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"Father" of the soviet rocket program - Sergey Korolev was also imprisoned in 1937 for false charges, put into labor camp, tortured, moved to a prison for scien

• TeMPOraL 4y ago
  That's one of those things about history that still don't add up in my mind. How come that so many breakthroughs were made by Russian/Soviet researchers who were tortured, imprisoned, or sent to a gulag, sometimes in the middle of working on those major achievements? You'd think that with the political climate in Russia/USSR in the 19th and 20th century, there would be near-zero scientific output coming from there - but it turns out the opposite was true. I first started thinking about it when I read about Korolev. I can't imagine continuing to do any kind of work after spending years in prison and almost dying in a gulag.
  • nuccy 4y ago
    The stimuli may have been different than today - while a person is in prison (or abroad for a conference, collaboration, research or whatever trip) the family remains under close supervision of the special services, and the person is being reminded about that.
    • p1esk 4y ago
      I don't think it was about family. When you're in prison, you will want to have an opportunity to do useful and interesting work, instead of either doing nothing, or doing hard labor.
      • jacquesm 4y ago
        I know someone who has been in that situation and in their case it definitely was the not-so-subtle reminder that their family was vulnerable that caused them to cooperate with the regime.
  • hattmall 4y ago
    Because with Soviet Communism you don't have to worry about anything other than doing your work and the gulag. If you're not in the gulag and are in an inherently rewarding field you can really get stuff done. Capitalism prevails but the overhead for everyone is orders of magnitude more than under communism for the chosen.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • my_city 4y ago
      With communism you work to build socialism, a better society. Under capitalism you work so your CEO can get another 20 million dollars bonus.
      • astrange 4y ago
        A better society exists in capitalism and is called "consumer surplus".
      • cylinder714 4y ago
        "Under capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under socialism, the powerful become rich."
        • actionfromafar 4y ago
          (Side-note: socialism is one of these overloaded terms. In the US for instance, socialism and communism seem to be synonyms.)
          • flohofwoe 4y ago
            ...but it also doesn't help to treat socialism and social-market-economy as synonyms. E.g. most Northern/Western European countries are not actually 'socialist', even though they are much more social than the "real socialist" countries of the Eastern Bloc. (and yes, the term "Real Socialism" was actually a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_socialism
  • fifticon 4y ago
    There is also the reverse relationship: The kinds of geniuses capable of such original thought, were precisely the kinds of persons the regime would be suspicious of and do witch hunts on. So, to the extent you were 'acting as as genius', you were high risk for being witch-hunt tortured.
  • airgapstopgap 4y ago
    The answer is that, bluntly, environment matters vastly less than we are led to believe by people invested (even for morally noble reasons!) in maintaining the prestige of education and redistributionist policies. It is not only impossible to make an average person a genius, but also very hard to destroy a genius through adverse conditions short of actual murder. Pretty much all of the variance is explained by natural talent. American rhetoric about expenditure per pupil, middle class advantages and SAT prep seems so petty and myopic in comparison to those stories because it objectively is.
  • credit_guy 4y ago
    Here's the thing: people adapt. We hear about various unthinkable horrors in Russia or the USSR, and think that people lived in fear 24/7. No, people still lived their lives, went to schools, got married, had children, worked, got paid, went shopping, went on vacations, etc. Various things were different, for example long shopping lines, or the constant fear of informers. But you learned to keep your tongue, stop thinking about frivolous things such as "inalienable rights", mutter the right incantations, and life was livable. I know this because I was born in the Eastern Block. Life offered lots of little moments of joy, such as going to math contests and getting awards (for me as a kid). Just think of the times of Covid. In January 2020 we could not fathom the idea of being trapped at home for months, and then it happened just like that. Life went on. The same with Communism. It's horrible, but (most) people adapt and keep living their lives.
  • Mikhail_Edoshin 4y ago
    There was one man, V. F. Voino-Yasenetsky. He got the profession of a surgeon, and he was also deeply religious and was soon ordained a priest. He remained a surgeon though and worked as such for the rest of his life. Thing is, it all happened in early Soviet years when the government was actively opposing and suppressing the church. He was in the middle of this struggle and it was rather hard for him. At one moment, for example, he though of burning himself in a church that was about to be closed. This didn’t happen and he was eventually sent to an exile somewhere far in Siberia. Yet when the war started he wrote a letter to the officials saying that he, as a surgeon with a lot of experience, wanted to be of help and asked to be sent into a hospital closer to the frontlines. And also added that “when the war ends I’m ready to return back to the exile”. Russian history is rich and convoluted and may look controversial to an outsider. But it is not really that to an insider. The controversial parts are just tragic. (Later that man got Stalin prize for his book about surgery, although they did not let him put “Archbishop Luke” as the author and published it under his civil name.)
• brabarossa 4y ago
  Yuri Kondratyuk - Soviet engineer and mathematician, who developed the first known lunar orbit rendezvous. In 1927 he built a 13,000 ton wooden grain elevator without a single nail. The lack of nails in the structure was used as evidence that he had planned it to collapse. Convicted of "anti-Soviet activity", Kondratyuk was sentenced to three years in a GULag. The building stood 60 years before burning down in middle 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Kondratyuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Kondratyuk