Research Institute as a Functional Unit of Scientific Activities

The development of Russian science gave birth to a system of organizations that were tangibly different from the institutions of science in the West embedded in universities. The main element of the system is a research institute. In the Soviet times founding the institutes under the auspices of the Academy of concentrating staff and material resources in the chosen directions. Higher education institutions were also engaged in research, but their main task consisted in training professional cadres for the rapidly expanding Soviet economy. The public consciousness and Russian culture as a whole viewed and keeps viewing a research institute as a key element in the production of scientific knowledge and a place that employs real researchers whose whole life is dedicated to science. In the institutional order that emerged in the post-Soviet times the institute fulfills a number of important functions. Firstly, the institute is engaged in the production of authentic scientific knowledge using traditional research methods to verify it through standard procedures. Secondly, the institute is charged with the task of reproducing the community of researchers “demographically” and ideologically as a group of people who share the values of scientific endeavor. Thirdly, the institute plays a decisive role in communication with society as a whole, passing on in abridged form the essence of scientific discovery. The reforms of Russian science as part of the general policy of destroying old Soviet institutions did not bring about any improvements in the Russian science complex. Their effects were opposite to what they were set to achieve inflicting heavy damage on the entire realm of research complex.