"Woman plus..."Sciencevilles: Breakthrough into the Third Millennium

Sciencevilles: Breakthrough into the Third Millennium

In 30’s Soviet government decided to form satellite settlements outside major urban centers throughout the country with the only purpose: to house (and isolate) extensive research programs aimed at building national military potential of the USSR and associated with high levels of power consumption and population exposure. Extremal concentration of national brain resources at few dozens locations resulted in centers of overwhelming technologic power. Until recently it was never actually estimated for the simple reason of ‘strictly secret’ stamp on every piece of data related to these research hubs.

Today, after secrecy curtain has been torn down, we must witness that national scientific and technologic spurt of 30’s — 80’s was unprecedented and resulted in many achievements that even now remain beyond compare with what other nations have achieved. All these were produced by practically anonymous communities that gave home to laboratories, research institutes, project teams and production lines equipped with everything available, while communities themselves were turning into something like medieval trade settlements. Well-known examples include Dubna, Obninsk, Protvino and other "atom-villes"; Zhukovsky — aircraft constructing hub; Korolev (former Kaliningrad, Moscow oblast) — space research center; Zelenograd and Fryazino — national electronics development... Other names (figures, to be correct) have not emerged until recently: Arzamas-16, Chelyabinsk-70, Krasnoyarsk-45... In 1991 on all these communities were aptly designated as "sciencevilles".

Abrupt change of social paradigms and extenuation of the cold war produced dramatically woeful impact on sciencevilles. State contracts for knowledge-demanding implements of war ceased, and so did resources allocated to either fundamental or applied researches. In early 90’s sciencevilles found themselves completely stripped of state support. Now, taking into account their completely artificial nature; subordination of the entire community to narrow state-determined tasks; a few highly specialized institutions as employers; population’s narrow specialization in few areas of research, effectively precluding exchange and trade of labor products... Enough features to sketch the picture of economic collapse — and this is exactly what science-oriented communities survived then.

Back in 1991, leaders of Zhukovsky, Kaliningrad, Obninsk, Obolensk, Klimovsk, Protvino, Dubna, Troitsk, Fryazino and other communities formed the Scienceville Development Union with the sole goal to jointly seek opportunities for survival without governmental subsidies. The Union started with outlining sciencevilles’ features in common that might serve a baseline for turning this zones of ultimate economic decline into pilot-sites of national revival.

First, sciencevilles are characterized by solidarity of populace, educated elite and municipal authorities, which is unique for Russia. Consensus covers practically every aspect of social development. In Obninsk, for example, 75% of residents voted for the community’s scienceville status. Second, scientific communities are characterized by extreme concentration of highly educated specialists with creative potential for scientific research and engineering, along with abundant experimental and production cites. Thus, human and material resources allow for most daring research and innovation projects, including those aimed at developing high technologies. In other words, copious opportunities exist to deploy activities which are most effective and profitable worldwide.

Scienceville Development Union has undertaken many attempts to draw federal gov-ernment attention to the fact that sciencevilles’ potential in research and technology is even more important today than ever before. Be this potential employed, the predictable output could be a literal technological breakthrough into the third millennium with intellectual products taking place of oil and gas export as the main source of national income.

However, until very recently national authorities paid practically no attention to sciencevilles’ problems and offerings, for staying at power was their primary — if not the only — concern. Finally, in 1997 the Union’s efforts brought first fruits. Both chambers of the national parliament, presidential administration and the federal gov-ernment finally came to agreement about national policy for sciencevilles. On November 7, President of the Russian Federation issued decree "On Measures for Sciencevilles Development as Research and Technology Oriented Communities" containing articulate statement of national strategies for sciencevilles.

First, the federal government assumes commitment to finance high-priority research programs (though amounts of federal contracts are not too promising). Well, there is no news so far. What is new is that the government has acknowledged scientific communities’ right to use state-owned internal resources for purposes of their own development. First of all, it means that from now on sciencevilles are entitled to intellectual property that has been accumulated there for decades; being properly utilized and marketed, know-how products will certainly make their owners prosperous, since innovations legalizes and encourages innovations.

From the standpoint of resources required to implement innovation projects, sciencevilles are subdivided into two categories: subsidized and non-subsidized. Non-subsidized scientific communities are planned to become pilot sites for an economic experiment that will take several years. The basic idea is that general taxes collected in these communities will remain in municipal budgets (instead of transferring them to the state) as targeted funds for innovation projects. Immense federal assets concentrated in sciencevilles will also be transferred into municipal holding. Therefore, these communities will have an opportunity to exploit all locally placed assets for their benefit. The first pilot-site for non-subsidized model of scienceville development will be Obninsk community. At the same time, government is committed to disseminate experience that will have proven successful to other sites. About ten sciencevilles plan to participate in this experiment. As for communities subsidized from regional budgets, another mechanism is being designed. Supposedly, part of tax money accumulated at oblast level will be retained to form scienceville development reserve (again, instead of being transferred to the federal budget).

Presidential Decree made municipal authorities responsible for carrying-out state policies for sciencevilles development. For example, Dubna has already adopted certain tax immunities to help develop small businesses implementing innovation projects. Schools of entirely new type are one of priorities. Specialists with broad education who are both skillful researchers and proficient teachers (and sciencevilles are rich with such persons) have initiated new education programs that combine regular studies with research practices. Several education programs of this type have already been opened in Obninsk; Puschino plans a college and an university; Dubna housed "Nature. Society. Humanity" international university... Sciencevilles Development Union’s President, Mr. Anatoly Dolgolaptev believes that local higher education programs is also a good solution to women’s unemployment problem, as in sciencevilles (like everywhere else) most persons with humanitarian education are women.

Among other innovatory projects, space telecommunications development must be named. At "Sciencevilles: Breakthrough into the Third Millennium" exhibition that took place in late November 1997 at "Moscow" pavilion of All-Russian Exhibition Center, the new global telecommunication project ROSTELESAT was presented. ROSTELESAT system is based on unique engineering decisions that will allow to make telecommunication costs 3 — 5 times lower. The system has already passed federal expertise, and $3.5 bln. of investments have been attracted to cover half of the project cost. ROSTELESAT project deployment will span four years, and six years from now the system will begin to pay back, due to growing demand for telecommunication services. As for general impression produced by the exhibition, organizers obviously suc-ceeded in what they had intended to demonstrate: sciencevilles’ large potential to offer complex technological projects — attractive for investors and promising for the nation.

by Julia Kachalova, based on

"Sciencevilles: Breakthrough into

the Third Millennium" exhibition materials

Thinking Aloud

N. K. Nikitina, President, MetaSynthes Co., Board member, Sciencevilles Development Union, Russia

Innovation projects imply new technologies which begin to bring fair return on investments as soon as they have been implemented. This is the core difference between innovation projects and what we used to call ‘applied science’. The latter used to take copious resources while pay-back sometimes would be delayed for decades and gains tangible only if assessed on the national scale.

Russian national character has something in it that precludes us from competing with other nations in certain areas. For instance, we are practically incapable of mass production. I mean, as manufacturers, we just cannot keep up quality standards at our technological lines on permanent basis. On the other hand, we are very witty when it comes to produce some non-commodity goods, find practical and easy-to-implement solutions for both specific and complex technological tasks. I think, we are complementary to Eastern nations in this sense. They have no problems with assembly-line manufacturing and, to some extent, with engineering, while wherever invention and scientific approach are required, such tasks are alien and painstaking for them. So we could work out and patent our inventions and sell them to eastern manufacturers — and thus earn money required to restructure our own production lines.