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By Loren R. Graham - Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridg (1994-04-09) [Paperback]
By the 1980s the Soviet scientific establishment had become the largest in the world, but very little of its history was known in the West. What has been needed for many years in order to fill that gap in our knowledge is a history of Russian and Soviet science written for the educated person who would like to read one book on the subject. This book has been written for that reader. The main theme of the book is the shaping of science and scientific institutions in Russia and the Soviet Union by social, economic, and political factors. Russian society and culture have been strikingly different from the society and culture of Western Europe, where modern science was born, and those differences have influenced not only the organizational and economic framework of Russian and Soviet science, but also the scientific theories themselves. The intellectual pathways of many areas of Russian and Soviet science are dissimilar from those in Western Europe and the United States. The history of Russian and Soviet science is a story of remarkable achievements and frustrating failures. That history is presented here in a comprehensive form, and explained in terms of its social and political context. Major sections include the tsarist period, the impact of the Russian Revolution, the relationship between science and Soviet society, and the strengths and weaknesses of individual scientific disciplines. The book also discusses the changes brought to science in Russia and other republics by the collapse of communism in the late 198Os and early 199Os.
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First published October 1, 1990
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Loren R. Graham
21 books17 followersLoren R. Graham was an American historian of science, particularly science in Russia.
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November 5, 2020
Anyone who is old enough to have experienced the Cold War and who may have had a connection with academia will remember the great divide among the scientific community that prevailed in those years between western and eastern blocs. Intercommunication was often difficult and discouraged; it frequently happened that the same thing would be discovered independently and more or less concurrently in both hemispheres, leading to keenly felt disputes over priority. But everyone was well aware that the two sides were closely matched intellectually; the Soviets’ disadvantage in most areas of technology was compensated by a tradition of excellence in ‘blackboard’ subjects, those that require only pure thought along with a pencil and paper.
For such a one of a certain age, the present historical study on science in Russia and the Soviet Union by Loren Graham promises to make for absorbing reading. Graham is pretty good on the early history through 1917. After a few pages sketching the pre-modern background, the narrative picks up with Peter the Great in the eighteenth century, the foundation of the Academy of Sciences and its first noteworthy native-born member, the chemist Lomonosov. Then, it continues with educational policy during the nineteenth century and portraits of the great mathematician Lobachevskii and the equally distinguished chemist Mendeleev. As a result, one will come to appreciate aspects of the tsarist system that are little known; why for instance Lobachevskii, the great inventor of non-Euclidean geometry in the 1820’s, was not as isolated at the University of Kazan as he might appear to us – it has to do with the Russian imperialist project of colonial expansion eastward, into territories that often were far from empty, but occupied by fiercely warlike peoples who were jealous of their independence and who fought valiantly to resist Russian overlordship; Americans had a comparatively easy time exterminating their indigenous populations, who existed at a lesser stage of material culture upon the arrival of the colonists and could never quite close the gap with the latter’s superior technology and military tactics (not to mention overwhelming numbers). The upshot: beginning in the eighteenth century, the tsarist bureaucracy felt that science and mathematics were entitled to strong state support in order to buttress its military might, much as would later be the case in the United States during the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet bloc.
Another good specimen of Graham’s writing can be found in chapter six on the Lysenko affair and the role of Soviet ideology. Everyone will have heard of this pathology in the country’s scientific life in stray references from time to time; it is well to have the facts set straight here.
What can this reviewer say by way of a general characterization of the present work? Unfortunately, it disappoints and comes across mostly as dull. Graham does not attempt to delineate any characteristic of the Russian scientific mentality along the lines of, say, the French school of mathematical physics during the first half of the nineteenth century, or the German theoretical physics that rose to prominence during the second half of the nineteenth century and British electrodynamics from the same period etc. These have always received the sedulous attention of historians of science, while Russia and the Soviet Union are, comparatively speaking, terra incognita. Why does Graham fail at a task that would have been very fortunate, if he had succeeded? He is apparently not himself a scientist or very interested in the science per se, not even in any one preferred field, but more of a sociologist interested primarily in politics. There is no philosophy at all, not even philosophy of science, in the present work.
As a typical instance of Graham’s method, see pp. 224-228 for a detailed account of why the Soviets were not as successful in chemistry as they were in physics and math. Another would be his view of the evolution of technology (pp. 251-260). Contrary to what might be the common impression, one cannot summarize the history simply by suggesting that Russia was behind during the nineteenth century but began to catch up under the Soviets: ‘A closer look at the history of technology in Russia and the Soviet Union reveals a much more complicated story. Instead of a picture of a steady closing of a gap, starting in the twentieth century, we see a jagged curve stretching back for several centuries, with individual high points of excellence achieved long before 1917, only to be lost again in succeeding years. And this repetitive story of momentary achievement followed by obsolescence continues in twentieth century’ (p. 251); indeed, this pattern of cycles of innovation and stagnation in technology continued into the Soviet period (pp. 254-255). Although explanations for the cycles of advance and retardation are somewhat different for each different technology, social and economic barriers, rather than technical ineptitude, are the common factors (p. 259). The extensive appendices on the relative strengths and weaknesses of Russian and Soviet science by the various domains of research are, as a rule, long on names and details that don’t matter much, but short on analysis.
Graham presents a convincing account of why Russians excel at mathematics (p. 218), but declines to enter into any characterization of their mathematical style at all. This recensionist will hazard an admittedly impressionistic and anecdotal sketch. What about the great names of Alexandrov, Luzin, Kolmogorov, Sinai, Arnold, Gelfand, Naimark, Manin, Vinogradov etc. in mathematics, isn’t there a distinctive style? One detects a tendency to analysis, the artful combination of being at once visionary and highly technically skilled, not cramped like Bourbaki, and welcoming of philosophical speculation, much more so than among the common run of westerners; lastly, broadly atheistic in outlook (so far as one can glean from scattered remarks).
As for Graham’s proficiency itself, we must rate the present monograph as three stars only. Remember, three stars means competent, workmanlike; to earn four, there needs to be some flair and intellectual interest to the thesis; for five, add to that brilliance in execution. He overlooks the opportunity to reflect upon two large topics that strike this recensionist as being of particular and timely interest:
1) Are we all dialectical materialists now, despite the downfall of Communism in 1989? Dialectical materialists are sharply critical of both reductionism and vitalism, and tend to an evolutionist perspective. For the classic Marxist, being determines consciousness. Hence, the prelinguistic stage of the child is more a function of social determinants in the environment than Piaget would allow. Another interesting point Graham refers to is that Oparin and Haldane’s celebrated work on the origin of life had, in fact, a Marxist motivation. These scientists see dialectical materialism as the via media between idealism/vitalism, on the one hand, and mechanistic materialism on the other. The Soviet physicist Fock entered into a dialogue with Bohr, and exerted a notable influence on the latter’s late philosophy of quantum mechanics. The great Kolmogorov, too, sketches a dialectical theory of the origin of mathematics itself related to economic and technological needs.
What follows for us today? For one thing, it is pleasant to encounter a form of atheist thought that is more intellectually substantial than the rather simple-minded and jejune reductionistic materialism to which western atheists are wedded. Anyone concerned, like the great German idealist philosophers from Kant to Hegel, to split the difference between dogmatic idealism and dogmatic realism within some transcendental schema will have to concede that it will be difficult to differentiate progress along this direction from what the Soviet dialectical materialists have already accomplished. Is Marx so easily to be dismissed, after all? On the other hand, why did Communism fail as a systematic socio-economic alternative to capitalism if its philosophy was so good? Thus, we have the makings of an exciting ‘Auseinandersetzung’ for the dwindling few who continue to hold themselves to the ideal of intellectual integrity. But not to do so, of course, condemns one to act blindly and, therefore, to end up being merely the material fodder that will be shaped by the historical process rather than an intelligent and wise force on behalf of the good!
2) The second point that bears remarking upon is the striking predominance of Russians and eastern Europeans among women in the contemporary scientific community, particularly in mathematics and physics (after them come Italians and Spaniards; this reviewer is not aware of a reliable statistical study, but anecdotally it does appear as if, on a per capita basis, the rate of participation of northern European, American and Asian women must stand considerably far behind that of either of these two regions). Anyone who follows the abstracts appearing every day on the preprint archive can verify this for himself and, when one becomes more familiar with the older literature, it seems that the phenomenon extends back over the past century and a half. Moreover, it is not just a question of representative numbers but also one of style. Eastern European women, in the storied tradition of Sofya Kovalevskaya and Olga Ladyzhenskaya (among others), tend to favor the most technically demanding branches of mathematics—partial differential equations, operator algebras and global analysis in infinitely many dimensions. Eastern Europeans being more highly cultured in general than western Europeans (to say nothing of Americans), a girl growing up there will find it perfectly normal to harbor intellectual interests and to want to pursue them as a career. The unfortunate notion, so commonly held in America, to the effect that a schoolgirl can get away with slacking off in academic subjects, especially in the exact sciences, simply does not exist in eastern Europe. During the Cold War, it was not unusual for Soviet girls to compete at the international Olympiads in mathematics and to win a first prize, whereas it was not until as late as 1998 that an American girl first placed on the US team!
What lies at the root of this disproportionate representation of eastern European women in the natural sciences and mathematics? Certainly, the trend among the Russian aristocratic classes during the latter half of the nineteenth century supports its early development. At that time, liberalizing tendencies were abroad and this led to a certain amount of friction between reformers and conservative elements in the tsarist government and Russian Orthodox church. The young intellectuals not part of the establishment styled themselves ‘nihilists’, adopting Turgenev’s term of abuse for them. They held an ardent faith in progress, in the replacement of superstition by reason and hoped for an amelioration of the working conditions of the then-rising proletariat. They also affirmed the equality of women, not an idle theoretical position but one meant seriously to be put into effect and that served as a spur to encourage a generation of young women to seek higher education, despite the obstacles that stood in their path [vide Ann Hibner Koblitz, Science, women and the Russian intelligentsia: The generation of the 1860’s, Isis 79, 208-226 (1988)].
Nevertheless, one suspects the nihilist movement to be a proximate but not the ultimate cause. Also, the penchant among eastern European women for hard analysis over softer disciplines like algebraic geometry and logic, which are more popular with western women, is not thereby explained. Let us therefore entertain a speculation on more remote history. Nomadic life on the steppe is downright trying; one has to contend with a poor physical environment and a paucity of natural defenses against raiding hordes. Under such harsh conditions, one can scarcely afford to disregard the potential contribution of one-half of the population. One must suppose that, in consequence, eastern Europeans, including their women, inherit a tougher, more realistic appraisal of the world which lends itself well to real analysis when they come around to doing mathematics. As is widely noted, moreover, eastern European society tends to this day to be more socially conservative than its western counterpart, which by the nature of things confers on their women a stronger, what would have been seen as more stereotypically feminine character, if we go back far enough before the modern period (cf. the figures of women in Tacitus’ Germania and in the Old Testament).
We know, incidentally, from the testimony of the ancient historians that civilized Greeks, among whom the woman was presumed as a matter of course to be confined to a household role, marveled at the independence and free-spiritedness of barbarian women who lived mainly to their north and east, in Thrace and on the steppes of southern Russia and in the mountainous regions of Asia Minor around the Caucasus and who were rumored to associate as equals with their men, especially as full-fledged fighters in the intermittent but constantly recurring warfare that figures so prominently in the ethos of nomadic tribes (as the archaeological record indeed confirms). Here we can locate the solid historical basis of the legend of the Amazons; clearly, from the frequent depiction of Amazonian women in Greek art and mythology of the archaic and classical periods, one can detect a fascination with the otherness of another and very different culture.
But we digress. As far as science goes, there is no trace of a double standard with respect to intellect among eastern Europeans. As Koblitz shows by means of statistics in the article by her cited above, the early idealistic nihilist generation of women in Russia, when enrolling in western universities for doctoral studies, made a conscious choice to pursue what were perceived as the most intellectually challenging fields of science in order to prove themselves. The conditions were thus prepared for perpetuating a like attitude all through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Let us close, then, with a salient question to pose to the curious modern reader: what does the eastern European experience have to tell us about the role of innate differences between the sexes; and nature versus nurture? If former Harvard president Larry Summers is right after all in his disparagement of women’s intellectual capacities, why would his surmises appear ludicrous to eastern Europeans in view of what, from everyday practice, they know very well women to be capable of? This angle is never brought up in the raging feminist debate in western society but does decidedly challenge our rampant preconceptions.
For such a one of a certain age, the present historical study on science in Russia and the Soviet Union by Loren Graham promises to make for absorbing reading. Graham is pretty good on the early history through 1917. After a few pages sketching the pre-modern background, the narrative picks up with Peter the Great in the eighteenth century, the foundation of the Academy of Sciences and its first noteworthy native-born member, the chemist Lomonosov. Then, it continues with educational policy during the nineteenth century and portraits of the great mathematician Lobachevskii and the equally distinguished chemist Mendeleev. As a result, one will come to appreciate aspects of the tsarist system that are little known; why for instance Lobachevskii, the great inventor of non-Euclidean geometry in the 1820’s, was not as isolated at the University of Kazan as he might appear to us – it has to do with the Russian imperialist project of colonial expansion eastward, into territories that often were far from empty, but occupied by fiercely warlike peoples who were jealous of their independence and who fought valiantly to resist Russian overlordship; Americans had a comparatively easy time exterminating their indigenous populations, who existed at a lesser stage of material culture upon the arrival of the colonists and could never quite close the gap with the latter’s superior technology and military tactics (not to mention overwhelming numbers). The upshot: beginning in the eighteenth century, the tsarist bureaucracy felt that science and mathematics were entitled to strong state support in order to buttress its military might, much as would later be the case in the United States during the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet bloc.
Another good specimen of Graham’s writing can be found in chapter six on the Lysenko affair and the role of Soviet ideology. Everyone will have heard of this pathology in the country’s scientific life in stray references from time to time; it is well to have the facts set straight here.
What can this reviewer say by way of a general characterization of the present work? Unfortunately, it disappoints and comes across mostly as dull. Graham does not attempt to delineate any characteristic of the Russian scientific mentality along the lines of, say, the French school of mathematical physics during the first half of the nineteenth century, or the German theoretical physics that rose to prominence during the second half of the nineteenth century and British electrodynamics from the same period etc. These have always received the sedulous attention of historians of science, while Russia and the Soviet Union are, comparatively speaking, terra incognita. Why does Graham fail at a task that would have been very fortunate, if he had succeeded? He is apparently not himself a scientist or very interested in the science per se, not even in any one preferred field, but more of a sociologist interested primarily in politics. There is no philosophy at all, not even philosophy of science, in the present work.
As a typical instance of Graham’s method, see pp. 224-228 for a detailed account of why the Soviets were not as successful in chemistry as they were in physics and math. Another would be his view of the evolution of technology (pp. 251-260). Contrary to what might be the common impression, one cannot summarize the history simply by suggesting that Russia was behind during the nineteenth century but began to catch up under the Soviets: ‘A closer look at the history of technology in Russia and the Soviet Union reveals a much more complicated story. Instead of a picture of a steady closing of a gap, starting in the twentieth century, we see a jagged curve stretching back for several centuries, with individual high points of excellence achieved long before 1917, only to be lost again in succeeding years. And this repetitive story of momentary achievement followed by obsolescence continues in twentieth century’ (p. 251); indeed, this pattern of cycles of innovation and stagnation in technology continued into the Soviet period (pp. 254-255). Although explanations for the cycles of advance and retardation are somewhat different for each different technology, social and economic barriers, rather than technical ineptitude, are the common factors (p. 259). The extensive appendices on the relative strengths and weaknesses of Russian and Soviet science by the various domains of research are, as a rule, long on names and details that don’t matter much, but short on analysis.
Graham presents a convincing account of why Russians excel at mathematics (p. 218), but declines to enter into any characterization of their mathematical style at all. This recensionist will hazard an admittedly impressionistic and anecdotal sketch. What about the great names of Alexandrov, Luzin, Kolmogorov, Sinai, Arnold, Gelfand, Naimark, Manin, Vinogradov etc. in mathematics, isn’t there a distinctive style? One detects a tendency to analysis, the artful combination of being at once visionary and highly technically skilled, not cramped like Bourbaki, and welcoming of philosophical speculation, much more so than among the common run of westerners; lastly, broadly atheistic in outlook (so far as one can glean from scattered remarks).
As for Graham’s proficiency itself, we must rate the present monograph as three stars only. Remember, three stars means competent, workmanlike; to earn four, there needs to be some flair and intellectual interest to the thesis; for five, add to that brilliance in execution. He overlooks the opportunity to reflect upon two large topics that strike this recensionist as being of particular and timely interest:
1) Are we all dialectical materialists now, despite the downfall of Communism in 1989? Dialectical materialists are sharply critical of both reductionism and vitalism, and tend to an evolutionist perspective. For the classic Marxist, being determines consciousness. Hence, the prelinguistic stage of the child is more a function of social determinants in the environment than Piaget would allow. Another interesting point Graham refers to is that Oparin and Haldane’s celebrated work on the origin of life had, in fact, a Marxist motivation. These scientists see dialectical materialism as the via media between idealism/vitalism, on the one hand, and mechanistic materialism on the other. The Soviet physicist Fock entered into a dialogue with Bohr, and exerted a notable influence on the latter’s late philosophy of quantum mechanics. The great Kolmogorov, too, sketches a dialectical theory of the origin of mathematics itself related to economic and technological needs.
What follows for us today? For one thing, it is pleasant to encounter a form of atheist thought that is more intellectually substantial than the rather simple-minded and jejune reductionistic materialism to which western atheists are wedded. Anyone concerned, like the great German idealist philosophers from Kant to Hegel, to split the difference between dogmatic idealism and dogmatic realism within some transcendental schema will have to concede that it will be difficult to differentiate progress along this direction from what the Soviet dialectical materialists have already accomplished. Is Marx so easily to be dismissed, after all? On the other hand, why did Communism fail as a systematic socio-economic alternative to capitalism if its philosophy was so good? Thus, we have the makings of an exciting ‘Auseinandersetzung’ for the dwindling few who continue to hold themselves to the ideal of intellectual integrity. But not to do so, of course, condemns one to act blindly and, therefore, to end up being merely the material fodder that will be shaped by the historical process rather than an intelligent and wise force on behalf of the good!
2) The second point that bears remarking upon is the striking predominance of Russians and eastern Europeans among women in the contemporary scientific community, particularly in mathematics and physics (after them come Italians and Spaniards; this reviewer is not aware of a reliable statistical study, but anecdotally it does appear as if, on a per capita basis, the rate of participation of northern European, American and Asian women must stand considerably far behind that of either of these two regions). Anyone who follows the abstracts appearing every day on the preprint archive can verify this for himself and, when one becomes more familiar with the older literature, it seems that the phenomenon extends back over the past century and a half. Moreover, it is not just a question of representative numbers but also one of style. Eastern European women, in the storied tradition of Sofya Kovalevskaya and Olga Ladyzhenskaya (among others), tend to favor the most technically demanding branches of mathematics—partial differential equations, operator algebras and global analysis in infinitely many dimensions. Eastern Europeans being more highly cultured in general than western Europeans (to say nothing of Americans), a girl growing up there will find it perfectly normal to harbor intellectual interests and to want to pursue them as a career. The unfortunate notion, so commonly held in America, to the effect that a schoolgirl can get away with slacking off in academic subjects, especially in the exact sciences, simply does not exist in eastern Europe. During the Cold War, it was not unusual for Soviet girls to compete at the international Olympiads in mathematics and to win a first prize, whereas it was not until as late as 1998 that an American girl first placed on the US team!
What lies at the root of this disproportionate representation of eastern European women in the natural sciences and mathematics? Certainly, the trend among the Russian aristocratic classes during the latter half of the nineteenth century supports its early development. At that time, liberalizing tendencies were abroad and this led to a certain amount of friction between reformers and conservative elements in the tsarist government and Russian Orthodox church. The young intellectuals not part of the establishment styled themselves ‘nihilists’, adopting Turgenev’s term of abuse for them. They held an ardent faith in progress, in the replacement of superstition by reason and hoped for an amelioration of the working conditions of the then-rising proletariat. They also affirmed the equality of women, not an idle theoretical position but one meant seriously to be put into effect and that served as a spur to encourage a generation of young women to seek higher education, despite the obstacles that stood in their path [vide Ann Hibner Koblitz, Science, women and the Russian intelligentsia: The generation of the 1860’s, Isis 79, 208-226 (1988)].
Nevertheless, one suspects the nihilist movement to be a proximate but not the ultimate cause. Also, the penchant among eastern European women for hard analysis over softer disciplines like algebraic geometry and logic, which are more popular with western women, is not thereby explained. Let us therefore entertain a speculation on more remote history. Nomadic life on the steppe is downright trying; one has to contend with a poor physical environment and a paucity of natural defenses against raiding hordes. Under such harsh conditions, one can scarcely afford to disregard the potential contribution of one-half of the population. One must suppose that, in consequence, eastern Europeans, including their women, inherit a tougher, more realistic appraisal of the world which lends itself well to real analysis when they come around to doing mathematics. As is widely noted, moreover, eastern European society tends to this day to be more socially conservative than its western counterpart, which by the nature of things confers on their women a stronger, what would have been seen as more stereotypically feminine character, if we go back far enough before the modern period (cf. the figures of women in Tacitus’ Germania and in the Old Testament).
We know, incidentally, from the testimony of the ancient historians that civilized Greeks, among whom the woman was presumed as a matter of course to be confined to a household role, marveled at the independence and free-spiritedness of barbarian women who lived mainly to their north and east, in Thrace and on the steppes of southern Russia and in the mountainous regions of Asia Minor around the Caucasus and who were rumored to associate as equals with their men, especially as full-fledged fighters in the intermittent but constantly recurring warfare that figures so prominently in the ethos of nomadic tribes (as the archaeological record indeed confirms). Here we can locate the solid historical basis of the legend of the Amazons; clearly, from the frequent depiction of Amazonian women in Greek art and mythology of the archaic and classical periods, one can detect a fascination with the otherness of another and very different culture.
But we digress. As far as science goes, there is no trace of a double standard with respect to intellect among eastern Europeans. As Koblitz shows by means of statistics in the article by her cited above, the early idealistic nihilist generation of women in Russia, when enrolling in western universities for doctoral studies, made a conscious choice to pursue what were perceived as the most intellectually challenging fields of science in order to prove themselves. The conditions were thus prepared for perpetuating a like attitude all through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Let us close, then, with a salient question to pose to the curious modern reader: what does the eastern European experience have to tell us about the role of innate differences between the sexes; and nature versus nurture? If former Harvard president Larry Summers is right after all in his disparagement of women’s intellectual capacities, why would his surmises appear ludicrous to eastern Europeans in view of what, from everyday practice, they know very well women to be capable of? This angle is never brought up in the raging feminist debate in western society but does decidedly challenge our rampant preconceptions.
December 20, 2020
A thorough academic survey of the development of science from the time of Peter the Great to just post-Soviet times, focusing on the main scientists and how scientific research and researchers were effected by the political and social trends of the times, too often appallingly. Appendices give more detailed rundowns on Russian/Soviet contributions to individual fields, with the main scientists noted.
March 6, 2022
中译本翻译质量差！
1.对沙俄时代的���学发展的解释比较简单，什么时候开放面对西方，什么时候科学就会有突破。
2.苏联以马克思主义为意识形态，本身是重视科学的。以国家战略的角度发展科技、注重社会因素对于科技发展的影响，在这两点上，苏联是先进的。但是这个国家要搞政治运动，科学家被压抑。李森科主义就是明证。
3.在建政初期，苏联不信任旧俄国培养出来的知识分子，认为他们是象牙塔里的资产阶级分子；而到了二战以后，科技界的主力已经变成了社会主义教育下成长起来的科学家，苏联却不愿意让这些科学家真正与工人阶级结合，而是把他们安排进各种“研究所”这种新象牙塔里。总而言之，苏联自己搞的科学，恰恰是原先自己所批判的“不实用”的纯科学，比如数学、物理、天文、火箭等等；而与现实的产业相结合的科技，几乎没有。
4.苏联从来就没有真正做到专家治国：二战前，旧科学家被防范、迫害；二战后，新科学家只知书斋，鲜问社会。而战后苏联领导人大多是“理工出身”，这并不是专家治国，相反，这种体制下，他们早已脱离专业背景而专心搞政治，“理工出身”的作用，就是显示他们政治上可靠，没有学那些无用而危险的社会经济思想。
1.对沙俄时代的���学发展的解释比较简单，什么时候开放面对西方，什么时候科学就会有突破。
2.苏联以马克思主义为意识形态，本身是重视科学的。以国家战略的角度发展科技、注重社会因素对于科技发展的影响，在这两点上，苏联是先进的。但是这个国家要搞政治运动，科学家被压抑。李森科主义就是明证。
3.在建政初期，苏联不信任旧俄国培养出来的知识分子，认为他们是象牙塔里的资产阶级分子；而到了二战以后，科技界的主力已经变成了社会主义教育下成长起来的科学家，苏联却不愿意让这些科学家真正与工人阶级结合，而是把他们安排进各种“研究所”这种新象牙塔里。总而言之，苏联自己搞的科学，恰恰是原先自己所批判的“不实用”的纯科学，比如数学、物理、天文、火箭等等；而与现实的产业相结合的科技，几乎没有。
4.苏联从来就没有真正做到专家治国：二战前，旧科学家被防范、迫害；二战后，新科学家只知书斋，鲜问社会。而战后苏联领导人大多是“理工出身”，这并不是专家治国，相反，这种体制下，他们早已脱离专业背景而专心搞政治，“理工出身”的作用，就是显示他们政治上可靠，没有学那些无用而危险的社会经济思想。
February 25, 2009
I admit. I haven't really finished it. Will write a more complete review. Perhaps later. So much later.
July 28, 2011
it's just an excellent book. Very clear, the conclusion is brilliant and especially helpful given a Skolkovo's initiative and what's going on with the Russian Academy of Sciences now.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews