Conferences

Unique in its kind

Interdisciplinary Conference "Mathematics. Computer. Education - XXX" was held in a remote format from 23 to 27 January. At the Conference, plenary and sectional reports were presented, staff members of the research centres, universities and institutes, museums, libraries and cultural centres of Moscow, Izhevsk, Tomsk, Perm, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh, Pushchino, Dubna, Kirov, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, as well as Kazakhstan, China, Ukraine participated in round tables and discussions. This amazing Conference brings together biologists, specialists in mathematical stimulation in various fields, philologists, university teachers, historians of culture and other specialists. It is impossible to cover all the topics of the Conference, so I would like to offer a cross-section of what I think were the most interesting reports.

Income differentiation is still a problem

A.E.Varshavsky (Central Institute of Economics and Mathematics, Moscow) spoke about "Current problems of economic development". He began his report with the crisis of the world capitalist system. The main problem of the economy is its liberalization, aiming primarily at quick profits, a sharp increase in the income differentiation of the population. All this multiplies the risks caused by the crisis. The United States looks for ways out of the crisis by stimulating military action. According to the well-known American economist R. Solow, a long-term stagnation awaits the Western society: serious problems are likely to persist for the next 50 years - increase of income and wealth inequality, a tendency to create high and low-skilled jobs at the expense of the middle class. Information technology will not produce the same economic growth as internal combustion engines and electrification did in the past. A.E.Varshavsky quotes another well-known American economist, D.Stiglitz that had doubts about the fairness of the US economic system for the majority of the population - for the last 25 years, the system has been successful for the richest. Economic inequalities have been transformed into political ones and the principle of "One man, one vote" has become the principle of "One dollar, one vote." In the US, a recession is expected this year, the largest stock market decline since 2008. Western experts admit that in the United States and a number of other Western countries, curricula at schools and universities change and when hiring teachers, professors and government officials, they prefer "minorities" - even with their lower qualifications. This is one of the signs of the crisis in the Western society.

Then the author turned to the problems of the Russian economy. These are deindustrialization, excessive income inequality and excessive spatial inequality, focus on the export of raw materials and import of equipment and technologies, high cost of credit for enterprises, a significant underestimation of human capital, a decrease in the quality of education, healthcare, underfunding of science, management problems, ignoring the recommendations of scientists and specialists by state bodies. The export of capital from Russia to offshore companies remains a serious problem. If in the USA the share of exported financial assets is 4%, in Europe it is 10%, then in Russia it is 50% (2015 data). Only by the countries of the Persian Gulf - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, together withdrawing almost 60% of assets are ahead of us in this respect.

If in 2000, in terms of spending on science (in percent of GDP), according to Rosstat, our country was ahead only Turkey, Hungary and Italy with 1%, surpassing Japan in 2.9%, the USA (2.65%), European countries, then by 2020, together with Turkey, we are in the last place. The United States have taken the lead with 3.5%, followed by Japan (3.3%) that has increased spending on science by almost a percentage, Germany catches up with it (3.2%). The author called the maintenance of spending on science at 1%, when in the USSR it was 2.8%, a disgrace. "Today, there is a lot of talk about the need to buy industrial robots, yet increasing their fleet requires the development of manufacturing industries." More than 100 thousand industrial robots were produced in the USSR, almost all of them were retired in 1992-1994. In 2004, the robot fleet in Russia was 5000, in 2015 it was 8000. Russia ranks the 27th in the world in the number of robots sold.

Both Russian and Western experts speak of excessive income inequality in Russia. According to experts, the Gini coefficient (a macroeconomic indicator of the degree of social stratification) is 44, according to Rosstat - 40.9 in 2021. In Moscow, it was 42.1 in 2015, whereas in 2002 it was 62.7. For comparison: in the USSR in 1989, at a time of almost universal equality, this ratio was 23.8. According to American experts, at the beginning of the 20th century, Russia's Gini index (47) did not differ much from that of Europe (50) and the USA (42). World War I and the Civil War in Russia reduced it to 25. World War II influenced Europe and the USA and the index decreased to 32-35 in 1950. Then the index increased in all countries, but the inequality that occurred in Russia in the 1990s increased so rapidly that by 1995, with a Gini index of 50, we were ahead the United States and Europe.

According to Rosstat, in the first half of 2015, 21.7 million people (15.1% of the country's population) had incomes below the minimum subsistence level, in 2021 - 16 million (11%). If we follow foreign poverty standards, the author estimates that 25% to 30% of the population, or 36 million to 43 million people will be below 60% of the median value. Spatial inequalities also persist. According to 2017 data, the revenues of the consolidated budgets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Leningrad regions amounted to 31.3% of the country's budget and 39.9% of the personal income tax while the population of these territories was 18.5% of the population of Russia. Yes, and it increased more due to migration: in Russia, the coefficient of migration growth per 10 thousand of the population is 14, in Moscow - 89, in St. Petersburg - 121, in Moscow Region - 111, in Leningrad Region - 171. According to the data of 2020, tax revenues of Moscow budget amounted to 2.254 trillion rubles, personal income tax - 1.13 trillion or 50.1% of tax revenues. An increase in the rate for the richest 20% from 13% to 26% would result in an increase in personal income tax revenue by about 565 billion rubles. It would be enough to close the budget deficit of the Pension Fund that in 2018 amounted to 256.8 billion rubles.

As the speaker highlighted bitterly, all these problems have been repeatedly pointed out and recommendations to the government on how to preserve the scientific and technological potential of the country have been made in articles and proposals by scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the country's leading higher education institutions. Referring to his monographs of recent years, the author shared a proposal - to redistribute excess profits as support for R&D. It would be possible to demand from the major exporters of raw materials (oil, gas, coal, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, chemical products, timber) to pay a few dollars from each tonne of raw materials sold abroad to science, given that the rate of return for these industries significantly exceeds this figure for foreign firms and the amount of excess profits is significant. A. E. Varshavsky proposes specific measures in the state investment policy, steps for the development of investment engineering and especially machine tool building, measures to ensure technological safety. Science should not be led by officials, the speaker notes. The "optimization" of the public sector of science proposed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education without clear parameters for optimization will result in its destruction, as it happened in the 1990s. He also quotes the words of Patriarch Kirill: "We must clearly and with full responsibility understand that our people have no future at all unless science and education become national priorities."

According to the speaker, First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation A.R.Belousov from the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, suggests creating favorable conditions for investors under combat conditions; addressing technological challenges beyond the technological sovereignty of the country; implementing a social policy aimed at reducing poverty and supporting consumer demand; organizing transport and logistics corridors; supporting export.

The idea of "technological sovereignty" was approved in the President's instructions following the results of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum 2022. The availability of raw materials, developments and technologies, equipment, qualified personnel and prepared sites are key issues in its strengthening and outstripping increase of the manufacturing industry. The speaker noted that it is important for us to become a socially oriented economy characterized by a harmonious (close to the golden ratio) distribution of income between different population groups.

Scandinavian left-wing Social Democrats learned from the experience of the Bolsheviks in 1918-1919. Today, the maximum personal income tax rates are 55.9% in Denmark, 38.4% in Norway and 57.1% in Sweden. At the same time, the maximum personal income tax rate in Denmark applies to all incomes exceeding the average by 1.3 times, in Norway - by 1.6 times, in Sweden - by 1.5 times. The share of personal income tax revenue was 24.2% of GDP in Denmark, 10.3% in Norway and 13.3% in Sweden in 2017. In Russia, according to Rosstat, it is 3.6% of GDP in 2019!

Here are the conclusions drawn by the author in his report. It is necessary to establish a state body - an analogue of the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR for the development and implementation of state programmes and projects in science and technology with the involvement of leading scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences, industry research institutes and leading universities; focus on the transition to a socially oriented economy, reform of the tax system, progressive taxation, others; ensuring the increase of human capital - increasing funding for science, restoring and developing the education and healthcare systems; ensuring the responsibility of governing bodies and executors for the quality and implementation of the developed state documents and the implementation of the scheduled reforms; strict control and cessation of the export of capital; mobilization of all material, financial and human resources for reindustrialization, modernization of production and import substitution.

It's time for change

S.Yu.Malkov (Centre of Problems of Strategic Nuclear Forces of the Academy of Military Science, Moscow) made a speech on "Civilizations as an object of mathematical simulation" based on the materials of the report prepared together with the Faculty of Political Science of Moscow State University to the Club of Rome (an international public organization that unites representatives of the world political, financial, cultural and scientific elite - O.T.), although there is no response yet.

It is already obvious that the 20th century was an era of transition: statistics and simulation results show that since the 1970s, the transition from the "era of increase" to the "era of global deceleration" has started. The world enters a new stage of historical development, the image of which is currently developed. It's a time for radical changes. The world will move to a more stable state through some stages, when the West will try to maintain its leadership and make further globalization scenario, then there will be the stage of instability, conflict and chaos (2020-2040), a new stage of interaction between regional blocs, with several reserve currencies functioning instead of the dollar, development of a new world order; the unification takes place not on a territorial, but on a civilizational basis. At the same time, further discussion is made on the very concept of civilization.

The civilizational theory was popular in world science half a century ago, today, it is in crisis. Foreign scholars prefer to study local societies and historical anthropology. The theory of civilizations is studied more widely in developing and post-socialist countries, with the status of civilization given to almost every ethnic group. It is difficult not to agree that this is a form of protest of ethnic nationalism against the developed countries of the "core" of the modern world system. Civilizational dynamics are naturally influenced by socio-natural conditions; the difference in climatic conditions predetermines the gap in the rest. The most famous attempt to describe the dynamics of this process was made by L.N.Gumilev in his theory of ethnogenesis. The weak link in his theory is that he associated the beginning of cycles with cosmic cycles, but the main stages were well shown.

In the current situation, it is necessary to move from the "clash of civilizations" to their partnership, when a new world religion or world ethics uniting Islam and Christianity can occur. The author considers two possible ways of development. According to the first one, a hierarchical estate totalitarian society is developed, run by an explicit or implicit "world government" that controls resource and information flows. Digital technologies are used for total control of the population's behavior ("digital concentration camp"), competition and freedom of expression are suppressed. Essentially, this is a new feudalism.

In the second variant, a society is developed where, with deep professional specialization, there is no discrimination and governance is based on network technologies. Ideology in the form of ethical norms and self-restraint plays a major role and the administrative elite are controlled by society. The author has suggested four scenarios. The first one (opposing Western-centrism) involves resisting the pressure of the "collective West", rejecting the ideology of liberalism, patriotism, fighting the fifth column and the legacy of the 1990s. The second one (avoiding chaos) is civilizational self-identification based on the experience of Russia's historical development, the experience of uniting all the peoples of the Russian state (from the Moscow state to the USSR) into a system of "one's own" (without competition between societies). In the third one (interaction of civilizations), the strategy of partnership of civilizations (BRICS, SCO, EAEU, others) is implemented, revealing the common features in the ideological foundations of various civilizations. In the fourth scenario, a new ideological basis for the world system, the institutions of a new world order are developed. How to move from the mode of clash of civilizations (the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a clash of Western civilization with the Russian one) to the mode of cooperation and partnership, how to manage the processes of interaction of civilizations, is still an issue of concern.

The collapse of education and its results

Report by G.G.Malinetsky (Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Moscow) "How to teach? What to teach? Who to teach?" was, as always, broader than the identified problem. He started it with a "hot" topic of military strategy, recalling the statement of the great Chinese commander of the 6th century BC Sun Tzu - Strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory. Tactics without strategy is vanity before defeat. The best of the best is to conquer a huge army without fighting. Therefore, the best war is to smash the enemy's plans; in the next place - to defeat his alliances; the next is to smash his troops. The worst is to besiege fortresses." According to the speaker, NATO follows this strategy.

"The surplus product that our industry provides is not great. Our future is high technology and education," the speaker noted and reinforced the proof with quotes that he had repeatedly cited in his reports: "Wars are won by the schoolteacher and the parish priest" (O.Bismarck), "Education is what remains, when all that is learned is forgotten" (A.Einstein), "Learn, learn and learn!" (V.I.Lenin), "The Soviets overtook us in space at the school desk" (J.Kennedy). "We again need to overtake the United States at the school desk. I teach at Bauman Moscow State Technical University and 6th (!) year students once asked how to add fractions?" the speaker shared his experience and wondered: will there be anyone to teach, does Russia have a future? For the reproduction of the population, every woman should have 2-3 children. Only in the late 1980s, the total fertility rate in the USSR was slightly above the reproduction level of generation, then there was a decrease with a small surge to 1.7-1.78 in 2012-2015, after which it started to decline again. According to D.I.Mendeleev's 1906 prediction, Russia should have had 594 million people in 2000 and over a billion by 2020. Was the great scientist mistaken? And for the US and Germany, his forecast turned out to be very accurate. According to the UN forecast, by 2100, India will become the leader in terms of population with 1.5 billion people, the population of China will slightly exceed 1 billion, Nigeria will come the third (800 million), the United States will rank the fourth (almost 500 million) followed by Asian and African countries (80% of the world's population), Russia ranks the 22nd (less than 100 million people). And in terms of life expectancy, we are currently ranked the 103rd out of 183 countries and in terms of life expectancy for men - the 125th. At the same time, 1% of the super-rich citizens of Russia own 60% of the assets, compared to 35% in the US.

The current reforms in education were the result of the reforms of 1970-1977 that have their roots in the period of the collapse of the Russian school in the post-revolutionary years. The Stalinist reforms of the 1930s that were based on the principles of the Russian classical gymnasium of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, established a unique system of education that allowed us to reach a level unattainable in the West. The collapse began in 1957, when Khrushchev introduced industrial education in schools, followed by mathematics textbooks with elements of Kolmogorov's higher mathematics. Today, according to Rosobrnadzor, 35% of Russian schoolchildren fail in one subject, in the leading countries there are only 5% of such students and more than half of Russian schoolchildren use the services of tutors.

Regular education is always a dialogue and computer education is a monologue. The programme "Sberclasses" proposed by G.O.Gref provides for the rejection of a teacher and it was included in the programme "Education 2030". Numerous ministers of education (since 1990, the current minister is the 11th) have been engaged in tactics - informatization, humanization, "bolonization", "unified state examination", when the strategy has been chosen wrongly, the speaker noted. Each country monitors the level of its education, our reformers believe that it does not matter - if anything, you can always change everything! In the standard physics test for 15-year-olds, China and its parts (Macau, Hong Kong), Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, as well as Estonia, Finland, Canada are in the first 10 places. Russia is in the 33rd place and 20 years ago it was in the top 30. The Russian President talks about the need for a technological breakthrough, but the USE allows random people to be selected and the price of such selection will be great. The USE disfigures the secondary school: the student does not learn to argue, to ask questions, does not have laboratory classes, does not learn practical skills and does not work with reference literature. What is not tested by the USE quickly dies off. The author argues for the abolition of the state final certification and a return to the Soviet form of exams and today, "we are very successfully sawing off the branch we are sitting on!"

For 30 years we have been reaching for big Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, but Europe is mentally a completely different world. In Russia, Russians need to be educated. Attempts to enter Western civilization, according to the speaker, are foolish and futile. In academic and university science, publications in Western journals, citations and self-citations, mentions in Scopus and Web of science are still welcome but as they say, "Pershing" can't be bet by Hirsch!"

G.G.Malinetsky considers the establishment of a single Rostec corporation to be wrong. In the USSR, there was competition between several design bureaus, there was a competition between establishers - A.N.Tupolev, A.I.Mikoyan, O.K.Antonov, S.V.Ilyushin and the best models were selected for production. The fact that today we do not participate in the computer race and that we are so far behind in robotization is the result of the collapse of the education system. Great scientists have invested huge efforts in our education, establishing faculties at universities, writing textbooks, holding Olympiads. There should be a single educational space in the country with one simple and one complex textbook for each subject. The President has already spoken twice about the need for a single history textbook, yet schoolchildren continue to study with 68 ones!

G.G.Malinetsky likes to quote an Eastern proverb: when the caravan turns back, the lame camel becomes the first. The world changes, one way or another, Russia will be the first. "If we stop limping, then the future will happen, I really hope so."

(Ending follows.)

Olga TARANTINA