Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars

by Ethan Pollock

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 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.

Genres: Soviet Union, Science, History, Russia, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 21, 2006

Reviews

[Megi Kartsivadze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended for those interested in the correlation between science and politics, especially within the scope of the Soviet 'psychedelia':))) it describes the impact Stalinist policy had on various scientific fields such as biology, philosophy, linguistics, physiology, physics and economics by examining the Soviet archives, revealing Stalin's active interference in scientific discussions. The most appealing aspect of this book for me is that although it is basically focused on past events, particular explanation for the ongoing processes in the Post Soviet scientific area can be found in it.

[Gerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became interested in this book a number of yeArs after completing a. Open University Course in International Politics. It struck m a chord with my interest in the planning. Debate and in the remarkable though forced developments in Soviet society during the Post war period.