---
title: "Repression of science in the Soviet Union"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:40:20.455651+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Physics ===
In the late 1940s, some areas of physics,  were also criticized on grounds of "idealism".
In quantum mechanics  Soviet physicists Dmitry Blokhintsev, Yaakov Terletsky and K. V. Nikolsky  developed a version of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of dialectical materialism. 
Special and general relativity were a matter of controversy among the Soviet scientists since 1920. Some of them argued that this theory is grounded in Machism (acutely criticized by Vladimir Lenin in his Materialism and Empiriocriticism), others were a group of so-called "mechanists" (see Mechanists and dialecticians controversy), later "Young Stalinists" joined the ranks of the relativity theory. At the same time a considerable number of prominent Soviet physicists defended the relativity theory. The attacks on the relativity theory intensified in 1949 under the auspices of the struggle against the "physical idealism" in the work of Leonid Mandelstam. Initially Sergey Vavilov, President of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union,  managed to defend Mandelstam, but in 1952 the political attacks on "reactionary Einsteinianism" intensified further. This pseudoscientific campaign sizzled after the death of Stalin. 
Although initially planned, the process of "ideological cleansing" in physics did not go as far as defining an "ideologically correct" version of physics and purging those scientists who refused to conform to it, because this was recognized as potentially too harmful to the Soviet nuclear program. During 1949-1951 there was "antiresonance campaign" against the theory of resonance, during which scientists who supported it were accused of "cosmopolitan" sympathies and repressed. As Anna Krylov writes on the perils of ideological intrusion into science, "Stalin rolled back the planned campaign against physics and instructed Beria to give physicists some space; this led to significant advances and accomplishments by Soviet scientists in several domains.  However, neither Stalin nor the subsequent Soviet leaders were able to let go of the controls completely.  Government control over science turned out to be a grand failure, and the attempt to patch the widening gap between the West and the East by espionage did not help.  Today Russia is hopelessly behind the West in both technology and quality of life."

=== Sociology ===
After the Russian Revolution, sociology was gradually "politicized, Bolshevisized and eventually, Stalinized". In 1920s a position had formed in the Soviet Union that historical materialism is in fact Marxist sociology, and the major discussion was whether to use the terms "sociology" and "historical materialism" synonymously or to abandon the term "sociology" altogether and consider it to be an anti-Marxist bourgeois science. From 1930s to 1950s, the independent discipline of sociology virtually ceased to exist in the Soviet Union. Even in the era where it was allowed to be practiced, and not replaced by Marxist philosophy, it was always dominated by Marxist thought; hence sociology in the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc represented, to a significant extent, only one branch of sociology: Marxist sociology. With the death of Joseph Stalin and the 20th Party Congress in 1956, restrictions on sociological research were somewhat eased, and finally, after the 23rd Party Congress in 1966, sociology in Soviet Union was once again officially recognized as an acceptable branch of science.

=== Reliability of data ===
The quality (accuracy and reliability) of data published in the Soviet Union and used in historical research is another issue raised by various Sovietologists. The Marxist theoreticians of the Party considered statistics as a social science; hence many applications of statistical mathematics were curtailed, particularly during the Stalin era. Under central planning, nothing could occur by accident. The law of large numbers and the idea of random deviation were decreed as "false theories". Statistical journals and university departments were closed; world-renowned statisticians like Andrey Kolmogorov and Eugen Slutsky abandoned statistical research.
As with all Soviet historiography, reliability of Soviet statistical data varied from period to period. The first revolutionary decade and the period of Stalin's dictatorship both appear highly problematic with regards to statistical reliability; very little statistical data was published from 1936 to 1956 (see Soviet Census (1937)). The reliability of data improved after 1956 when some missing data was published and Soviet experts themselves published some adjusted data for Stalin's era; however the quality of documentation deteriorated.
While on occasion statistical data useful in historical research might have been completely invented by the Soviet authorities, there is little evidence that most statistics were significantly affected by falsification or insertion of false data with the intent to confound the West. Data was however falsified both during collection – by local authorities who would be judged by the central authorities based on whether their figures reflected the central economy prescriptions – and by internal propaganda, with its goal to portray the Soviet state in most positive light to its very citizens. Nonetheless, the policy of not publishing, or simply not collecting, data that was deemed unsuitable for various reasons was much more common than simple falsification; hence there are many gaps in Soviet statistical data. Inadequate or lacking documentation for much of Soviet statistical data is also a significant problem.

== Theme in literature ==
Vladimir Dudintsev, White Garments (1987), a fictionalized story about Soviet geneticists working during the Lysenkoism era

== See also ==
Academic freedom
Antiscience
Anti-intellectualism
Bourgeois pseudoscience
Censorship in the Soviet Union
Deutsche Physik
First Department
Historical negationism
Political correctness
Politicization of science
Science and technology in the Soviet Union
Soviet historiography
Alexander Veselovsky, a case of suppressed literary research
Stalin and the Scientists

== References ==

Я. В. Васильков, М. Ю. Сорокина (eds.), Люди и судьбы. Биобиблиографический словарь востоковедов  жертв политического террора в советский период (1917–1991) ("People and Destiny. Bio-Bibliographic Dictionary of Orientalists – Victims of the political terror during the Soviet period (1917–1991)"),   Петербургское Востоковедение (2003). online edition