Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Introduction of a Market Economy and the Future BTWC Compliance Protocol: Impact on the Russian Biotechnology Industry

Abstract

As a consequence of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War in the early 1990s Russian science has suffered severe setbacks in terms of government funding and support. This has led to a severe loss of personnel, reduction in the ability to do research, and even the closing of some institutes. Most science was connected in some way or another to defense spending, and the vast network of scientific institutes employed the country’s best minds towards primarily military ends. The biotechnology field has suffered along with other defense-related areas such as nuclear science, chemistry and materials science, and rocketry. The effect on the future of the biotechnology industry has been indirect but nevertheless profound, because it is only the scientific institutes with their concentration of equipment and talent that can provide the driving force behind new developments and applications in the manufacturing sector. This is, of course, in stark contrast to countries which have well-developed private industrial capacity and extensive private research laboratories. The more immediate factor that has crippled the Russian biotechnology industry is the wholesale switch of the consumer market from domestic supplies to imported medical products in spite of the much higher prices for the imports. For example, whereas Russia once produced its own insulin, it now relies on imports alone, a fact which has put many diabetics in peril after the dramatic fall of the ruble with the financial crisis of August 1998. More telling is the fact that in a typical pharmacy in Moscow, the majority of products are imported, as demanded by a public that frequently perceives Russian products, rightly or wrongly, as inferior to their western counterparts.