Gustav Naan

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Gustav Naan ( Russian Густав Иоганнович Наан ; born May 17, 1919 near Vladivostok , Russian SFSR ; † January 12, 1994 in Tallinn ) was an Estonian physicist and philosopher .

Life

Gustav Naan was born in a village in the Primorsky Krai into a family of Estonian resettlers. He graduated from Leningrad State University in 1941. During World War II he was active as a partisan on the Soviet side and in 1943 became a member of the Communist All- Union Party (Bolsheviks) (KAUP). After the war he returned to Estonia. As a loyal communist and a graduate of the KAUP Higher Party School (b) (1946), he published a number of polemical Stalinist articles. He looked at the history of Estonia from an orthodox communist point of view, for example in "Eesti kodanlike natsionalistide ideoloogia reaktsiooniline olemus" ("The reactionary essence of the ideology of the bourgeois nationalists", 1947). Naan was director of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR (1950-1951) and then Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR (1951-1964). Since 1964 Naan worked in the Estonian Institute of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Physics. He published theories in cosmology , cybernetics and especially demography , including taboo topics at the time (the growing divorce rates, sexuality). He later claimed that he was also one of the first to support the theory of relativity in the Soviet Union when Soviet rulers dismissed the theory as a pseudoscience . He represented the hypothesis of a symmetrical universe, according to which, in addition to the known universe, a universe consists of antimatter .

Gustav Naan was editor-in-chief of Eesti Nõukogude Entsüklopeedia ("Estonian Soviet Encyclopedia") from 1966 to 1989 .

Naan's articles, which he published in popular science magazines in particular in the 1970s, made him known in Estonia. However, when the Estonian public advocated liberalization of the Soviet regime and the independence of Estonia during the perestroika era, Naan's support for pro-Soviet political positions froze. He was a staunch opponent of the independence movement (the then very popular Estonian Popular Front ) and supported the Interfront , which was extremely unpopular with the Estonians. His political expressions of opinion were also published in Pravda (e.g. the derogatory article "From the feet on the head" ("С ног на голову" or "Kõik pea peale"), written in 1988 as a reaction to the "Declaration on sovereignty ”(November 16, 1988) followed by the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR). As a result of his pro-Soviet involvement, Naan lost his influence in the Estonian public and was only mentioned as an old "Arch Stalinist".

Naan's son, who is also called Gustav, is now an entrepreneur in Russia, his grandson Deniss Naan lives in Moscow and is a well-known pop musician.

Works

  • Gustav Naan: About the freedom of national development . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1956

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Naan's article was published in 1951 in the Soviet magazine Woprosy Filosofii , according to the source (in Estonian)
  2. ↑ Interfronten ( Memento of March 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Naan, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian physicist and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH near Vladivostok , Russian SFSR
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1994
Place of death Tallinn