E-Book Overview
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.
E-Book Content
S Stalin’s Great Science The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists
This page intentionally left blank
History of Modern Physical Sciences – Vol. 2
Stalin’s Great Science The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists
Alexei B. Kojevnikov University of Georgia, Athens, USA Institute for History of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia
ICP
Imperial College Press
Published by Imperial College Press 57 Shelton Street Covent Garden London WC2H 9HE Distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224 USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover illustration: “Mass celebration on the occasion of the opening of Second Congress of Comintern, Uritsky square [in front of the Winter Palace – AK], Petrograd, 1921,” painting by Boris Kustodiev. Two figures dressed in black jackets are easily identifiable physicists P. L. Kapitza (with the pipe) and N. N. Semenov. The artist had recently met two young and arrogant graduates of the Petrograd Polytechical Institute, who told him that one day they would become very famous. He agreed to paint their portraits, but recycled one of the sketches and included the same characters in a larger painting of an outdoor mass performance, typical of the revolutionary era. Eventually, both Semenov and Kapitza won Nobel Prizes, the former in chemistry for the discovery of chemical chain reactions, the latter in physics for discoveries and inventions related to liquid helium.
STALIN’S GREAT SCIENCE The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists Copyright © 2004 by Imperial College Press All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any m