Aided by personal documents and institutional archives that were closed for decades, this book recounts the development of physics—or, more aptly, science under stress—in Soviet Russia up to World ...War II. Focusing on Leningrad, center of Soviet physics until the late 1930s, Josephson discusses the impact of scientific, cultural, and political revolution on physicists' research and professional aspirations.
Political and social revolution in Russia threatened to confound the scientific revolution. Physicists eager to investigate new concepts of space, energy, light, and motion were forced to accommodate dialectical materialism and subordinate their interests to those of the state. They ultimately faced Stalinist purges and the shift of physics leadership to Moscow. This account of scientists cut off from their Western colleagues reveals a little-known part of the history of modern physics.
The former Soviet empire spanned eleven time zones and contained half the world's forests; vast deposits of oil, gas and coal; various ores; major rivers such as the Volga, Don and Angara; and ...extensive biodiversity. These resources and animals, as well as the people who lived in the former Soviet Union - Slavs, Armenians, Georgians, Azeris, Kazakhs and Tajiks, indigenous Nenets and Chukchi - were threatened by environmental degradation and extensive pollution. This environmental history of the former Soviet Union explores the impact that state economic development programs had on the environment. The authors consider the impact of Bolshevik ideology on the establishment of an extensive system of nature preserves, the effect of Stalinist practices of industrialization and collectivization on nature, and the rise of public involvement under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and changes to policies and practices with the rise of Gorbachev and the break-up of the USSR.
The Soviet Union was the resource state par excellence. From the days of its founding under Vladimir Lenin, Communist Party officials, economic planners, and scientists and engineers engaged a series ...of projects intended to tame nature, overcome the forces of national self-determination, and incorporate the periphery of the vast multi-national nation into a powerful empire. This empire would be able to withstand what came to be called “hostile capitalist encirclement,” but only if its vast open spaces of land—that the urban leaders saw as empty of people—was settled by like-minded workers and party members. They promoted a series of large-scale nature transformation, construction, transportation infrastructure, resource extraction, and other industrial efforts that would simultaneously fill empty spaces on the periphery and the interior with devoted newcomers, and remake local people and indigenes into conscious, modern Soviet citizens.
In cases of suspected meningitis or encephalitis that were difficult to diagnose, metagenomic sequencing of CSF was used to attempt to determine the etiologic agent. Metagenomic sequencing was able ...to determine a likely pathologic agent that was clinically actionable in some cases.
The leaders of the USSR actively pursued Arctic exploration, settlement and resource exploitation. Working with scientists, engineers, settlers and local people, and using gulag labourers, they ...created the most urban Arctic environment in the world that focused on extractive industries
- oil, gas, nickel, platinum, coal and others. Owing to a centrally-planned economy, forced settlement and unwavering determination to harness resources, they faced the constant threat of industrial accidents and pollution-borne illnesses; epidemiological surveys reveal significant life
expectancy and infant mortality impacts. The break-up of the USSR left Arctic regions without the extensive subsidies of the Soviet era. But under Vladimir Putin, Russia has again determined to force Arctic development in support of state power. This essay will examine continuity and change
in the efforts of Russian leaders from Stalin to Putin to develop rich Arctic resources and establish urban settlements and military bases across the Arctic Circle. It will consider the human and environmental costs of the state-sponsored effort, as well as fledgling efforts at remediation
of persistent pollution and social problems.
In 2000, Russian scientist Zhores Alferov shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the heterojunction, a semiconductor device the practical applications of which include LEDs, rapid ...transistors, and the microchip. The Prize was the culmination of a career in Soviet science that spanned the eras of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev--and continues today in the postcommunist Russia of Putin and Medvedev. In Lenin's Laureate, historian Paul Josephson tells the story of Alferov's life and work and examines the bureaucratic, economic, and ideological obstacles to doing state-sponsored scientific research in the Soviet Union. Lenin and the Bolsheviks built strong institutions for scientific research, rectifying years of neglect under the Czars. Later generations of scientists, including Alferov and his colleagues, reaped the benefits, achieving important breakthroughs: the first nuclear reactor for civilian energy, an early fusion device, and, of course, the Sputnik satellite. Josephson's account of Alferov's career reveals the strengths and weaknesses of Soviet science--a schizophrenic environment of cutting-edge research and political interference. Alferov, born into a family of Communist loyalists, joined the party in 1967. He supported Gorbachev's reforms in the 1980s, but later became frustrated by the recession-plagued postcommunist state's failure to fund scientific research adequately. An elected member of the Russian parliament since 1995, he uses his prestige as a Nobel laureate to protect Russian science from further cutbacks. Drawing on extensive archival research and the author's own discussions with Alferov, Lenin's Laureate offers a unique account of Soviet science, presented against the backdrop of the USSR's turbulent history from the revolution through perestroika.
In the 1950s, Soviet nuclear scientists and leaders imagined a stunning future when giant reactors would generate energy quickly and cheaply, nuclear engines would power cars, ships, and airplanes, ...and peaceful nuclear explosions would transform the landscape. Driven by the energy of the atom, the dream of communism would become a powerful reality. Thirty years later, that dream died in Chernobyl. What went wrong? Based on exhaustive archival research and interviews,Red Atomtakes a behind-the-scenes look at the history of the Soviet Union's peaceful use of nuclear power. It explores both the projects and the technocratic and political elite who were dedicated to increasing state power through technology. And it describes the political, economic, and environmental fallout of Chernobyl.
The paper deals with the strategies of colonization and assimilation of frontier in Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia in relation to, Siberia and the Far East. These frontier spaces were disturbing ...the Soviet leadership for they were both vulnerable for an external invasion and unsupportive of the new socialist order. Thus, countryside of Soviet Russia was also seen as frontier of its own kind. The conquest of frontier and its integration into the socialist, industrial economy was implemented by Stalinist leadership through the violent collectivization, which was accompanied by colonization in the periphery strengthened by the flow of exiles and labor camp prisoners from the collectivized western areas. From the point of view of Soviet leaders, the frontier territories were both resource pantry and “empty spaces” to settle. To stimulate colonization Soviet government was establishing the “corridors of modernization”, a network of infrastructure, connecting the newly constructed “company towns”, the outposts of frontier conquest. Such politics was simultaneously integrating indigenous peoples of frontier into the socialist economy and destroying their way of life. In spite of efforts of Soviet rulers from Stalin to Brezhnev, the assimilation of frontier did not succeed. However, in the 21st century Russian leadership continues to treat Arctic, Siberia and the Far East along the Soviet lines, as frontier spaces of economic and symbolic conquest and military-political contestation. Unlike the Soviet era, though, nowadays the concept of frontier had found its way into Russian historical and political thought.
Spanning nine time zones, the Russian Arctic was mostly unexplored before the twentieth century. Paul Josephson describes the massive effort under Stalin to assimilate the Arctic into the Soviet ...empire--effects still being felt today, as Putin redoubles efforts to secure the Arctic, which he sees as key to Russia's economic and military status.
Spanning nine time zones from Norway to the Bering Strait, the immense Russian Arctic was mostly unexplored before the twentieth century. This changed rapidly in the 1920s, when the Soviet Union ...implemented plans for its conquest. The Conquest of the Russian Arctic, a definitive political and environmental history of one of the world's remotest regions, details the ambitious attempts, from Soviet times to the present, to control and reshape the Arctic, and the terrible costs paid along the way.Paul Josephson describes the effort under Stalin to assimilate the Arctic into the Soviet empire. Extraction of natural resources, construction of settlements, indoctrination of nomadic populations, collectivization of reindeer herding--all was to be accomplished so that the Arctic operated according to socialist principles. The project was in many ways an extension of the Bolshevik revolution, as planners and engineers assumed that policies and plans that worked elsewhere in the empire would apply here. But as they pushed ahead with methods hastily adopted from other climates, the results were political repression, destruction of traditional cultures, and environmental degradation. The effects are still being felt today. At the same time, scientists and explorers led the world in understanding Arctic climes and regularities.Vladimir Putin has redoubled Russia's efforts to secure the Arctic, seen as key to the nation's economic development and military status. This history brings into focus a little-understood part of the world that remains a locus of military and economic pressures, ongoing environmental damage, and grand ambitions imperfectly realized.
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