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Stalinist Science
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Book Synopsis Stalinist Science by : Nikolai Krementsov
Download or read book Stalinist Science written by Nikolai Krementsov and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996-11-25 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some scholars have viewed the Soviet state and science as two monolithic entities--with bureaucrats as oppressors, and scientists as defenders of intellectual autonomy. Based on previously unknown documents from the archives of state and Communist Party agencies and of numerous scientific institutions, Stalinist Science shows that this picture is oversimplified. Even the reinstated Science Department within the Central Committee was staffed by a leading geneticist and others sympathetic to conventional science. In fact, a symbiosis of state bureaucrats and scientists established a much more terrifying system of control over the scientific community than any critic of Soviet totalitarianism had feared. Some scientists, on the other hand, developed more elaborate devices to avoid and exploit this control system than any advocate of academic freedom could have reasonably hoped. Nikolai Krementsov argues that the model of Stalinist science, already taking hold during the thirties, was reversed by the need for inter-Allied cooperation during World War II. Science, as a tool for winning the war and as a diplomatic and propaganda instrument, began to enjoy higher status, better funding, and relative autonomy. Even the reinstated Science Department within the Central Committee was staffed by a leading geneticist and others sympathetic to conventional science. However, the onset of the Cold War led to a campaign for eliminating such servility to the West. Then the Western links that had benefited genetics and other sciences during the war and through 1946 became a liability, and were used by Lysenko and others to turn back to the repressive past and to delegitimate whole research directions.
Book Synopsis Stalin and the Scientists by : Simon Ings
Download or read book Stalin and the Scientists written by Simon Ings and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century.” —Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine. But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2016 A New York Times Book Review “Paperback Row” selection “Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid . . . Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today.” —The New York Times Book Review “A must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union.” —The Washington Post
Book Synopsis Stalin's Great Science by : A. B. Kozhevnikov
Download or read book Stalin's Great Science written by A. B. Kozhevnikov and published by Imperial College Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-class science and technology developed in the Soviet Union during Stalin's dictatorial rule under conditions of political violence, lack of international contacts, and severe restrictions on the freedom of information. Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists is an invaluable book that investigates this paradoxical success by following the lives and work of Soviet scientists ? including Nobel Prize-winning physicists Kapitza, Landau, and others ? throughout the turmoil of wars, revolutions, and repression that characterized the first half of Russia's twentieth century.The book examines how scientists operated within the Soviet political order, communicated with Stalinist politicians, built a new system of research institutions, and conducted groundbreaking research under extraordinary circumstances. Some of their novel scientific ideas and theories reflected the influence of Soviet ideology and worldview and have since become accepted universally as fundamental concepts of contemporary science. In the process of making sense of the achievements of Soviet science, the book dismantles standard assumptions about the interaction between science, politics, and ideology, as well as many dominant stereotypes ? mostly inherited from the Cold War ? about Soviet history in general. Science and technology were not only granted unprecedented importance in Soviet society, but they also exerted a crucial formative influence on the Soviet political system itself. Unlike most previous studies, Stalin's Great Science recognizes the status of science as an essential element of the Soviet polity and explores the nature of a special relationship between experts (scientists and engineers) and communist politicians that enabled the initial rise of the Soviet state and its mature accomplishments, until the pact eroded in later years, undermining the communist regime from within.
Book Synopsis Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars by : Ethan Pollock
Download or read book Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars written by Ethan Pollock and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: Stalin, science, and politics after the Second World War -- "A Marxist should not write like that": the crisis on the "philosophical front" -- "The future belongs to Michurin": the agricultural academy session of 1948 -- "We can always shoot them later": physics, politics, and the atomic bomb -- "Battles of opinions and open criticism": Stalin intervenes in linguistics -- "Attack the detractors with certainty of total success": the Pavlov session of 1950 -- "Everyone is waiting": Stalin and the economic problems of communism -- Conclusion: science and the fate of the Stalinist system.
Book Synopsis Stalin's Great Science by : A. B. Kozhevnikov
Download or read book Stalin's Great Science written by A. B. Kozhevnikov and published by Imperial College Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-class science and technology developed in the Soviet Union during Stalin's dictatorial rule under conditions of political violence, lack of international contacts, and severe restrictions on the freedom of information. Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists is an invaluable book that investigates this paradoxical success by following the lives and work of Soviet scientists ? including Nobel Prize-winning physicists Kapitza, Landau, and others ? throughout the turmoil of wars, revolutions, and repression that characterized the first half of Russia's twentieth century.The book examines how scientists operated within the Soviet political order, communicated with Stalinist politicians, built a new system of research institutions, and conducted groundbreaking research under extraordinary circumstances. Some of their novel scientific ideas and theories reflected the influence of Soviet ideology and worldview and have since become accepted universally as fundamental concepts of contemporary science. In the process of making sense of the achievements of Soviet science, the book dismantles standard assumptions about the interaction between science, politics, and ideology, as well as many dominant stereotypes ? mostly inherited from the Cold War ? about Soviet history in general. Science and technology were not only granted unprecedented importance in Soviet society, but they also exerted a crucial formative influence on the Soviet political system itself. Unlike most previous studies, Stalin's Great Science recognizes the status of science as an essential element of the Soviet polity and explores the nature of a special relationship between experts (scientists and engineers) and communist politicians that enabled the initial rise of the Soviet state and its mature accomplishments, until the pact eroded in later years, undermining the communist regime from within.
Book Synopsis Science in Russia and the Soviet Union by : Loren R. Graham
Download or read book Science in Russia and the Soviet Union written by Loren R. Graham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 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 1980s and early 1990s.
Book Synopsis Stalinist Genetics by : Dmitri Stanchevici
Download or read book Stalinist Genetics written by Dmitri Stanchevici and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stalinist Genetics focuses on the rhetoric of T. D. Lysenko, the founder of an agrobiological doctrine (Lysenkoism) in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Using not only scientific but also political and ideological arguments, Lysenko achieved an official ban on Soviet Mendelian genetics. Though the ban was brief and Lysenkoism, as a leading biological doctrine, was eventually deposed in favor of Mendelism, Lysenkoism remains a paradigmatic example of pernicious political interference in science. In this study, the critical orientation for reading Lysenko's major speeches is constitutional rhetoric. It combines Kenneth Burke's dialectic of constitutions and rhetoric of the subject. Painting a nuanced picture of intellectual, economic, ideological, and political life in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s, the book demonstrates how the rhetorics of Lysenkoism and Mendelism interacted with Stalinist culture in the fight for dominating Soviet science. The reader will learn how Lysenko's constitutional rhetoric created a space where scientific terms transformed into political and ideological ones, and vice versa. The book also shows how, in a dialectical flip, the Lysenkoist rhetoric eventually turned from tool to master. Contrary to Lysenko's intentions, his language gave his opponents, Soviet Mendelians, grounds on which to defend their science and criticize Lysenkoism. Stanchevici forcefully reasserts the blurriness of the boundaries between science and politics, and argues that scientific language reveals more plasticity and adaptability to the political situation than has hitherto been assumed. Intended Audience: Scholars in rhetoric, history, and philosophy of science; graduate or upper-division undergraduate course in the rhetoric of science or technical communication.
Book Synopsis Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars by : Ethan Pollock
Download or read book Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars written by Ethan Pollock and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1945 and 1953, while the Soviet Union confronted postwar reconstruction and Cold War crises, its unchallenged leader Joseph Stalin carved out time to study scientific disputes and dictate academic solutions. He spearheaded a discussion of "scientific" Marxist-Leninist philosophy, edited reports on genetics and physiology, adjudicated controversies about modern physics, and wrote essays on linguistics and political economy. Historians have been tempted to dismiss all this as the megalomaniacal ravings of a dying dictator. But in Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, Ethan Pollock draws on thousands of previously unexplored archival documents to demonstrate that Stalin was in fact determined to show how scientific truth and Party doctrine reinforced one another. Socialism was supposed to be scientific, and science ideologically correct, and Stalin ostensibly embodied the perfect symbiosis between power and knowledge. Focusing on six major postwar debates in the Soviet scientific community, this elegantly written book shows that Stalin's forays into scholarship can be understood only within the context of international tensions, institutional conflicts, and the growing uncertainty about the proper relationship between scientific knowledge and Party-dictated truths. The nature of Stalin's interventions makes clear that more was at stake than high politics: these science wars were about asserting that the Party was rational and modern, and about codifying the Soviet worldview in a battle for the hearts and minds of people around the globe during the early Cold War. Ultimately, however, the effort to develop a scientific basis for Soviet ideology undermined the system's legitimacy.
Book Synopsis Stalin and the Bomb by : David Holloway
Download or read book Stalin and the Bomb written by David Holloway and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.
Book Synopsis The Making of a Soviet Scientist by : R. Z. Sagdeev
Download or read book The Making of a Soviet Scientist written by R. Z. Sagdeev and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1994 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing with extraordinary candor, Dr. Sagdeev reveals startling details of the most politically sensitive scientific issues of the Cold War years. He identifies the key players in the Soviet nuclear weapons program (nearly all of whom he worked with) and recounts the internal battles over SDI technology and his own role in killing Russia's own "Star Wars" program.
Book Synopsis Stalin's Architect by : Deyan Sudjic
Download or read book Stalin's Architect written by Deyan Sudjic and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Boris Iofan—designer of the iconic but unbuilt Palace of the Soviets—whose buildings came to define the language of Soviet architecture. What would an architect do for the chance to build the tallest building in the world? What would he sacrifice to stay alive in the midst of Stalin’s murderous purges? This is the first major publication on the remarkable life and career of Boris Iofan (1891–1976), state architect to Joseph Stalin. Iofan’s story is an insight into the troubled relationship of all successful architects with power. A gifted designer and a committed Communist, Iofan became the Soviet Union’s most celebrated architect after Alexei Rykov, Lenin’s successor, persuaded him to return to Moscow from Rome with his aristocratic wife, Olga Sasso-Ruffo. Iofan was at the heart of political life in the Soviet Union and his work is key to understanding its official culture. When Stalin’s henchmen crushed the architectural avant-garde, it was Iofan who created the new national style, from the grand projects he realized—including the House on the Embankment, a megastructure of 505 homes for the Soviet elite—to even more ambitious unbuilt projects, in particular the Palace of the Soviets, a baroque Stalinist dream whose image was reproduced throughout the Soviet Union. His career took him to New York and Paris, and to the destroyed city of Stalingrad. He was a friend of Frank Lloyd Wright; a rival of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Erich Mendelsohn; and an enemy of Hitler’s architect Albert Speer, whose Nazi pavilion faced Iofan’s Soviet one at the Paris Expo in 1937. He kept silent when Stalin executed his friends, including Rykov; he also sacrificed his own talent by following the dictator’s instructions to the letter in creating the regime’s landmarks. Generously illustrated, with a wide range of previously unpublished material, this book is an exploration of architecture as an instrument of statecraft. It is an insight into the key moments of 20th-century politics and culture from a unique perspective, and the personal story of a remarkable individual who witnessed many of the most dramatic turning points of modern history.
Book Synopsis Science for the Masses by : James T. Andrews
Download or read book Science for the Masses written by James T. Andrews and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Science for the Masses, James T. Andrews presents a comprehensive history of the early Bolshevik popularization of science in Russia and the former Soviet Union."--Jacket.
Book Synopsis The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev by : Maria Rogacheva
Download or read book The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev written by Maria Rogacheva and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rogacheva sheds new light on the complex transition of Soviet society from Stalinism into the post-Stalin era. Using the case study of Chernogolovka, one of dozens of scientific towns built in the USSR under Khrushchev, she explains what motivated scientists to participate in the Soviet project during the Cold War. Rogacheva traces the history of this scientific community from its creation in 1956 through the Brezhnev period to paint a nuanced portrait of the living conditions, political outlook, and mentality of the local scientific intelligentsia. Utilizing new archival materials and an extensive oral history project, this book argues that Soviet scientists were not merely bought off by the Soviet state, but that they bought into the idealism and social optimism of the post-Stalin regime. Many shared the regime's belief in the progressive development of Soviet society on a scientific basis, and embraced their increased autonomy, material privileges and elite status.
Book Synopsis Models of Nature by : Douglas R. Weiner
Download or read book Models of Nature written by Douglas R. Weiner and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Models of Nature studies the early and turbulent years of the Soviet conservation movement from the October Revolution to the mid-1930s—Lenin's rule to the rise of Stalin. This new edition includes an afterword by the author that reflects upon the study's impact and discusses advances in the field since the book was first published.
Book Synopsis In the Name of the Great Work by : Doubravka Olšáková
Download or read book In the Name of the Great Work written by Doubravka Olšáková and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in 1948, the Soviet Union launched a series of wildly ambitious projects to implement Joseph Stalin’s vision of a total “transformation of nature.” Intended to increase agricultural yields dramatically, this utopian impulse quickly spread to the newly communist states of Eastern Europe, captivating political elites and war-fatigued publics alike. By the time of Stalin’s death, however, these attempts at “transformation”—which relied upon ideologically corrupted and pseudoscientific theories—had proven a spectacular failure. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in three communist states—Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia—and explores their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences.
Book Synopsis The Palace Complex by : Michał Murawski
Download or read book The Palace Complex written by Michał Murawski and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-22 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palace of Culture and Science is a massive Stalinist skyscraper that was "gifted" to Warsaw by the Soviet Union in 1955. Framing the Palace's visual, symbolic, and functional prominence in the everyday life of the Polish capital as a sort of obsession, locals joke that their city suffers from a "Palace of Culture complex." Despite attempts to privatize it, the Palace remains municipally owned, and continues to play host to a variety of public institutions and services. The Parade Square, which surrounds the building, has resisted attempts to convert it into a money-making commercial center. Author Michał Murawski traces the skyscraper's powerful impact on 21st century Warsaw; on its architectural and urban landscape; on its political, ideological, and cultural lives; and on the bodies and minds of its inhabitants. The Palace Complex explores the many factors that allow Warsaw's Palace to endure as a still-socialist building in a post-socialist city.
Book Synopsis The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin by : Erik van Ree
Download or read book The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin written by Erik van Ree and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-27 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the political thought of Joseph Stalin. Making full use of the documentation that has recently become available, including Stalin's private library with his handwritten margin notes, the book provides many insights on Stalin, and also on western and Russian Marxist intellectual traditions. Overall, the book argues that Stalin's political thought is not primarily indebted to the Russian autocratic tradition, but belongs to a tradition of revolutionary patriotism that stretches back through revolutionary Marxism to Jacobin thought in the French Revolution. It makes interesting comparisons between Stalin, Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky, and explains a great deal about the mindset of those brought up in the Stalinist era, and about the era's many key problems, including the industrial revolution from above, socialist cultural policy, Soviet treatment of nationalities, pre-war and Cold War foreign policy, and the purges.
