> scientists were moving progress rather despite the regime, than thanks to it. No, it is more nuanced than that. Those scientists only had their positions be

> scientists were moving progress rather despite the regime, than thanks to it. No, it is more nuanced than that. Those scientists only had their positions because the state chose to allocate resources to keep them employed. With the fall of Communism, when academia was exposed to market forces, those departments were often gutted. Also, certain fields gained considerable state support precisely because the regime felt they served its own foreign policy goals. For example, the USSR was a powerhouse for the study of the Iranian language family. This was not only because a number of Iranian languages were spoken within the USSR, but also because the USSR wanted good Central Asian areal studies so that it could better extend its influence over Iran and Afghanistan. The same is true of many of the Third World nations where the USA and USSR were fighting for influence: name a language in Africa or Asia, and there is often a very well-written Soviet-era grammar or lexicon that linguists everywhere still cite today.