Interviewed by Daria Melikhova, exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
Former Russian Education Minister Andrei Fursenko now heads the board of trustees of the Russian Science Foundation and works for the board of the Russian Council on Foreign Affairs. Mr Fursenko told Vestnik Kavkaza about science and education in the North Caucasus, as well as about humanitarian cooperation with the South Caucasus.
- How do you assess the state of education and science in the North Caucasus?
- The North Caucasus Federal District is a region where the development of the humanities is particularly important, because the Caucasus has always been a place where national culture and the interaction of different peoples play a very important role. And this is precisely the responsibility of the social sciences: how to form interactions to the benefit of each and every person and to the country as a whole.
In the areas of natural sciences in the Caucasus there are several interesting directions and very interesting institutions, in particular, in Kabardino- Balkaria, North Ossetia and Stavropol Territory. The newly-created North Caucasus Federal University has been established precisely in order to coordinate and consolidate the scientific forces in the Caucasus. One should see concrete work, go there, meet different scientists.
This region is very important for the country. And this means it must develop comprehensively. And education and science are an inalienable and very important part of the development of each people, each region.
- How are scientific contacts with the countries of the South Caucasus developing?
- Once we worked together on education, but also in science. Thus, not accidentally, Azerbaijan opened a branch of Moscow State University, because it was aimed not only at teaching the youth, but also at ensuring that there was fully-fledged joint research with our colleagues from Azerbaijani scientific institutes and universities. There were outstanding mathematicians in Georgia. Nikolay Muskelishvili was one of the pillars of Soviet mathematics. And my colleagues, with whom I did pure modelling, they worked in universities, in the Georgian Academy of Science. So Georgian science had potential, and I'm one hundred percent sure that it is preserved, therefore I hope very much that science will be the direction from which, perhaps, we will start restoring relations with this country.
Successful cooperation with Armenia has developed in the field of information technology. It is a very concrete thing, so it is important to conduct scientific cooperation with any country on specific projects. We need to do this not because we have been ordered to do so, but in order to bring benefit, not only to the scientists from collaborating countries, but also to the economies of these countries. It seems that today such opportunities exist, and something is already developing.
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Speaking of the state of the Russian science and education, Mr Fursenko noted that since about 2006, we can see a steady increase in the number of scientists under the age of 40. “Today the possibility of paying good scientists, good young scientists and giving them the opportunity of interesting work (I mean the special devices and the infrastructure for research) are very much advanced. We have never had such a level of quality and quantity of scientific equipment as we have now. We have dozens of leading centers, and the quality of the scientific infrastructure there is in no way inferior to foreign centers”.
“We have lost the generation of people who are now 45-55 years old. These people were in a very difficult situation. In the 1990s they worked in science, and some of them left it. You know that in all Russian banks, in all the commercial enterprises the top management mostly consists of people from science, people who were quite successful in science,” says Mr Fursenko. “ Some people left for other countries, because they wanted to continue to work in science, believing that in the 1990s the conditions for this were very limited. Today, some of these people come back for good, some return for a while, but they cooperate with their former employers and other institutions very actively.”
According to Mr Fursenko, today full-time jobs in Russian scientific institutions are in such demand that there is a queue for them. “There are no vacancies. Both academic institutions and the Graduate School said that it is necessary to create conditions for the young to stay. Therefore, we are creating new tools now. One of the aspects is supporting communities that to a large extent consist of young people.”
Speaking of the promising directions of science, Mr Fursenko said, “It is very important to be competitive not only in terms of academic or university science, but also in terms of the industry that would be in demand. I think in the near short term a very interesting direction for Russia will be related to the environment. I believe that in the next 5-10 years, the issue of the environment, of saving it, will be a highly-paid, well-funded direction.
Nuclear energy is also developing actively. It is an area that requires work with new materials, and in the field of elementary particles, and research in the structure of matter. Information technology are needed there as well. Also a very interesting area is associated with medicine. These are areas that are on the border between the nuclear industry, nuclear science and medicine. There is much to do, and I think that many young people are well aware of it.”
