Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953

by Simon Ings

Overview

Scientists throughout history, from Galileo to today’s experts on climate change, have often had to contend with politics in their pursuit of knowledge. But in the Soviet Union, where the ruling elites embraced, patronized, and even fetishized science like never before, scientists lived their lives on a knife edge. The Soviet Union had the best-funded scientific establishment in history. Scientists were elevated as popular heroes and lavished with awards and privileges. But if their ideas or their field of study lost favor, they could be exiled, imprisoned, or murdered. And yet they persisted, making major contributions to twentieth-century science.

Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the hugely gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the Revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine.

But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also discovered breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802127594
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	02/20/2018
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	1,095,215
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Simon Ings, a science writer and novelist, is the author of A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision. He edits the culture section of New Scientist and regularly contributes to publications including the Guardian, Times (UK), Telegraph, Independent (UK), and Nature. He lives and works in London.

Read an Excerpt

The controversies over genetics came to a head at the fourth annual session of the Lenin Academy, that vast conglomerate of all things agricultural. The organizers of the session, which ran from December 19 to 26, 1936, had never planned it to be some kind of extra-judicial venue to try genetics. Nicolai Ivanovich Muralov, the new head of the Lenin Academy, tried to maintain an even-handed debate. Muralov’s reputation was one of warmth and fairness—but he was in serious trouble. Trotsky had been his friend and champion. That sort of affiliation was by now quite enough to get a person killed.

There was another problem with Muralov—one which came to shape the Lenin Academy’s session in a way that sent a chill through Vavilov and the field of genetics: Muralov knew nothing whatsoever about genetics.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

Prologue: Fuses (1856-1905) 1

Part 1 Control (1905-1929)

1 Scholars 11

2 Revolutionaries 27

3 Entrepreneurs 55

4 Workers 68

5 Exploring the mind 85

6 Understanding evolution 113

7 Shaping humanity 142

Part 2 Power (1929-1941)

8 'Storming the fortress of science' 165

9 Eccentrics 183

10 The primacy of practice 197

11 Kooperatorka 213

12 The great patron 233

13 'Fascist links' 260

14 Office politics 277

15 'We shall go to the pyre' 287

Part 3 Dominion (1941-1953)

16 'Lucky stiffs' 305

17 'Can I go to the reactor?' 319

18 'How did anyone dare insult Comrade Lysenko?' 340

19 Higher nervous activity 367

20 'The death agony was horrible' 383

21 Succession 399

Epilogue: Spoil 416

Acknowledgements 435

Notes 437

Bibliography 466

Index 496

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Stalin and the Scientists:

Longlisted for the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

“Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid . . . Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times Book Review

“[Ings] is a gifted writer . . . A good single source for anyone approaching Soviet science for the first time . . . Stalin and the Scientists deserves attention . . . It is based on an impressive amount of study, and most readers will learn a great deal.”—Loren Graham, Wall Street Journal

“Ings’s finely crafted and informative book is a must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union, all in the service of the most ambitious experiment in social engineering the world has ever witnessed.”—Washington Post

“[A] monumental chronicle . . . Ings ably tweezers the discoveries and disasters out of this political train-wreck.”—Nature

“In Stalin and the Scientists, Simon Ings, culture editor at New Scientist (UK), very effectively relates a set of stories—compelling, often horrifying, sometimes both at once—of the most singular period in the history of Russian science.”—American Scholar

“An engrossing and disturbing cautionary tale illustrating the dangers that arise when rigid state ideology collides with scientific reality.”—Booklist

“[A] lively book . . . This is a fascinating story of brilliant scientists and charlatans, of visionaries and careerists, of civic courage and moral cowardice. The author explains the scientific issues in a clear and simple way, so the reader is aware of the issues at stake.”—Guardian

“Endlessly entertaining . . . An amusing book . . . [Ings’] storytelling skill is everywhere evident; the book . . . is lively, dramatic, intriguing, and often very funny. Ings also has a wonderful ability to explain complex notions.”—Times (UK)

“Ings tells his story with vigour . . . The bewildering array of scientists, philosophers and politicians is matched by the impressive range of topics that Ings discusses.”—New Statesman (UK)

“An artful synthesis of basic science and political infighting.”—Daily Telegraph (UK)

“[Ings] has an eye for the interactions between the worlds of the laboratory, the print room and the corridors of power . . . Stalin and the Scientists is a fascinating read. Well researched and written in a lively and engaging style, it grips like a good novel would.”—Sunday Business Post (UK)

“A great book . . . A vast tapestry of Russian history from the mid-19th century . . . The great themes and contributions of Russian science . . . are illustrated with detailed examples, anecdotes and apt quotations.”—Scotland on Sunday

“In Stalin and the Scientists, Simon Ings has produced one of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century. Deeply researched and written with a sense of burning importance, Ings’ book ranges widely from politics to philosophy, from economics to biography to recount the monumental successes of Russian scientists and the Soviet State’s Mephistophelean embrace of the scientific community. It is a fascinating work that both inspires and terrifies.”—Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy

“A dazzling, often astonishing prism through which to view the Soviet experiment”—Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

From the Publisher

…Ings is an entertaining storyteller who often captures the essence of things…Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book…

The New York Times Book Review - Simon Sebag Montefiore

12/19/2016
English novelist and science writer Ings (The Eye: A Natural History) takes an expansive look at scientific life in the Soviet Union from the waning years of the Russian Empire to Stalin’s death. Faced with grave challenges in the immediate aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and driven by a Marxist philosophy that envisioned a future universal science that encompassed politics and society, Soviet elites endeavored to make the Soviet Union “the world’s first scientifically run state.” These leaders embarked on an ambitious struggle to place science in “the service of society” and bring vast practical and humanitarian benefits to mankind. The pursuit of science was soon trumped by politics, ideology, and the whims of leaders, as Stalin’s “cult of personality expanded into the natural realm.” Ings sympathetically details the experiences of scientists who lived a complex, precarious, and harrowing existence as shifts in prevailing ideological winds exposed many to severe repression, including purges, arrests, and executions. The stories and anecdotes of individual scientists provide narrative bridges throughout the book, as Ings ably documents the challenges, failures, and achievements of Soviet science during this period in such areas as psychology, physiology, genetics, neuroscience, and cybernetics. Though he can be long-winded, Ings engagingly fuses history, science, and storytelling. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

11/01/2016
In examining the historical development of Soviet science before and after the Russian Revolution of 1917, novelist and science writer Ings (The Eye) focuses on the many ideological controversies that shaped the discipline during that era. With only a few introductory chapters on the transition from the Tsars to the Bolshevik Revolution, general readers may not be adequately prepared to understand the complexities given prominence in the book. There is substantial coverage of Joseph Stalin's personal and political interference in the development of science in the Soviet Union as well as the resulting controversies relating to genetics, biology, chemistry, and physics—in which Stalin established himself as the ultimate authority, often at the expense of many lives. VERDICT With an excellent bibliography, this book is recommended for sophisticated readers who appreciate the intricacies of Russian and Soviet political and scientific controversies and the dangers they brought to a society in turmoil. Those new to the subject might do well to consider Ethan Pollock's Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars or works by science historian Loren Graham.—Amy Lewontin, Northeastern Univ. Lib., Boston

Library Journal

2016-11-02
Picking through a minefield of Soviet utopia and paranoia.All sciences would coalesce into one, and this science would usher the new socialist being—so believed the Soviet state in its promulgation and censoring of brilliant Russian scientists from the establishment of the Bolshevik order onward. British novelist and science writer Ings (A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision, 2008, etc.) builds from the utopian vision of lofty scientism advocated by Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov in 1904 to the surviving crop of nervous scientists under Stalin, who were busy trying to make thermonuclear weapons in the late 1940s. The first hurdle for true scientists—e.g., the mineralogist and geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky—was the crippling material conditions in Russia, a situation caused largely by successive famines in the early 1920s and the rampant backbiting in the Academy of Sciences and other official agencies that effectively monitored and restricted intellectuals. The new order was in a hurry to bring on a "revolutionary generation," and above all, the Bolsheviks needed engineers, removing specialists from universities and ensconcing them in well-appointed institutes that became hives of bureaucratic and competitive disgruntlement. After Lenin died, Stalin moved to industrialize the country by fiat and quickly "rattle through the stages by which true communism might be achieved." Ings moves somewhat unevenly through these stages of increased authoritarianism, beginning with Stalin's Great Purge, which sacrificed many brilliant scientists and intellectuals such as Nikolai Vavilov, an internationally revered botanist whose fall was startling ("We shall go to the pyre," he predicted). "Pure science" did not exist, and many scientists were galvanized in Stalin's "Plan for the Great Transformation of Nature," a grand deforestation and dam-building project to make even the natural world yield to the plan. A provocative and increasingly chilling work that shows how scientists in the nascent Soviet Union were sacrificed to the Soviet dream of building the ideal state.

Kirkus Reviews