Technological breakthrough is impossible in Russia without basic science

Abstract

Russia’s mineral resources are a unique wealth, given to us by nature and discovered and preserved by generations of our ancestors. In the 20th century, two addends of this wealth, oil and gas, gained special importance. They are nonrenewable, and their reserves are decreasing. Over the last two decades, the highest state bodies have kept saying that the raw-materials export model of the Russian economy has exhausted itself and we should transfer to innovation-oriented development. How can we do this in practice using our natural advantages? This and other problems are discussed by S.S. Popov, a Sector Head of the journal Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk (Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences), in his conversation with Academician A.N. Dmitrievskii, one of the leaders of Russian oil and gas science and Director for Research of the RAS Oil and Gas Research Institute (RAS OGRI), who will celebrate his 80th birthday in 2017.