Kozhevnikov, Alexei. Stalin's Great Science

Kozhevnikov, Alexei. Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists. London: Imperial College Press, 2004.

Agenda: to answer the question of how impressive scientific and technological progress could exist under a regime which supressed the Western-type democracy. A Lycenko case as a rhetorical example in Western Cold War studies of Soviet science. Kojevnikov aims “to develop a less impaired view of the history of Soviet science in its social, political, and ideological contexts.” (xii)

“freedom of scientific discourse could maintained precisely by keeping it separate from the much more dangerous discourse on political, religious, and moral issues” (xiii)

!!! “Many of the Cold War ideological stereotypes were not laid to rest with the end of the Cold War itself – in fact, they have survived particularly well in the field of Soviet history and continue to underlie the bulk of popular and professional literature in the field.” (xiii)

xvi: “a society that started with a pact between a revolutionary ruling party and scientific experts ended up in their mutual – and mutually self-destructive – alienation.”

Chapter 1: the role of applied research in the envisioned and projected re-organization of Russian science; therefore the revolution – a great opportunity for this. Russian academic loses contact with Western schools—emergence of national forms of scholarly dialogue (new journals, e.g.). Development of a new organization (‘mobilizational’ type) of research. Another context: a desire of Russian scholars for academic autonomy and research institutions as a type of research organization disassociated from universities and, hence, teaching obligations. German model of research institute. Centralized effort in scientific research. Soviet science born from these developments and debates of the immediate pre-WWI and WWI time.

Chapter 2: an alliance between science and revolution. “As the war and the attendant isolation of Russian science ended in 1921, the foundation of a novel government-sponsored system of research and development was already in place.” (23) Independence of universities, accent on research, centralization (even monopolization) of a certain field, large interdisciplinary projects with applied flavour. Bolsheviks have support from scholars, but not from universities – part of the tendency. Optical industry as an example of transformations that this alliance between pre-1917 scholars and the revolution brought. Establishment of a new Soviet-style model of industrialization and modernization which was driven by science and not market (cf. the brothers Strugatsky). Scientists cooperate with the regime, because their effort has now a much greater social impact than before or abroad.

Loren Graham has described the birth of the characteristically Soviet system of research institutes as “the combination of revolutionary innovation and international borrowing” (Graham 1975). The present study shows that that formula needs to be modified. The new R&D system was, true, a revolutionary innovation, but one that had started already before the revolution itself and did not originate from a particular political or ideological agenda of a revolutionary party. (44)

In chapter 3, Kojevnikov links revolutionary transformations in Russia and the development of the theory of the expanding universe (Aleksandr Friedmann). (FROM Wikipedia: Friedmann's work supports both theories equally, so it was not until the detection of the cosmic microwave background radiation that the steady state theory was abandoned in favor of the current favorite Big Bang paradigm.) This chapter presents a case in which a similar question can be answered with sufficient confidence. The case is that of some revolutionary ideas applied to the description of the behavior of atoms and electrons. (48) Kojevnikov argues that the idea of electrons’ freedom in dense bodies came from leftist political language and social theory – the case of Yakov Frenkel. (49)

Chapter 4 (mentions his own position as a scholar:

Back home, their advanced expertise was no longer needed, or so at least sounded the message from political authorities in the new post-communist Russia, who were busy devaluing science along with everything else that their predecessors, the communist authorities, had seemed to value. (74) )

An experience of Western travel funds (Rockfeller funding and other sources) as very timely for Soviet theoretical physics.

Chapter 5 explores the biography of Piotr Kapitza before his split with Beria. Chapter 6 looks at the Soviet atomic project: “The socialist economy, with its centralized military-style management and an existing tradition of big-science institutions, was perfectly suited for replicating the Manhattan Project.” (127)

Chapter 7 discusses the fox-like character of Sergey Vavilov, President of the Soviet Academy since 1945. “Vavilov’s case, though unique, is also revealing, as it helps to understand Stalinism not simply as a totalitarian dictatorship but as a society and a culture with specific rituals, mores, and styles.” (184) Chapter 8 discusses in more detail this discursive aspect of Soviet science. Five debates – biology, physiology, philosophy, economics and linguistics. Anthropological approach to the study of rituals and languages of the Soviet scholarship. Kritika i samokritika. In chapter 9 Kojevnikov discusses why a similar ordeal never happened to Soviet physics. He argues that it was due to bureaucratic intrigue of Vavilov. Chapter 10 deals with the alternative of how to develop Soviet science: through international collaboration (physicists) or in a relative autonomy (Lysenko). Kozhevnikov takes the case of ‘collective excitations’, a state of atomic interaction, a theory developed by Soviet physicists, to see how ideas trespassed national border during the Cold War.

Chapter 11 Dialogues about Knowledge and Power in Totalitarian Political Culture discusses how scientists’ enter to power position in the Soviet society was negotiated through Soviet political language. “This relationship was not stable, but rather subject to negotiation and compromise, with terms that shifted over time. Politicians and scientists were two privileged and mutually dependent elite groups in Soviet society. The partners in this relationship, though of course not equal, exerted influence upon each other. Politicians had a share in deciding on matters related to science. At the same time, scientists had de facto access to political decision making, although the nature of this access was not easy to formulate in acceptable Soviet political language.” (276) Kozhevnikov makes an excellent discourse analysis (or even conceptual analysis in a form a-la Koselleck) of concepts of power and knowledge in the Soviet society. Discusses the imagined Party as the bearer of Power (not impossible to be described vis-à-vis real party); then: “Even in the world of communist dreams, however, the ideal Party was not expected to command the third kind of higher knowledge, knowledge of the natural world. For this, Bolsheviks imagined a separate ideal agency, which they called Science.” (281)

“Science as an ideal agency enjoyed a very high status in the Bolshevik world, compared to that of Party, People, or Proletariat. Bolsheviks knew that Party could not rule without relying on Science— in other words, that Power depended on Knowledge. On the other hand, they insisted that Science could not be separated from politics and ideology— in other words, that Knowledge could not be independent of Power. These two symmetrical epistemological theses were represented in the Bolsheviks’ language as the two formulaic phrases about Science and Party quoted above.” (281) Mentions that Purges led to the homogenizing of the social group of technical professionals.

Between 1917 and mid-1930s – a search for a model of relationship between the party and the science. “The restoration of order, hierarchy, and boundaries between science and politics meant a return to a compromise between scientists and politicians— a compromise that can be called the Stalinist pact. This restored relationship has often been characterized in implicitly gendered terms. Soviet publications and statements pictured it as a romantic (but traditional) partnership between Party and Science. The former provided support and leadership, while the latter responded with devotion and assistance, with the two inseparably tied together by true and mutual love.” (290) Traces this relationship through the work on the Bomb to Sakharov with his political activism. He uses the example of Sakharov to, actually, discuss the end of this tacit and cordial alliance between science and party and to chart the beginning of their dissociation.