Stalinist Science

Some scholars have viewed the Soviet state and science as two monolithic entities - with bureaucrats as oppressors, and scientists as defenders of intellectual autonomy. Based on previously unknown documents from the archives of state and Communist Party agencies and of numerous scientific institutions, Stalinist Science shows that this picture is oversimplified. In fact, a symbiosis of state bureaucrats and scientists established a much more terrifying system of control over the scientific community than any critic of Soviet totalitarianism had feared. Some scientists, on the other hand, developed more elaborate devices to avoid and exploit this control system than any advocate of academic freedom could have reasonably hoped.

Nikolai Krementsov is a senior researcher at the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of the History of Science and Technology, the Russian Academy of Sciences.