Research in the Soviet Union

Marked by a highly developed pure science and innovation at the theoretical level, interpretation and application fell short. Biology, chemistry, materials science, mathematics, and physics, were fields in which Soviet citizens have excelled. Science was

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emphasized at all levels of education, and very large numbers of engineers graduated every year. Shortfalls in science and technology can be attributed to a centrally planned and controlled economy and to priority given to national security, all of which provided little incentive to design and create prototypes of products for mass market. Without orders from central government, no product design and prototype saw fruition or stimulated innovation of other products. The Soviet government, in many cases, has chosen to adopt foreign technology rather than invest money, talent and time to develop the Soviet Union's indigenous technological capacity.

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• Initial pact between scientists and Vladimir Lenin in the early days, on the importance of science and science working for the state
• Funding mechanisms for science directed entirely through the state
• Early-Soviet funding of pre-Revolutionary scientists who had prestige even if they didn't agree with Soviet policies (Pavlov)
• Stalin's rise to power and the imposition of harsh philosophical codes onto science
• Brief paragraph on Sharashka system.
• Dialectical materialism as the Soviet philosophy of science
• Emphasis on the "practicality" of science/anti-theoretical attacks which are seen in an extreme form in Lysenkoism but exist in other forms throughout the sciences (chemistry advertises itself as a fully "practical" and "industrial" science after Lysenkoism in order to avoid any problems, for example)
• Lysenkoism
• Fears of Lysenkoism and the creation of false "founding father" biographies of past scientists, to avoid being accused of being bourgeoisie
• Suppressed science (cybernetics, Vygotsky, etc)
• Soviet coordination and funding of state military technological projects (atomic bomb, rockets)
• Atomic bomb, espionage, parallelism
• Sputnik, space program
• Soviet computers
• Soviet scientists and dissidence (Sahkarov)
• Soviet-Western scientific exchanges and tensions
• Fall of the Soviet Union = political freedom for scientists, but no money for science
 
Research in the Soviet Union: NII ►