Academician Gennady Krasnikov: “The level of the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences is the level of the Prime Minister”

The candidate explained how to raise the authority of the Russian Academy of Sciences

“The Academy is not even fulfilling the functions that are assigned to it in the Charter.” According to Gennady Krasnikov, the inability of the current leadership to achieve its own is one of the reasons for the further decline in the authority of the organization, its exclusion from the state decision-making system.

On Friday, the Academician-Secretary of the Department of Nanotechnologies and Information Technologies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who began his pre-election tour of regional departments, spoke to scientists from the Far East.

One of the main points of his election program, he called the increase in the authority of the Academy.

– How to increase authority and fit into the system of government decision-making? Krasnikov asked a question. And he immediately answered that everything is determined not by formal names, but by deeds:

– I think that even all those functions that are enshrined in the Charter, the law, we do not perform. It has become a formal moment today. It is written (in the law) that government decisions and expertise must be coordinated with us … But in fact they come out, regardless of whether we agreed on them or not. Therefore, my task as president is to achieve, first of all, the fulfillment of what is written in the Charter: if a document should not be published without the approval of the Academy, it should not be published.

Krasnikov gave a vivid example with a draft decree (it was issued two years ago), which spoke about the withdrawal from the RAS of the function of an expert in relation to a number of scientific and educational organizations: Moscow State University, the Higher School of Economics, the Kurchatov Institute, scientific organizations of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs .

– We held a presidium on this issue, unanimously voted against, sending our decision to the government … And yet the order was issued. What did we do? They calmed down, did not continue to insist on their own. This is how the authority of the RAS is being destroyed.

Gennady Yakovlevich also drew attention to the relationship with the Ministry of Education and Science:

– If the Academy, as the main expert body in the country, gives a negative opinion on the scientific activities of the institute, an appropriate reaction should follow. But we are witnessing how, despite our negative conclusion, the Ministry of Education and Science continues to finance this institute anyway!

According to the academician, all the objections of scientists simply could not go unnoticed if the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences had personal contact with the first persons of the country, as was the case before. Here Krasnikov, apparently, hinted that the current president, Alexander Sergeyev, does not have such a level of connections in the upper echelons of power.

– The level of the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences is the level of the prime minister, the chairman of the Federation Council, the chairman of the State Duma, the minister of defense, the chairman of the FSB … – Krasnikov said. – Not just – I called by phone once a month – you need to really work, in fact, on a daily basis. If the president of the Academy works in such a format, then all our objections to many documents could not be approved.

Anticipating a question from the audience about what personally prompted him to run for president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Gennady Krasnikov answered the following:

– After February 24, the situation in the country has seriously changed, a window of opportunity has appeared. From my work in the field of electronic technologies, I see how the attitude of top officials is changing now, starting from the prime minister, deputy prime minister, how seriously attention is paid to the potential of our institutions, the introduction of domestic developments in industry. The situation requires a greater influence of science, and the RAS should take a leading position here.

Recall that Krasnikov is the main competitor of the current president of the Academy, Alexander Sergeyev, who, five years later, expressed a desire to run for a second term. However, if Sergeev was supported by 4 departments, then members of 9 out of 15 departments of the Academy voted for Krasnikov. Another branch voted for two other nominees – Robert Nigmatulin and Dmitry Markovich. The election of the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences will be held on September 21.