Suppressed research in the Soviet Union
Encyclopedia
Suppressed research in the Soviet Union refers to scientific fields which were banned in the Soviet Union, usually for ideological reasons. Science
and humanities
were placed under a strict ideological scrutiny in the Soviet Union. All research was to be founded on the philosophy of dialectical materialism
. All humanities and social sciences were additionally tested for strict accordance with historical materialism
. These tests were alleged to serve as a cover for political suppression, to terrorize scientists who engaged in research labeled as "idealistic" or "bourgeois".
In several cases the consequences of ideological influences were dramatic. The suppression of research began during the Stalin
era and continued after his regime.
At different moments in Soviet history a number of research areas were declared "bourgeois pseudoscience
s", on ideological grounds, the most notable and harmful cases being these of genetics
and cybernetics
. Their prohibition caused serious harm to Soviet science and economics. Soviet scientists never won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
or a Turing Award
. (In comparison, they received seven Nobel Prizes in Physics
.) This is one of the factors that resulted in the USSR historically lagging in the fields of computer
s, microelectronics
and biotechnology
.
Research which was not banned was often subject to political pressure to conform to certain schools of science seen as "progressive."
Further, research was subject to censorship
. Hence, scientists and researches were denied access to some publications and research of the Western scientists, or any others deemed politically incorrect; access to many others was restricted. Their own research was similarly censored, some scientists were forbidden from publishing at all, many others experienced significant delays or had to agree to have their works published only in closed journals, to which access was significantly restricted.
started a campaign against genetics
and was supported by Stalin. Between 1934 and 1940, many geneticists were executed (including Agol, Levit, Nadson) or sent to labor camp
s (including the best-known Soviet geneticist, Nikolai Vavilov
, who died in prison in 1943). Genetics was called "the whore of capitalism" (продажная девка капитализма) and stigmatized as a "fascist science", hinting at its closeness to eugenics
, popular in Nazi Germany
. If the field of genetics' connection to Nazis wasn't enough, Mendelian genetics particularly enraged Stalin due to its founder Gregor Mendel
's being a Catholic Christian priest
, a fact that flew in the face of the Soviet Union's official atheism and antitheism
.
However, some geneticists survived and continued to work on genetics, dangerous as this was.
In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience
"; all geneticists were fired from work (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. The taboo on genetics continued even after Stalin's death. Only in the mid-1960s was it completely waived.
Ivan Pavlov
's theory of higher nervous function was used to denounce Western influence in physiology. 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, A.D. Speransky, I.S. Beritashvily) were attacked for 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 self-excluded itself from the international scientific community.
in the spirit of Lysenkoism
. The culprit was the theory of structural resonances by Linus Pauling
, declared "idealistic" (since it speaks about the "resonance" of nonexistent molecular structures). The planned victim was the Chemical Department of the Moscow State University
that carried out the related research. In June 1951 The All-Union Conference on the State of the Theory of Chemical Composition in Organic Chemistry was held, where the resonance theory was declared bourgeois pseudoscience
, and the corresponding report was sent to Stalin.
was also outlawed as bourgeois pseudoscience
, "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
". A more radical description was "the mercantile whore of global imperialism". As with genetics, the taboo continued for several years after Stalin's death, but ultimately served as a rallying point for the destalinisation of Soviet science. The symbolic significance of cybernetics in the reformation of Soviet science after Stalin - as well as its position as a label for interdisciplinary research - accounts for much of the subject's popularity in the Soviet Union long after its decline as a distinct field of research in the West. By suppressing cybernetics, Stalin was arguably responsible for its dramatic growth after his death.
by scholars of the Soviet Union
- 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. As such, if it was a science, it was a science in service of a specific political and ideological agenda, commonly employing historical revisionism
. In the 1930s, historic archive
s 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.
Many works of Western historians were forbidden or censored
, many areas of history were also forbidden for research as, officially, they never happened. 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.
and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society. 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." In this way he grasped enough of the underlying issues to coherently 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."
Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it, neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin's understanding of linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics.
was a popular area of research on the basis of numerous orphanage
s 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.
thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical
truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought
were repressed (many philosophers emigrated, others were expelled). Joseph Stalin
enacted a decree in 1931 identifying dialectical materialism
with Marxism Leninism, making it the official philosophy which would be enforced in all communist states and, through the Comintern
, in most communist parties. Following the traditional use in the Second International
, opponents would be labeled as "revisionists". From the beginning of Bolshevik
regime, the aim of official Soviet
philosophy (which was taught as an obligatory subject for every course), was the theoretical justification of Communist ideas. For this reason, "Sovietologists", whom the most famous were Józef Maria Bocheński
and Gustav Wetter, have often claimed Soviet philosophy was close to nothing but dogma
. However, since the 1917 October Revolution
, it was marked by both philosophical and political struggles, which call into question any monolithic reading. Evald Vasilevich Ilyenkov
was one of the main philosophers of the 1960s, who revisited the 1920s debate between "mechanicists" and "dialecticians" in Leninist Dialectics & Metaphysics of Positivism (1979). During the 1960s and 1970s Western philosophies
including analytical philosophy and logical empiricism began to make a mark in Soviet thought.
". Soviet physicists, such as K. V. Nikolskij and D. Blokhintzev, developed a version of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics
, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of dialectical materialism
. However, although initially planned, this process 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
.
introduced an obscure synonym, theory of secondary modeling systems ("вторичные моделирующие системы"), the language
being the "primary modelling system". See also Japhetic theory (linguistics)
.
, 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
. 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.
or the idea of random deviation
were decreed as "false theories". Statistical journals and university departments were closed; world renowned statisticians like Andrey Kolmogorov
or Eugen Slutsky
abandoned statistical research.
As with all Soviet historiography, reliability of Soviet statistical data varied from period to period. The first revolutionary decade and the period of Stalin's dictatorship both appear highly problematic with regards to statistical reliability; very little statistical data were published from 1936 to 1956 (see Soviet Census (1937)
). The reliability of data has improved after 1956 when some missing data was published and Soviet experts themselves published some adjusted data for the Stalin's era; however the quality of documentation has deteriorated.
While on occasion statistical data useful in historical research might have been completely invented by the Soviet authorities, there is little evidence that most statistics were significantly affected by falsification or insertion of false data with the intent to confound the West. 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. 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. Inadequate or lacking documentation for much of Soviet statistical data is also a significant problem.
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
were placed under a strict ideological scrutiny in the Soviet Union. All research was to be founded on the philosophy of dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
. All humanities and social sciences were additionally tested for strict accordance with historical materialism
Historical materialism
Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...
. These tests were alleged to serve as a cover for political suppression, to terrorize scientists who engaged in research labeled as "idealistic" or "bourgeois".
In several cases the consequences of ideological influences were dramatic. The suppression of research began during the Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
era and continued after his regime.
Policy
Certain scientific fields in the Soviet Union were suppressed primarily after being labeled as ideologically incorrect.At different moments in Soviet history a number of research areas were declared "bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience was a term of condemnation in the Soviet Union for certain scientific disciplines that were deemed unacceptable from an ideological point of view....
s", on ideological grounds, the most notable and harmful cases being these of genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
and cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
. Their prohibition caused serious harm to Soviet science and economics. Soviet scientists never won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
or a Turing Award
Turing Award
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
. (In comparison, they received seven Nobel Prizes in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
.) This is one of the factors that resulted in the USSR historically lagging in the fields of computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s, microelectronics
Microelectronics
Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture of very small electronic components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-scale or smaller,. These devices are made from semiconductors...
and biotechnology
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
.
Research which was not banned was often subject to political pressure to conform to certain schools of science seen as "progressive."
Further, research was subject to censorship
Censorship in the Soviet Union
Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced.Censorship was performed in two main directions:*State secrets were handled by Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press was in charge of censoring all publications and broadcasting for state...
. Hence, scientists and researches were denied access to some publications and research of the Western scientists, or any others deemed politically incorrect; access to many others was restricted. Their own research was similarly censored, some scientists were forbidden from publishing at all, many others experienced significant delays or had to agree to have their works published only in closed journals, to which access was significantly restricted.
Biology
In the mid-1930s, the agronomist Trofim LysenkoTrofim Lysenko
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist of Ukrainian origin, who was director of Soviet biology under Joseph Stalin. Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of the hybridization theories of Russian horticulturist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, and adopted them into a powerful...
started a campaign against genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
and was supported by Stalin. Between 1934 and 1940, many geneticists were executed (including Agol, Levit, Nadson) or sent to labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s (including the best-known Soviet geneticist, Nikolai Vavilov
Nikolai Vavilov
Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was a prominent Russian and Soviet botanist and geneticist best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants...
, who died in prison in 1943). Genetics was called "the whore of capitalism" (продажная девка капитализма) and stigmatized as a "fascist science", hinting at its closeness to eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, popular in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. If the field of genetics' connection to Nazis wasn't enough, Mendelian genetics particularly enraged Stalin due to its founder Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance...
's being a Catholic Christian priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
, a fact that flew in the face of the Soviet Union's official atheism and antitheism
Religion in the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion and its replacement with atheism. To that end, the communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools...
.
However, some geneticists survived and continued to work on genetics, dangerous as this was.
In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience was a term of condemnation in the Soviet Union for certain scientific disciplines that were deemed unacceptable from an ideological point of view....
"; all geneticists were fired from work (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. The taboo on genetics continued even after Stalin's death. Only in the mid-1960s was it completely waived.
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....
's theory of higher nervous function was used to denounce Western influence in physiology. In 1950, the Soviet government organized the Joint Scientific Session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences
USSR Academy of Medical Sciences
The USSR Academy of Medical Sciences is the highest scientific and medical organization founded in the Soviet Union in 1944.Its successor is the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences founded in 1992....
, the "Pavlovian session
Pavlovian session
The Pavlovian session was the joint session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences held on June 28–July 4, 1950. The session was organized by the Soviet Government headed by Joseph Stalin in order to fight Western influences in Russian physiological sciences...
". Several prominent Soviet physiologists (L.A. Orbeli, P.K. Anokhin, A.D. Speransky, I.S. Beritashvily) were attacked for 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 self-excluded itself from the international scientific community.
Chemistry
In 1951, an attempt was made to reform organic chemistryOrganic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions, and preparation of carbon-based compounds, hydrocarbons, and their derivatives...
in the spirit of Lysenkoism
Lysenkoism
Lysenkoism, or Lysenko-Michurinism, also denotes the biological inheritance principle which Trofim Lysenko subscribed to and which derive from theories of the heritability of acquired characteristics, a body of biological inheritance theory which departs from Mendelism and that Lysenko named...
. The culprit was the theory of structural resonances by Linus Pauling
Linus Pauling
Linus Carl Pauling was an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century...
, declared "idealistic" (since it speaks about the "resonance" of nonexistent molecular structures). The planned victim was the Chemical Department of the Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
that carried out the related research. In June 1951 The All-Union Conference on the State of the Theory of Chemical Composition in Organic Chemistry was held, where the resonance theory was declared bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience was a term of condemnation in the Soviet Union for certain scientific disciplines that were deemed unacceptable from an ideological point of view....
, and the corresponding report was sent to Stalin.
Cybernetics
CyberneticsCybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
was also outlawed as bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience was a term of condemnation in the Soviet Union for certain scientific disciplines that were deemed unacceptable from an ideological point of view....
, "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
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....
". A more radical description was "the mercantile whore of global imperialism". As with genetics, the taboo continued for several years after Stalin's death, but ultimately served as a rallying point for the destalinisation of Soviet science. The symbolic significance of cybernetics in the reformation of Soviet science after Stalin - as well as its position as a label for interdisciplinary research - accounts for much of the subject's popularity in the Soviet Union long after its decline as a distinct field of research in the West. By suppressing cybernetics, Stalin was arguably responsible for its dramatic growth after his death.
History
Soviet historiography - the way in which history was and is writtenHistoriography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
by scholars of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
- was significantly influenced by the strict control by the authorities
Censorship in the Soviet Union
Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced.Censorship was performed in two main directions:*State secrets were handled by Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press was in charge of censoring all publications and broadcasting for state...
aimed at propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
of communist ideology and Soviet power.
Since the late 1930s, Soviet historiography treated the party line
Party line (politics)
In politics, the line or the party line is an idiom for a political party or social movement's canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organization's partisanship. The common phrase toeing the party line describes a person who speaks in a manner that conforms to his...
and reality as one and the same. As such, if it was a science, it was a science in service of a specific political and ideological agenda, commonly employing historical revisionism
Historical revisionism (negationism)
Historical revisionism is either the legitimate scholastic re-examination of existing knowledge about a historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more or less favourable light. For the former, i.e. the academic pursuit, see...
. In the 1930s, historic archive
Archive
An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...
s 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.
Many works of Western historians were forbidden or censored
Censorship in the Soviet Union
Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced.Censorship was performed in two main directions:*State secrets were handled by Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press was in charge of censoring all publications and broadcasting for state...
, many areas of history were also forbidden for research as, officially, they never happened. 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
Basil Liddell Hart
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart , usually known before his knighthood as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was an English soldier, military historian and leading inter-war theorist.-Life and career:...
's History of the Second World War pre-war purges of Red Army officers, the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
, many details of the Winter War
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
, the occupation of the Baltic states, the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Western Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
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.
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 constructionJaphetic theory (linguistics)
Japhetic theory is a term used to describe a linguistic theory developed by the Soviet linguist Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr . In linguistics it was compared by critics to Lysenkoism in biology: a theory that was promoted and supported for ideological rather than scientific reasons, because it was...
and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society. Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as People's Commissar for Nationalities, read a letter by Arnold Chikobava
Arnold Chikobava
Arnold Stepanovich Chikobava was a Georgian linguist and philologist best known as for his contributions to the Caucasian studies as well as one of the most active critics of Nicholas Marr's controversial monogenetic "Japhetic" theory of language.Chikobava was born in the small village...
criticizing the theory. He "summoned Chikobava to a dinner that lasted from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. taking notes diligently." In this way he grasped enough of the underlying issues to coherently 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."
Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it, neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin's understanding of linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics.
Pedology
PedologyPedology (children study)
Pedology is the study of children's behavior and development, not to be confused with pedagogy, which is the art or science of teaching....
was a popular area of research on the basis of numerous orphanage
Orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...
s created after the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
. Soviet pedology was a combination of pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
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
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
"On Pedolodical Perversions in the Narkompros System" on July 4, 1936.
Philosophy
Philosophical research in the Soviet Union was officially confined to Marxist-LeninistMarxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought
Russian philosophy
Russian philosophy includes a variety of philosophical movements. Authors who developed them are listed below sorted by movement.While most authors listed below are primarily philosophers, also included here are some Russian fiction writers, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, who are also known as...
were repressed (many philosophers emigrated, others were expelled). Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
enacted a decree in 1931 identifying dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
with Marxism Leninism, making it the official philosophy which would be enforced in all communist states and, through the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, in most communist parties. Following the traditional use in the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
, opponents would be labeled as "revisionists". From the beginning of Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
regime, the aim of official Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
philosophy (which was taught as an obligatory subject for every course), was the theoretical justification of Communist ideas. For this reason, "Sovietologists", whom the most famous were Józef Maria Bocheński
Józef Maria Bochenski
Józef Maria Bocheński was a Polish Dominican, logician and philosopher.-Life:...
and Gustav Wetter, have often claimed Soviet philosophy was close to nothing but dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
. However, since the 1917 October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, it was marked by both philosophical and political struggles, which call into question any monolithic reading. Evald Vasilevich Ilyenkov
Evald Ilyenkov
Evald Vassilievich Ilyenkov was a Marxist author and Soviet philosopher who did original work on the materialist development of Hegel's dialectics...
was one of the main philosophers of the 1960s, who revisited the 1920s debate between "mechanicists" and "dialecticians" in Leninist Dialectics & Metaphysics of Positivism (1979). During the 1960s and 1970s Western philosophies
Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
including analytical philosophy and logical empiricism began to make a mark in Soviet thought.
Physics
In the late 1940s, some areas of physics, especially quantum mechanics but also special and general relativity, were also criticized on grounds of "idealismIdealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
". Soviet physicists, such as K. V. Nikolskij and D. Blokhintzev, developed a version of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics
Ensemble Interpretation
The ensemble interpretation, or statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, is an interpretation that can be viewed as a minimalist interpretation; it is a quantum mechanical interpretation that claims to make the fewest assumptions associated with the standard mathematical formalization...
, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
. However, although initially planned, this process 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
Soviet atomic bomb project
The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb , was a clandestine research and development program began during and post-World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the United States' nuclear project...
.
Semiotics and structural linguistics
To circumvent ideological pressure in the 1960s and 1970s on "formalistic tendencies in linguistics", Soviet researchers in semioticsSemiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
introduced an obscure synonym, theory of secondary modeling systems ("вторичные моделирующие системы"), the language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
being the "primary modelling system". See also Japhetic theory (linguistics)
Japhetic theory (linguistics)
Japhetic theory is a term used to describe a linguistic theory developed by the Soviet linguist Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr . In linguistics it was compared by critics to Lysenkoism in biology: a theory that was promoted and supported for ideological rather than scientific reasons, because it was...
.
Sociology
After the Russian Revolution, sociology was gradually "politicized, Bolshevisized and eventually, Stalinized". From 1930s to 1950s, the discipline virtually ceased to exist in the Soviet Union. Even in the era where it was allowed to be practiced, and not replaced by Marxist philosophyMarxist philosophy
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are terms that cover work in philosophy that is strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory or that is written by Marxists...
, it was always dominated by Marxist thought
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
; hence sociology in the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc represented, to a significant extent, only one branch of sociology: Marxist sociology
Marxist sociology
Marxist sociology refers to the conduct of sociology from a Marxist perspective. Marxism itself can be recognized as both a political philosophy and a sociology, particularly to the extent it attempts to remain scientific, systematic and objective rather than purely normative and prescriptive....
. With the death of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and the 20th Party Congress in 1956, restrictions on sociological research were somewhat eased, and finally, after the 23rd Party Congress in 1966
23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union took place in Moscow, RSFSR between 29 March and 8 April 1966. It was the first Congress during Leonid Brezhnev's leadership of the Party and state...
, sociology in Soviet Union was once again officially recognized as an acceptable branch of science.
Statistics
The quality (accuracy and reliability) of data published in the Soviet Union and used in historical research is another issue raised by various Sovietologists. The Marxist theoreticians of the Party considered statistics as a social science; hence many applications of statistical mathematics were curtailed, particularly during the Stalin's era. Under central planning, nothing could occur by accident. Law of large numbersLaw of large numbers
In probability theory, the law of large numbers is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times...
or the idea of random deviation
Standard deviation
Standard deviation is a widely used measure of variability or diversity used in statistics and probability theory. It shows how much variation or "dispersion" there is from the average...
were decreed as "false theories". Statistical journals and university departments were closed; world renowned statisticians like Andrey Kolmogorov
Andrey Kolmogorov
Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov was a Soviet mathematician, preeminent in the 20th century, who advanced various scientific fields, among them probability theory, topology, intuitionistic logic, turbulence, classical mechanics and computational complexity.-Early life:Kolmogorov was born at Tambov...
or Eugen Slutsky
Eugen Slutsky
Evgeny "Eugen" Evgenievich Slutsky was a Russian/Soviet mathematical statistician, economist and political economist.-Slutsky's work in economics:...
abandoned statistical research.
As with all Soviet historiography, reliability of Soviet statistical data varied from period to period. The first revolutionary decade and the period of Stalin's dictatorship both appear highly problematic with regards to statistical reliability; very little statistical data were published from 1936 to 1956 (see Soviet Census (1937)
Soviet Census (1937)
The Soviet Census held on January 6, 1937 was the most controversial of the censuses taken within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The census results were destroyed and its organizers were sent to the Gulag as saboteurs because the census showed much lower population figures than...
). The reliability of data has improved after 1956 when some missing data was published and Soviet experts themselves published some adjusted data for the Stalin's era; however the quality of documentation has deteriorated.
While on occasion statistical data useful in historical research might have been completely invented by the Soviet authorities, there is little evidence that most statistics were significantly affected by falsification or insertion of false data with the intent to confound the West. 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. 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. Inadequate or lacking documentation for much of Soviet statistical data is also a significant problem.
Theme in literature
- Vladimir Dudintsev. White clothes. (In Russian)
See also
- Censorship in the Soviet UnionCensorship in the Soviet UnionCensorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced.Censorship was performed in two main directions:*State secrets were handled by Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press was in charge of censoring all publications and broadcasting for state...
- Soviet historiographySoviet historiographySoviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union . In the USSR, the study of history was marked by alternating periods of freedom allowed and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and also by the struggle of historians to...
- Historical revisionism (negationism)Historical revisionism (negationism)Historical revisionism is either the legitimate scholastic re-examination of existing knowledge about a historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more or less favourable light. For the former, i.e. the academic pursuit, see...
- Politicization of sciencePoliticization of scienceThe politicization of science is the manipulation of science for political gain. It occurs when government, business, or advocacy groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted. The politicization of...
- Scientific freedomScientific freedomScientific freedom is the idea of freedom applied to natural science, in particular the practices of scientific research and discourse, mainly by publication...
- Academic freedomAcademic freedomAcademic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...