A Guide to the Russian Academy of Sciences - University of Texas ...

Department status in the mid-1980s, and of the Siberian Departments of the
Academies of Medical and Agricultural sciences . It could also claim a great deal of
credit for the expansion of higher education in the region. The emerging "critical
mass" of scientific Personnel, laboratories, institutes, design bureaus, and industrial
activity could be traced, Koptyug believed, to the "constant attention being devoted
to the [Siberian] Department" by the CPSU Central Committee, the USSR and
RSFSR Councils of Ministers, the USSR Academy of Sciences and its specialized
Departments, the State Committee for Science and Technology (GKNT), and party
and local political organs. The role of "science" in the development of Siberia has
grown tremendously since 1957 when the Department was first established.
Siberian Scientists: By 1984, there were over 40,000 "scientific workers" in the
Siberian Department scientific research institutes and design bureaus. Figure 33
shows the increase of senior scientists with advanced degrees in the Department
from 1957 to 1984.
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
35
280
Pre-1957 May-82 May-84
Doctors of
Science
Figure 33
Chief Scientific Personnel in the
Siberian Department, 1957-1984
400
3000
450
Candidates of
Science
4000
Source: Koptiug, V., "The Science and Productive Forces of the Region,"
Politicheskoye samoobrazovaniye, No. 5, May 1984, pp. 31-39.
Solving Regional Problems: As Figure 34 shows, from 1957 to the early 1970s the
greatest number of scientific research institutes was established. By the 1980s and
after splitting off several of the earlier institutes in the Far East, scientific
development in the Siberian Department was more intensive than extensive. Basic
research and the participation of its scientists in solving national economic problems
became the focus of the members of the Department in the 1980s. Methodological
seminars became the vehicle for a unification of effort among the various scientific
elements in the higher educational institutions, the Academic Science System, and
the ministerial scientific institutions in Siberia. These conferences and seminars
became the "means of the unification of the intellectual potential of the Siberian
region" and for "the intensification of scientific activity."
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