There are certain days which everyone remembers down to the smallest details. I very well remember the toy I was playing with in the courtyard when my father swung open the window and shouted: “Slava, come home quickly! We’ve flown into space!” Across the screen of our black-and-white television set – a Temp 6 – scrolled the TASS announcement, and they were showing and telling the biography of the man who instantaneously became not only a hero but dear comrade.
I remember how people ran through the streets past our house yelling “Hurrah!” on the way to Red Square toward the center of Moscow to meet him – the cult-hero of planet Earth – Yuri Gagarin. Today, everyone who on that April 12 had already reached the age of reason has his or her own story for that day. And I have all the grounds to make this assertion: our foundation, the Russkiy Mir Foundation, is organizing a worldwide campaign called First in Space, and I see how warmly people throughout the planet recall Gagarin’s feat (or perhaps hear of him for the first time in their lives).
Today we very well understand the greatness of what happened half a century ago. Since that time only two countries in the world have managed to implement their own manned space flight programs – the United States and quite recently China. And in the near future we will become the sole power capable of providing support to the International Space Station, as the Americans shut down their space shuttle program. People will be taken to the space station aboard Soyuz spacecraft, the development of which also began in the 1960s.
Our space program is not only one of the sources of our well-founded national pride. It is one of the most successful (if not the very most successful) innovation projects in history of mankind, paving the road for its travel to other planets. Prior to Gagarin’s flight, our probes had been launched not only to the moon but also to Venus and Mars. It is no coincidence that space exploration, where we have already achieved so much, remains one of the five national priorities in the modernization program.
The passing of the half century mark of man’s exploration of space comes at a time of a new round of discussion of paths to achieving an innovation breakthrough, about the role in this process of the state and private capital. At the most recent meeting of the commission on modernization, President Medvedev placed an emphasis on the creation of a normal investment climate. And this is quite justified. It is not possible to suppose innovative development will occur when not providing elementary support for production, when social taxes are raised on business that is still struggling to recover from the crisis, when corruption outlays are skyrocketing and state contracts are no more used for updating equipment than for the enrichment of elusive and impervious state officials.
The role of a normal economic environment, economic climate and private capital – both foreign and Russian – in the creation of a modern economy cannot be overestimated. Many of our past modernization breakthroughs were built on capital and technologies brought in from the West – be it at the turn of the 19th-20th century or the Stalinist industrialization, which received much support from American engineers and equipment. In the West, major corporations have their own networks of research and development institutions and design bureaus, support venture projects (of which more than 80% turn out to be failures but whose rare successes drive global progress), and place orders with universities and add to their endowments. Enormous insurance and pension funds invest in, among other things, the shares of hi-tech companies. The situation should be similar in Russia. But this is not yet the case. Big business is largely built on the export of raw materials (and in some cases processed materials) in return for which the country receives imported products at a high markup. Such an economy does not need innovation. Global thinking is a rarity even among the very largest companies. It is also a rarity among research and development institutions. It is no coincidence that it took more than a year and some administrative “acceleration” from above to implement a direct order from the president to increase research and development budgets of Russian companies.
There must be a demand for innovation, and the state plays a deciding role in creating this demand. That is how it worked with our space projects, which provided stimulus for the development of a broad range of research areas – from mathematics, physics, astronomy, material engineering and instrumentation to medicine and microbiology. Tomorrow a presentation will be held of compilations of recently declassified documents on the Soviet space program, including documents from the Presidential Archive. What is surprising in them is the precision and clear articulation of instructions coming from the leadership of the country and the speed at which these instructions were followed out. The documents, which originated from many knowledgeable administrators working under the leadership not only of Sergei Korolev and Minister of Aviation Mikhail Khrunichev but also head of the military-industrial complex Dmitry Ustinov Minister of Defense Rodion Malinovsky and President of the Academy of Sciences Mstislav Keldysh, contain detailed instruction for each stage of the space program. Details of each parameter, principle and characteristic of future flight; details on each equipment component and aggregate on the spacecraft; details on the preparation and outfitting of cosmonauts… These specific instructions were given to thousands of research and development institutions, engineering bureaus, heavy and light industrial enterprises, medical clinics, military bodies, etc.
The Academy of Sciences, which is now berated by all but the lazy, and leading universities somehow managed to provide an enormous amount of scientific support for the most audacious breakthrough of the mind. Perhaps it is because they knew what was needed of them? From the very first note on the principle possibility of launching a satellite to the subsequent launch of the first satellite takes only two years. From the first directive to study the only the medical and biological possibility of sending a human into space to Gagarin’s flight also takes only two years. These are amazing documents for all who want to understand the logic and mechanics of strategic planning. But is such a scheme only possible for us and only during the Soviet period? In this exact form – yes.
But even in the most developed market economies, major innovative breakthroughs are the results of state programs. The Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb and nuclear technologies, was a purely state commissioned project. The Internet was developed and launched by the Pentagon. Modern American universities and their first-rate equipment are capable of producing innovations, but we cannot ignore the fact that in the budget of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, the share of funds that are some way or another tied to the government is as high as 90%.
The role of the state in an innovative economy should not be limited to the creation of a normal investment environment, which is important. But it also includes as sort of “forcing” business and science to take up the cause of innovation. In formulating the corresponding stimuli, a first priority is to develop clearly formulated and financed state contracts, including military contracts, for research and development work, which in turn supports both academic scientific work and universities. The creation of institutions of development and the widely criticized Skolkovo project are absolutely sensible and rational efforts. Providing a privileged status for the talented is one of the few methods available for not losing the future.
Vyacheslav Nikonov
