Russia: May 23, 2004

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Russia has taken an inventory of its scientific and technical capabilities and found that these capabilities are rapidly declining. The Soviet Union spent a disproportionate amount of money on science and engineering education for many decades. Thus percentage of scientists and engineers in the population was twice what is was in Germany when the Soviet Union collapsed. But now it is about equal, with Russia continuing to lose ground. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, money for training many of those technical people disappeared. That was because all the government weapons development operations lost their funding as well. Over the last decade, thousands of the best scientists and engineers have emigrated to Western Europe and North America. Back in Russia, there was little money to keep equipment up to date. PCs and scientific equipment are, on average, eleven years old. The number of patents issued has declined year by year. The economy is being rebuilt and reorganized, and the science and technology portion of it is reviving it as part of private companies. The decades of government control of this work is rapidly fading away. This can be seen in the weapons development sector, where most of the innovation is coming from private companies.

 

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