During 10 years, we finished research from the nuclear bomb to the hydrogen bomb. It is one example of bad competition", said Dikazev, who wore a green and white pin with Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's logo, a gift from a previous lab visitor. "Now we are collaborators". Once the Soviet Union collapsed, many Americans, hearing stories of bread lines and worthless rubles, assumed the nuclear threat had disappeared. But American experts knew the Soviet security system relied on guards and gates, keeping both scientists and weapons behind closed doors. That system faltered when guards weren't paid and gates weren't maintained. The country didn't have a system to track the amount or movement of nuclear materials or protect them adequately. Amid this chaos, some U.S. leaders quickly established a connection with Russian weapons scientists. U.S. and Soviet scientists first met as technical advisers to arms control talks. In February 1992, directors of U.S. weapons labs visited two secret Russian cities known only by their post box numbers in nearby towns: Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70. Few, if any, Americans had visited these remote Russian weapons lab cities. "There was a lot of the feeling, at the end of the Cold War, that we could all work together", remembered John Nuckolls, then director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, who visited both historical and scientific sites during that frigid winter. That same year, then-Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., sponsored legislation creating the Cooperative Threat Reduction programs to address the basics: dismantling weapons and protecting and storing nuclear materials. It later expanded to include conversion of military and nuclear facilities and other efforts from the departments of Defense, State, Commerce and Energy. Supporting weapons scientists was then, and remains now, a small part of this monumental task. But as U.S. scientists learned that their Russian colleagues were not being paid for months at a time, fear grew that these scientists could be wooed by high-paying jobs in rogue nations. The first real effort to address this threat was the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC), a collaboration between the United States, the European Commission, Japan and other nations that fund science projects in Russia and other former Soviet countries. ISTC money from the United States supports the Siberian geologists in their shaking research on the rolling plains. A sister project operates in Ukraine. Since then, other civilian science programs have been started. The Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention aim to make applied science projects attractive for Western business investment. It then hands projects over to the U.S. Industry Coalition, a U.S. government-funded nonprofit group that helps businesses work in Russia. A Department of Energy program to help Russia's 10 closed nuclear weapons cities turn to civilian endeavors has come under the most criticism by both Russians and Americans. This 3-year-old effort, called the Nuclear Cities Initiative, has gone through multiple reviews and has seen its budget swing drastically - from $6 million to $30 million - during its short lifetime because critics say it is ineffective and its funds go to U.S. labs rather than Russian researchers. After a rocky start, ISTC is now the most accepted of these programs, which says a lot in light of touchy U.S.-Russia relations. "When the Russian government for several months failed to pay the salaries of its nuclear scientists, for several months they survived on ISTC grants", said Alexander Pikayev, who studies the nuclear threat at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Weapons scientists ISTC provides links with leading Western scientists and conferences on how to apply for grants, said Anatoli Iskra, a leader in a project to compile radioactive waste data from former Soviet sites. The salary system sends money directly to scientists rather than to federal bureaucracies. Unlike Russian research grants, ISTC salaries are not taxed at the typical 40 percent."Our projects are a very good model of living in the real market economy", Russian executive director Sergey Zykov said, explaining many weapons scientists never faced the kind of scrutiny typical of Western grant-making agencies and businesses. "There is a sort of teaching by real work". However, ISTC faces the same criticism as other scientist assistance programs. It must prove its salary supplements are not furthering weapons research, something ISTC officials say they prevent with hands-on, highly accountable management. "We can honestly say we are not proposing to do enormous things", said Peter Falatyn, who for three years has been an ISTC senior adviser. "It is still on a person-by-person-by-person basis". And that's a good thing. In the decade since the Soviet Union fell, relations between the U.S. and Russian governments have gone up and down like dot-com stock prices. And if news of National Missile Defense and FBI spies is any indication, that won't change anytime soon. Meanwhile, the long-hoped-for comeback of the Russian economy has not materialized, leaving once-hopeful scientists - especially weapons specialists, who were well off during the Cold War - pushing for a return to the good old days of designing new weapons. All of this has an impact on nuclear nonproliferation programs. U.S. lab scientists who once had access to Russian closed cities now have to cancel trips or put them off for months. However, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow point out that the most tense time in recent relations, the war in Kosovo, had little impact on nonproliferation efforts. Nonproliferation problems were much more complicated than anyone suspected 10 years ago. More nuclear materials are in more abysmal security and storage conditions than was predicted. The expected threat from rogue nations has intermingled with threats from terrorists. But the doomsday predictions have not yet come true. Some Russian weapons scientists have tried to flee for better-paying jobs in rogue nations, as documented by nuclear think tanks, but they are few and far between. Experts now understand, however, that Russians don't have to leave their labs to work for those nations. U.S. and European visitors have seen business cards of scientists from Iran and Iraq inside Russia's closed nuclear cities. And conditions have not improved much for weapons scientists, especially in those neglected weapons cities that are home to 760,000 residents. "There is a dangerous gap between this threat and our response", said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Energy official and analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Most of today's threats can only be met by cooperation with Russia". In some ways, that makes nonproliferation programs more important. "Above all, it is in the U.S. interests, the shrinking of the Russian complex", said Pikayev of the Carnegie Moscow Center."If Russia changes its policy to anti-American, it would have less chances to reconstitute its nuclear capabilities". The question of whether these programs, designed as short-term fixes, are good for long-term problems also must be addressed. The Bush administration is re-evaluating nonproliferation efforts, and preliminary reports say that review suggests at least two programs, including the Nuclear Cities Initiative, be eliminated. "You have to ask yourself, what signal are we sending to the Russians?" said James, the Stimson Center analyst. "If you think that spending money to address these dangers is a good thing, why are we cutting back money on it?" At least some Russian experts realize the threat and say they are working to do something about it. Officials at the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy say they are putting money earned by converting weapons-grade uranium to nuclear power-plant fuel back into transforming their weapons complex. They also are looking to two highly controversial plans to raise money: Selling a nuclear power plant to Iran and importing the world's nuclear waste for storage in Russia. "From the Russian side, we have to solve this",said Alexander Antonov, head of conversion for the Ministry of Atomic Energy, the Russian equivalent of the Department of Energy. He said the question for the United States is, "Will it take a long time to develop this (conversion), or can we speed it up?" To hope Back at the Siberian test site, a mere 52-hour train ride southeast of the power players in Moscow, the geologists are celebrating the present with an elaborate meal of butter-soaked Russian dumplings, known as "pilminy", red caviar on dark brown bread and, of course, vodka toasts all around. "Perestroika was not good for science", said Victor Soloviov, another researcher at the test site, as he stood, glass raised, to make his ritual toast.He spoke of days when money flowed, when machines ran and twice as many scientists were seated at the long food-filled table in the bunkhouse here. But he is hopeful for the future of Russian science and the test site, he said, because the research is strong and has support from the West. Everyone raised their glasses as his voice crescendoed to the final words:"To the ISTC". * * * Struggles for money consume scientists Published Sunday, September 9, 2001 AKADEMGORODOK, Russia-Andrei Arzhannikov is a thin, helpful man with a brown goatee and an earnest manner. At one point he chased a rapidly moving van several blocks through Akademgorodok's April slush when it left without his visitors. OBNINSK, Russia -- Anton Yanovsky said the word "Naukograd" with a reverence that in other places is reserved for religion. An open Obninsk Think of it as the ultimate company town."In reality, it was built as an institute, and around the institute a city developed", Yanovsky explained from his shared office in Obninsk, a city founded in 1954 where medium-rise apartment buildings are nearly indistinguishable from offices and labs. During the city's early days, its 110,000 citizens were shut off from the outside world by tall fences and strict visitation rules. This was the Soviet version of security, replicated in dozens of other cities with nuclear and military knowledge. Many cities, including 10 formerly secret nuclear weapons sites, remain closed. Obninsk has been open to visitors and its residents have been free to travel for almost 20 years, but the past decade brought new challenges as city government took responsibility for things such as health care and potholes, once the responsibility of the prominent research institutes here. Yanovsky and many others worked for years to get the official "science city" designation in 2000. It gives the city five years to attract businesses and create new ones, relying in large part on a wealth of underpaid and underemployed workers at its 12 federal research institutes. The designation spurred a large influx of grants from the U.S.-sponsored Eurasia Foundation, which is interested in creating the underpinning of civic organizations noticeably lacking in post-Soviet Russia. One grant funded Yanovsky's economic development plan; another put the city budget on the Web; a third set up a business park. "It was not funding of academic institutions. It was funding for adaptation", explained Eurasia's Irina Pilman, who manages the 15 Obninsk grants -- an experiment in focusing on one city. This project still leaves the city far from its goals. It wants to start businesses, privatize hundreds of apartments and increase incoming revenue. "We are just in the beginning of this", said Victor Latynov, a former city official who uses a grant to train entrepreneurs. New responsibilities The mayor's office in Krasnoarmeisk is in a sturdy 1870s brick building with tall windows and rare wood floors, itself almost a century older than Obninsk. But the two cities face many similar difficulties.This 27,000-person town northwest of Moscow was a 14th-century village with a strong local textile industry, whose main factory is still marked by tall metal gates. That industry drew the military during World War II and hence closed the city to visitors. Before long two- thirds of its residents worked for the factory and four military research institutes designing artillery. They owned schools, gardens, 96 percent of apartments and the cultural center. Krasnoarmeisk elected its first city government in 1991, just two years before it was handed responsibility for crumbling apartments and offices, heat and water, education and health care, and no money to do anything about them. In 1994, the population paid only 6 percent of its utilities, and the city was responsible for everything else, said Vitaly Pashentsev, the city's straightforward mayor. Pashentsev, a man with salt-and-pepper hair whose eyes crinkle as he talks, said he and fellow city officials have been learning democracy the hard way. Financial fixes needed to turn these problems around have been a hard sell to citizens, who don't understand why they should pay rent or utilities. The city wants residents to pay 80 percent of their utilities this year. With the help of a foundation created by billionaire American investor George Soros, these officials have taken their message to local talk radio, town meetings and focus groups. Soros' money paid a consultant to turn what residents say into a strategic plan. And they've had some success. Last year, a new perfume plant was built here. Through sometimes painful negotiations, the institute has given up several buildings and land for scientific development. Science business In cities big and small, one of the most promising hopes for economic development is Russia's massive science infrastructure. The economic downturn that orphaned fledgling cities also left thousands of scientists looking for jobs.In, Akademgorodok on the Siberian plains 1,800 miles from Moscow, Alexey Alexeev can tell you minute-by-minute movements of the Nasdaq, and how each dip might affect his computer software company. Alexeev, a small man with straight blond hair and a neat suit, has hired dozens of former scientists at Siberian Information Technologies to write computer programs for Western companies. He charges about $40 an hour, a pittance for U.S. programmers used to making $120 or $130, but a fortune for Russians often earning $80 a month. Besides the lure of low prices, Alexeev hopes Western business will be interested in the pedigree of these scientists, especially in math and physics. He says Russian programmers are better equipped than those in India, a predominant computer outsourcing powerhouse, to tackle complex problems. People don't think of Russia, said Serguei Simonov, who runs a technology park and collaborates with Virtual Pro of San Ramon to draw computer business to Russia. "Siberia is not only a frozen area", he said, flinging his arms for emphasis and nearly losing his metal-framed glasses. "In fact, it is a big (site) for intellectual resources". Back in Moscow, the U.S. Department of Energy is joining with the Kurchatov Institute to retrain the institute's nuclear weapons scientists to work in industry. Ten years ago, this federal institute employed 12,000 people. Now only 5,000 people work there, most earning less than $100 a month. To stem a potential exodus of scientists, the department's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention is linking 17 computer modeling experts with a Philadelphia-based phone company. The biggest challenge, said Boris Stavisski, director of the institute's business park project, isn't the science but teaching programmers how to work for Western companies. "The technical risk is very low", said Victor Alessi, a former Energy official who now works for the U.S. Industry Coalition, a group encouraging business investment in weapons scientists' technologies. "But it still has the problem that doing business in Russia is not easy". Nearly nonexistent Russian patent and contract laws, along with an economy in shambles, have kept most Western businesses away. Those problems, along with marketplace naivete, have kept many Russian entrepreneurs from success. "(Western) companies need to be wary, but they need to understand that there is a lot more going on in Russia than what you hear in the press", said Virtual Pro's Martti Vallila, who began working with Russian software companies in 1993. "There are steps being taken to create stability". Yanovsky, the author of Obninsk's economic development plan, is optimistic that stability will be part of the city's future. When Yanovsky remembers the naukograd plan and all the hard work that went into it, he remembers the funders with a toast that has become a tradition: "To the American taxpayer". * * * Russia struggles to revive its past renown in science Published Sunday, September 11, 2001 Scientists' salaries plummeted after the Soviet Union's collapse; many left for the West or abandoned the field DUBNA, Russia -- As he walks darkened hallways toward an acclaimed particle accelerator, Yuri Lobanov remembers the early 1960s, when he arrived at this science city. A dismal decade The second-floor classroom is humid and filled with healthy houseplants, a sharp contrast to the still-wintry April air of Akademgorodok in southwest Siberia. Ten high school students, boys with short haircuts and blazers and girls in ponytails and skirts, scribble notes as the gray-suited teacher writes the familiar "Aa+Aa = a" of a basic genetics lesson.His deep voice holds their attention. They giggle as Gregory Dymshits ribs them about chicken heredity and their grandparents' eye color. Granted, these aren't typical students. They're attending an elite physics and math boarding school for Siberia's best students in this science city created by Stalin to rival intellectual centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. And Dymshits isn't a typical teacher. He's a professional genetics researcher who has taught high school for 35 years. Ten years ago, he was chosen as one of Russia's best high school science teachers. That entitled him to a salary supplement from the International Soros Science Education Program, a fund set up by billionaire U.S. investor George Soros to keep Russian and other regional secondary schoolteachers, college professors and graduate students in science during a time when many were leaving to feed their families. That exodus was a big change for a country where science was among the most respected professions and a common career choice for smart young people. Communists saw science as a vital competitive tool and a way to prove the Marxist ideal. They rewarded its practitioners with well-paying jobs and hard-to-get apartments and cars. That commitment was mirrored in a Russian education system that emphasized science, especially physics and math. The result: a massive science infrastructure that at one time employed as many scientists as the United States, although this country's population is smaller by nearly 100 million. After the financial and political fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, salaries for these elite professionals fell from the equivalent of a U.S. scientist's salary to nearly nothing. Now a full professor at Moscow State University, Russia's top institution of higher education, earns $100 a month, and those at other schools earn $50 or less. High school science teachers are paid less than $30. Scientists once earned twice the average salary, which is now about $60 to $80 per month. That shocking dip created an equally disturbing departure from science. The most talented researchers, with good reputations and Western contacts, could leave for research jobs elsewhere. Many did, especially young people. Others left for business, which seemed a quick way to discover the joys of capitalism. Most Russia experts assumed the downturn would be just a blip while the economy recovered. An initial influx of Western philanthropy, most notably from Soros, who donated $70 million from 1994 to 1997, aimed to support the best scientists and science teachers for a short time by paying salaries and buying scientific journals. But in recent years, that support has begun to wane as few signs of an economic recovery have emerged. The Soros science program has halted programs to pay high-profile retired scientists and has severely cut back on salary supplements. "We can't stop it, but definitely, we helped a lot", says Lydia Ryabova, a friendly former engineer who runs the funding programs for Soros professors. Federal and local Russian governments have not picked up financial support for Soros programs, as some had hoped. The government now spends less than half of what it spent on research 10 years ago, about 1.06 percent of its gross domestic product, or $2 billion - even less than New Zealand or the Czech Republic. Few Russian businesses are motivated or financially strong enough to fund research. Remaining scientists often stayed because of family commitment, patriotism or a lack of opportunity abroad. Many work part-time jobs, as translators,computer teachers or drivers for visiting reporters, so they can continue in science. Others, such as physicist Alexander Bukin, spend months each year researching or teaching in Europe or the United States, earning enough to live the rest of the year. Each year for 13 years, Bukin has traveled from Akademgorodok almost 6,000 miles to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where he works on high-energy physics experiments. It is difficult to leave family to come where you feel uncomfortable with the language, he says, sitting in the SLAC lobby in June with fellow Russians, including a first-time scientific visitor and a UC Berkeley student. "Many people choose to stay ... and not go abroad", Bukin says as he ducks down, uncomfortable with his perfectly passable English. "It is a quite personal decision". One of those who don't want to leave is 17-year-old science student Alexander Kurgan who is in Dymshits' biology class. Kurgan, from the Ural Mountains, understands that salaries might be better elsewhere, and many fellow students want to leave. But Kurgan, whose father is a policeman and whose mother works in a state insurance company in a town 750 miles away, is patriotic and wants to work here after he has his degree in physics, or maybe computers. "The future depends on us, " he says. Saving science Keeping Kurgan and those like him will be a determining factor in whether science can survive and thrive in Russia. Some think Russian science just needs money to quickly recover. That's a partial solution, but the "youth problem" is the most serious issue, says Schweitzer of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. "It used to be that being a professor was it. ... It is so much tied to financial status now", he says. "I think (the challenge) is convincing the young people that if they go into science they have a chance of making a living".Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin did little to acknowledge this or other science problems, but Vladimir Putin has mentioned science in several speeches, an encouraging sign for those hoping for restoration of money to science. In his large, picture-filled office overlooking the Moscow skyline, the Russian Academy of Sciences' Fortov says he will ask Putin to give more money to young scientists. His plan would allocate 10 percent of Russia's science budget to 10,000 promising young researchers, money they can use to buy equipment and hire graduate and post-doctoral students. "If the talented will be inside the country, we will find a solution", says Fortov, a large, serious man with a picture of himself and U.S. physicist Edward Teller in their younger days on the wall. "If they leave the country, nothing will help us". Russia has already implemented a competitive grant-based funding system, called the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. This, more than theoverarching funding of the past, may allow the country to prioritize funding on research with the highest potential for success. Others think Russian business itself may one day save science. Two young businessmen, including the governor of an Eastern province, have promised millions to research. The young, dark-haired executive director of Soros' science education programs in Russia, Vladimir Zarnitsyn, says that won't happen until the tax code changes; money for science from philanthropists is taxed upwards of 40 percent. Zarnitsyn received his doctorate in physics from one of Moscow's most prestigious scientific colleges and has seen most classmates leave Russia or science. That, combined with what he sees as governmental failure to address the problem, leaves him less optimistic about the future. Pushing ahead Back in Dubna, Flerov lab scientists have lofty plans to build a new accelerator, announced with a colorful diagram to those entering the sturdy brick building's front door. They hope to explore the nature of an atom's nucleus with this new machine, continuing their international collaborations despite problems."I could not say that the salary and the general resources strictly determine the results", says Yuri Oganessian, the Flerov lab director. "If you are a painter or a writer, if we pay you 10 times more it does not become 10 times better". The most successful part of Russian science is small labs such as his that raise their own funding, both from Russia and abroad, and produce good science, Oganessian says. "The scientific level is not made by the big institutions", he says. "The small groups are really the diamonds". * * * Earth-shaking machines may help monitor test ban treaty Published Sunday, September 9, 2001 BYSTROVKA VIBROSEISMIC TEST SITE, Siberia - The shaking starts as a twitch in your toes and gradually escalates to an ear-rattling rumble. © 2001 , Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.)
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