Repression of science in the Soviet Union

Many fields of scientific research in the Soviet Union were banned or suppressed with various justifications. All humanities and social sciences were tested for strict accordance with dialectical materialism. These tests served as a cover for political suppression of scientists who engaged in research labeled as "idealistic" or "bourgeois".<ref name="Graham 2004">Loren R. Graham (2004). Science in Russia and the Soviet Union. A Short History. Series: Cambridge Studies in the History of Science. Cambridge University Press. Template:ISBN</ref> Many scientists were fired, others were arrested and sent to Gulags. The suppression of scientific research began during the Stalin era and continued after his death.<ref>Loren R. Graham, Science and philosophy in the Soviet Union. New York, 1972 Template:ISBN</ref>

The ideologically motivated persecution damaged many fields of Soviet science.<ref name="Graham 2004"/><ref name="Walker 2002">Mark Walker (2002) Science and Ideology. A Comparative History. Series: Routledge Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Routledge. Template:ISBN</ref><ref name=":0" />

Examples

Biology

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} In the mid-1930s, the agronomist Trofim Lysenko started a campaign against genetics<ref>Hudson, P. S., and R. H. Richens. The New Genetics in the Soviet Union. Cambridge, UK: English School of Agriculture, 1946.</ref> and was supported by Stalin. If the field of genetics' connection to Nazis wasn't enough, Mendelian genetics was also suppressed due to beliefs that it was "bourgeoisie science" and its association with the priest Gregor Mendel due to hostility to religion because of the Soviet policy of state atheism.<ref name="George Sarton">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Charles Paton Blacker">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="George Aiken Taylord">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Australasian Association of Psychology and Philosophy">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Gregor Mendel: And the Roots of Genetics, Edward Edelson, p. 14. "Lysenko won the support of Joseph Stalin, the ruthless Soviet dictator, and Mendel's rules were officially outlawed in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Countries that it controlled at that time. Under Communism, the Mendel Museum in his monastery was closed."</ref>

In 1950, the Soviet government organized the Joint Scientific Session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, the "Pavlovian session". Several prominent Soviet physiologists (L.A. Orbeli, P.K. Anokhin, Template:Ill, Ivane Beritashvili) were accused of deviating from Pavlov's teaching. As a consequence of the Pavlovian session, Soviet physiologists were forced to accept a dogmatic ideology; the quality of physiological research deteriorated and Soviet physiology excluded itself from the international scientific community.<ref>Windholz G (1997) 1950 Joint Scientific Session: Pavlovians as the accusers and the accused. J Hist Behav Sci 33: 61–81.</ref> Later Soviet biologists heavily criticised Lysenko's theories and pseudo-scientific methods.

Cybernetics

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Cybernetics was also outlawed as bourgeois pseudoscience during Stalin's reign. Norbert Wiener's 1948 book Cybernetics was condemned and translated only in 1958. A 1954 edition of the Brief Philosophical Dictionary condemned cybernetics for "mechanistically equating processes in live nature, society and in technical systems, and thus standing against materialistic dialectics and modern scientific physiology developed by Ivan Pavlov".<ref>«Кибернетика», Краткий философский словарь под редакцией М. Розенталя и П. Юдина (издание 4, дополненное и исправленное, Государственное издательство политической литературы, 1954.</ref> (However this article was removed from the 1955 reprint of the dictionary.) After an initial period of doubts, Soviet cybernetics took root, but this early attitude hampered the development of computing in the Soviet Union.

History

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Soviet historiography (the way in which history was and is written by scholars of the Soviet Union<ref>It is not the history of the Soviet Union. See definitions of historiography for more details.</ref>) was significantly influenced by the strict control by the authorities aimed at propaganda of communist ideology and Soviet power.

Since the late 1930s, Soviet historiography treated the party line and reality as one and the same.<ref name="Osipova">Taisia Osipova, Peasant rebellions: Origin, Scope, Design and Consequences, in Vladimir N. Brovkin (ed.), The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars, Yale University Press, 1997, Template:ISBN. Google Print, pp. 154–76</ref> As such, if it was a science, it was a science in service of a specific political and ideological agenda, commonly employing historical negationist methods.<ref name="Markwick">Roger D. Markwick, Donald J. Raleigh, Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, Template:ISBN, Google Print, pp. 4–5</ref> In the 1930s, historic archives were closed and original research was severely restricted. Historians were required to pepper their works with references – appropriate or not – to Stalin and other "Marxist-Leninist classics", and to pass judgment – as prescribed by the Party – on pre-revolution historic Russian figures.<ref name="keep">John L. H. Keep: A History of the Soviet Union 1945–1991: Last of the Empires, pap. 30–31</ref>

Many works of Western historians were forbidden or censored, many areas of history were also forbidden for research as, officially, they never happened.<ref name="Ferro">Ferro, Marc (2003). The Use and Abuse of History: Or How the Past Is Taught to Children. London; New York: Routledge. Template:ISBN. See Chapters 8 Aspects and variations of Soviet history and 10 History in profile: Poland.</ref> Translations of foreign historiography were often produced in a truncated form, accompanied with extensive censorship and corrective footnotes. For example, in the Russian 1976 translation of Basil Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War pre-war purges of Red Army officers, the secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, many details of the Winter War, the occupation of the Baltic states, the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Western Allied assistance to the Soviet Union during the war, many other Western Allies' efforts, the Soviet leadership's mistakes and failures, criticism of the Soviet Union and other content were censored out.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Of note was the ban of the theory about the Varangian origin of Kievan Rus for ideological reasons.<ref>Leo S. Klein, "The Russian controversy over the Varangians", p.29</ref>

Linguistics

At the beginning of Stalin's rule, the dominant figure in Soviet linguistics was Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, who argued that language is a class construction and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as People's Commissar for Nationalities, read a letter by Arnold Chikobava criticizing the theory. He "summoned Chikobava to a dinner that lasted from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. taking notes diligently."<ref>Montefiore. p. 638, Phoenix, Reprinted paperback.</ref> In this way he grasped enough of the underlying issues to oppose this simplistic Marxist formalism, ending Marr's ideological dominance over Soviet linguistics. Stalin's principal work in the field was a small essay, "Marxism and Linguistic Questions."<ref>Joseph V. Stalin (1950-06-20). "Concerning Marxism in Linguistics", Pravda. Available online as Marxism and Problems of Linguistics including other articles and letters also published in Pravda soon after February 8 and July 4, 1950.</ref>

The term "semiotics" was banned, and the researchers used the obfuscated term "secondary modeling systems" (Template:Langx) coined by Juri Lotman and Vladimir Uspensky in 1964;<ref>N.V. Poselyagin, О понятии «Вторичные моделирующие системы»: из истории раннего российского структурализма, Вестник РУДН, серия Теория языка. Семиотика. Семантика, 2010, No 1, CyberLeninka, also here</ref> see Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School.

Pedology

Pedology was a popular area of research on the basis of numerous orphanages created after the Russian Civil War. Soviet pedology was a combination of pedagogy and psychology of human development, that heavily relied on various tests. It was officially banned in 1936 after a special decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union "On Pedolodical Perversions in the Narkompros System" on July 4, 1936.

Physics

In the late 1940s, some areas of physics, were also criticized on grounds of "idealism".

In quantum mechanics Soviet physicists Dmitry Blokhintsev, Yaakov Terletsky and K. V. Nikolsky developed a version of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of dialectical materialism.<ref>Olival Freire Jr.: Marxism and the Quantum Controversy: Responding to Max Jammer's Question Template:Webarchive</ref><ref>Péter Szegedi Cold War and Interpretations in Quantum Mechanics</ref>

Special and general relativity were a matter of controversy among the Soviet scientists since 1920. Some of them argued that this theory is grounded in Machism (acutely criticized by Vladimir Lenin in his Materialism and Empiriocriticism), others were a group of so-called "mechanists" (see Template:Ill), later "Young Stalinists" joined the ranks of the relativity theory. At the same time a considerable number of prominent Soviet physicists defended the relativity theory. The attacks on the relativity theory intensified in 1949 under the auspices of the struggle against the "physical idealism" in the work of Leonid Mandelstam. Initially Sergey Vavilov, President of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, managed to defend Mandelstam, but in 1952 the political attacks on "reactionary Einsteinianism" intensified further. This pseudoscientific campaign sizzled after the death of Stalin.<ref name=vyzvy>Вячеслав Звягинцев, Как в СССР боролись и почти победили теорию относительности</ref>

Although initially planned,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> the process of "ideological cleansing" in physics did not go as far as defining an "ideologically correct" version of physics and purging those scientists who refused to conform to it, because this was recognized as potentially too harmful to the Soviet nuclear program.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> During 1949-1951 there was "antiresonance campaign" against the theory of resonance, during which scientists who supported it were accused of "cosmopolitan" sympathies and repressed.<ref name=":0" /> As Anna Krylov writes on the perils of ideological intrusion into science, "Stalin rolled back the planned campaign against physics and instructed Beria to give physicists some space; this led to significant advances and accomplishments by Soviet scientists in several domains. However, neither Stalin nor the subsequent Soviet leaders were able to let go of the controls completely. Government control over science turned out to be a grand failure, and the attempt to patch the widening gap between the West and the East by espionage did not help. Today Russia is hopelessly behind the West in both technology and quality of life."<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Sociology

After the Russian Revolution, sociology was gradually "politicized, Bolshevisized and eventually, Stalinized".<ref name=eaw8-9>Elizabeth Ann Weinberg, The Development of Sociology in the Soviet Union, Taylor & Francis, 1974, Template:ISBN, Google Print, pp. 8–9</ref> In 1920s a position had formed in the Soviet Union that historical materialism is in fact Marxist sociology, and the major discussion was whether to use the terms "sociology" and "historical materialism" synonymously or to abandon the term "sociology" altogether and consider it to be an anti-Marxist bourgeois science.<ref>Романова Александра Владимировна, Развитие социологии в СССР</ref> From 1930s to 1950s, the independent discipline of sociology virtually ceased to exist in the Soviet Union.<ref name=eaw8-9/> Even in the era where it was allowed to be practiced, and not replaced by Marxist philosophy, it was always dominated by Marxist thought; hence sociology in the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc represented, to a significant extent, only one branch of sociology: Marxist sociology.<ref name=eaw8-9/> With the death of Joseph Stalin and the 20th Party Congress in 1956, restrictions on sociological research were somewhat eased, and finally, after the 23rd Party Congress in 1966, sociology in Soviet Union was once again officially recognized as an acceptable branch of science.<ref name=eaw11>Elizabeth Ann Weinberg, The Development of Sociology in the Soviet Union, p.11</ref>

Reliability of data

The quality (accuracy and reliability) of data published in the Soviet Union and used in historical research is another issue raised by various Sovietologists.<ref name="Eberstadt">Nicholas Eberstadt and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Tyranny of Numbers: Mismeasurement and Misrule, American EnterpriseInstitute, 1995, Template:ISBN, Google Print, p.138-140</ref><ref name="reflections">Robert Conquest Reflections on a Ravaged Century (2000) Template:ISBN, page 101</ref><ref name="Hewett"/><ref name="Dronin"/> The Marxist theoreticians of the Party considered statistics as a social science; hence many applications of statistical mathematics were curtailed, particularly during the Stalin era.<ref name="Salsburg"/> Under central planning, nothing could occur by accident.<ref name="Salsburg">David S. Salsburg, The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, Owl Books, 2001, Template:ISBN, Google Print, pp. 147–149</ref> The law of large numbers and the idea of random deviation were decreed as "false theories".<ref name="Salsburg"/> Statistical journals and university departments were closed; world-renowned statisticians like Andrey Kolmogorov and Eugen Slutsky abandoned statistical research.<ref name="Salsburg"/>

As with all Soviet historiography, reliability of Soviet statistical data varied from period to period.<ref name="Dronin">Nikolai M. Dronin, Edward G. Bellinger, Climate Dependence And Food Problems In Russia, 1900–1990, Central European University Press, 2005, Template:ISBN, Google Print, pp. 15–16</ref> The first revolutionary decade and the period of Stalin's dictatorship both appear highly problematic with regards to statistical reliability; very little statistical data was published from 1936 to 1956 (see Soviet Census (1937)).<ref name="Dronin"/> The reliability of data improved after 1956 when some missing data was published and Soviet experts themselves published some adjusted data for Stalin's era;<ref name="Dronin"/> however the quality of documentation deteriorated.<ref name="Hewett"/>

While on occasion statistical data useful in historical research might have been completely invented by the Soviet authorities,<ref name="reflections"/> there is little evidence that most statistics were significantly affected by falsification or insertion of false data with the intent to confound the West.<ref name="Hewett">Edward A. Hewett, Reforming the Soviet Economy: Equality Versus Efficiency, Brookings Institution Press, 1988, Template:ISBN, Google Print, p.7 and following chapters</ref> Data was however falsified both during collection – by local authorities who would be judged by the central authorities based on whether their figures reflected the central economy prescriptions – and by internal propaganda, with its goal to portray the Soviet state in most positive light to its very citizens.<ref name="Eberstadt"/><ref name="Dronin"/> Nonetheless, the policy of not publishing, or simply not collecting, data that was deemed unsuitable for various reasons was much more common than simple falsification; hence there are many gaps in Soviet statistical data.<ref name="Hewett"/> Inadequate or lacking documentation for much of Soviet statistical data is also a significant problem.<ref name="Eberstadt"/><ref name="Hewett"/><ref name="Dronin"/>

Theme in literature

• Vladimir Dudintsev, White Garments (1987), a fictionalized story about Soviet geneticists working during the Lysenkoism era

See also

• Academic freedom
• Antiscience
• Anti-intellectualism
• Bourgeois pseudoscience
• Censorship in the Soviet Union
• Deutsche Physik
• First Department
• Historical negationism
• Political correctness
• Politicization of science
• Science and technology in the Soviet Union
• Soviet historiography
• Alexander Veselovsky, a case of suppressed literary research
• Stalin and the Scientists

References

• Я. В. Васильков, М. Ю. Сорокина (eds.), Люди и судьбы. Биобиблиографический словарь востоковедов жертв политического террора в советский период (1917–1991) ("People and Destiny. Bio-Bibliographic Dictionary of Orientalists – Victims of the political terror during the Soviet period (1917–1991)"), Петербургское Востоковедение (2003). online edition