Science Funding in the Former Soviet Union Needs the Bottom‐Up Approach

APR 01, 1999

Western physicists have learned that researchers in the post‐cold war East need direct support of research projects that promote healthy East‐West collaborations, in place of bureaucratically diffused ‘top‐down’ funding.

DOI: 10.1063/1.882625

Maurice Jacob

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union have greatly changed the structure of the world. We should all be thankful that the confrontation between West and East, which reached dire heights during the long cold war, could be resolved peacefully. For Eastern scientists however, the difficult transition currently faced by the countries of the former Soviet bloc raises enormous funding and adaptability problems. The very survival of brilliant scientific schools in the former Soviet Union (FSU) is at stake.

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References

1. D. Gould, R. Vardapetian, in INTAS:A Bridge between Scientists of Western Europe and the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union, Yu. Ts. Oganessian, R. Kalpakchieva, eds., World Scientific, Singapore (1998).

More about the authors

Maurice Jacob, International Centre for Fundamental Physics, Moscow.