3 ms·
Russia had brilliant mathematicians even before the October revolution, however, the Soviet Union gave another incentive to become an academic - it pretty much
by jerzyt 6y ago
Russia had brilliant mathematicians even before the October revolution, however, the Soviet Union gave another incentive to become an academic - it pretty much guaranteed a highly respected job, even if the salary was modest, but also allowed most of the academics to not get involved in politics. So in a country where you couldn't form a business, being an academic or a doctor was pretty much the best career choice.
- yters 6y agoAt least the engineers were too useful to the state to get purged frequently.
- jerzyt 6y agoAlthough there were exceptions. If you got hitched to a high-visibility program, failure was considered a sabotage.
- yters 6y agoSo I guess the best position in a communist country is to be extremely useful and extremely obscure.
- jerzyt 6y agoYou could say that. I'm from Poland, so compared to Soviet Union it was communist-lite. I had a brilliant math teacher in high school. He had the reputation that if he was your math teacher you were automatically accepted at the local university. He was a legend in my town, and managed to stay under the radar of the communist regime.