ing new cadres of scientists. On the other hand,
Stalin encouraged and patronized Marxist philoso-
phers in their mounting attacks on the leaders of
the scientific community accused of violating the
norms of Marxist theory. In the years of Stalin’s
reign of terror in the late 1930s, a long line of Acad-
emy personnel landed in political prisons, from
which many did not return.
In 1936 the government abolished the Com-
munist Academy and transferred its members to
the Academy of Sciences, where they became part
of the newly founded Department of Philosophy,
the center of an intensified crusade against “ideal-
ism” in both Western and Soviet science. For a long
time, “physical idealism,” as manifested in quan-
tum mechanics and the theory of relativity, was
the main target of Marxist attacks.
Even in the peak years of Stalinist oppression,
the Academy’s physicists—led by Abram Fyodor-
ovich Ioffe, Vladimir Alexandrovich Fock, and Igor
Yevgenievich Tamm—made bold efforts to resist
philosophical interference with their science. Their
basic arguments were that Marxist philosophers
were not familiar with modern physics and were
guilty of misinterpreting Marxist theory. At a later
date, Nikolai Nikolayevich Semenov, a Nobel lau-
reate, stated publicly that only by ignoring Marx-
ist philosophers were the physicists able to add
fresh ideas to their science. More general criticism
of Marxist interference with science came from the
academicians Ivan Petrovich Pavlov and Vladimir
Ivanovich Vernadsky: They opposed the monopo-
listic position of Marxist philosophy.
Physics and biology were the main scientific
arena of Stalinist efforts to establish full ideological
control over scientific thought. The two sciences,
however, did not undergo the same treatment. In
physics, Stalin encouraged Marxist philosophers to
engage in relentless attacks on the residues of “ide-
alism” in quantum mechanics and the theory of rel-
ativity, but refrained from interfering with the
ongoing work in physics laboratories.
The situation in biology was radically differ-
ent. Here, Stalin not only encouraged a sustained
ideological attack on genetics and its underlying
“bourgeois” philosophy but played a decisive role
in outlawing this science and abolishing its labo-
ratories. Academicians Peter Leonidovich Kapitsa
and Igor E. Tamm, experienced warriors against
Stalinist adverse interference with the professional
work of scientists, were among the leading schol-
ars whose sustained criticism swayed the govern-
ment ten years after Stalin’s death to abandon its
stand against modern genetics.
The process of the de-Stalinization of the Acad-
emy began soon after Stalin’s death in 1953. By
the mid-1960s, there was no science in the outside
world that was not recognized and closely followed
in the Soviet Union. The Academy played the lead-
ing role in reestablishing sociology and the rich na-
tional tradition in social psychology dominated by
the internationally recognized legacy of Lev Se-
menovich Vygotsky. At the same time, Marxist
philosophers were encouraged to explore paths to
a reconciliation with leading Western philosophies
of science and to search for “the kernels of truth”
in “bourgeois” thought.
In the meantime, the Academy continued to
grow at a rapid pace. In 1957 it established a string
of research institutes in Novosibirsk—known as the
Siberian Department or Akademgorodok (Academic
Campus)—concentrating, among other activities,
on the branches of mathematics related to the on-
going computer revolution, the latest developments
in molecular biology, and the new methodological
requirements of the social sciences, particularly
economics. In 1971 the Department had fourty-
four research institutes, fifty laboratories, and a re-
search staff of 5,600. It also supported a new
university known for its high academic standards.
A new complex of research institutes in nuclear
physics was established in Dubna, and another
group of institutes engaged in physico-chemical
approaches to biological studies was built in
Pushkino. A scientific center engaged in geophysi-
cal studies was established in 1964 in Krasnaya
Pakhta. The scientific center in Noginsk concen-
trated on physical chemistry. The Academy also
helped in guiding and coordinating the work of the
Union-Republican academies.
In 1974 the Academy had 237 full members
and 439 corresponding members. In the same year
the professional staff of the Academy numbered
39,354, including 29,726 with higher academic de-
grees. The Academy published 132 journals, a few
intended to reach the general reading public. It con-
tinued the tradition of publishing collections of es-
says celebrating important events in national
history or commemorating major contributors to
science. One of the last and most memorable col-
lections, published in 1979, marked the centennial
of Einstein’s birth.
The Academy produced voluminous literature
on its own history. The Soviet period of the Acad-
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY