In the USSR, the material and technical resources utilized for R&D purposes include buildings, facilities, machinery, equipment, materials, reagents, and so forth. Inferior standards of R&D equipment, insufficient supply of ad- vanced instruments, lack of premises, and lack of experimental base hinder the development of fundamental research, and the creation of radically new technology and equipment.
Only during the last years did the material and technical base of the sci- entific sector become the subject of a comprehensive and systematic study.
Indicators for statistical reporting provided only the most general charac- teristics of scientific organizations' fixed assets and did not describe, t o any precise detail, the movement, structure, condition and utilization of technical means and their quality.
A 1989 survey concerning the resources of research, designing, project- designing, and technological organizations, and higher education institutions finally provided some statistical data. The survey encompassed 5,400 re- search and designing organizations and higher education institutions. The amount of fixed assets of the research (designing) activity as of 1 June 1989, exceeded 36.5 billion rubles which, according t o our calculations, was about 90% of the value of the total fixed assets for science (together with those owned by industrial enterprises). About 60% of these were concentrated in the industrial science organizations, 22% in the academic sector, and 18%
in the higher education institutions. A considerable part of the fixed assets of industrial science was concentrated in the scientific organizations of the machine-building, chemical and forestry, agroindustrial, and energy and fuel complexes. The analysis regarding the distribution of the fixed assets by branch of science demonstrated that half were the property of the technical sciences, almost 20% belonged t o the natural sciences, the agricultural and medical sciences account for 4%, and the social and humanitarian sciences for only 2%.
The overall value of machinery and equipment in the scientific sector was 22.3 billion rubles; together with the experimental bases (factories, plants, units) of the scientific organizations it increased t o 24 billion rubles. Ma- chinery and equipment dominated the fixed assets of science within the tech- nological structure (refer t o Table 6).
The analysis of the latter also demonstrated the deficiencies regarding the equipment in scientific organizations with special requirements for re- search machinery. Namely, the share of instruments and laboratory equip-
L . Gokhberg and L. Mindely 9 ment accounted for only one fifth of the total value of fixed assets. In the branch and higher education sectors it is even lower. Furthermore, in exper- imental production the general purpose production equipment accounted for 69% of total fixed asset value, while the proportion of specialized equipment for experimentation constituted only 12%.
In order t o successfully perform standard research and even more so in priority areas is the availability of usually expensive, sophisticated sci- entific instruments and equipment (electronic microscopes, spectrometers, chromatographs, X-ray machines, ultra-centrifuges etc.) crucial. However, their average share in the total value of machinery and equipment of scien- tific organizations was 7.5%; the academic sector privileged a t 10.4%, while higher education and branch sectors were forced to make do with 6,5% and 6.7% respectively. The absolute majority of such equipment (93%) was con- centrated in the fields of technical, natural, and medical sciences. However, even there, the proportion in the total value of machinery and equipment was not too impressive: just 5.7%, 12.8% and 18.5%, respectively. In ad- dition, the level of specialization of computing equipment used in scientific organizations was rather low. On average, 46% of the total value of com- puting equipment were accounted for by computing centers and computers based on general-purpose processors. A very similar situation exists in the natural (48.8%) and technical (45.6%) sciences, while the situation in the field of medicine is somewhat better (33.9%).
The aggregate characteristics regarding the viability and potential of a scientific organization are usually described using indicators such as capital- labor ratio and equipment-labor ratio. The former is calculated as a ratio between the volume of fixed assets of science and the number of scientific employees and the latter as a ratio between the value of machinery and equipment and the number of employees engaged in the
R&D.
From the point of view of analysis, the supply of instruments and computers available t o scientists is of special interest.According t o our calculations, the capital-labor ratio in Soviet science amounted t o 12,800 rubles in 1989 (Table 7); 1.75 times lower than in the industrial sector.
The supply of technical means for fundamental research on a priority basis caused such indicators as capital-labor ratios or other ratios involving specific types of assets for the academic science t o be twice as high on average as in other sectors. The capital-labor ratio in scientific organizations under the jurisdiction of the mining industry is about 7,000 t o 9,000 rubles; in the ministries of the machine-building complex the figure lies between 7,000 and
10 Soviet R&D Resources 11,000 rubles, which is still somewhat lower than the average. Equipment- labor ratio in the scientific experimental base was only 5,500 rubles (3 times lower than that in industry). Obviously, such a situation did not promote the quality of developments, samples of new technology, and industrial products and, consequently, affected the condition of the material and technical base of the whole national economy.
The instruments-labor ratio and computer-labor ratio are 3 times lower than the capital-labor ratio in science. The highest instrument-labor ratio was registered in natural (9,900 rubles) and medical (8,200 rubles) sciences.
This indicator was recorded t o have the values of 3,200 and 2,900 rubles in the agricultural and technical sciences respectively. It reached a minimum in the field of humanitarian and social sciences, and information and informa- tion systems (700 t o 1,200 rubles). However, this is influenced, t o a certain degree, by the unique feature of the latter research areas. In the field of in- formatics, the computer-labor ratio (9,800 rubles) was 2.4 times higher than the average across all sectors; it's level is lower in the social (5,400 rubles), natural (5,100), and technical (4,100) sciences. Among the less-computerized branches of research are the medical (2,000), humanitarian (1,700), and agri- cultural (1,100) sciences. Our estimates indicate that, on average, there were no more than 20 personal computers (PCs) per 1000 Soviet scientists. In certain ministries and departments this figure was actually even less than 5. All these determinants demonstrated a cross inconsistency between the technological structure of fixed assets and the true needs of modern science.
An ineffective replacement policy with respect t o scientific fixed assets resulted in the accumulation of a vast amount of physically and technically obsolete equipment in the scientific organizations. As shown in Table 8, 20.8% of the machinery and equipment in scientific organizations were more than 10 years old including one fourth of them older than 20 years. The proportion of scientific instruments and equipment less than five years old amounted t o 44.2% of the total volume of machinery and equipment in gen- eral, while the proportion over 10 years of-age accounts for 25.1%. The age characteristics of the machinery and equipment belonging t o independent experimental bases are even worse: in 1989,32% of the equipment was older than 10 years. According to our calculations, the proportion of the most modern equipment (up to 2 years of age) in the Soviet science was 1.5 t o 2 times lower than in the USA (1, p. 205).
The system of providing resources for scientific activity did not stimu- late rapid breakthroughs in the priority directions of development. Thus, in the case of biotechnology, 50% of the R&D institutes did not have experi-
L. Gokhberg and L. Mindely 11 mental facilities, and 35% did not even have their own. The volume of fixed assets and current capital of these organizations were, on average, 1.5 and 1.3 times lower than those of the research institutions specializing in natural sciences in general. It is significant that 20% of the equipment in biotech- nological research institutions were more than 10 years old and that half of the high-cost equipment exhibited a technical level which was lower than the best international standards. Overall, only a small percentage of such biotechnological equipment (0.4%) is more advanced than the best world standards. The proportion of Soviet high-cost machinery and equipment (as a percentage of the total value) above or equal t o that of the best world technical standards varied depending on the research field as follows: only 14% in biotechnology, 21% in machine-building related research, manage- ment processes and mechanics, and 24% in general physics and astronomy, informatics, computers and automatization. This indicator was highest in the field of biochemistry, biophysics, general and technical problems of power engineering (35%), physical chemistry and technology of non-organic mate- rials (41%); yet, even these levels were clearly insufficient in order to achieve advanced scientific results. According to the existing estimates, the overall demand for scientific instruments in the USSR is only 20-25% satisfied; for a number of important groups a mere 10% of demand is covered.
This has been a very brief review, of the survey results concerning the Soviet material and technical base of science in 1989. In future, such sur- veys should take place more often and at regular intervals. A systematic approach to the statistical analysis of scientific resources additionally envis- ages a comprehensive system of regularly conducted, subject-specific surveys of the following issues: level of computerization in scientific activity, exper- imental and pilot facilities, production and social infrastructure, material and technical supply of different R&D sectors, and orientation of scientific research.