Stalin and the Scientists

by Simon Ings

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

War-torn, unstable and virtually bankrupt, revolutionary Russia tried to light its way to the future with the fitful glow of science. It succeeded through terror, folly and crime - but also through courage, imagination and even genius. Stalin believed that science should serve the state and with many disciplines having virtually unlimited funds, by the time of his death in 1953, the Soviet Union boasted the largest and best-funded scientific establishment in history - at once the glory and the laughing stock of the intellectual world. The human cost of this peculiar marriage between the state and its scientists was horrendous, yet, in Stalin and the Scientists, Simon Ings makes clear what Soviet science has done for us.

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

508 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2016

About the author

I began by writing science fiction stories, novels and films, before disappearing down various rabbit-holes: perception (The Eye: A Natural History), 20th-century radical politics (The Weight of Numbers), the shipping system (Dead Water) and augmented reality (Wolves). I co-founded and edited Arc magazine, a digital publication about the future, before joining New Scientist magazine as its arts editor. Now I eke out a freelance living in possibly the coldest flat in London, writing arts reviews for the newspapers. My latest non-fiction is Stalin and the Scientists, a history of Soviet science. My latest novel is The Smoke.

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is unsurprising to read that Stalin demanded science and scientists to first and foremost serve the Soviet state, their work at all times to reflect the politics of the ruling party, and that this didn't exactly work out how he imagined, especially as he took party will=Stalin's will. Yet what Ings presents here is a well researched and complex picture of the relationship between the leader and scientists/ intellectuals within Russia that had its failures, but some successes too. That I wasn't expecting. Ings may criticise the irrationality and devastating failure, but he doesn't do it from a position of superiority, but as another flawed human. As such, we see the parallels he makes with contemporary political and scientific decision making, lambasting recent failure to take into account the food and other resources we need to meet demands, waiting for scientists to pull us out of the fire with some last minute save.

As with Hitler, it is clear that Stalin saw the significance of scientific endeavour to the internal and external power of the state, but he too believed that its direction should be moulded by his will. Science was thus subverted by party politics, or Stalin's personal desires, and only those following the party line got to play. Conversely, those who could reel out the right slogans got a seat at the table, regardless of the viability of their 'science'. His favourite scientist, Lysenko, seemed to see will as the single most important factor in scientific endeavour, the ultimate version of the 'if you want it enough, it'll happen' philosophy. The idea was conceived as a positive one 'If you are pure and focused- this was the Bolshevik promise- then the physical world will shape itself to your will. [..] Above all, do not accommodate reality: it will only scatter your effort' [loc 7185]. Yet as some of the evidence makes clear, will alone did not solve Russia's issues with famine or child mortality. Throughout the book, the repeated threat to human life in Russia is staggering. Meanwhile, Stalin becomes obsessed with growing lemons. It's both tragic and bizarre.

Such could be said of the whole book. I think the only reason it works so well is due to Ings ability to be entertaining. It makes the reading experience a somewhat strange one, but never boring.


Thanks to Simon Ings, Faber & Faber, and Netgalley for the chance to read this review copy. All opinions are my own.

[Bettie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review under spoiler until nearer publication date, however I can give this a 5* and tell you that the paper book is a must for my home library.

Description: Scientists throughout history, from Galileo to today’s experts on climate change, have often had to contend with politics in their pursuit of knowledge. But in the Soviet Union, where the ruling elites embraced, patronized, and even fetishized science like never before, scientists lived their lives on a knife edge. The Soviet Union had the best-funded scientific establishment in history. Scientists were elevated as popular heroes and lavished with awards and privileges. But if their ideas or their field of study lost favor with the elites, they could be exiled, imprisoned, or murdered. And yet they persisted, making major contributions to 20th century science.

Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the Revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine.

But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics.

Available on NetGalley

Powerful, eye-opening start to the prologue: Every year, between 1550 and 1800, Russia conquered territory the size of today's Netherlands, until, in the eighteenth century, it dawned on European writers that Russia had become larger than the surface of the visible moon.
With no natural geographical boundaries to speak of, Russia's only means of defence was to control its neighbours, using them as buffers against possible attack.

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was a Russian, Ukrainian, and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry.

Alexander Mikhaylovich Butlerov was a Russian chemist, one of the principal creators of the theory of chemical structure (1857–1861)

How Mendeleev Invented His Periodic Table in a Dream

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably not a book I would have chosen for myself, but I was given a copy, and I found it compulsively readable, informative and surprisingly relevant to the world of Trump, Johnson and other truth-resistant populists.

Ings's starting point was the psychologist Luria, and his account is quite heavily skewed towards biological sciences (and a little physics), but the range is impressive. This is by no means a straight denunciation of Stalin, though his role in supporting bad science and the way this contributed directly to the great famines is ruthlessly exposed - there were a surprising number of achievements too, and as Ings points out in his concluding section, recent governments have not always been blameless in their dealings with science either.

[Seymour Millen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Covers western Russian history from the late 1800's to early Khrushchev era, with a particular emphasis on the biologists of the era, though some physicists and psychologists are also featured. The pulpy title is quite misleading: Stalin himself barely features in the first third, and his particular impact on Soviet science is not the primary investigation of the book. The book also looks mainly at biology and Lysenkoism, not scientists in general- anyone expecting an equally thorough examination of Soviet physics, or the nascent space program, will be disappointed.

The book is also more interested in Soviet history more generally, with political history informing the structure of the book more than scientific and technological development. This is a shame, since the book's historical understanding is quite poor, and the basic themes and grasp of events could be found in any GCSE textbook on the era. If it is meant to be a chiefly historical text, it is inconsistently referenced, has occasionally glaring errors (p.31: Trotsky is said to be head of the Mensheviks, when this was actually Julius Martov), and has an overly intrusive author who is too willing to provide unwarranted personal opinions instead of letting the facts speak for themselves.

The book is slightly better at covering Soviet scientists and the political and historical conditions they dealt with, though their actual work, and discoveries are not covered in any great detail, with the exception of Lysenko, who gets a repeated savaging throughout. The biographies of the figures involved are tied together in a temporal sense, but overall the book fails to coalesce into anything greater on the topic of politics and science in an unbelievably turbulent country and era. Apart from anything else, this creates quite a repetitive rhythm to the book, where one chapter passes much like the last.

Given the subject matter, the book could have been much more interesting and relevant.

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Stalin and the Scientists' by Simon Ings

4 stars/ 8 out of 10

I have previously read a lot about Trofim Lysenko, and had many discussions about him; so I was interested to read this book in order to find out more about him and his contemporaries, and the environment in which they lived and worked.

Simon Ings has written a detailed and clearly expressed book, about scientists in Russia during the period from 1905 to 1953. In addition to the bibliography, each chapter has informative endnotes.

There is a prologue covering the period 1856 to 1905, which provides an explanatory background for the rest of the book.

Part 1 covers 1905 to 1929. As I read this, I realised that there were several Russian scientists from this period whom I already knew something about: Luria, Pavlov and Vygotsky. This helped provide me with a context for the many unknown scientists that were introduced to me in this part. There were so many issues raised in this section that interested me eg: the shocking severity of the famines in Russia throughout the period, the work by Muller on genes, some of the details relating to eugenics and sterilisation in many countries. Other things I found fascinating included Kammerer and his toads, and Lenin's brain.

Part 2 covers 1929 to 1941. It starts with the background to the rise to power of Stalin. The most interesting sections here for me related to Luther Burbank (the American plantsman), Gorky, Stakhanov, and the Great Purge. Lysenko appears as an overarching theme in both this Part, and in Part 3 of the book, which covers 1941 to 1953. Part 3 was interesting regarding the change in the role of specialists during this period. I learnt here of Timofeev-Ressovsky, whom I had never known about previously, and also gained much more knowledge about the gulag camps, and about the development of the Russian nuclear programme.

Simon Ings has a clear and enjoyable writing style, suitable for a non-specialist audience. The book contains a lot of political history, which is necessary in order to put the developments in the scientific fields into context. I feel that I have learnt a lot from this book, and I recommend it to anybody who is interested in this period in Russian history, or is interested in science in general.

Thank you to Faber and Faber Ltd and to NetGalley for an ARC.

[Carol Kean · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Russia’s political elites embraced science, patronized it, fetishized it and even tried to impersonate it,” Simon Ings writes in “Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy 1905-1953.”

Ings takes a light tone with the dark history of a nation so big, it has “more surface area than the visible moon”(eep! I still haven’t web-surfed that one, but I trust it must be so). All that land, yet most of it cannot sustain its population. A full third of this empire is in the permanent grip of ice and snow. Where the soil is fertile, the climate is cold. In warmer regions, the soil is poor. There’s a narrow belt of fertile black earth with enough rainfall to grow crops.

In Russia there were no institutions for reformers to reform; no councils, no unions, no guilds, few roads, schools or hospitals. “For the masses, modernization consisted of containment, regimentation, curfew and exemplary punishment.”

What a country!

“Quite simply, whenever capitalism tried to penetrate Russia’s heartland, it caught a cold and died,” Ings quips.

So many fascinating facts and insights in this history of Russian scientists, particularly under Stalin! I want to comment on every chapter, but I also want to read dozens more books, and it's ever a balancing act, deciding how much to rave about one book before moving on to the next one. "The Patriots" by Sana Krasikov is the next Russian-themed novel on my list. I loved "The Bear and the Nightingale" by Katherine Arden, which reads like a fairy tale.

This book is straight non-fiction, but Simon Ings brings it to life with a conversational tone, as if telling us these stories over a pitcher of beer (er, vodka!). He makes the Russian people *real* in a way that history books seldom do.

Below, some of my favorite excerpts:

-- Alexander Romanovich Luria, in a career full of astonishing achievements, accomplished the extraordinary feat of leading a normal life. He betrayed no one, nor was he betrayed. He led a happy family life.

-- Austrian scientist Enrst “Speed of Sound” Mach argued that science makes no pronouncements about ultimate reality. One body of knowledge can lead scientists to several, equally valid conclusions. Lenin hated Mach’s “empirionmonism."

-- “The Bolsheviks’ philosophy preached optimism as a virtue, even a moral duty.”

-- “The communist ideal did not fail; it was never really tried.” The shadow of the Prussian solution over all. Western commentators bemoaned Russia’s failure to adopt capitalism: without a free market, how would Russia ever emerge from a dark age?

-- A Russian poet in 1906 returned from Stockholm to St Peterbsurg, and you must read the book to see why this caught my eye. It's sad. That's all I want to say about that.

-- Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture took tsarist megalomania to new depths.

-- Stalin believed science should serve the state. Pure research was counterproductive. Politicians, philosophers, and scientists intruded onto each other’s turf.

Ings summarizes the most life changing work of scientists before Stalin’s time: Edwin Hubble measuring the distance to the nearer spiral galaxies, for example, and Marconi’s longwave radio signals.

With the transformative and traumatic 20th Century, impatient believers turned on the scientific community and demanded that the future happen right away. Gone was the mutual understanding that characterized 19th Century Europe’s religion, science and politics. Stalin “invested recklessly in Russian science even while having individual scientists sacked, imprisoned, murdered”– many vanished without a trace. Psychoanalysis was made illegal.

If this review makes me look lazy, allow me to share the Outline:

Part One: Control (1905-1929) )
Scholars, revolutionaries, entrepreneurs, workers

Part Two: Power (1929-1941
Eccentrics, office politics,

Part Three: Dominion (1941-1953)
Lysenko

I read the book, and others should, too. I just can't justify taking time to write the review it deserves.

NOTE: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest feedback.

[SergeyVystoropskyi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a several remarks about this book:
1) Authors attempts to explain caveats of Russian language
- author says that there is no work "scientist" in Russian, the closest analog is "ученный"(uchenniy) which means educated. Remark is correct for 17-th century Russian. This day it means nothing else except scientist.
- Russian does not have a word for favor, it actually does: "услуга"(usluga).
2) WW2 description, I might be wrong here but author says that that in 4-6 weeks Minsk was taken, that sounds to soon.
3) Stalin appears only in the middle of the book.
4) The book is not really about science in general, it is almost completely devoted to biology, agronomy and genetics

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley.

Even a casual student of Soviet history must remark upon the strange relationship the USSR had with science. It forms major themes in specialist works by historians such as Stephen Kotkin and Loren Graham, and forms an undercurrent in works by Robert Conquest and others. Whereas these writers use Soviet science as a way to explore the internal contradictions which ended the experiment in Socialism, Simon Ings is far more interested in the reason why Soviet science had such a relationship with the state.

For this reason, Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953, is probably best understood as the story of Trofim Lysenko. This is not to say that the book follows Lysenko exclusively, but rather the rise and dominance of the man and his pseudoscientific theories is the climax and falling action of the narrative. The work “describes what…failure meant to a state that justified itself through science, and regarded its own science, Marxism, as the capstone…” Lysenko was the origin of many failures.

Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer based in Britain, and this is his second foray into book-length non-fiction. Similar to Loren Graham’s Ghost of the Executed Engineer, Ings approaches his rather broad topic from the perspective of individuals in Russia and the Soviet Union. Beginning with members of the first generation of scientists who were born and educated under the Tsarist bureaucracy, Ings tracks the general trends in Russian science. Under the Tsar, science was recently brought into a similar state as the rest of Europe; with a national academy of sciences being formed and research institutes beginning to be established, albeit with less capital investment. Russia was, and is, capital poor. These Tsarist experts became necessary for the very existence of the Soviet state: whether it was army officers, engineers, factory managers, or, even, biologists. Under Lenin, these experts were generally accepted and flourished, especially during the NEP.

This intellectual prosperity changes, however, when Stalin begins to solidify power. Philosophically, Socialism could not fail: so therefore failures needed to be blamed on something. These scapegoats could be under foreign influence, as many scientists were claimed to be. Because Germany was a leader in science, and rapidly fell to Nazism, those who followed German theories were easy targets. Other groups were associated with left or right opposition groups, mostly fictional, but nevertheless always lurking in shadows. Some were “wreckers”, counter-revolutionary figures intentionally damaging the Soviet system. But, most victims of Stalin’s terror were people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The constant failures of the political system to accomplish its goals led the government to create a frenzy of internal enemies, neighbors denounced neighbors, children their parents, and scientists their lab partners. Quotas of arrests, deportations, and executions ensured that the innocent would be punished.

Into this arose Trofim Lysenko. A peasant, he rose through the bureaucracy based on his political acumen rather than his scientific abilities. Politically correct in a system which required it, his particular brand of quackery rapidly became the state scientific gospel. He is the central figure in the narrative for good reason. Lysenko was a man who took the rather normal concept of vernalization and used it as a hammer against genetics. This simple biological concept is so central to science that it destroyed the intellectual abilities of generations of Soviet scientists. Notable exceptions include nuclear research and the Soviet space program. As useful as Lysenkos could be in controlling knowledge, neither Stalin or any other leader allowed quackery into what really mattered.

Stalin and the Scientists is very readable, which is the best thing going for it. It was originally published in Britain last year; this is a review of the US release. So, it is a polished work. Ings is able to use his experience as a science writer to condense some very dense and technical science into easy-to-understand language. As an historian, I appreciated this quite a bit. While he isn’t bringing much new to the table—he appears to use entirely secondary or published primary sources; and only English-language (or translated)—he doesn’t claim to be reinventing the wheel. He lacks a clear argument, but succeeds in his stated goals for the book. While specialists will find little they are not aware of, it nevertheless serves an important role in the literature of Soviet history. I can recommend this book highly to casual readers, students, and non-specialists looking to bone up on the era of Stalin.

[Bernard O'Leary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really the story of Trofim Lysenko, a Rasputin type who dominated early Soviet science with a tangle of lies and manipulation. It's a fascinating story with plenty to chew on regarding the dangers of groupthink and utopianism.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't believe how much they messed everything up by being fanboys of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Of all the scientists to pick you choose him?? Insane to think they got anything done at all.

[Kiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting premise and I did learn new things about Soviet genetics, agriculture and the nuclear bomb project. However, the books main focus is biology and the lives of the scientists rather than Soviet scientific policies, ideologies and general trends which was disappointing. Additionally, Stalin's views on science barely featured, which was a shame as finding out about that was one of the biggest appeals of the book for me.

[Martin Chudik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vynikajúce. So záberom širším ako by indikoval názov.

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is actually not that much Stalin in this book all things considered, with most of the first third being devoted to what it meant to practice science in the early Soviet Union, Though since much of the story is being told through the prism of the Lysenko Affair, the “Boss” is a big part of this tale. As for what is really going on, Ings is examining how the pretensions of Marxists to being the practitioners of a science conflicted with the actual practice of theoretical science. The foundational issue is that the Marxist conception of science was a very mechanistic and reductionist affair and they had a hard time dealing with the efflorescence of nuclear physics; at the very least these developments profoundly disturbed Lenin enough to write a very wrong-headed essay criticizing the new physics.

Even more problematic though were what developments in the human and life sciences meant for the Bolshevik program. The implications there being that the Bolshevik ambition to be “engineers of human souls” was not achievable, and this was a total anathema. As it was, it took the demise of Stalin, and the craze for Cybernetics, to finally put Lysenko in his place, whereas my impression is that Russian psychology and psychiatry has only started to recover in the wake of the fall of the Soviet state.

The note that Ings chooses to conclude on is to make a nod to Nicolai Fedorov and Russian Cosmism, with its twin obsessions of perfecting humanity and transcending the natural world, if one only had enough will and enough knowledge; the implication there being that the natural world was expendable in the pursuit of perfection and immortality. Ings actually has some respect for this vision, not to mention the desperate Soviet efforts to transform society with the weak tools at hand. What Ings looks askance at in the end is our version of scientism in the West, which allows us to entertain delusions that our power will always allow us transcend our own burn rate in regards to natural resources that have a hard cap.

Originally written: August 1, 2018.

[Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a great deal more that I would have liked this book to have covered. Essentially the science covered was the politicized science, psychology, genetics, and nuclear physics. I would have liked to have seen chemistry and engineering addresses (particularly with regard to the military). However, this book is replete with anecdotes. The problem Russia had with science was that it was supposed to operate within the context of Marxism. Marx was supposed to be the connective tissue that would create a unified field theory that united all the sciences under one roof. It is not unlike the way Christianity works among right wing Republican circles today. Ideology, as usual, led to bizarre choices. The state, seeking to undermine the view that science was the product of well educated elites, sought to capture the insights tfw gifted amateur. This led to every crackpot, with the right class struggle credentials, making his way to Kremlin and undermining Soviet science. The Soviet insistence that genetics was “fake news” and the more politically correct “science” of Lysenko was correct is the most notorious example. In contrast, no such nonsense was permitted in nuclear physics. Ideology was all well and good, but it wouldn’t be allowed to interfere with the defense of the nation and Stalin’s decision to build a bomb. This is an excellent rundown on the story of Soviet science and the corruption exercised by official ideology in the decision making process.

[Darren · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Interesting but widely inconsistent seems to be the first sentence of every review of every non-fiction book I read this year. This book has moments that were truly fascinating, but you've got to wade through pages and pages of confusing off-shoots and timeline back and forths in order to get there.

[Shabbeer Hassan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when half-baked scientific ideas meshed with vague political ideas become an ideology and is used by ignoramus politicians to wield power? The answer inevitably is a dictatorship and in many cases like the erstwhile Soviet Union, genocide, slavery and labour camps.

An excellent book which traverses a vast swathe of Soviet scientific history during the egomaniacal times of Tsars, Lenin, Stalin and rest of the ideology waving coterie. What we see were people like Vavilov, Vernadsky, Levit, Chetverikov, Karpechenko, Orbeli, Beritov and others either being killed or shoved into gulags & sharashki's, all in the name of a vague ideology. Lysenko and his cronies are also to be blamed and quite heavily so, in thwarting science and condemning brilliant scientists.

The old adage comes to mind which summarises this book rather neatly:

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

My Rating - 4.5/5

[Ján · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although disjointed at times, this is a great overview of the relationship between the autocracy and scientific research. In short: if you are a loyal idiot, like Lysenko, you can amass immense power over actual scientists and you can - and will - actually kill people with your stupidity. This scenario repeats itself many times over in different fields, from agriculture to physics. It's really sad to see how many lives and years of effort have been wasted simply because the correct thinking was not fitting the Communist dogma. In essence, every real scientist in Russia during the Communist regime has been prosecuted, jailed, killed or driven to exile. The scientific advances - from nuclear bomb to cosmic flights - have happened despite, not thanks to, the Stalin's autocracy. Sad, enlightening reading.

[Ivan Lyutskanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Stalin and the Scientists" tells the story of the scientific community in the early years of the Soviet Union. While it leaves a trace of benevolence towards the communist regime, it objectively outlines the challenges faced by science and its priests during the era. Unfortunately, it concentrates predominantly on genetics and biology, whereas it somewhat ignores other disciplines. Overall, the book is very informative on multiple biographies, Soviet political decisions and the international situation in the first half of the 20th century. Furthermore, it presents the dangers of politicians deciding which science is correct or wrong in the context not only of personal tragedies, but also of macroeconomic catastrophes.

[Louise Driscoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was incredibly interesting to learn how the Soviet Union repeatedly praised and vilified scientists as well as pointing out how science can be biased (looking at u, Trofim Lysenko). Also I love how Simon Ings is so sassy.

I did find this quite hard to read as there are lots of “plot lines” & individuals dip in and out, but I’ve been told this is normal for soviet history. Also, I like how the book is laid out based on what branch of science is being discussed but that sometimes means it’s born chronological, which can be confusing.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative, illuminating, accessible and meticulously researched, this fascinating account of science in the Soviet Union makes for some compelling reading. The relationship between science and politics has never been as problematic as it was under Stalin’s iron – and increasingly erratic and unbalanced – grip and Simon Ings brings the era vividly alive, not least in making the science comprehensible to the general reader. Essential reading for anyone interested in Russia’s history.

[Anna Hawes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book gave me a great appreciation for the quality of life that I take for granted. It is amazing to me that Russian scientists were able to accomplish anything when they were starving, using stolen equipment, and often executed for results that didn't fit the political narrative. It was a little hard to keep track of the many names of all the people involved and the writing was dense at times but I kept fighting through it because the subject matter was so interesting.

[Philip A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some fascinating insights into how politics and science can work with, or against each other. Sometimes I was slightly less interested in sections which were more the political manoeuvrings of individuals. However where the science and political worlds collide the book is interesting, sometimes funny and often tragic.

[Malin Eklund · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting more from this book than a story of personal relations gone bad. I guess it gives a good insight to what working as a scientist during the Stalin era must have been like, but i would have been more intresting reading about the actual science then personal vendettas among scientists

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Political System that Destroyed Russian Scientific Progress

Boosting agricultural production through new scientific methods was a high priority for Stalin, but efforts failed miserably.

The basic reason for this failure, argues author Simon Ings, was a Soviet political system that tried to remake science into an institution of the state, based not upon the scientific method but rather on political dogma that was as doctrinaire and inflexible as Communism itself. The Bolsheviks sought an overriding scientific theory that would explain everything, not only in terms of human behavior but also across all scientific doctrines. Marx had argued that socialism could reform and improve peoples’ well being in one generation, and a similar impatience was applied to scientific progress.

Stalin first undercut Soviet progress in science by conducting political terror that swept up leading scientists along with so many others in all walks of life and levels of society. Ings quotes statistics that half the engineers in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s were eventually arrested, along with hundreds of members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Other world class scientists and engineers were forced to work in prison laboratories if they escaped being sent to the Gulag or shot.

Ings devotes much of the book to Stalin’s disastrous programs to transform Soviet agriculture. Famine was a chronic problem, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, and was a potential threat to Stalin’s leadership and the survival of the Party.

A chief villain in the book is Trofim Lysenko, whose peasant background appealed to the amateur botanist in Stalin. By contrast, those who subjected genetic experiments to the scientific method were persecuted. From the late 1920s to the late 1940s, Lysenko claimed advances in agricultural procedures that would allow fruit trees to grow in arctic conditions, that would triple crop yields through unproven treatment of seeds, and that called for an ill-conceived breeding program aimed at transferring dairy production of the best Jersey cows to cows of a mediocre breed in just a generation or two. Lysenko supported his theories by altering the data and lying about the results of these experiments. He had Stalin’s backing, however, and no one could challenge these programs even as they were rolled out across the nation with disastrous results.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Stalin mobilized propaganda resources of the state to promote the superiority of Soviet scientists over Western science. Soviet scientists were forbidden to publish their work in western journals, and were cut off from scientific progress made abroad. This further insulated Soviet science from peer review, constructive criticism, and the exchange of ideas.

The area which most suffered was genetics, which had top priority due to the need to increase Soviet agricultural productivity. Ironically, because of their success in building an atom bomb so soon after the Americans, physicists were given much more freedom. As a result, many talented geneticists transferred to “radio biology and physics” where they escaped the interference of Lysenko and his political supporters.

The main theme of Ing’s book is the importance of freedom as a prerequisite of scientific progress. Although a great deal of talent resided in the Soviet Union in the 20th Century, much of it was dissipated and the Soviet Union fell well behind the Western democracies.

In the 1980s the Soviet Union and its satellites boasted twice as many scientists as a percent of their population as the US and Western Europe, and possessed the best funded scientific establishment in the world, notes Ings. But Russian science failed to exploit development of the European continent’s first digital computer, early leadership in lasers, transistors, and space communications. The USSR saw the technological progress of the past 50 years pass it by.

Although most readers will learn a great deal about the debasing of science under Soviet dictatorship, Ing perhaps goes into more detail about Lysenko and those scientists whom he persecuted than is necessary to grasp the main arguments of the book. Other areas of science, particularly physics, receive short shrift. The book nevertheless is a cautionary tale of the harm that can arise when, for example, politicians find it expedient to ignore the scientific evidence because such denial is expedient. Climate change deniers, please take note.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very sad to read. The research is superb, especially considering the fact that some information under Stalin's reign must have been difficult to locate.

On the one hand, it is interesting to note that initially the Bolsheviks felt that science could help lead the proletariat to a utopian state. But the difficulties arose when science had to bend to the political ideology and personal whims of Stalin and his regime.

If there is a poster child for science gone wrong during this period, it had to be Trofim Lysenko, a pseudo-agricultural "scientist" who believed in Lamarckism, that is that adaptations occurring in the environment to a parent could be passed on to the offspring. Patently false, this doctrine led to an anti-genetics movement that created widespread famine that led to millions of deaths.

The same patterns play out--currying favor with Stalin and his cronies, denouncing enemies as traitors, and their subsequent "confessions," "trials" and either exile to Siberia or execution.

Lysenko was only widely discredited in the sixties, and by then the damage to Soviet science was done. Intriguingly, Stalin chose not to interfere with physicists or anyone else working on weapons systems.

At one point, after encouraging international cooperation, it became anathema to have Western associations.

One interesting tidbit was that because of the instability of the Tsarist regime before its fall, writers created more apocalyptic fiction, Is this what is going on today in the U.S. with our boom in post-apocalyptic literature?

I felt how close we came to this Soviet scenario under Donald Trump and his anti-science attitudes, including his denial of climate change and the unwillingness to take scientists seriously during the COVID crisis. To deny inconvenient scientific findings because they don't agree with your politics is very dangerous policy.

The author concludes with the sobering realities of the damage we are doing to the world. He wonders if we too are wandering down the path of believing that science will resolve all of our problems to save the day.

At 508 pages, this is a long work. So I recommend only if you are interested in Soviet history or the history of science.

[Graham McGhie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Fascinating and Informative Study of Russian Science under Stalin
This is an illuminating, highly readable and informative study by Simon Ings of Russia under the dictatorship of Stalin with particular regard to Science. The author places developments under Stalin in context with Pre Revolutionary Russia (the Tsars), Russia under the leadership of Lenin (post October 1917) and progress immediately after the death of Stalin. The book is packed with facts, information, revelations, personal vendettas, stories of self sacrifice, heroism and a lot of Russian Surnames which may appear daunting at first but by repetition you grasp them.
The book makes for fascinating reading only a few of which I mention below.
The era immediately following the Revolution was to see continued International cooperation in most Scientific fields with free exchanges of information between East and West. It was only the advent of Stalin which was to halt such exchanges. I was amazed to learn how easy it was to travel into and out of Russia following the Revolution. But that freedom was to cease during the Stalin era.
The period following the Revolution was a momentous one for Scientific discoveries on the international stage: mainly for the good but occasionally not so good. Advances made in agriculture promised to alleviate, if not prevent, large scale famine. Unfortunately Russia failed to benefit from many of these advances due to ideology and millions died as a consequence. It is sad to think that millions of Russians died needlessly for the sake of political ideology.
Science as defined by Marxist ideology did not confine itself to the laboratory but also included philosophy and by extension nearly all matters of learning, education, study and research. Marxism itself implies scientific government and for this reason deviation from that which was defined as truly "scientific" caused so many problems as it affected so many areas of life. The definition of what was truly "Marxist" varied over time: when massive problems faced the country, a pragmatic view was pursued, whilst in better times it depended often on who held sway with Stalin and latterly, in his final years, which side of the bed he got out of on the morning.
The book describes how scientists could be hailed as heroes one month only to find themselves at odds with the state the next. Add to that the realities of the times (civil war, famine and invasion) and scientists faced problems if their research and results deviated from Marxist ideology. There is one particularly "bad" scientist in the book, Lysenko, who made all kinds of whimsical claims, was a laughing stock internationally and, although most Russian scientists held the same view, they risked arrest and execution if they openly criticised him. Lysenko seemed to have a natural talent for coming out on top. In part it seems that his background which was of lower peasant stock rather than the suspect bourgeois intelligentsia may have assisted his cause. Lysenko, who oversaw repeated scientific failures relating to agriculture, remained in favour with the Marxist governing elite even under Khrushchev. Indeed it was Khrushchev's downfall that lead to Lysenko eventually falling out of favour. (That and cows which produced a fraction of the milk he claimed).
But by that time decades had been wasted by central government directing an agrarian economy on the basis of incorrect, biased data deemed by Stalin to be sound advice. Thus real progress eluded Russian agriculture and prevented her providing sufficient food for her own population. Of course it was more than just Lysenko to blame but rather an entire litany of errors defying common sense. And the failure rests squarely at the feet of the very Revolutionaries who promised so much in 1917 yet squandered opportunities to better the lot of the ordinary Russian citizen.
Stalin's interpretation of Marx meant that humankind could organise nature to suit the needs of humans. Massive projects were undertaken in forestry, reservoir and dam construction all to divert natural resources for the supposed benefit of the population. New cities were created to support this infrastructure. But in the end such projects were doomed largely to failure.
Ings does not dwell long on the suffering of World War 2. I felt this probably appropriate given that more Russians died at Stalin's hands than as a consequence of the war. However the scientists which the Soviet Union captured towards the end of the war were to prove invaluable especially in developing their Nuclear capability. The conclusion of the war also made vast areas of quality arable land particularly in the Ukraine accessible to the Soviet Union. Despite the destruction the motherland suffered she emerged probably the stronger in many ways for it.
Stalin's long period as Dictator did see some positive progress. Nuclear advancement I have already mentioned but there were also advances in the extraction of natural resources, neurology, education and medicine to mention but a few. Russian technology was responsible for the first man in space. Indeed they might have beaten the Americans to a moon landing had bureaucracy and rivalry between Soviet Political Departments not got in the way.
At the end of the day Stalin continues to be judged by the loss of life he inflicted on the peasants of the countryside who formed the largest part of the population. The Marxists were a party of the proletariat and always seem to have viewed the rural population with a degree of cynicism.
I found the chapter on Neurology a bit difficult to follow. Too many names! But otherwise I was taken by the narrative style of Simon Ings's book which made a difficult topic as easy to read and to understand as any book I've read on the period. My review is intended only to give a taste for the book which covers many areas I have not mentioned (music, drama, films and art for instance). I would recommend this work to readers interested in Russian history. Simon Ings's book presents the epoch of the Stalin dictatorship from a different but important perspective.
(My review was based on an eBook file provided to me free of charge by the publisher via NetGalley. My review is totally independent.)

[Brayden Raymond · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a shame to give this 2-stars because the premise of the book is something promising. The author sets out to demonstrate to readers what Soviet science did for the world, and I think they unfortunately fail in that endeavor. The author gets much too caught up in trying to give every important character in the history of science a full biography that the actual scientific efforts get lost, not to mention the authors need to contextualize and offer a relatively weak political history (glaring errors at times) throughout. In short, I think they tried to accomplish too much with this. Missing the mark like that is a shame because a real in depth look at the scientific achievements of Soviet science, expecting that readers who pick up a book of that sort would already have an understanding of Soviet politics (or dont care), would be a thrilling read - one that the author really only hints at throughout.

There are still some interesting bits in here, earning a 2-star rating, and I will give the author credit for their closing thoughts about over consumption and the modern tendence to expect science and tech to save us from our savaging of the earth (AI will not save us it is a waste of energy and resources people !!!).

[Kalle Id · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pretty awesome book that properly explores Soviet science and explains the background of not just the development of science but many things in the context of the era.

If one wants to be critical, it doesn't quite do what it promises: on one hand, the book tells about so much more than just Stalin and his era, but on the other hand, it doesn't deliver the promise about "making clear what Soviet science has done for us." The information is there – at least in part – but it is hardly the focus of the book. This doesn't make the book any less good (unlike, it must be said, the end of the epilogue, which comes across as a somewhat desperate attempt of making the book relevant to the present).

The chilling relevance here is illustrating how political "guidance" of science can wreak havoc – at least for my home country, this is more relevant than ever.

And yes, despite the criticism I did give this 5 stars. It may not deliver exactly what it promises, but it is still a superb book about a fascinating subject.

[Mike Putnam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easily one of the most fascinating and simultaneously terrifying books I have recently read. Although the Soviets strove to be a state driven by science, few with political clout were scientists themselves. The fundamental problem of the mixture of politics and sciences are valuable lesson for all societies, both past and present.

My only 'major' criticisms of this work is two-fold: First, it is difficult get associated with the vast number of ancillary characters who are mentioned throughout the book at a sometimes rapid pace. Second, I felt that that initial chapters of the book got off to a drudgingly slow start, but to its credit, improved nice after Part One.

[Elly · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times I hated this book, not for its content but for its writing. Its structure left me confused, I never quite got why it’s split into the three parts it has, or why the first part is even included. Some chapters, and many paragraphs, pursued multiple ideas, jumping around without a link I could easily follow. A few times, the author’s attempt at humor left me feeling like I’m not in on an inside joke. It was a struggle.

Despite all this, the book is a worthwhile publication, and I’m glad I persevered and made it to the last page. For anyone interested in 20th century history and the Soviet Union, it will be an interesting read. If only it had a stronger editor.