The Guardian (UK) 24 July 2000 [for personal use only] Town where a Soviet dream turned sour Its scientists were the envy of the world. Now some of the top brains are manual workers. Our three-part series on the decline and rebirth of Russian science begins in Siberia Amelia Gentleman in Akademgorodok
Beneath the streets of Akademgorodok a maze of tunnels links key buildings so that academics in Russia's science town never need emerge into the harsh Siberian temperatures outside.
In winter, workers at the institute of nuclear physics make their way along curving dimly lit walkways. The rationale of the underground system, one scientist explained, was to prevent research time being wasted in the rigmarole of wrapping up against the cold.
When Akademgorodok was created from nothing in 1957, its founders spent considerable time assessing how to make life easier for the thousands of scientists who were to abandon their comfortable lives in Moscow to labour for the good of Russian science in bleak Siberia.
On a site 30 miles south of the polluted industrial city of Novosibirsk, trees were planted, flats were built and spacious, well-equipped laboratories were set up. Academics were given a concert hall and a club - the House of Scientists - where they were to spend sober evenings together discussing research developments.
Hundreds of tonnes of sand were imported at great expense and scattered on the stony shores of the nearby Ob sea to create the illusion of a beach on which the scientists could relax at weekends.
For the first 30 years the town - with its 37 institutes and thousands of researchers working together to push back the boundaries of knowledge - was a symbol of the grandiose intellectual ambition of the Soviet regime.
Scientists were treated with deference in the USSR. Lenin began to promote their interests immediately after the revolution, aware of their importance in the creation of a powerful new society. In the lean years they received extra rations.
Later, under Stalin, a sense of national insecurity boosted the state's devotion to science. Most scientists escaped the repressions because they were needed to develop the country's ability to make weapons. Even those who were imprisoned continued to work in specially developed research camps.
"We were slaves to the totalitarian state, but we didn't mind because we were doing interesting work and we felt that the state needed and respected us," said Vitaly Ginzburg, a physics professor, who worked during the 1940s to develop the Soviet atom bomb.
Science was not a mere adjunct of Soviet life - it was at its core, the key to transforming Russia from a backward agricultural country into an industrialised mighty world power, equipped to defend itself against the capitalist enemy.
The government poured large measures of the budget into cultivating this scientific base, squeezing ideological pride from internationally acclaimed - and feared - advances: pioneering aeroplanes, and later rocket technology; the first man in space; the first atomic power station; the hydrogen superbomb.
For most of the 20th century the Soviet Union raced on, matching the achievements of America.
Akademgorodok - meaning small town of academics - was part of that tradition. Sophisticated space technology was developed in one institute, while down the road mathematicians pioneered computer technology and biologists wrestled to make Russia's crops sturdier, using new genetic engineering techniques.
But in the past 10 years it has come to symbolise the disastrous decline of Russia's academic tradition.
It is generally accepted that there are two reasons why Russians move to Siberia - either they are romantics or they come as prisoners. The scientists who founded Akademgorodok in 1957 were romantics. Many who remain see themselves as the prisoners of their own shattered project.
No one has forgotten the early optimism. Towards the end of the 50s it had become obvious that Siberia had massive natural resources: petroleum, gas, coal, timber, diamonds and minerals. But with the country's brainpower concentrated in Moscow and Leningrad - now St Petersburg - there was nobody to exploit its potential, so President Nikita Khrushchev backed a scheme to move leading scientists and research students from western Russia to the Siberian wilderness.
Just 12 years after the ravages of the second world war, the state somehow found enough money to establish the science oasis. The scale of the project was phenomenal. The main street, Lavrentiev Prospect, named after the town's founder Mikhail Lavrentiev, was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the most scientific street in the world", because of its high concentration of institutes.
As well as undertaking research aimed at developing Russia's conventional and nuclear military potential, scientists were encouraged to focus on pure science, to find answers to the big questions, simply for the sake of academic advancement.
Today the institutes - physics, chemistry, genetics, biochemistry, mathematics, electronics and more - all remain. A few, run by energetic directors, have transformed themselves into profitable enterprises by winning lucrative research contracts from western companies.
But they are a minority. As their funding dwindles, the rest have had to abandon research projects and survive on a fraction of their former income. Many are dusty shells, virtually abandoned by their scientists, some of whom have been forced to turn to manual labour to supplement their miserly or non-existent income. Meanwhile the most talented of the younger generation have slipped abroad and students, disheartened by poor job and salary prospects, stay away.
With a shortage of money for laboratory equipment, there is no question of even attempting to keep up with developments in Europe and America. And with the influx of rich communiting businessmen, many young scientists can no longer afford the rents.
The privations suffered by scientists in this town echo the hardships of colleagues throughout the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In real terms Russian science now receives a seventh of the government funding it did in 1990, leaving hundreds of institutions struggling to survive.
Genady Kulipanov, vice-chairman of Akademgorodok's governing body and a professor of nuclear physics, said: "In the late 1980s I found it hard to explain to friends in the west what the process of perestroika [rebuilding] really meant. Now I tell them perestroika - it was destroyka. We didn't really rebuild anything, we just destroyed a great deal.
"The government stopped funding projects. There were no new institutes. A lot of the more energetic and best-qualified people left and went abroad or went into business. The spirit of the town changed."
Scientists here remember the lean years from 1991 to 1996 with horror, proferring graphs with drooping curves -testimony to the funding collapse and - charts with soaring curves to demonstrate the flow of scientists abroad.
Desperate to approach the future with optimism, many of Akademgorodok's workers are hopeful that Vladimir Putin is the man to restore the prestige of Russian science. They interpret the new president's commitment to restoring a powerful Russian state as an indirect pledge to boost their funding.
Mr Putin's advisers are making all the right noises - stressing the urgency of developing Russia's scientific, technological base to revitalise the economy. But the president does not have long to contemplate the disarray he has inherited. Academics agree that an increase in funding must begin immediately, before the crumbling structures of Russia's scientific base disintegrate.
"It is impossible to go on like this. If the process of the last 10 years continues for another 10 years then there will be total collapse," said Professor Vladimir Likholobov, deputy director of one of Akademgorodok's more succesful institutes, the Institute of Catalysis.
But for men such as the founder of the town's medical institute, Professor Vlail Kaznacheev, 75, who devoted their lives to developing the Soviet scientific dream, the changes have come too late. Sitting in the bare lobby of the House of Scientists Mr Kaznacheev is despairing about the events of the last 15 years.
"Our salaries have dropped radically, but we've lost everything else too. We used to get money for animals, laboratories, materials, equipment, expeditions and flats," he said.
"Without expeditions and new equipment, we can't continue the research. The process has been devastating."