Recently, the Kremlin again encroached on freedom in Russia. This time, the restrictions were applied to science and research.
Since 1993, Russian scientists have been forced to submit to the special services for approval all their research, scientific papers and articles related, for example, to industry. Recently, however, President Putin went even further and changed the state secrets law, expanding it to all areas of science and research related to new products and discoveries.
In other words, Russian universities, universities and all research centers, according to the law, must require their researchers to send their works to the special services for approval.
Universities and research institutes have already started publishing instructions for their staff. The first to take this step was the largest Russian university. As the scientific journal Nature recently wrote, the Faculty of Biology of the University. Lomonosov has compiled instructions for his employees, according to which all their works, before presentations at conferences or publications in magazines, must go through the procedure of approval by the special services.
Needless to say, when planning to publish a study in English (abroad), scientists must first translate these materials into Russian and also submit them for approval to intelligence officers.
One researcher at a major Russian university told the magazine that "this is a return to Soviet times, when permission was needed to send an article to an international journal, which said that the results were not new and not important, which means they could be published abroad." …
In practice, the system works like this: before the planned publication of the work in a journal or presentation at a conference at home or abroad, a scientist must request permission from the First Department of the Federal Security Service. Moreover, such a special service department exists at every Russian university and research institute. This is a complete degradation of academic and research freedom, the return of censorship and demotivation of the academic and scientific community.
The Russian government wants five Russian universities to be included in the top 100 in the world by 2020. However, Putin's measures run counter to such goals. Worse, such moves appear to be aimed at eliminating critics of the Putin regime. If one or another researcher criticizes Putin and his policies, the secret services will not approve his research and, thus, slow down his scientific career. All this will entail self-censorship and the degradation of scientists and researchers to politically loyal characters left to the mercy of Putin and the Russian special services.
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