Science in the Soviet Union

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The science in the Soviet Union was formally by the Marxist - Leninist dominated world view. On the one hand, the Soviet engineers and scientists achieved top achievements in the natural sciences and technology; on the other hand, the humanities and social sciences in particular in the Soviet Union were subject to a number of political taboos .

History of Soviet Science

The following important information is missing from this article or section:
Information on the Soviet Academy of Sciences, political persecution of Soviet scientists (science and Stalinist purges : case of Grigol Tsereteli 1937, dealing with Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov )
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Priority for industrialization and technology

After 1917 the scientific, technical and economic development of Soviet Russia accelerated and the industrialization , mechanization and literacy of the predominantly rural tsarist country increased in all of its republics. ( Soviet Republics )

" Communism equals Soviet power plus electrification " , this well-known expression by Lenin expressed the goals of the next few years, which went hand in hand with progress in all areas of Soviet science and technology, whose achievements and results were least of all due to the electrification of the 230 million euro State were characterized.

Notwithstanding strong obstacles, such as the civil war , the drought and the foreign military interventions in the 1920s with millions of victims, and the Stalinism in the 1930s , from which many scientists had to suffer, for example by staying in special prisons, the USSR could not least because of its Scientific and technical development will become economically and militarily a world power comparable to Germany and the United States within a few years . Even during and after the Second World War , the Soviet Union remained a major scientific and technical power comparable to the USA, France , England , Germany and Japan until its dissolution in 1991 ; despite the loss of 20-30 million people in World War II. Many scientists, engineers and technicians also fell victim to the war, as did tens of thousands of cities, factories, factories and plants.

Military-technical milestones in the post-war period were the arms race with the United States, the nuclear, chemical, biological and conventional armament with the atomic bomb , the hydrogen bomb and the nuclear submarines .

Particular successes in space travel

Space station Mir

In space technology, the Soviet Union was a world leader between 1957 and around 1968 and made numerous historic pioneering achievements:

In the Cold War , these successes were exploited as propaganda successes - much more intensely than those in the USA - and in some cases were terminated in connection with important state visits. The successes were often the expression of a race to catch up under time pressure, such as the construction of the first Soviet nuclear submarine , later known as the Leninsky Komsomol , which lagged behind its American counterpart.

After Stalin's death (1953), previously taboo research areas such as Mendel's theory of inheritance , the sociological theories of MN Petrovsky or linguistic structuralism could be dealt with again. Nevertheless, it was considered dangerous for Soviet scientists to officially cite Western researchers. Historical research was also subject to historical taboos until 1991, which concerned both the early medieval history of Russia ( Varangians ) and more recent contemporary history (the Katyn massacre ).

Synchrophasotron in Dubna

Whole cities with scientists and technicians emerged, such as the Dubna Nuclear Research Center , Star City , Akademgorodok in Siberia and the Science Center in Chernogolowka near Moscow with the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics . Such science cities were sometimes considered restricted areas .

Contrary to the opinion sometimes heard, neither cybernetics nor the advancement of the theory of evolution were forbidden in the USSR and GDR .

Milestones of Science in the USSR

  • 1954 Construction and operation of the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk near Moscow (output: 5 MW).
  • On December 5, 1957, the world's first atomic icebreaker was launched; he was called Lenin and was used for civil purposes from December 1959.
  • In 1958 the first computer ( Setun ) was developed that calculated with ternary numbers .
  • Discovery of supercavitation and construction of the first functional underwater supersonic drive based on this principle. As the first operational system, the Shkwal torpedo (Russian Шквал) was put into service by the Navy of the Soviet Union in 1977 after about ten years of development; its maximum speed is 370 km / h.
  • 1970 first controlled nuclear fusion with tokamak -3.
  • 1971 Completion of the world's first MHD generator "U-25" with an output of around 50 MW. Feeding into the Moscow power grid and use in research.

Other special services

Nobel Prize Winner

Cherenkov, 1958
Kapiza, 1964
Sakharov, 1989

Numerous Soviet scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize among other international prizes , such as:

Research suppressed in the Soviet Union

"Bourgeois Pseudoscience"

Genetics , cybernetics , sociology , semiotics and comparative linguistics were subsumed under the fighting term bourgeois pseudoscience , among other things and to different degrees . These areas of science, or certain interpretations of them, were viewed as incompatible with socialism and their exploration by the CPSU was suppressed. In addition, loyalty to the regime was a prerequisite for any scientific career.

History

The philosopher Karl Popper understands historicism to be the socialist theory that society will inevitably change, but along a predetermined path that cannot be changed, dictated by inevitable necessity. “ Social formation ” is the central term used for this in Marxist theory. This conspiracy theory shaped Soviet history and made it difficult to conduct unbiased historical research.

The history of the Russian Revolution was falsified under Stalinism . Stalin authorized the work ' Short Course in the History of the CPSU (B) ' from 1938 as historical truth: no Soviet publication was allowed to deviate from the picture drawn here. Access to Soviet archives was generally severely restricted and unpopular facts, for example about the Katyn massacre in 1940, were kept secret.

biology

genetics

Trofim Lyssenko propagated Lyssenkoism , that is the pseudoscientific Lamarckist idea that animals and plants could pass on acquired properties to their offspring via altered genetic makeup. This thesis was welcomed by Stalin, among others. In return, classical genetics and Mendelian inheritance theory were rejected as “counter-revolutionary” and research on fruit flies or other model organisms was dismissed as pointless or even bustling.

Lyssenko's competitor, the geneticist Nikolai I. Wawilow , was first taken into custody at Lyssenko's suggestion and then deported to Siberia, where he died in 1943.

Psychology and psychoanalysis

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Development from 1936
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The psychoanalysis advocated by Trotsky came under increasing criticism with his exclusion from the inner circle of the CPSU. The “bourgeois individualism ” and the essential importance of sexuality in Freud's theories were felt to be incompatible with socialist doctrine, socialist “ Freudo Marxists ” were marginalized and the State Institute for Psychoanalysis was closed in 1925. The Pavlovian reflex psychology was with the establishment of Stalinism as the only "politically correct" subspecies of psychology established. In 1936 Stalin banned the circulation and quotation of Freud's works completely.

medicine

Pedology

In the early Soviet Union of the 1920s, the state-sponsored science of pedology dealt, among other things, with the composition of school classes and with mentally handicapped and difficult to educate children. Pedology should not be confused with pedagogy.

physics

Theoretical physics

The quantum mechanics and relativity theory in physics were rejected personally by Stalin, as they may, the Marxist-Leninist materialist epistemology undermined. On the other hand, these findings were also indispensable for the theoretical background of the production of nuclear weapons , which the Soviet Union urgently needed.

cybernetics

Soviet cyberneticists sought to unify various cybernetic theories that had been worked out in the West - control theory , information theory , automaton theory , and others - into a single overarching conceptual framework that served as the basis for a general methodology for a wide range of social applications of cybernetics would serve.

In the early 1950s, amid a wave of Stalinist ideological campaigns against Western influence in Soviet science, cybernetics was branded as "fashionable pseudoscience " and "a reactionary imperialist utopia ."

Development since the turning point

Since Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985 , fewer state funds have flowed into the arms industry. Science was also affected. Many almost completed large projects and even more small projects were discontinued or restricted, many projects not started.

In the space sector, the reusable space shuttle Buran , which was once successfully flown and landed unmanned, was abandoned; as well as the strongest launch rocket Energija built so far (as of 2016) . The expansion of the MIR space station was restricted, the station was later deliberately crashed and replaced by work on the ISS.

In atomic technology, new powerful particle accelerators were canceled and work on nuclear fusion experiments was discontinued.

In the army, the modernization and maintenance of military technology was restricted. American investigations put the sinking of the nuclear submarine K-141 Kursk back on it.

Many Soviet scientists left the country around 1989 and tried to find a living in research facilities in other industrialized countries.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Info on U-25 on Books.Nap.edu (English)
  2. ^ Licenses from Moscow . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1957 ( online ).
  3. ^ "Extracts from The Open Society and Its Enemies Volume II". Retrieved November 16, 2014.
  4. ↑ cf. e.g. Jonathan Brent, Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia, Washington 2008.
  5. ↑ “Paper Trail”. Accessed November 16, 2014.
  6. ↑ “Uprising of the Heretics: Soviet Genetics”. Accessed November 16, 2014.
  7. ^ "History of Psychoanalysis in Russia". Accessed November 16, 2014.
  8. ↑ a b "Ethan Pollock - Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars"

See also

Web links