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Interesting article and some interesting insights into how marxism-leninism actually played well with the scientific method.
There was another pathology, as the author calls it, in the Soviet scientific system: pretty much like what it did to genetic science, some ignorant officials essentially outlawed computer science, or what was called cybernetics back then. I don't know much about the motivations and how exactly banning cybernetics was in line with marxism-leninism, but needless to say what a fatal mistake it was. Bringing back computer science later, I think in the 1970s didn't help much: the Soviets were already light years behind in the area. All the Soviet computer scientists and engineers could do at the time was to steal and copy. If anyone here remembers ДВК - that was an almost exact copy of PDP-11 and its OS. (My God, I think I can even remember its smell now.)
Bottom line being, all arguments regarding political and economic systems aside, you can't trust one person or a single "ideologized" organization on anything, ever. There should always be alternatives and eventual consensus. Kind of obvious today, isn't it.
>you can't trust one person or a single "ideologized" organization on anything, ever
All organizations are ideologized; if you can't see the ideology, that just means you agree with it.
I think he was going for the argument that your decisions should come from the integration and evaluation of different ideologies, rather than any one single ideology.
Then again, if you follow that too closely, it might become dogmatic itself :P so iunno. Epistemology is hard.
But decisions only come from ideology in a tertiary sense. Goals are the central contribution of any ideology. What criteria are you basing your decisions on? That is your ideology, and you can't just elide it; your goals come from somewhere and not all goals are interchangable.
> All organizations are ideologized; if you can't see the ideology, that just means you agree with it.
Ditto for technology.
There are intersting talks about reverse engineering intel processors under microscope. We also reversed ram, floppy and some hdds.
Cybernetics was considered western science, and most scientists had west connection. Good example is Antonin Svoboda. He ran away from Czechoslovakia before nazis invaded, hiding antiaircraft missile computer plans in frame of bicycle. Then he returned, build Czech Cybernetic Institute, become director and emigrated when soviets invaded. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%C3%ADn_Svoboda
Cybernetics were wrong because they began as efficiency optimization in the economy. It was wrong because it necessarily assumed shadow prices, which is incompatible with labor theory of value. The upper echelons were really that dumb.
There's a book about the whole optimization debacle, "The Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford.
Cybernetics were wrong because they began as efficiency optimization in the economy. It was wrong because it necessarily assumed shadow prices, which is incompatible with labor theory of value.
No, it conflicted with party dogma, not with the labor theory of value. In what way do you think the existence of shadow prices conflict with LTV?
I think almost all new branches of 20th century Western-originating science suffered some degree of unhelpful ideological scrutiny at one point or another although most of these cases were not as damaging or as well-known as Lysenkoism.
The pure science itself perhaps had the capability to catch up and recover but the centrally planned, often military-dominated industrial system was profoundly awful at actually managing industry and innovating. Much of Soviet industry remained woefully behind its Western counterparts - in capacity, precision, quality assurance, material science, you name it. One can reasonably argue that a great deal of Soviet engineering design ingenuity in a number of fields was driven by the constraints of what they could realistically produce.
Actually the reverse happened in 70s - instead of pursuing indigenous R&D, it was decided to clone Western hardware and software instead. This really crippled Soviet computer science and engineering.
In 50s-60s Soviet computers were not that far behind, but late it was harder and harder to compete with West simply because of economy scale disadvantage. Unlike nukes and space exploration, computer technology was not receiving the funding to maintain parity.
Therefore it was decided that copying and cloning Western tech would be cheaper then trying to compete in yet another high-tech industry.
And of course things were harmed by the party politics. A Polish engineer invented a computer which is now considered to be few years ahead of its time, and was ready to enter production,but then it was shut down because of a direct order from the party,as it would conflict with the party-backed Elwro company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202
Edit: of course Poland was never part of the Soviet Union,but the political system was heavily influenced by orders from Russia.
Interesting how facing competition, following the others (between nations, or even companies) ideas is rarely a worthy plan for long term. It's depriving your brains of real pressure to invent.
Even consensus is repressive, though. Sometimes you need an alternative to consensus: ideologized personality.
But if you teach a whole nation a powerful philosophy of science, some of them
might find it useful. Vladimir A. Fock (1898-1974) reported that his engagement
with the ideology enabled him to devise a new set of harmonic coordinates for
general relativity. Yakov I. Frenkel (1894-1952) developed his notion of “holes”
and “collective excitations” in condensed-matter physics through extensive
reflection on contemporary Soviet political thought.
At least one Gulag scientist influenced TRIZ, which influenced Western industry, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrich_Altshuller
Well, Korolev also spent some months in GULAG. But I believe the point in article was not that people in system were "suddenly" agreeing with system - rather that system's concepts lead them to some discoveries.
Side note: "Tsar Peter I (also known as “the Great,” although the appropriateness of that moniker is one of the most debated questions of Russian history)"
I don't think very many people dispute Peter's moniker, except for total haters. Even if you think his influence was on the whole negative, you have to admit that it was very, very large and that the changes he made were profound (though they may have been continuations of movements started by his predecessors). He may not have been great in the sense of having a positive influence, but he was great like the Great Barrier Reef.
If you're interested in this topic, the quasi-novel Red Plenty is fantastic. Its primary characters are members of the Soviet scientific community, particularly the nascent computer scientists of the 60s-70s.
I totally agree with the recommedation of Red Plenty. It's really a lucid set of stories about the Soviet system. I can't say I really knew a lot going into it, but it doesn't fall into the trap of saying "damn commies" every few pages.
The scene with the Gosplan planner trying to solve the problem of allocation of resources is a particularly damning indictment of central planning.
If you look at science and technology/engineering as a unified field, you can see that not everything conforms to the "American" model: the military is arguably just as important to American science/technology as it was to Soviet science (the Manhattan Project, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Air Force owned forging presses, ARPANet, the DoE, Boeing, the Dodge Brothers plant to manufacture recoil cylinders, etc.)
There's also the (former) elephant in the room that was Bell Labs: the huge R&D lab was owned by Ma Bell, essentially a government endorsed monopoly.
I think it's safe to say Bell Labs represented a large portion of the whole of US's technical and scientific output in the 20th century (reminder: they invented the transistor, information theory, lasers, radio astronomy, UNIX, ... ; it's mindblowing).
Don't forget the Valley's own government-sponsored roots: Navy money funded the Federal Telegraph Corporation and later Moffet Field, which begat Eitel-McCullough, a wartime manufacturer of radios and vacuum tubes. Varian Associates, another wartime manufacturer, was instrumental in getting Stanford Industrial Park built, where HP was founded.
NACA (later NASA) brought Lockheed to the area, and worked hand-in-glove with Fairchild as its only supplier of the transistors needed in the Space Race for years, which firmly centered the semiconductor revolution in the area.
Of course, this is to say nothing of the Federal research dollars which still constitute a massive portion of university research funding, including at Stanford itself.
And of course, to add to the countless examples outside the Bay area, there's the National Laboratory system.
If you look closely, the American and Soviet science systems don't appear all that different. The chief difference is that the Soviets preferred to keep everything under direct governmental control, while the United States prefers to use government contracts and grants to drive scientific progress through the private sector and university system.
That, and there's significantly less chance of being thrown in prison for espousing political views in the modern US.
You forgot separation of research and teaching.
Stalinism was the worst dissaster which happened to Russia since the napoleonic wars or even mongols. It is also responsible for one of the bigest genocide of all times (slavic peasants). I really have hard time to grasp why articles even debating this ideology are here.
Because debating things is what people do and should do. Also, the scientific system in the Soviet Union does not automatically equate to Stalinism.
On of the closing paragraphs more or less answers your question:
"To avert any misunderstanding: I am not defending the Soviet Science System; I am describing it. There was a great deal of shoddy work, rent-seeking and suffering within that system. But there was also extremely good work, and the latter was a product of the system that engendered the former. That’s the paradox that comes from looking at any science system: it wouldn’t be a system at all if it didn’t, in some sense, work."
It is also interesting that in the last decade or so Putin has been trying to historically redeem Stalin. "He was brutal this and that", but, "he did all these great things as well" kind of idea.
Maybe realizing he is also a dictator by redeeming one of the most brutal and evil dictators he is also legitimizing his own power.
I think that the interest here on HN would be similar for education in a long-lasting fascist (or whatever kind of brutal) state's scientific system. I really don't see the interest here as a moral statement on communism, but rather as just interest.
And the morality of the sort of political system the US has (I'd say "capitalism" but that's a little simplistic), is also not being judged when we examine the US scientific approach.
If we want to avoid the nightmare of another superpower arising that behaves in that fashion, we would be wise to learn how it was able to amass so much power.
Also, just because part a system is bad doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from it. The Soviets had some truly amazing technological achievements, especially in physics, and they often did their work on a shoestring budget.
Learning and debating alternative systems is a good thing. Even if those systems were evil as a whole, there might be valuable insights somewhere within them.
Stalinism didn't go away - it still exists in the mindset of the global elite as a mechanism for power. Writing it off with prejudice would be a serious mistake; for all its failings of the human species, it certainly provided some small powerful groups with a recipe for mass control. This is even more important a subject today than it ever was.
Without Stalinism the USSR would have probably lost WW2, which in turn means Hitler would not have been defeated. Sad but true.
Stalin purged so many military commanders it's doubtful USSR wouldn't have advantages in WW2 without Stalin. The war would likely be fought very differently - or not fought at all, as Hitler wouldn't be so careless with his Barbarossa plan.
Just look at the performance of the Red Army in the Winter War for an example.
If there was no Stalin, WW2 would have been totally different. Soviet Union helped Hitler a lot to rebuild Germany military power and prepare for WW2. In fact, they started WW2 as allies. Soviets were giving supplies to Germany till the moment Germans did U-turn and attacked USSR. Without Stalinism, were would probably be no need for WW2 at all. Or it would be a totally different event.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were allies only in the weakest sense, non-aggression. Each were buying time, and ultimately considered the other its enemy and knew a war would be fought sooner or later.
Claiming that the Soviet Union was a major force in the re-arming and preparation of Nazi Germany is counterfactual at best. There are hundreds of studies on how and why Nazism rose in Germany, and none seriously posits that it was with the help of the Soviet Union (the aftermath of WWI, the treaty of Versailles, rising discontent and anti-semitism, are all part of the real motives). Because of the tenets of Nazism, the war in Europe would have been fought no matter what ("living space", "superiority of the Aryan race", "final solution of the Jewish question" and all that stuff). Without the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany wouldn't have had a major front in which their soldiers fought and died by the thousands, and it would have made the job of the Western Allies incredibly harder, if at all possible.
If you want to assign blame to other countries, many businessmen in the Western world actually saw Hitler in a positive light, at least initially, since he was against unions and workers rights.
Meh, who knows what would have happened. If the Russian Revolution had played out differently, Russia could have become a socialist country more like modern European states, still broken the back of the Germans on the Eastern front, helped defeat Hitler, and we might have had a half century of free trade and economic growth. Accurately evaluating alternative history is next to impossible.
"what would have happened" - suprising to see it here, in comments about a science-related article. The fact is that the most evil, biggest and thoughest army of all times was defeated(with enormous participation of the "western" allies, though). And still, it's kinda "doubtful" that Stalin was somewhat maybe a tiny bit good at commandment...
I disagree.
Without Stalin's political system we were not able to build our nuclear and fusion shield (not only the bomb itself, but rockets, plains and other delivery systems), antimissile systems and so on. The goal of that defence project demanded hyper concentration of human resources, and Stalin did this.
And if he didn't who can grant for shure that USA would not use their nukes against our country (or, may be some other country, which was in conflict with USA) as they did against Japan? The most people thanked Stalin for that safety he gave our nation, the minority had suffered.
Yes, there was oversacrifices and exaggerations, and that was cruel regime and highly militarized. But it was necessary to protect ourselves from the unfriendly West (the West openly hated communism since the beggining, even when it was only internal Russian affair). And in the end, it was Churchill, who declared Сold War, not Stalin.
And Putin has nothing in common with Stalin. You know, our elders say about our current political situation: if we would have Stalin nowadays the life would be far far better. Putin is not so strong, and smart, and firm and slefless, as Stalin was. For instance Putin have ended Russian Academy of Sciences So... You may not be afraid, we are not able to rebuild Union here in any sense.
> Yes, there was oversacrifices and exaggerations, and that was cruel regime and highly militarized. But it was necessary to protect ourselves from the unfriendly West (the West openly hated communism since the beggining, even when it was only internal Russian affair). And in the end, it was Churchill, who declared Сold War, not Stalin.
Come on. The large-scale purges, the public trials, the goulags... this was done to suppress not only internal dissent, but any independent thought. How many loyal communists, original bolsheviks, were executed or sent to die in the camps? This had nothing to do with "protecting the USSR from the West" (I'll note that Stalin seemed very willing to work with the West, in the person of Adolf Hitler, as long as he got something out of it).
Stalin was a mass murderer. You cannot brush his crimes under the carpet by talking about "exagerations", "sacrifices" and "necessity".
And am I brushing something away? I'm just saying, that he was not catastrophic to our country. For instance during Yeltsin's democratic government there was no repressions but because of povetry died over 3000000 people, and we lost a lot of industrial enterprises. During Stalin's repressions died 650000 people, but he developed our country... So... Who was a greater catastrophe for Russia?
You know, just claiming that Stalin was complete disaster for us is oversimplification.
I disagree. Putin is building 21-century version of SSSR. He is in same delusional uber-ego dictator category as Stalin, just methods have matured, PR is better (well... he is still a shame to his country though), and he doesn't have the absolute power to unleash stalinist terror - it wouldn't work in same way as back then.
To us in Europe, Putin (and hence Russia) is by far biggest thread to our society and our values. Forget cartoonish muslim terrorists, they are there just to catch headlines to get more sponsors/recruits from Saudi wahhabists. Putin, on the other hand, longs for his good old days in KGB and the power structure of the world back then. My country (Czechoslovakia back then) was heading towards democracy in 60', and it was invaded in '68 with russian forces just to stop it. For next 21 years, my tiny little country had 5% more population in form of soviet soldiers permanently stationed there. This recent bitter lesson won't be forgotten so easily - russians cannot be trusted. Period. I am more glad with US powerhouse being counterbalanced with Chinese. You can call my opinions personal, but Poles, Hungarians etc. could tell their own stories.
I would even extrapolate and state that well-being of europe is, among other factors, linked to militarily weak russia. Once precious natural resources will go off (and eventually they will), there isn't much Russia has to offer to the world. If any non-russian disagrees, please go there living for few months, and let's talk after that.
I disagree. You know, borders are open. And anybody who wants european benefits can just go there and have a good european life. And many people choose that way. Those who stay just don't give (excuse me my lexic) a shit about Europe. We just do not care, and we are not interested in conquering something. We have a lot of our land to develop, so why we should bother about exhausted Europe?
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary and a lot of smaller countries was just necessary for safe belt between USSR and the West. If there was no Cold War, there was no need to control that countries. But the West preferred to confront not to cooperate. And what we supposed to do? Should we allow to position NATO's nukes around our borders?
And now Putin have no interest to get something from Europe. May be only money and technology to build enterprises here. Nobody needs or wants conrol over Europe. Even more, a lot of people thinks here that we should learn from Europe...
But now. Europe just pushed us away into "friendly" Chinese hug. And it would have far far different economical consequences for Europe. Because China wants your markets badly. And with Transsiberian Highway it will get them.
Do you have similar excuses for Nazi Germany for its contribution to rocketry and nuclear power?
I do get why (especially in the West) people think better of Stalin than of Hitler, but its good to point out that the first had even more civilian victims.
I am not saying that one should make a ranking of genociders, but one should refrain from whitening anyone who have willingly caused millions of civilian deaths.
The real numbers are: during 1921-1954 years there were 642980 death sentences on political cases. It is far far less, than amount of Hitler's victims. Just only Holocaust victims outnumber that.
And I'm not whitening anybody and I have no excuses for Stalin.
But we are just not thinking here about Stalin as the one of the worst things happened to our country. I think that being nuked by USA was quite a worse perspective for our people.
Because "Commies Are Cool" (see the cult of Che), and their supporters imagine themselves as becoming commissars, not anonymous bodies in ditches.
Unfortunately yes, to some extent. Propaganda is a serious force, as latest events in Russia and Ukraine are showing.