The boundaries of Soviet science

Soviet scientific and technological progress in 1966, and utilization of science for improved national econom

Introduction: From Nauchnaia Fantastika To Post-Soviet Dystopia

Science fiction is the genre that links our lives to the future: the faster the pace of scientific and technological advancement, the greater our awareness of what István Csicsery-Ronay called “the science-fictionality” of everyday life. The more we feel the effect of scientific and technological change on global flows of economic, social, and cultural exchange (not to mention the blurring of biological and environmental boundaries), the more we are drawn to a literature that Boris Strugatskii identified as “a description of the future, whose tentacles already reach into the present.“ It is hardly surprising that scholarly interest in Russian and Soviet science fiction has been growing in recent years, with an expanding roster of roundtables and panels exploring the topic at professional conferences. Why talk about Soviet science fiction? As the articles in this special thematic cluster suggest, science fiction functions more as a field of intersecting discourses than as a clearly delineated genre: for readers of Slavic Review, it is a genre that foregrounds the interdisciplinary connections between the history of Soviet science and technology, political and economic development, and social and literary history. Science fiction, in short, offers a way to read the history of the future, with texts selfconsciously oriented toward distant spatial and temporal horizons, even as they point insistently back to the foundational factors shaping the vectors of a society's collective imagination.</jats:p

Progress satellite: An automatic cargo spacecraft

The requirement for resupplying long term orbital space stations is discussed. The operation of Progress (an unmanned automatic resupply spacecraft) is described. It concludes that the development of Progress is a major contribution of Soviet science to domestic and world aeronautics

Biomedical Ethics in the Soviet Union

*This is an abbreviated version of a paper presented first at a joint MIT-Harvard Faculty Seminar on the humanistic dimensions of Soviet Science on November 20, 1987, and then at the Western Michigan University Ethics Center on February 10, 1988. An expanded, fully documented version, under the title Soviet Biomedical Ethics will appear in a volume edited by Loren Graham, and tentatively entitled The Human Side of Soviet Science, Harvard University Press, 1989

Major victory for Soviet science. New data on the invisible side of the moon

Television equipment on Zond III for transmitting photographs of far side of moon - U.S.S.R

Subversive affinities: Embracing Soviet science in late 1940s Romania

This article discusses the appropriation of Soviet science in Romania during the late 1940s. To achieve this, I discuss various publications on biology, anthropology, heredity and genetics. In a climate of major political change, following the end of the Second World War, all scientific fields in Romania were gradually subjected to political pressures to adapt and change according to a new ideological context. Yet the adoption of Soviet science during the late 1940s was not a straightforward process of scientific acculturation. Whilst the deference to Soviet authors remained consistent through most of Romanian scientific literature at the time, what is perhaps less visible is the attempt to refashion Romanian science itself in order to serve the country’s new political imaginary and social transformation. Some Romanian biologists and physicians embraced Soviet scientific theories as a demonstration of their loyalty to the newly established regime. Others, however, were remained committed to local and Western scientific traditions they deemed essential to the survival of their discipline. A critical reassessment of the late 1940s is essential to an understanding of these dissensions as well as of the overall political and institutional constraints shaping the development of a new politics of science in communist Romania

Ateism kui nõukogude teadus

Atheism as a Soviet Science Atko Remmel, UT Faculty of Theology The following questions will be addressesd in the talk: To which extent were Soviet anti-religion practices scientifically grounded? To which extent can one speak about atheism as a scientific discipline? Is it justifiable to regard Soviet science as „atheist“? On the one hand, atheism was a conceptual component of the prevailing ideology, but on the other hand it was a practical device used for enforcing this ideology. The main basis for regarding it as scientific was the dogmatic position that Marxism-Leninism was a scientific theory. Soviet science was therefore automatically considered atheist and atheism scientific, regardless of the scientific methods – or lack thereof – which were used for gathering data. When speaking of the scientific character of scientific atheism, it should be approached as a synthetic discipline which drew together the results of other disciplines with the aim of criticizing religion, its main conclusion being that religion was incompatible with Marxist ideology and natural sciences. However, when science is exploited for ideological reasons, it is inevitably biased and lacks some of the main attributes of scientific quality, despite its scientific mimicry. Moreover, since the contributions of atheists to the findings of natural sciences were mainly of ideological nature, the discipline attained an apologetic role and it can be considered a quasi-scientific rather than a scientific discipline. In Estonia the community of scientific atheists consisted barely of a handful of people who were mostly occupied at different establishments for higher education. „Estonian scientific atheism“ can be distinguished from Soviet scientific atheism only so far as their writings dealt with the local situation. The main fields of study were the history of religion and sociology; on the practical side the main focus was on the new Soviet rituals.  

Climate modification and climate change debates amongst Soviet physical geographers, 1940s-1960s

This review provides an insight into some of the main themes characterizing the work of Soviet physical geographers concerning climate during the decade following the Second World War. Post-1945, pressure was placed upon geography via the state and the Academy of Sciences to ensure that its activities were of practical use to the development of the socialist economy and this was particularly evident in the case of work related to climate and climate modification. The review is divided into four main sections. First, it provides an understanding of the range of work carried out by physical geographers with respect to climate and related phenomena in the late 1940s and 1950s. Second, it focuses on the work of geographers and climatologists in relation to the heat and water balance at the earth's surface, which attracted considerable attention within geographical circles as well as more broadly within Soviet science during the 1950s. Third, it reflects upon the way in which Soviet geography utilized its understanding of climate systems in order to participate in national schemes concerned with the modification of the climate and the transformation of nature. Finally, the review highlights the maturing of climate modification debates among geographers and cognate scientists during the late 1950s and early 1960s with the emergence of competing discussions over the potential for human activity to result in both positive and negative consequences for the global climate system