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An emergency meeting of repre sentatives from the republics of the former
Soviet Union has stressed the need for a ‘common scientific space’ which
would encourage collaborative research and the funding of big science projects.
The meeting’s recommendations will be considered by governments in the republics
before a formal agreement is drawn up.

The delegates, meeting in Kiev earlier this month, argued that any agreement
should be based on the free flow of information and mutual recognition of
patents and qualifications. Republics wishing to join the scheme should
contribute a proportion of their budgets to fund research in ‘priority directions’.

The discussion turned, at times, into fierce debate. ‘Fundamental research
is a luxury for rich states only,’ said representatives from Georgia and
Armenia. The deputy chairman of the Russian State Committee for Science
and Higher Education, A. N. Tikhonov, replied: ‘If you abandon fundamental
science, you abandon your future.’

Of the 15 former republics of the USSR, 13 attended the meeting. Georgia,
Moldova, Lithuania and Latvia sent observers and two republics failed to
turn up at all. The delegates proposed that former Comecon members should
also be invited to join the ‘space’ in order to widen its scope.

The meeting recommended setting up a new interstate scientific and technical
council to coordinate joint projects. In the interim, this role could be
filled by the existing all-union state committee on science and technology.

The role of coordinator looks like slipping from the hands of the all-union
academy of sciences. After 70 years at the helm of Soviet research, the
all-union academy has only four months’ funding left, said Boris Paton,
president of the Ukrainian academy.

The silence of the all-union academy’s leadership during the abortive
coup last month – and particularly the reticence of its president Gurii
Marchuk – raised the pitch of criticism of the organisation (see ‘The world
turns upside down for Soviet science’, 14 September).

Highly placed members of the all-union academy had hoped to hear Marchuk’s
position at a rare meeting of the academy’s presidium, called after the
coup attempt. But this was not to be, said academician V. Barsukov, director
of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry. Writing
in Izvestiya, he said: ‘The meeting was told in a few phrases that the decree
of the President of the Russian Federation (Boris Yeltsin) about the nationalisation
of state assets did not apply to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.’

But the Kiev meeting was told that it was likely Russia would take over
the 250 or so institutes belonging to the all-union academy that were sited
on its territory. The meeting decided, however, that a number of these institutes,
where work of ‘interstate’ importance was being done, should become joint
institutes supported by the republics which use their facilities.