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For the first time in 275 years, the government will decide how to restructure Russia’s Academy of Sciences and which institutions to close under a decree to take effect in 1998.

“Nobody ever changed the structure of the academy: neither the tsars, nor even the Soviet powers,” said Georgy Yelyakov, president of the Far Eastern Division of Russia’s Academy of Sciences. “The academy always lived according to its own charters.”

The charters call for the academy itself, not the government, to decide which institutes would be funded.

Following a government federal decree issued in August 1997, the academy just submitted its suggestions on which scientific organizations should be fully financed by the government, which should be funded from a region’s budget, and which should be closed. But the government will make the final decision.

One problem is that government bureaucrats aren’t necessarily qualified to make decisions about science, said Anatoly Kalyagin, a researcher at the Pacific Oceanological Institute. Some scientists who don’t seem productive may actually be working on significant research.

“All those reforms are designed to annihilate our achievements,” Kalyagin said.

Yelyakov said the goal of restructuring is to save money in order to increase salaries for the staff (the average is 500,000 rubles, or $85 a month) and for scientific equipment and materials.

The academy has recommended relatively small changes in its Far Eastern Division. It involves unification of the Institute of Volcanic Geology and Geochemistry with the Scientific Geotechnological Center in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

Said Boris Ivanov, director of the institute, “It’s a positive event, because under current circumstances there’s no other way out of the situation.”

The Institute of Ecology and Natural Resources in Kamchatka will become a branch of Institute of Geography in Vladivostok. In Sakhalin, the Institute of Marine Geology and Geophysics will unite in one complex with an institute that designs scientific equipment.

The regional center in Chukotka and international center Antarctica will become branches of the Northeast Institute.

All 14 institutes located in Vladivostok will be preserved. But the problem of botanical gardens and natural reserves is still being discussed.

Yelyakov and members of the Presidium of the Far Eastern Division do not think the restructuring is necessary, since the staff is reducing naturally anyway. From 12,000 in 1992 it has declined to 7,000 people in the Far East.

As compared to 1992, financing is one seventh the 1992 level in the Far East. Nationwide, the budget is a 22nd of what it was.