“Where there is a collapse of strategy, there is a strategy of collapse”: Russia's academic community on the results of liberal reforms (the 1990s)

The article based on unfamiliar documents from the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences examines the problem of interaction between the academic community and the power. The author focuses on views and assessments shared by the leading Russian scholars in the mid-1990s as to the conception, mechanisms and methods of liberal economic reforms as well as their outcomes and consequences. The analysis reveals the prevalence of negative and pessimistic assessments. The criticism was primarily directed against the rejection by the reformers of government regulation, the criminal privatization launched by them, production breakdown, underfinanced science and education, dramatic social disintegration and the impoverishment of a considerable part of the population. The Academy’s scholars had to acknowledge the fact that the reformers did not have any theoretically grounded transformation programme as well as the danger in which they put the country by choosing their strategy of social and economic development with the help of foreign experts. The debates and discussions about the critical state in economics, social sphere and science which were held at the Russian Academy of Sciences manifested the research economists’ inefficacy and failure to influence the government policy, on the one hand, and on the other, the eagerness of the academic community to devise both a system of urgent specific measures to resolve the severe crisis, and a long-term strategy for Russia’s scientific and technological development. However, the academicians had to confront with the government bureaucracy’s reluctance to cooperate with the academic community, with the top officials ignoring their projects.