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‘An island of socialism in a capitalist country’: Postsocialist Russian science and the culture of the state

2005; Routledge; Volume: 70; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00141840500419741

1469-588X

Amy Ninetto,

Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice

Abstract Through a comparison of privatization programs in two physics institutes, this article explores the ways in which scientists in the Siberian science city of Akademgorodok adapted to the low levels of state funding available to them in the 1990s. Scientists transformed structures that were available under socialism into hybrid state-private ventures. Rather than ‘freeing’ Russian science from its former dependence on the state, however, these changes have reconfigured, and in some cases even strengthened, the relationship between state power and the production of knowledge. Seeing ‘the state’ as it is constituted in Russian scientists' discourse challenges Western models of the autonomy of science. Keywords: Russiasciencestatepostsocialism Acknowledgments My field research in Russia was generously supported by grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Additional support for writing was provided by the Eurasia Program of the Social Science Research Council. None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed. Many thanks to Andrew Asher, Junjie Chen, and Sarah Phillips for inviting me to participate in the conference panels from which this paper grew. I owe special thanks to Sarah Phillips for her patient editorial guidance, and to Elizabeth Vann for her invaluable readings of many, many drafts. I am also grateful for the very helpful comments of Nils Bubandt and three anonymous reviewers. Notes 1. Akademgorodok was the first Soviet science city, but several more were built, mostly around Moscow: Chernogolovka, Dubna, Obninsk, Pushchino, and Serpukhovo. 2. In May 2005, after this article was written, the Ministry of Education and Science proposed a sweeping plan for the reform of science, at the heart of which was the ‘denationalization’ of perhaps ninety percent of state-run scientific institutions. The government minister in charge of the plan was heckled at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, and small protests were held by scientists, but as of this writing it appears that a scaled-down version of the privatization plan will be implemented by 2008 (Borisov Citation2005; Vasilenko & Chernov Citation2005). 3. All names of my ethnographic interlocutors used in this article are pseudonyms. I use the real names of historical and public figures who are named in other published accounts. 4. This is not to say that science in a democracy is a science without the state. The image of science exemplified by Merton's ‘normative structure’ (Citation1973) and, arguably, Thomas Kuhn's paradigms, was conceived at a time of intense post-World War II anxiety about ‘big science’ in the US (see Hollinger Citation1995). An autonomous, self-regulating institution of science, whether governed by norms or paradigms, was, in Steve Fuller's (Citation2000:11) words, ‘a science safe for and safe from democracy’ – a science which could neither be used for state purposes nor pose a threat to the public. 5. Faraday (Citation2000) makes a similar argument for Soviet filmmakers, contending that stable and reliable funding from the state gave favored directors a measure of creative autonomy. See also Ninetto (Citation2000). 6. On the Computing Center's first ‘experiment in market economics’ in 1964, see Marchuk (Citation1997:80–83). On Fakel, which began in 1966 at the initiative of young scientists in various institutes and with the support of the Komsomol, and ended in 1970, accused of being a ‘private-entrepreneurial’ activity, see Vodichev (Citation1994: 80–82). On NPOS in general, see Fortescue (Citation1990:115–118). 7. Actually, he emigrated to the US in the early 1990s and married the granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower – my friend was a little behind the latest local gossip. Sagdeev's memoir (1994) includes an account of his time in Akademgorodok. 8. In 1997, INP employed about 3000 people, including approximately 490 researchers, 50 graduate students, 650 engineers, 400 laboratory assistants, and 1100 other staff, making it the largest of Akademgorodok's institutes (Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics Citation1998:5). 9. The degree of kandidat nauk has no precise Western equivalent. Some characterize it as roughly equivalent to a master's degree; others equate it with the Ph.D. At any rate, it is the first of the postgraduate degrees in Russia; the second, doktor nauk, is attained by senior scientists who write a second dissertation. VEP is an acronym for Vstrechnye Elektronnye Puchki – Colliding Electron Beams.