answer question

Soviet Scientists and the State: Politics, Ideology, and Fundamental Research from Stalin to Gorbachev BY PAUL R. JOSEPHSON

1 HE SOVIET UNION PROVIDES a unique opportunity to examine the impact of social, political, and cultural factors on the development of science. In perhaps no other country do external forces shape the face of research so visibly. Whether through economic desiderata to increase industrial produc- tion, ideological pronouncements to create a new "proletarian" science, or political pressures imposed from above, fundamen- tal research in the USSR has reflected the tenor of Soviet history. The most important factor in the history of Soviet science was the imposition of Stalinist policies in the 1930s. This led to the ideologization of science and the belief that socialist science existed as distinct from bourgeois science. The ideologization of science imposed significant impediments to fundamental research which handicap the system to this day. In a word, politics and ideology played a predominant role in the Soviet scientific enterprise.

The politics of Soviet science refiect the personalities and programs of Communist party leaders, from Lenin to Stalin,

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Fall 1992)

590 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev. In the 1920s, no coherent national science policy existed. Scientists and bureau- cracies sparred among each other for power and influence. Under Stalin, new policies were introduced to harness science to the machine of industrialization. The party brought scientists, like all other potentially autonomous groups, stricdy under its control, centralized policy-making, infiltrated re- search institutes, and established ideological hegemony and international isolation. Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, scientists succeeded somewhat in loosening the constraints of party control. Scientists managed to throw off the remnants of the Stalinist legacy only after the revolution initiated by Gorbachev in the 1980s.

In spite of divergences in science policy among Soviet leaders, several trends remain constant. First, throughout Soviet history party leaders, economic planners, and scientists alike have maintained their faith in modern science as a panacea for the social and economic problems facing their nation. Marxism, which in its Soviet form is particularly economically determinist, has reinforced this belief. Second, scientists and engineers commanded great respect in Soviet history, the periods of ideological scrutiny of their work notwithstanding. And third, the physical and chemical sciences have prospered, while the life sciences have garnered less than their share of resources. Of course, Lysenkoism in genetics contributed to this state of affairs. However, the technicist leaning of Soviet science policy, and the fascination with large-scale technologies, tended to reinforce emphasis on the exact sciences.

Science and Politics in the 1920s

There was no systematic science policy in Soviet Russia until around 1926. Scientists took advantage of the divergence of opinions to expand scientific activities far beyond the limit

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 591

characteristic of the czarist regime; they sought out and received financial and administrative support from among the competing ministries and other institutions in a time of severe financial constraints.

The immediate problems facing scientists after the revolu- tion of February 1917 and the abdication of the czar concerned acquisition of such necessary basic supplies as reagents, equipment and machinery, textbooks, and financial support and the continuation of their professional activities. The February revolution disrupted life in universities and scientific research institutes. Few universities reopened in the spring of 1917, and the increasing politicization of the student body accelerated "the complete dislocation of academic life."' Severe economic and financial depression, broad social displacement, and political uncertainty prevented the provi- sional government from gaining popular confidence, making good on the advice of the intelligentsia, or developing programs for the support of university research. Hastily created and broad-based societies which appealed to ideals of freedom and democracy on the basis of science quickly disappeared.

Once the Bolsheviks took power, scientists encountered conditions propitious to the founding of a number of large-scale, central research institutes, many of which exist to this day. Few institutes were founded in the czarist era. The Soviets were, unlike their predecessors, demonstrably inter- ested in supporting science and technology. Lenin pragmati- cally advocated involving scientists in the business of "govern- ment construction," that is, administrative and economic measures designed to bring about stability of the state. However, there was a debate about the details of cooperation with scientists, and disagreement about how to employ the "bourgeois inheritance" in socialism. The new government

' p. N. Ignatiev et al., Russian Schools and Universities in the World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929), pp. 222-223.

592 SOCIAL RESEARCH

hence failed to create a single commissariat to administer science and technology; several bureaucracies filled the vacuum. While Narkomzem and Narkomzdrav—the commis- sariats of Agriculture and Health, respectively—had a large number of scientific research institutes under their respective jurisdictions, the majority of institutes of the fundamental sciences—chemistry, biology, and physics—were under the control of the Main Scientific Administration (Glavnoe upravlenie nauchnymi, nauchno-khudozhestvennymi , muzeinymi i po okhrane prirody uchrezhdeniiami, or Glavnauka) of the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narodyni komissariat prosvesbcheniia, or Narkompros), and the Scien- tific-Technical Department of the Supreme Economic Council (Nachno-tekhnicheskii otdel Vysshego soveta naraodnogo khoziaistva, or NTO Vesenkha). Glavnauka and the Scientific- Technical Department competed for infiuence over matters of science and technology policy until the late 1920s, each striving to become a sort of "Commissariat of Science," and each hoping to increase the number of scientific research institutes and workers under its jurisdiction. As a result, they failed to develop a long-range, coherent, and coordinated science policy between them.

Until the formation of the Scientific-Technical Department and Glavnauka, the government worked through the Academy of Sciences to communicate with scientists. The Academy attempted to maintain its distance from the political events of the revolution, insisting upon its autonomy "before any government,"^ and rejecting Narkompros's overtures to cooperate fully with the new regime until its financial constraints required that it agree in the spring of 1918 to assist in "government construction." The Academy finally fell firmly under the control of the Communist party in 1929.

Glavnauka and the Scientific-Technical Department not only

A. V. Kol'tsov, Lenin i stanovlenie akademii nauk kak tsentra sovetskoi nauki (Leningrad- Nauka, 1969), p. 31.

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 593

competed with each other but came to represent the lack of agreement over how best to support the scientific activity to foster the Bolshevik economic, educational, and political programs. In general, those in Glavnauka supported a greater degree of autonomy for scientists in the identification and formulation of research programs, the control of publication, and contacts with Western scholars. They believed in the fundamental importance of basic research. Those in the Scientific-Technical Department were wary of "ivory-tower programs" which seemed to stress knowledge for knowledge's sake. They assumed that centralized control and administra- tion of institutes would guarantee responsiveness to Bolshevik programs to rebuild a war-torn economy, educate the illiterate peasantry, and develop a socialist society with the help of applied science and technology.

In practice, the Scientific-Technical Department had diffi- culty steering between the demands of the research institutes under its jurisdiction and the demands of industry. Until the late 1920s, scientists dominated its policy-making councils and defended fundamental research from within. Feliks Dzerzhin- skii, head of the Cheka—the secret police—and chairman of the Supreme Economic Council, supported the relative autonomy of scientific research institutes and the decentraliza- tion of their management. While fully cognizant of the importance of applied research for industry, he warned against skewing scientific research too closely to industrial R&D.3

Glavnauka was handicapped in its efforts to support a program of fundamental research. It was charged with providing the basic operating expenses of most of the institutes of fundamental science—chemistry, biology, and physics—in the early postrevolutionary period. This was enough for these institutes to continue to operate, even if not to expand.

' F. E. Dzerzhinskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1977), 1:34-35.

594 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Scientists complained that their organizational and research activities had been hindered by the penuriousness of Glavnauka.

Scientists took advantage of the absence of a unitary body to administer their programs. They played the bureaucracies off against each other. In the most noteworthy case, the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, which fell under the jurisdiction of Glavnauka, contracted with the Scientific-Technical Depart- ment as the Leningrad Physico-Technical Laboratory. There was significant overlap of personnel, research programs, and facilities. The institute and laboratory managed in effect to double its money. After the institution of the five-year plan and superindustrialization under Stalin, this duplication was ended, and the laboratory and institute were reunited as one entity.

Glavnauka lost its power and influence under Stalin. On the eve of the first five-year plan, most fundamental physics, chemistry, and biology institutes in the Soviet Union were removed from Glavnauka to the jurisdiction of the Scientific- Technical Department. There had been increasing criticism of Glavnauka for failure to coordinate the activity of its affiliated research institutes and to use its funds to advance more applied research. Stalinist policies of science required rational- ized, comprehensive, centralized plans for scientific research to contribute to the growth of industrial production, and renewed struggle against the bourgeois specialists. This ensured the decline of Glavnauka's infiuence in matters of fundamental research.

Stalinism and Science: Revolution from Above

With respect to science, the Russian revolution had run its course only with the institution of Stalinist policies in the early 1930s. These policies included the centralization of administra- tion, the introduction of long-range planning, and the

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 595

requirement that research have immediate effect upon production.* The government centralized planning under the Sector of Scientific Research of the Planning Technical- Economic Administration of Vesenkha (or NIS) to administer R&D. Later, NIS was transferred to the Commissariat of Heavy Industry (Narodyni komissariat tiazheloi promyshlen- nosti, or Narkomtiazhprom), a move which signaled the intent of the state to harness research for industry. The government aimed to control the entire scientific enterprise, from the individual researcher to the Commissariat by means of planning on an all-union scale.

From the first days of the revolution a number of party officials had called for the reorganization of scientific activity along "socialist" lines of planning, collectivism, and avoidance of parallelism. The rapid growth of the scientific establishment and number of scientists in the 1920s, when the party had yet to develop a coherent all-union science policy, frustrated attempts to introduce planning, as did the very small number of scientists holding party membership, especially among natural and exact scientists.

Around 1929, scientists and their institutes were forced to submit annual and five-year plans of research, spelling out targets and products of research. The government was motivated in part by fear of duplication of research effort. Western observers have argued that the marshaling of resources to avoid duplication prevented competition between scientific centers and made Soviet science less dynamic in many fields than Western science. Initially, scientists presented detailed documents running hundreds of pages. They quickly discovered, however, that these documents tied their hands, making it difficult to move into new areas of research or to justify failure to meet goals. They were pleased to learn that

•* On industrial R&D and technology policy, see Robert Lewis, Science and Industrialization in the USSR (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979), and Bruce Parrott, Politics and Technology in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: M I T Press, 1983).

596 SOCIAL RESEARCH

central-planning agencies were willing to accept more general plans of forty to sixty pages. This, and the largesse bestowed upon scientists as part of the industrialization effort, enabled them to strike out into new areas as the horizons of science shifted, for example, into nuclear physics in 1932. Because of its importance for industrialization, NIS received massive infusions of funding and grew quite rapidly, in both institutions and scientific workers. The number of scientific workers in the Narkomtiazhprom alone grew to 13,000 by 1934, roughly the number for the entire country in 1927.

The creation of centralized organs of control was followed by the subjugation of autonomous professional societies. Until the early 1930s, scientists maintained professional organiza- tions in all fields. Chemists, biologists, ecologists, physicists, writers, and architects lobbied the state, held annual or biannual meetings, published proceedings and independent journals. The Russian Association of Physicists (RAF), founded in 1919, had met eight times by 1931 in increasingly well-attended conferences. Under Stalin, however, the party eliminated all professional associations. In 1931, the RAF was disbanded. The party created in its place a physics association within Narkomtiazhprom devoted to Stalinist development programs.

In all, ten to fifteen associations replaced existing profes- sional scientific organizations. They generally represented major branches of science for industry: physics, heat engineer- ing, metallurgy, machine building, and chemistry. Each association included higher educational institutions, factory laboratories, industrial administrations, design bureaus, and fundamental-research institutes, and each association had subsections for subfields of that discipline. Perhaps recogniz- ing that they required the input of specialized advice in making science policy, Narkomtiazhprom still gave scientists significant responsibilities in the new associations, such as forecasting industrial needs, assimilating new technologies, and raising industry's technological level; the elaboration of

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 597

individual and institutional research programs, and the overall annual plans for Narkomtiazhprom; and so on.^ The associations effectively subjugated professional aspirations to party organs. Only under Gorbachev would independent societies reappear.

Economic planners and party officials required that research have applicability for the ongoing superindustrialization effort. This changed the face of science, too. Scientists had to avoid giving them the impression that their research lacked application, or resembled "ivory-tower reasoning" so common in capitalist societies where, it was believed, science was divorced from the needs of "socialist reconstruction." Through the media, including their own professional journals, scientists were exhorted to force the achievements of science into the productive process in such wide-ranging fields as agriculture, communications, electrification, and metallurgy. In the Acad- emy of Sciences, the creation of a division of technological sciences in 1931 left no doubt as to the intended preeminence of applied science and technology for the party. Fundamental science had lost its hallowed place in Soviet society. The emphasis on applications limited the effectiveness of basic research to this day.

Finally, the centralization of science policy was accompanied by the imposition of autarkic scientific relations. Just as in the economy, so in science, scholars were encouraged to go it alone. Scientists had with great difficulty overcome interna- tional isolation after World War I and the revolution. Only by 1924 were they regularly traveling to international conferences and studying abroad, receiving foreign publications, and publishing in the West. In the 1930s, these great achievements were abandoned. Regular scientific contacts with the West ceased. Such leading specialists as the biologist Dobzhansky and the physicist Gamov failed to return from Western

Sorena4 (1933): 173-175.

598 SOCIAL RESEARCH

sojourns. The physicist Peter Kapitsa, who had worked for thirteen years in Cambridge, was not permitted in 1934 to return to England after his customary summer holiday in Russia. From this point until the late 1950s, as a rule only "party scientists" were allowed to travel abroad. There was even danger associated with sending reprints to foreign colleagues; collaboration with the enemy might be alleged.

It may indeed be that the party and scientists shared certain goals during the institutions of the five-year plans. For example, both wished to expand the research enterprise and to speed up the introduction of the achievements of science into production. Both recognized that government support was vital for increasingly expensive, large-scale research programs in modern scientific institutions. But scientists worried about the encroachment on their enterprise by the state. They feared premature identification of targets, arguing that it was often impossible to identify future fruitful areas of research.

Stalinism and Science: Cultural Revolution from Below

Cultural revolution accompanied the Stalinist revolution from above. An increasingly proletarian Communist party demanded class war against bourgeois specialists—those who had received their education during the czarist regime or whose parents were from the intelligentsia—and against privilege. Cultural revolution was intended to lead to the replacement of bourgeois specialists with scientists of the proper social origin and worldview. This had far-reaching impact upon basic science in the areas of the relationship between scientist and party, the philosophy of science, and international relations. The party signaled its intention to limit the autonomy of specialists and mobilize them for the industrialization effort through the Shakhty and Promparty affairs in the late 1920s. These highly publicized show-trials

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 599

revealed that scientists and engineers were "wrecking" state industrialization plans.

Gultural revolution included attempts to take over the administration of scientific research institutes through the penetration of Communist cadres into the ranks of scientists through cooptation, coercion, and vydvizhenie. Vydvizhenie was the advancement of workers into positions of administrative responsibility in economic enterprises, higher educational institutions, and scientific research institutes on the basis of class origin and party affiliation rather than on merit, qualifications, or other traditional reasons for advancement.

Whole organizations and institutes were subjected to the party assault, with varying degrees of success. These included the Academy of Sciences. The party had discovered through a series of investigations in the late 1930s that most fundamental research institutes lacked sufficient Communist personnel. Leningrad was the center of scientific activity with the Academy of Sciences and other leading research institutes, but in 1929 of over 5,000 scientific workers in the city, only 39 were party members.^ Of 25,286 "scientific workers" in the USSR surveyed in 1930, only 2,007, or 7.9 percent, claimed party membership, and of these only 44 were physicists, with all but three in Leningrad. Two-thirds were social scientists; only 8 percent worked in the exact sciences.^ Essentially, the process of infiltration involved the elevation of the role of the primary party organization within research centers to one of close scrutiny of the scientific directors. This ensured that institutes followed instructions issued from above. The process was often coercive and usually involuntary from the perspec- tive of the institutions.^

^ Partrabotnik 15 (1929): 53, cited in K. E. Pechkurova, Partiinoe rukovodstvo nauchnykh kadrov v gody pervoi piatitetki (1928—1932 gg.) (na materialakh Leningrada). Candidate's dissertation, Leningrad State University, 1976, p. 6.

' G. Krovitskii and B. Revskii, Nauchnye kadry VKP (b) (Moscow, 1930), pp. 16, 51-83.

* See Loren Graham, The Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party,

600 SOCIAL RESEARCH

The party was less than successful in its attempts to bring more Communists into scientific research institutes, or to train new Communist scientific cadres. This was especially true of the natural and exact sciences, and particularly among world-class scholars. Most leading Soviet scientists joined the party after some delay late in their careers. Obligatory party membership for institute directors is largely a feature of the post-Stalin era. The major methods of increasing party membership in scientific institutions were aspirantura (graduate training), with candidates having a better chance of admission if they had party affiliation and working-class roots, vydvizhe- nie, and Marxist study circles. Initially, there was success in quantity, but little in quality. The vydvizhentsy often lacked rudimentary skills, it was difficult to train them, and in fact there were very few "worker/scientists." Vydvizhenie was scaled back in 1934 when it became clear that advanced workers were more trouble than they were worth.

In addition to vydvizhenie and aspirantura, there were two mechanisms by which the party "infiltrated" scientific organi- zations. One was conversion and cooptation, the other was the coercive methods of the purges. Conversion and cooptation involved setting up study circles on the history of the party, dialectical materialist philosophy, and (scientific) methodology. This approach seems to have been adopted in most scientific research institutes. The circles became widespread as vydvizhe- nie declined, because they proved to be more successful than vydvizhenie in bringing scientists, workers, and Marxist theory closer together and were seen by scientists as being less threatening. They existed by the hundreds throughout the USSR. They were assisted by such Communist strongholds as the Institute of Red Professiorat and the Communist Academy of Sciences. Many of these circles operated until the late 1970s.

1927-1932 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), and Paul R. Josephson. Physics and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1991).

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 601

Between 1936 and 1938, the scientific community fell into the maelstrom of the Great Terror. At least 8 million people perished in the purges. Thousands of scientists were arrested, many served in the Stalinist gulag, and a large number were shot. From the future Nobel prize-winning physicist Lev Landau, who served a year in prison, to the leading geneticist, Nikolai Vavilov, who perished in the camps (but whose brother, Sergei, became president of the Academy of Sciences), seemingly no one was immune.

The Ideologization of Science

The result of cultural revolution and the Stalinist revolution from above was the ideologization of science. From the late 1920s until the early 1960s, philosophers and ideologues drew sharp distinctions between Soviet and capitalist science. They insisted that scientists recognize that their research activities were inherently political. Assisted by Marxist scientists, they argued that certain fields of modern science—genetics, relativity theory, and quantum mechanics—were idealist or pseudoscience, and hence harmful to the proletariat. Entire fields were proscribed, institutes closed, scientists arrested and shot.

The ideologization of science was based partially upon the resurrection of the attitude toward science of the proletarian culture movement (1917-21). In addition to a mistrustful attitude toward "bourgeois specialists," those who embraced proletarian science believed it was based on the principle of "collective" scientific activity, and on planning to avoid the duplication endemic in bourgeois science. Proletkultists con- tended that a new methodological approach was needed and "pure" science—i.e., science for its own sake—should be prevented. The Proletkultists believed that the revolution which would create socialist "productive forces" and "produc-

602 SOCIAL RESEARCH

tive relations" would have to be accompanied by proletarian institutions, proletarian philosophy, and proletarian science.

According to Marx, the productive forces and productive relations constitute an economic basis upon which juridical, philosophical, political, and other institutions, which constitute a "superstructure," arise. When the economic basis changes, the superstructure is also transformed. Science in socialist society would have to be "proletarian," collective, progressive, and serve the needs of the masses; this would be distinguished from "bourgeois," anarchic, exploitative science. Proletarian science differed from bourgeois in terms of epistemology, methodology, economic basis, and origin. The proletarian culture movement did not long survive the revolution. The party objected to its rejection of pragmatic cooperation with "bourgeois specialists." However, belief in the existence of "proletarian science" persisted. This contributed to a series of fateful decisions to regulate the content and methodology of scientific activity.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, an increasingly stormy debate among Marxist philosophers over the relationship between the Soviet philosophy—dialectical materialism—and science spilled over into the scientific community at large. The participants disagreed over how to apply the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and ultimately Stalin to the form and content of modern science.^ The resolution of the debate was that Stalinist ideologues acquired the authority to inform scientists which approaches were acceptable in the proletarian USSR. In genetics, the result was the rejection of the gene. In 1948, at a national conference at the All-Union Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Trofim Lysenko, hack scientist, was proclaimed victor and genetics was outlawed and eliminated from textbooks and universities until 1965.

^ On these philosophical debates, see David Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 1917-1931 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961); Loren Graham, Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); and Josephson, Physics and Politics, pp. 213-275.

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 603

In physics, the results were nearly as severe. For twenty years ideologues and party philosophers had attacked "mathe- matical formalism," the Copenhagen interpretation in quan- tum mechanics, and relativity theory. Physicists escaped the wholesale debilitation which hit biology and genetics under Lysenko for a number of reasons. Through participation in Marxist study circles they were well prepared to discuss epistemological issues from a position of strength. The complexity of philosophical issues surrounding relativity, quantum mechanics, and nuclear and solid-state physics made it difficult for ideologues to challenge them. And they presented a united front to ideological attacks on their discipline.

In spite of their accomplishments for the state in economic and military areas, physicists faced increasing scrutiny for alleged idealism, particularly the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics during the Zhdanovshchina. The Zhdanovshchina—an attack on "cosmopolitanism" and "ideal- ism" in Soviet society—began in 1947. The Zhdanovshchina involved unrelenting philosophical pressure on scientists and artists to conform to the Stalinist standard and to avoid "kowtowing" before Western ideas. In 1948, a series of meetings was held to condemn the alleged idealism rampant in modern physics. A number of physicists working on the atomic bomb project got wind of the idea, called Beria, head of the secret police, and informed him a bomb could not be constructed without taking note of relativity theory and the equivalence of matter and energy. The conference was not convened.

The Cigantomania of High Stalinism

In addition to the centralization of policy-making and the ideologization of science, Stalin placed his signature on science and technology through homage to projects of grandiose

604 SOCIAL RESEARCH

stature. The view of science and technology as panacea central to Soviet Marxism dates to the first days of the revolution. G. A. Cohen argues that historical materialism is a technologi- cally determinist doctrine. This means that the development of the productive forces (machines, tools, instruments, science, technology, and people themselves) is the single most important factor in the course of human history and, further, that science and technology provide the key to the socialist future. 10 Some have disputed Cohen's contention that for Marx "machines make history."" Whether or not Marx so argued should not obscure the fact that Soviet theorists and political leaders from Lenin on have embraced this view. They see technology as "the highest form of culture," emphasize the development of the productive forces in the creation of communism, declare that "technology decides everything," and put their faith in science to achieve political, economic, and social goals.

Initially, a fascination with things American was prominent in Soviet attitudes toward technology. Party figures, scientists, and engineers who traveled to the West reveled in the glow of American technology—its skyscrapers, public transportation, autofnobiles and highways, its industrial laboratories. The American system of manufacture, its factories, Fordizm and mass production in particular were seen as the key to the Soviet future. 12 The writers I'lf and Petrov, known primarily for The Twelve Chairs, while critical of some aspects of American life, regaled the Soviet reader with fantastic tales of technology in America in One-Story America (1936).

Amerikanizm faded under Stalin and the establishment of

'" G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (Oxford, 1978). " Donald MacKenzie, "Marx and the Machine," Technology and Culture. 25 (1984)-

473-502. '^ Hans Rogger, "Amerikanizm and the Development of Russia," Comparative Studies

in Society and History 23 (July 1981): 382-420, and Kendall E. Bailes, "The American Connection: Ideology and the Transfer of American Technology to the Soviet Union, 1917-1941," ibid., pp. 421-448.

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 605

autarky. However, faith in technology did not abate. It was central to the construction of communism. Its display value—not merely physical presence, but ideological signifi- cance—grew at the Magnetogorsk and Norilsk steel combines, the Dneprostroi hydropower station, and the MTS (machine tractor stations). The faith in technology reached a high point in the Stalinist skyscraper, the construction of the metro and canals, and other projects infamous for their gigantomania, if not their aethetics. As Douglas Weiner tells us, even the environment was seen as something to be tamed, to be subjugated to the planner's will.'^

In the late 1940s and 1950s, a cult of science, a logical continuation of Stalinist gigantomania, put scientists and engineers at the forefront of the effort to use big science and technology to solve Soviet economic problems. The cult grew unchallenged in the 1950s on the foundation of successes in space, nuclear power, and high-energy physics which rivaled those in the West.''' The cult was part of the general environment of de-Stalinization during which Soviet scholars, and in particular physicists, began to reclaim control over the scientific enterprise. While some public displeasure with expenditures on technologies with great display value but limited significance for the consumer can be identified, by and large this opposition was muted until Gorbachev came to power, when glasnost and perestroika triggered a reevaluation of the place of science and technology in society.

Scientists and Khrushchev

Khrushchev hoped to use Soviet scientific and technological successes to bolster his position within the party. He embraced

" Dougals Weiner, Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).

'•* Paul Josephson, "Rockets, Reactors and Soviet Culture," in Loren Graham, ed.. Science and the Soviet Social Order (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 168-191.

606 SOCIAL RESEARCH

large-scale research and development programs in nuclear and high-energy physics, chemistry, and agriculture (the planting of corn, sowing of Black Earth regions, the widespread applica- tion of fertilizers and pesticides). He presided over the rapid expansion of the scientific enterprise by all sorts of quantitative measures: numbers of scientists, institutes, and publications. He advocated the creation of a series of science cities in Novosibirsk (Akademgorodok) and around Moscow (Dubna, Khimki, Chernogolovka, Pushchino, and many others). Fi- nally, as part of the de-Stalinization thaw, Khrushchev supported increased autonomy for scientists in the day-to-day management of their enterprise. His attitude toward science as a panacea is symbolically revealed in his visit to Harwell, England, in April 1956, accompanied by L V. Kurchatov, head of the Soviet A-bomb program, to see the major British nuclear research facility, and his participation in the Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy.'^ The anomaly of Khrushchev's rule with respect to ideological intrusion into science concerned biology and genetics. Only after Khrushchev's ouster did scientists manage to rid themselves of Lysenko.

The most important scientific achievements of Khrushchev's years occurred in space technology. These successes were the capstone of scientists' increasing power and prestige under Khrushchev. Khrushchev and other officials knew of the technological failings, if not backwardness, of their program, and knew that the United States would respond to Soviet achievements with redoubled efforts in space. Still they embraced Sputnik as confirmation that a policy which gave scientists increased autonomy in the design and administration of R&D was in the best interests of the country.

'^ See N. S. Khrushchev. Khrushchev Remembers, tr. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), pp. 58-71, for a discussion of Khrushchev's relationship with the scientific intelligentsia. See Atomnaia energiia 1:3 (1956): 6-7 and 66-67 for photographs of the Harwell trip.

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 607

Under Khrushchev, scientists reestablished autonomy in several areas of their activity. Shortly after Stalin's death, scientists reasserted their primacy in matters of philosophy. On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the theory of relativity, they held a special session of the Academy to praise Einstein's work. In the summer of 1956, Soviet scholars called for a conference to establish the proper relationship between science and philosophy in general. This led to a special All-Union conference of the Academy of Sciences in October to discuss the philosophical problems of the natural sciences. There scientists regained the upper hand over ideologues.'^

Leading academicians also pushed for increased control over fundamental research. They secured the transfer of technical sciences from the purview of the Academy of Sciences to the industrial ministries in 1961, ending a thirty-year period during which the technological division of the Academy had been foisted upon it by Stalinist planners. Scientists had succeeded in weakening the Stalinist precepts of the unity of theory and practice, and of the lurking danger of idealism. They had taken a leading role in resurrecting constructivist visions of the communist future. They had yet to regain authority to function in professional associations, but were prepared to assume greater political visibility by virtue of their important skills in the areas of national security and economic development.

The reformist tendencies embraced by both the party and scientists during the Khrushchev years were intended to improve the efficiency of scientific research and development. During Khrushchev's rule, the rate of growth of numbers of researchers, institutes, publications, and other quantitative indices of performance increased nearly geometrically. The

'® p. N. Fedoseev, ed., Filosofskie problemy sovremennogo estestvoznania (Moscow: Akademmi nauk SSSR, 1959). For a discussion of the 1958 conference and its results, see Alexander Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge (Berkeley, Los Angeles. Oxford: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 330-335.

608 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Soviets were among world leaders in fields ranging from elementary-particle and nuclear physics to the conquest of space. Unfortunately, the judgments were not nearly as satisfactory from a qualitative perspective. Whether by such indices as Nobel prizes and scientific citations, or by more subjective evaluations as those offered by the Western peers of Soviet scholars, Soviet science did not fare as well. During the Brezhnev years a series of administrative measures was applied unsuccessfully to deal with this problem.

Brezhnev and the Time of Stagnation

Under Brezhnev, reformist tendencies ran out of steam. The Brezhnevites attempted to improve the performance of science and technology by administrative fiat. A conservative group of elder statesmen of science whose primary goals were the preservation of their authority and pet research programs and the advancement of their students into positions of responsibility dominated policy-making. In concert with party officials, such leading scientists as N. G. Basov, a founder of quantum electronics, and A. P. Aleksandrov, a nuclear specialist, pushed through half-hearted measures of reform. These measures—the formation of national bodies for the coordination of research and development, the creation of scientific-production associations, and calls to embrace the advantages of the developed socialist state during the ongoing scientific-technological revolution—amounted more to reform on paper than in reality. Often, one individual or institute dominated an entire field. Scientific policy-making became ossified in the hands of scientific bureaucrats. Performance deteriorated. The system proved capable of pioneering efforts in space (Sputnik), nuclear fusion (Tokamaks) and fission, elementary-particle and theoretical physics. It was often incapable of maintaining a lead or catching up in areas where it was behind.

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 609

From an ideological standpoint, insidious controls remained. Pressure to conduct research of an applied nature and to accelerate the introduction of the achievements of science into the economy increased. Strict controls on Western scientific literature and contacts remained. Overt discrimination in entry to universities and institutes or travel abroad against such national minorities as Jews persisted. Often, researcbers were rewarded with travel abroad more on the basis of party affiliation than scientific quality. The 1961 reorganization of the academy had triggered an examination of the proper relationship between fundamental and applied science and technology. Pressures for decentralization of administration of research and development were countered by the unwilling- ness of the party to relax its grip on policy-making and its continued faith in a command economy. Military R&D came to dominate national programs.

As a result, major handicaps on the performance of science remained. These included the separation of responsibilities for fundamental and applied research, technological develop- ment, and training among the Academy of Sciences, industrial ministries, and universities, respectively; a mismatch between human and material resources exacerbated by an overly centralized system of allocation of inputs and outputs; and continued efforts to create a central administrative body to force the pace of research and development for state programs.'''

Scientists who had gained authority through the cult of science and managed to free tbe Academy from pressure to conduct applied research now faced scientific bureaucrats who wished to maintain the status quo in the management, administration, and structure and funding of science. The party was determined to control the entire scientific enterprise,

" T h e best single treatment of the issues and actors of Soviet science policy is Stephen Fortescue, Science Policy in the Soviet Union (London and New York: Routledge, 1990).

610 SOCIAL RESEARCH

and placed emphasis on the development of large-scale technologies with display value but less immediate social utility: rockets, reactors, particle accelerators, military hardware, and so on.

Gorbachev and Beyond: The Deideologization of Science

The reforms in administration and funding of science initiated under Gorbachev destroyed what was left of the Stalinist legacy. The Gorbachev reforms entailed: decentraliza- tion of administration and funding of research, democratiza- tion of management from the level of the Academy to the level of the institute, an end to centralized control of information and foreign contacts, and the creation of informal government scientific advisory groups.'* It is challenging to write about science in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), since its face is always changing. However, several general observations hold which speak volumes about the deideologi- zation of science begun under Gorbachev.

The ongoing reforms contributed to a new self-image for Soviet scientists. Most important, ideological pronouncements about the superiority of Soviet science have been rejected. Scientists and officials alike welcomed participation in interna- tional science through individual, institutional, and bilateral agreements.

Another major change in science policy is the democratiza- tion of administration. This in turn has led to the proliferation of official and private organizations which play a role in science policy. In the past, prestigious Communist party and scientific "bosses" made most decisions behind closed doors and dominated scientific life on the basis of personal

'* Paul Josephson, "Scientists, the Public and the Party Under Gorbachev," Harriman Institute Forum 3 (May 1990).

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 611

connections. Higher authorities appointed institute and labo- ratory directors according to approved lists (the nomenklatura). Independent experts were seldom consulted. Now laboratory directors are elected, as are most institute directors with pro forma approval by the Academy presidium. Entrenched scientific bureaucrats have been removed through accelerated retirement. The Communist party was outlawed after the failed August putsch.

Paradoxically, in the short term, the disappearance of the Communist party from the scene has had a negative impact on fundamental research. The party had played a central role in trouble-shooting in areas of equipment supply, access to current literature, travel arrangements, and so on. Tbe usual discomforts of scientific research in the Soviet Union have become worse in the CIS without the party as an expediter. Scientists are subject to the same gross inefficiencies that long handicapped other sectors of the Soviet economy.

Decentralization of power structures accompanied democra- tization. The once powerful USSR Academy of Sciences, whose policies shaped the face of fundamental research for the entire empire, gave way to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) in December 1991. In the late 1980s, Academy scientists stood at the forefront of the democratization of Soviet society. They rejected initial election procedures to the Supreme Soviet which allowed officials of the Academy presidium to designate typically Communist scientists to the election slate. In the redrawn ballot such reformers as Andrei Sakharov were voted in overwhelmingly.

Today, the democratization of the Academy lags somewhat behind that of society. The increased membership of the Academy is more nationalistic and conservative. The effort to give corresponding members and even doctors of science voting privileges has been remanded to a charter committee. In many cases, past scientific bosses still command great authority. But the Academy is no longer an institution of the state: by decree of President Yeltsin, the RAN has completely

612 SOCIAL RESEARCH

independent legal standing and property rights. The RAN provides its scientists and institutions with more equitable access to resources, including travel abroad, and the rule by fiat which characterized administration in the past has come to an end.

One of the most striking changes in science in the former Soviet Union is the proliferation of groups of scientists independent of the government—what would be called "professionalization" in the West. In the last five years, independent scientific expertise has been reborn. We have seen the transition from Gorbachev's informal science advisory committee, including such physicists as E. P. Velikhov and several economists, to the Yeltsin government's ministry of science. The Supreme Soviet, the parliament which sat for the final three turbulent years of Gorbachev's rule, had a limited role in science policy. While one-eighth of all deputies of the Supreme Soviet were scientists, they failed to form a cohesive interest group.

At least six new academies (including engineering, technol- ogy, humanities, economics, and agriculture) and tens of scientific societies (from nuclear physics to sociology) have arisen in all states of the GIS. These societies—the Physics Society, the Nuclear Society, the Union of Scholars, a kind of American Association for the Advancement of Science, and many others—have three primary goals: to defend specialists' professional interests; to provide the government with inde- pendent expertise to ensure well-informed decisions in science and technology policy; and to combat incipient antiscience attitudes among the population. In a speech as president of the Physics Society, Sergei Kapitsa, son of Nobel prize-winner Peter Kapitsa, called on his colleagues to defend their "professional rights" to combat "antiscientific and anti- intellectual tendencies" in the public arena (mysticism, occult- ism, and pseudoscience). The intractable problems of ecologi- cal disaster, economic downturn, and political uncertainty require the input of advice from individuals with specialized

SOVIET SCIENTISTS 613

knowledge. However, the deideologization of science has left a vacuum. Discussion among professional and government organizations on the nature of scientific uncertainty, the role of such analytic tools as cost-benefit analysis, and how best to institutionalize scientific advice remains on a rudimentary level.

The Public and Science

Balancing scientists' newly found academic and political freedom are wide-ranging antiscientific attitudes, mistrust, and radiophobia among the public. From a nuclear-power industry in critical health and spectacular space failures to daily press reports of newly discovered toxic-waste dumps, the public has growing awareness of the potential social costs of unregulated science and technology. The striking response is the prolifera- tion of peasant home remedies, the fascination with medical charlatans who offer curative psychotherapy over the televi- sion, recently awakened latent interest in UFOs and extrater- restrials, and an ongoing urine-drinking craze. Modern technology and medicines are in short supply, epidemics are on the rise. Perhaps worse still, owing to seventy years of mismanagement, nowhere in the world is the state of the environment more critical than in the CIS today. Toxic-waste dumps, overuse of pesticides, and fossil-fuel pollution have wrecked Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia. It will be decades before CIS scientists come to grips with these problems.

Politics and ideology have always assumed a central position in the reality of the Soviet scientist. The establishment of centralized state control over the entire scientific enterprise required strict attention to the economic, political, and ideological desiderata of the state. Stalin's party placed particular emphasis on the uniqueness of science under socialism. This led to a litany of ideological pronouncements which shaped the face of fundamental research until the 1980s. They included the danger of idealism inherent in

614 SOCIAL RESEARCH

bourgeois science, the establishment autarkic relations in science, encroachment on the autonomy of scientists in the management of their institutes and the formation of their research programs.

Scientists in the CIS believe that the end of the Soviet empire means the end of ideology in science. They continue to see scientific activity as an apolitical endeavor which seeks to identify value-neutral and objective laws of nature. They see the Western system of science, particularly that in the United States, with its relatively decentralized funding, administration, and market mechanisms, as a panacea for the crisis of funding and decay they now face. It may be desirable for them to read this volume of Social Research, and to contemplate the ways in which scientific activity is influenced by politics and ideology in all systems.