How do we fight for high technology
While the top leadership of the Russian Federation is promoting itself in a pre-election fever, the scientific community is puzzled how to put the country on the path to a high-tech breakthrough.Our scientists do not even allow the thought that Russia will remain in the 21st century a backward raw material state. When asked if our country has prospects for the development of the high-tech industry, they confidently answer: there is! Only it is necessary to change the market legislation that impedes scientific progress, and to return to the state to the solution of global problems of introducing high technologies.
This was discussed at a meeting held in the State Duma by the Nobel Prize winner, vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Communist Party faction Zhores Ivanovich Alferov. He gathered academicians, professors, heads of the largest scientific research institutes and production sites working in conjunction with science. Invited shared sore.
Anticipating the discussion, J. Alferov said:
- There is no more important task for the country than the revival of industry in general, and the high-tech industry in particular. In Russia, de-industrialization was conducted in an extremely “specific” way, and the country entered a post-industrial period. In the US, the post-industrial period and the information society began on the basis of the development of modern technologies, primarily microelectronics. And our post-industrial period began with barbarous thieves' privatization. Destroyed the highly developed industries of the Soviet Union, the industrial base from which one could enter into the post-industrial period, developing truly modern technologies.
In the world at this time there was a rapid development of technology. And we have lost 20 years in its development!
Today there is an extraordinarily difficult task: how to get up to date? You can get out in only one way - by developing science. If a country does not develop science, it is subject to colonization, an outstanding Communist scientist, Nobel laureate in chemistry Frederic Joliot Curie stated. And he was right. This is actually happening with our country.
We are sitting in the State Duma, which means we must also think about how the legislative accompaniment should develop scientific research. From my point of view, the State Duma worked extremely inefficiently. The State Duma cannot work effectively if it stamps, without reflecting, all the legislative proposals submitted by the government. And rejects the proposals that are developed by parliamentary factions. For example, when the Skolkovo project appeared, which is important and necessary, the three factions made amendments. In them, we reflected the view that it is necessary not to develop a territory, but a kind of activity. The amendments were rejected by the well-known majority of the State Duma. Much has been said on this subject ...
The purpose of our collection is to formulate general political and legislative requirements concerning the development of science. Unfortunately, today a thought is traced in the policy of the president and the government of the Russian Federation: we have money for oil and gas, we can order everything, we will do everything and bring it here. This is a vicious way. This will never happen. International cooperation in science is necessary, but we must do everything, know everything and be able to produce. International projects should be joint.
The participants expressed a lot of criticism of the Russian leadership, which all past 20 years pushed science, financed on the leftover principle, the payment of scientific work dropped below pensions, forcing scientists to leave abroad. Now there is personnel shortage in Russia, an acute shortage of design engineers, developers of new equipment and technologies. In the USSR, development engineers were the pride of a higher technical school. And now in technical universities there is a shortage of students. The cause is political, ideological, reformist distortions.
But the academician, the president of the Association of Technical Universities, Igor Borisovich Fedorov, does not lose optimism. Engineers, they say, will be if we restore the interaction of industrial enterprises and universities. In the Russian Federation now 190 technical colleges, of which 150 are technical universities. More than 1 million people study there. Young people want to become engineers. But they are concerned about employment after school. It used to be a distribution. The feasibility of his return I.Fyodorov proposes to think of both the executive and the legislature. The distribution imposed mutual obligations both on the graduate and on the company, which guaranteedly received personnel from the university and assisted the university in conducting practices, forming the university experimental base, and research and development orders (research and development). This helped shape forecasts, industry needs for personnel, increased the social security of students. Other schemes are possible, for example, admission of students on the basis of contracts with enterprises, which will also reinforce the link between production and training. And “lawmakers need to establish mutual responsibility for their obligations to retain cadres,” the academician said.
“The message is good, but very mild,” J. Alferov commented on the speech of I. Fedorov and considered it necessary to supplement it: “The main problem of our universities and research institutions is the lack of demand for our scientific results. When we were students, we worked on economic contracts in the departments. Chairs it was profitable. Not janitors ... President, maybe - yes. We are not. We worked in the departments as engineers, senior laboratory assistants. Engineering education and engineering specialties were in demand. Science will be in demand, then with education it will be much easier, and you don’t have to invite so-called leading specialists from abroad, pay them incomparable wages, creating an absolutely unnecessary situation and not solving specific scientific and technical problems. ”
The possibility of training personnel for science and high-tech industries has the Physico-Technical Institute. A.F.Ioffe, said the deputy director of the Institute of Physics and Technology Viktor Mikhailovich Ustinov. He does not lose hope for the future. The scientific school of the institute is tightly knit, it has stood at the peak of the market tsunami and retains its high research potential. The scientists of the institute work in the 18 areas united in the 4 group: nanomaterials, optoelectronics, development of new devices and equipment, energy efficiency and energy saving. All of them can become the basis for the modernization of Russian industry.
The high-tech needs the Russian oil and gas and coal complexes, said Academician Alexey Dmitrievich Kantorovich. The policy of merciless exploitation of our subsoil, which is conducted by the authorities, has led to the fact that society has begun to regard oil and gas as a scourge and brake on the domestic economy and industry. A. Kantorovich noted: “it's not about how much we extracted raw materials, but about what we did with it”, “we should not sell raw materials, but processed products”, “20 years have been saying about deep oil refining - and nothing changing, everything stopped in the 1993 year. " The scientist is convinced that “the owner will not solve this problem, it is only by the state”.
The “effective” owner, who was promoted by the reformers, turned into a destroyer of industrial production and science. On the factory premises, in the shops where modern technologies were mastered and high-class craftsmen were honing their skills, the owners launched flea markets, entertainment centers, cereal establishments. The work of the generation of the first five years and winners in the Great Patriotic War went to ashes. Western manufacturers and dealers were satisfied with the result: they cleared the market place from competitors. And what remains of industrial production is owned by foreign offshores by 95% ...
In any self-respecting state, its manufacturer, prospector, scientist is protected. Under capitalism, it is important for science to have a customer for achievements and new developments. Russian scientists are little noticed by the authorities. And the conditions in which our innovators work can be called extreme, they themselves not only have to invent and test their achievements, but also make their way to a market where they are not expected.
No one doubts the importance of using alternative fuels. How their search is conducted, how the information map of the country's bioresources is created, said Viktor Viktorovich Lavrov, Director General of the INOTE Agency. According to him, “the creation of an information map of bio-resources in Russia, the use of technologies for information sounding of the earth from space will give impetus to the development of small and large businesses in such areas as information sounding and autonomous alternative energy.” But it is difficult to work on the problem, because “there is no necessary legislation, regulatory documents, partnership mechanisms in this area ...”
The difficult, according to the director of the Scientific and Technical Center of the United Aircraft Corporation Vladimir Andreevich Kargopoltsev, remains the situation in the field of high technologies for aviation. Powerful new players enter the world stage - China, India, Brazil, who have a high level of organization of work in this industry. “This obliges us to increase our efforts so as not to be in the final outsiders,” V. Kargopoltsev said. On the agenda of Russian aircraft designers is the concept of an all-electric aircraft ... Now in the world there are only a few all-electric aircraft, both civilian and military. Electrification elements are also being introduced on our domestic aircraft. “We are ready to solve a problem that is comparable with the GOELRO plan,” Kargopoltsev emphasized.
Chief Designer of the Aerobatic Research Center, Hero of Russia, Honored Test Pilot Anatoly Nikolaevich Kvachov announced the cry of the soul: save applied science!
On the verge of collapse - the most valuable research and test aviation base. Fixed assets are dying out. The fleet of flying laboratories 20 has numbered hundreds, now there are only a few left. Fewer specialists, because there is no demand, there is no work. Unique carriers of knowledge - researchers, engineers, technicians, test pilots leave. He, A. Kvachov, is the youngest of the testers, but he will soon have 60. ” Meanwhile, the Center is developing such a promising direction as the use of aircraft to launch satellites into orbit. “We launch small satellites with the help of huge launch vehicles. Satellites are waiting for the launch queue for months, and now for years. Launch them into non-optimal orbits. And they could have put fighter-class aircraft into orbit. We know that it will be claimed. But I’m unsuccessfully pushing myself into different doors and walls with this proposal ... "
Objevaya high thresholds, A. Kvachov came to the conclusion that "the owners cannot form scientific processes, high technologies, the state should formulate the tasks, set them and control the execution".
“It is important that the state participates in the fate of its own production of microelectronics - the basis for most innovations,” says Gennady Yakovlevich Krasnikov, general director of NIIME LLC (Research Institute of Microelectronics).
This industry is successfully developing in the European Union, Japan, South Korea, China, where the state helps science and protects its manufacturers. Our manufacturers also have something to introduce to the market. But nobody protects them, their access to the market is difficult. And under capitalist conditions, science must not only invent and discover, but also integrate into the market, sell the results of its labor. In other countries, the state helps science. For example, in Southeast Asia, state equity participation in microelectronics factories is practiced. Tax privileges are developed in the USA, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. They understand that the development of microelectronics is nano-discoveries, the latest technologies, new jobs. In the Russian Federation there is no such understanding. Therefore, “Russia remains the only unprotected market and country with uncompetitive economic conditions.”
J. Alferov: “The Soviet Union was a powerful electronic power. It was an electronic empire. In all 15 union republics there were electronic enterprises, institutes, design offices. These are 3 thousand enterprises, 400 institutes, 3 million people!
Today, electronics remained in Russia at the level of 20 – 25% of what was in Soviet times. Keeps its electronics Belarus. In the rest of the republics it simply does not exist. And this is a strategic direction, without which nothing can develop. And the state, of course, must give this an appropriate decision. ”
“There was a state, there were achievements that we were all proud of,” Nikolai Alferov Nikolai Panichev, the last Soviet minister of the machine-tool and tool industry, picked up the thought, and is now the president of the machine tool builder association.
From the point of view of N.Panicheva, “today, uncertainty and colossal lack of professionalism reign in our state, especially at the level of those people who make decisions”. The country works in an enclosed area, the market for Russians is deaf absolutely. There are practically no investments in machine building. What we are doing today, and this is 25 times less than they did in 1990, up to 70% is exported. And our enterprises remain with 30-year-old, 40-year-old equipment.
Did the state deal with the aviation industry? Our president goes to the USA and signs a contract for 50 Boeing. And we had our own reliable aircraft, and modern advanced aircraft can be created that are more suitable for our conditions than the Boeing. But our money goes to foreign manufacturers.
The base for the high-tech industry N.Panichev considers machine-tool construction, instrument making and electronics. He managed to get some financing for the machine tool building subprogramme. But 94-th FL (the law), which everyone in the Russian Federation does not like, but does not go anywhere, knocked down the plans of manufacturers.
“This is not a law, but a corruption component of all our procurement activities,” N.Panichev said. - Half of those scarce funds that companies earn or receive some loans, benefits, go to intermediaries. 55% benefits were received by intermediaries. Stop this orgy! ”
“You all correctly said, Nikolai Alexandrovich,” noted J. Alferov. He recalled how under Stalin the state treated science and industry. Any appeal of scientists was a priority for the Secretary General. Now it's the other way around. And the matter is not only in the legislative base, considers J. Alferov. “20 years have passed. We were told about the effective owner. We can say that in small business, in a restaurant, in the service sector - probably it is. But about the effective owner in large-scale industry - all lies. Collectivization of the means of production was also in the West. And we did it right away in 1917, running far ahead. But at the same time we created high-tech industries. And these new privatizers cannot be an effective owner. They can buy-sell. And Mr. Chubais said to these remarks that the goal was not at all an effective owner, but to hammer nails into the coffin of communism. But these are nails in the coffin for us all, our society. And we need another effective owner, we need Gosplan, not the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.
The first chairman of the State Planning Committee was Gleb Maximilianovich Krzhizhanovsky. A successful innovative GOELRO plan was born at the same time. Immediately in those days, soon after the revolution it was carried out. And how many successful innovative projects there were! And the matter is not only in the legislative base, the matter is in changing our social system. Nowhere not to get away from this. This brings us to the analysis of the economy and everything that happened to us. "
The words of the Nobel laureate, the meeting participants responded with loud applause. He expressed the main idea itself, which today not everyone dares to utter.
The meeting decided: the State Duma and the government to eliminate laws that hinder the development of science and high technology. This is the 94 Law, the Law on Autonomous Institutions, on High Tariffs, on Customs and Tax Barriers.
Scientists are turning to the president and the prime minister to make decisions about state participation in the most important industries, state tasks for science, a clear defense order, which will allow scientists to find their way and use and expand the scientific potential preserved in the Russian Federation.
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