In the autumn of 2009, the Nobel committee for the first time awarded the prize to a woman-economist. The laureate was 76 year-old American citizen, Elinor Ostrom. “The women’s wave” in the sciences continues to rise, and Russia also partakes in the trend. The testimony to this is Natalia Ivanovna Ivanova, the first woman in our country to be elected in 2008 as correspondent-member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), for the International Relations section, Social Sciences branch.
N.I. Ivanova was born in Vladivostok to a family engaged in the armed forces, and only at the end of the 1960s moved to Moscow where she studied and then started work. From 1966 to 1968, she attended the Far Eastern Technological Institute (Vladivostok), Engineering-Economics Faculty; and from 1968 to 1971, the Moscow Technological Institute of Food Industry, Engineering-Economics Faculty.
In 1973, N.I. Ivanova joined the team of the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of RAS (IMEMO), with which she has not parted to this day. In this Institute, she made her way in the hierarchy from research worker to first deputy to the director (from 2007). In 1979, she defended her PhD thesis (“Foodstuffs complexes in the USSR and the USA: a comparative analysis”, IMEMO) and in 2008, she defended her doctor’s dissertation (“The formation and evolution of national innovation systems”, IMEMO).
N.I. Ivanova is a major specialist in the field of theory of innovative development, national innovation systems, scientific and innovational policies and economic prevision. She has published over 100 scientific works, which came out in the USA and countries of the EU as well as in Russia.
On the 15th of September 2009, in IMEMO, N.I. Ivanova had a discussion with the “International Trends” editor-in-chief, Alexey Bogaturov.
A.B. I will venture to ask you about “women’s lot” in the community of IR researchers. It is well known that many are ironical regarding this, but there is actually nothing to be ironical about. The growth in the number of women among IR researchers is indeed a very serious trend, even though all assess its consequences differently. Some say that a feminization of sciences and practical politics is taking place. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, many fear this. But a lot of people single out positive sides to this trend…
N.I. First of all, there is a social dimension to this question. It is linked to the level at which gender problems are dealt with in society. It is a good thing that you brought up this subject not on the 8th of March. It is obvious that as women receive in social life real, and not only declared equality, and as they overcome the costs of feminism, one can level out one’s attitude to the problem. Secondly, women’s professional careers nowadays differ little from men’s, in developed but also in developing countries. The appearance of women at all levels of the professional ladder shouldn’t be considered a strange phenomenon. In fact, the more a country is developed, the more women are present in politics. Let’s consider the chancellor of Germany, the few secretaries of state in the USA, in Norway or in Switzerland, which skeptics qualified as governments of housewives. All these countries deal with their problems amazingly well. It is also appropriate to mention Margaret Thatcher, the “iron lady” in British politics. And let’s not forget Y. Timoshenko, who is referred to by some as the only real “bloke” in the Ukrainian authorities. The exact same processes are taking place in the sciences.
There is research on the theme “the role of women in the sciences”. In fact, they were very keen on this theme in Western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. The findings were, as a rule, all the same: Those sectors in which the proportion of women grows quickly compared to average indicators, have better performance indices. All in all, I think that the more serious women, the healthier the atmosphere in scientific teams. Of course, this means women should also be present in leading positions.
Formal indicators are irrelevant in this area. What is needed is real progress. We can see that this is happening in Russia; fastest of all in business. In the 1990s it became apparent that women can ajdust perfectly to business, in fact on average, better than men. They are responsible, efficient and capable of organising work in many different spheres. But it was a simple “carrying out of a rule”, the liquidation of a periodicities; only beforehand the process of advancement of women had been crushed, frozen by a whole series of artificial barriers.
A.B. But maybe, simply the inflow of women is a “breach in the dam”, is linked to the fact that the Soviet years led to the accumulation of many creative, uncalled for, bright women, and they all “surfaced” after 1991, and hence it is not at all a trend?
N.I. Of course, as being uneven, this process will not develop in a linear fashion. An adjustment process is objectively needed to make the assessement more accurate. Formally in the USSR, women had the same rights as men, but as you say, “barriers” did exist and did slow down the activity of women. Today, small business is almost entirely a women’s domain, but in the Soviet Union, they tried to place men in all key positions, even as a women’s hairdressing salon’s manager. And this was the case in all services. Now all is going back to the way it should be, in business as well as in the sciences. But science deserves a more detailed review.
My scientific career did not develop in a flash. Since my childhood, I have always been interested in everything in the world. Let me remind you of Brodski’s quote: “If it so happened that you were born in an empire, you are better off living in a lost town by the sea”. So you see I grew up in Vladivostok, a town which communicated with the rest of the world in spite of being closed off. My uncle was a long cruise captain; he saw practically the whole world, but always soberly compared our realities to those abroad. We had a big friendly family, with many sailors and fishermen in it.
A.B. Did you study oriental languages at university, like Korean or Japanese?
N.I. No, nothing of the sort, because at the time I was already into becoming an economist. And at that very time, they were opening economic departments all over the Soviet Union…
A.B. Did you go to Far Eastern State University (DVGU)?
N.I. No, it didn’t have an economic department. Even though I finished school with honours, I chose to go and study at a university which had an economic department; and this turned out to be the Vladivostok Technological Institute. This university was in fact designed to prepare specialists for the fishing industry. But this was where one could obtain an economic training, the competition to be enrolled was ferocious, students with honours alone were vying to get in. An incredible number of applicants. In 1966, everyone wanted to become an economist. Nevertheless, I succeeded and graduated in engineering and economy.
My father was in the military and he was soon transferred to Moscow. That’s how I ended up in Moscow and then graduated from the engineering-economic department of Moscow Technological Food Industry Institute, whose curriculum was in perfect continuity with my specialty in Vladivostok. Afterwards, my son always joked that I was “an engineer minus an economist”. He meant that “engineer-economist” is written with a dash.
My further specialisation was influenced by the fact that in the 1970s, the State was supporting an important comparative scientific and research program. Its goal was to study the economies of different countries and to identify the sectors where the Soviet Union lagged behind and those in which it surpassed its competitors. I had graduated with distinction, and when we were attributed jobs I was actually lucky enough to be brought to work for V.D. Novakov, of IMEMO. At that time he was supervising, at the Institute of the Ministry of foodstuff industry, the field of international comparison of the level of productivity of work in this sector. That’s where I started to work, and then following Novikov’s recommendation I embarked on a PhD at IMEMO.
A.B. So it was your father who pushed you into the sciences?
N.I. (laughs) Yes, one can put it that way, if my father had not moved to Moscow… But it was also my own decision. For instance, when the choice arose either to apply for an IMEMO PhD or to join the Ministry organs; I chose to pursue my studies. And at that time I already had some scientific publications.
I remember how I was called in by the director of “glavk” in the Ministry and offered to work there for an amazing salary for the time; 200 rubbles a month (my previous salary had been 100 rubbles). It all took place in the building of the Ministry on Kalinsky avebye. At the time it was new, prestigious building, with a wonderful canteen for the ministry associates, bonuses, etc. After the conversation, I got home and discussed the situation with my husband (he is a researcher in Physics). And this is what he said: “What can this bureaucracy do for you? Money, of course, is always necessary, but we will find some way of doing without”. I never regretted this choice.
A.B. Did you feel, while going up the career ladder, that you were listened to less attentively and taken less seriously by your superiors as opposed to your male colleagues?
N.I. I think it would be sinful for me to complain. Of course, women between 25 to 45 have a lot more problems than men, because women have children to care for, and usually take responsibility for their family. In the 1980s, it was hard to get hold of milk, and the situation just kept worsening. I still have shivers as I remember the practically empty shelves in our supermarket in 1990. One constantly had to think about most bare essentials like food, clothes, domestic appliances and even books; and this was very hard-going.
Men had faster careers in the Soviet times; they quickly and easily joined the ranks of the Communist party, which was very important for anyone’s career. This was not the path I chose, I did not try to become a director, I always focused on doing what I found interesting. My family enabled me to do so: I had both my husband and my son’s support. This is why I had the feeling that I could choose between going for money or staying on to work with interesting people, earning less money, but keeping my freedom.
A.B. If you had been a man, do you think you would have made the same career, lived more easily, more happily, or would everything have been the same?
N.I. I’m not sure, maybe it would have been the same, or none of it would have happened… It’s difficult to say. Probably, about the same. Life is long. Those who miss out in one stage of life tend to catch up in another. But it’s important to stick to what you find interesting and not to give in to minor temptations.
A.B. I once had a conversation with the academician Vladimir Stepanovitch Miasnikov and he confided to me: “Of my whole life, five years were entirely lost”. I asked him what he meant by saying that and he continued: “These five years, you see, are the sum of the years I worked on a construction site, to earn money for a flat, then there were another few years when because of life’s circumstances I could not be involved in active creative research.” Did you face similar conditions in your life?
N.I. Of course, there were years when most of my energy was wasted on fighting against relative poverty, by working extra-time in strenuous jobs to earn my living. In the 1970s, my second job was to review foreign publications on academic matters for reference books issued by the Institute for Information on Social Sciences. I had to, among other things, review “Hearings”, these are the transcripts of Congress sessions on science and technological policies of the USA. Just imagine what these “hearings” are… Thick volumes, 500–600 pages long, on papyrus paper in hardly legible print. And more often than not, it was hard to figure out what idea a given Senator or Representative was trying to put across. It sounds like a very boring, tedious and heavy-going job.
Yet, in effect, it was probably the right thing to do to take it up. Reading through these hundreds of pages, I got a good appreciation of the nature of scientific politics, about how things in it are “cooked up”, how it forms, and what conflicts it entails. The language was very sophisticated, because politicians and institute directors were discussing money issues and the priorities for development in the USA. It was extremely valuable and unforgettable experience.
A.B. This means you read up extensively on your subject matter, which in other circumstances would have just spared you…
N.I. Quite true. It gave me background knowledge thanks to which I could stand my ground. Afterwards, I came to perceive very differently decision-making in financing, the choice of development priorities, the nomination of Institute directors, competitiveness, and the role of science.
A.B. And can you recall an occasion, a meeting, a formal sitting, when you realised that people paid attention to you, and started to take your opinion into account?
N.I. I think this occurred in 1999 when our book “Innovative economics” appeared. Before that, everyone had talked about scientific-technological progress, but we were the first to hold a discourse about innovation. At that time, I had already been abroad to the USA and France (I was only able to go abroad quite late in life). I think I was quite lucky that after I completed my PhD, I started to work in this field with A.A. Dynkin, who was at the time a young scientific researcher. One can say that we have been working together our whole lives. True, he made his way up the career ladder very fast. But despite this, we never lost contact in work. We have a lot in common in terms of professional viewpoints- which is logical after 35 years of work together. He enlarged his sphere of activity and of scientific interests, while I have stayed interested in innovation politics, all the more because it has taken on a great social signification.
A.B. You mean to say that the very expression “innovation economics” brought into the scientific circle a new idea about innovation as the basis of self-development of the economy?
N.I. Innovation is the economic way of measuring progress, the economic meaning of scientific-technological progress. Innovation is a scientific or business idea which has been put into economic practice. It’s best when it is a scientific idea, because in this case it brings in a lot more revenue.
The book was successful. At that time, I was writing and in fact soon defended my doctor’s dissertation about the formation and the evolution of national innovation systems.
A.B. Does this mean that innovation is “technological advancement implemented in real life”?
N.I. Innovation is more like taking a different viewpoint on life altogether, and on economics as well. Imagine that there is economic progress based on an economic pattern, linked to a certain selection of routine technologies. And there is a scientific-technological job, like for instance, the creation of mobile connections instead of landlines, or new pills to fight a long-term illness. These new technologies are things in themselves when they are being created (in the 1970s we managed just fine without mobile phones). At the beginning they are very expensive and their future is undetermined. However, fairly quickly they change the business purposes of the whole sector they belong to, break down old well established companies and create in a short period of time incredible opportunities, but only for those who was the first to believe the new technology will be successful. We refer to these people as innovators. Schumpeter called this “creative destruction”. But alongside economic, there is also a non-economic, let’s say politically relevant, strand of scientific-technological development. In the Soviet Union, for instance, these two strands were not at all attributed the same importance. We invented and successfully produced weapons, rockets, and equipment to explore the outer space, but it was as if the general economic situation interested no one. As was said those days, the economy was a simple “add-on to the military-industrial complex”.
In the USA for instance, both sectors were being developed with a same degree of priority. Out there, big companies executed both military and commercial, applied orders. The corporation “Dupont” produced plastic and nylon stockings, but on the order of Pentagon it created complicated chemical materials for military purposes. “IBM” made computers for businesses, but it also performed military orders. In our country, such a scheme has yet to be implemented.
A.B. I get the impression that specialists in the scientific-technological and innovation spheres in the academic circles are becoming fewer and fewer. Where do they go?
N.I. I would say that innovation as a theme has been “widened rather than deepened”. I am often invited to various forums about innovation, innovation and investments salons, where researchers, politicians and businessmen get together.
A.B. Salons, are these the places where people buy and sell things?
N.I. Generally, they are scientific conferences, exposition fairs involving foreign guests. There are more scientific and social-political discussions than business deals. There are many events, so one never has time to take part in all of them. In the midst of such popularity, a word “innovatics” was coined.
A.B. And what does it stand for?
N.I. I would like to know that myself. The word appeared, in my view, by analogy to “automatics”. “Innovatics” refers to the complex of scientific-educational activity disciplines, which united both old science and technology specialists and new “innovation managers”. Only, this word as it became popular, lost its initial meaning.
And you are right about personnel. It is harder and harder for youth to opt for a career in the sciences. I had a few PhD students, but commonly after they get defended, they go into business; for instance to the AFK “System”, the only Russian corporation which operates in the sphere of high technologies. There, they develop quick careers and earn good money, incomparable to what we could pay them at the Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, this is the way it goes.
A.B. Does this mean that science cannot even compete with business to attract a very narrow group of people?
N.I. Generally speaking, yes. Youngsters have to build a family, to buy a flat, in short, to stand on their own two feet. And no one can assure that you will end up well-paid after working hard in the sciences for ten years. In most advanced countries, researchers are not among the best-paid job categories in society. Researchers’ salaries are not impressive, but they usually get special treatment because for instance, in many countries they have the status of public servant, and this entitles them to a decent retirement and other social guarantees.
It is amusing that in France, for example, they take to streets and demonstrate anyway. They demand an increase in their salary, extra opportunities to add to their income, for example for a researcher, if he deals with innovation activities, to be able to work at the same time at his university and in a company, without losing his status of public servant. They obtained all that they asked for, and now have the right to dedicate 15% of their time, that is one working day a week, to business. For this work, one can receive a salary from a firm and dividends, without losing the status of public servant. An extra point: the company who decides to employ a researcher receives tax dispenses from the state. All these are very powerful incentives.
A.B. And are such measures under discussion in Russia?
N.I. Everything is always being discussed. Once they even made a “very meaningful” decision, which consequently increased the inflow of youth into the sciences. Do you know what I am referring to?
A.B. Probably not…
N.I. They stopped drafting PhD candidates into the army. The number of PhD candidates grew very quickly; however the number of those actually defending their PhD ultimately, decreased.
A.B. Well, yes, they just “sat through it” and then ran away…
N.I. Yes, the system really didn’t work. However, it did protect some talented young men. But regarding salaries, we have a lot of catching up to do. There are some propositions to give status guarantees to a limited circle of researchers who have reached a certain professional level, but this measure is unlikely to solve the problem.
This summer, the Duma adopted a law which authorises scientists from universities and academic institutes to set up small companies. These companies are not so popular. They are not easy to create and to make successful, but I believe there is room for success.
A.B. It seems that in the West, like in Russia, scientists are encouraged to implement their ideas into real life, to convert new knowledge into innovation.
N.I. Exactly. But the state is less interested in its implementation than private business is. Alongside the state and the scientist, an in-between like a business-man is often needed to assume risk, to found a company, even when the idea is supported by the state. Often this entrepreneur used to be a researcher.
When you arrive at the Californian Technological Institute (Caltech, one of America’s leading centres for fundamental and applied research), you can tell that graduates from this institute are proud both of their Nobel prize winners and of their business-men. One of them created “Fedex” (Federal Express). It was an innovation, not directly linked to the scientific tasks of the given Institute. Moreover, most people and businessmen did not feel the need for additional postal services. However, the idea of a super-quick post turned out to be very well-timed. It required not so much scientific discoveries as it required key decisions to be made in the fields of logistics and air-transport. But it was an innovation of the purest kind. The person found a niche of demand on the market and thought out for himself how to organise urgent delivery of mail on a world-wide scale. But such a task can only be carried out by an entrepreneur. A bureaucrat has neither the stimulus nor the time to want to solve such a task.
A.B. One more question about HR politics. Youngsters do not go into science; mature people leave as they grow too old. Institutes “die off”. But in spite of this, the administration does not have the right to distribute funds in such a way so that, by making people redundant, they can pay more those who stay on.
N.I. Generally speaking it is difficult to do so because of the specifics of budget financing, because of irregular series of problems linked to the juridical status of the RAS in the contemporary system. This is a subject for a wholly different interview.
For the time being all we have is half-measures, special grants, president grants, “teacher-student” programs, scientific schools. These steps do not do much to solve the problem linked to the status of researchers. Roughly speaking, petrol economics does not need scientists, and the military-industrial complex needs fewer of them.
A.B. Can I ask you some general economic questions? Do you think the world crisis is on its way out, that the decline has already stopped?
N.I. This depends on which hypothesis for the causes of the crisis you chose to believe. One of them puts forward that a fundamental shift is taking place in the world economy. Globalisation created a new level of interaction between the developed and the developing world. This is reflected by the misbalance of commerce between the USA and China. In the modern world economy, goods and ever more so – the capital are not flowing from developed countries to developing countries, like before, but the other way round. Moreover, technologies are now flowing in from developing countries. This is linked to the new division of labour, which appeared during the last decade.
Globalisation has really helped to lift world economics to a new level and has accelerated the development of a few big countries of the developing world. These countries have started to dominate in terms of GDP indicators and shares of world commerce. The developed world has given up on a major part of production and on many forms of activity that had been part of its identity for much of its history. But by giving up on world production, the West has not handed over global finance, and for the moment has kept the supremacy in scientific-technological terms. Finance has been torn apart from the real economy. The deindustrialisation of the USA, Britain and many other developed countries is a fact. Today, it just has more effects, which have a perceivable impact on the entire world. The crisis stems from the fact that production has been transferred to developing countries but financial flows are still controlled by developed countries. This problem is far from being resolved.
The second hypothesis consists in pointing out the role of “financial innovations”. One can assert that the crisis has an innovation background, if derivatives and other instruments, mainly designed by the “Chicago boys” to reduce risks, already in the 1960s and 1970s, can be considered as innovations. Their wide use simplified and speeded up the global movement of capital. But now, all apart from the lazy, write about the destructive character of these financial innovations.
Strictly speaking, many important crises had an innovation character. They were linked to the fact, for instance, that mobile connection replaced cable connection, that railway lines took over cartage. In presence of such changes, stock markets always react; flows of capital and human workforce are redistributed. The problem of the contemporary crisis is its virtual character and the fact that no one quite understands how to correct the situation. There should be a regulator. It’s not a coincidence that the “Group of Twenty” has been discussing this for the second year in a row. However, before the beginning of the crisis, all everyone did was write about how “financial innovations” reduced risks and enabled circular financial flows between developed and developing countries. Everyone understood that they were playing a dangerous game, but nonetheless everyone continued playing it.
The third hypothesis was suggested by V. Polterovitsh. He presumed that the innovation context of the crisis was not so much linked to financial innovations, as to the lack of new technologies of world-wide economic significance, like those which appeared 15–20 years ago: the Internet, mobile connections and computers. For instance, the high economic expectations of efficiency linked to the application in real life of the results linked to the deciphering of the human genome and biotechnology did not quite work out. Added on to this was the fact that the global players, who were successful in the new conditions were large international corporations, among which science-intensive ones. And it is them who have started to worry most about the crisis.
It happened, on one hand, as a result of Marx theory style overproduction. The power of the car making industry is sufficient, for example, to create one and a half times the number of cars for which there actually is demand. “General Motors” went bust because it produced too many traditional cars and didn’t notice it was time to convert to economical hybrid models and electric cars. And the same thing in the plane construction industry. The competition between “Airbus” and “Boeing” is getting more and more ferocious. Both companies made new strong models, but their results were not as successful as before, when the creation of new planes led to everyone feeling the progress in terms of shortening of journey time or improvement of their comfort. In the last ten years, there has been no such progress. The crisis of the traditional sector of the knowledge-based economy is the crisis of major transnational companies. This is the cause of the decline in profit and the exhaustion of opportunities. Yes, and the exhaustion of new global markets as well. After all, markets have the possibility to grow now only in Africa, and there…
A.B. Africa can’t soak in world demand?
N.I. No, I think countries like Russia, China, India and maybe Pakistan and Bangladesh are more likely to maintain world demand. Or Egypt. But then, what will be the consequences of putting everyone in cars?
A.B. And what about the crisis then?
N.I. I think the way out of it is far-away, in spite of the improvement of indices of macroeconomic dynamics in a series of large countries in the world. There has already been a certain adaptation, an adjustment to the crisis. At the end of the day, ultra-fast growth rates couldn’t go on forever. Pay attention: The contemporary crisis is compared to the Great depression, but this does not have a particular effect on the public. No one is afraid. Because that crisis entailed massive unemployment and hunger; this one only entailed a decline in growth and a reduction in the level of wealth, especially the cutting down on prestigious forms of over-consumption. During the Great depression, there were millions of hungry people in the streets, but today Europe goes on with millions of unemployed replete people, who keep on buying food.
A.B. People say that Russia has suffered from the crisis more than other countries. I don’t get this impression…
N.I. If you consider formal indices, like the contraction of GDP and industrial production, Russia has suffered more. But really, our main criterion to judge is the price of oil; and after a significant fall, it has come back to an acceptable level and is stabilising. A price in the corridor from 65 to 70 dollars a barrel is advantageous not only for Russia, but for most of countries, because both consumers and producers of energy resources have adapted to such a price. It is also advantageous to financial markets to maintain this price. Economically, it is not a consiracy. There is no other asset, in which one could invest. However, one cannot qualify this situation as stable.
A.B. Thank you for the time you have devoted to our readers.
