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Stalin’s Great Science:
The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists
By Alexei B. Kojevnikov
$32
Imperial College Press |
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Book explores science under Stalin
World-class science and technology developed in the Soviet Union
during Stalin’s dictatorial rule under conditions of political
violence, lack of international contacts and severe restrictions
on the freedom of information.
Stalin’s Great Science, written by UGA associate
professor of history Alexei Kojevnikov, investigates this paradoxical
success by following the lives and work of Soviet scientists—including
Nobel Prize-winning physicists and others—throughout the turmoil
of wars, revolutions and repression that characterized the first
half of the USSR’s 20th century.
The book examines how -scientists operated within the Soviet political
order, communicated with Stalinist politicians, built a new system
of research institutions and conducted groundbreaking research under
extraordinary circumstances. Unlike most previous studies, Stalin’s
Great Science recognizes the status of science as an essential
element of the Soviet polity and explores the nature of a special
relationship between experts (scientists and engineers) and Communist
politicians that enabled the initial rise of the Soviet state and
its accomplishments, until the pact eroded in later years, undermining
the Communist regime from within. |
