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No, it does not. It is clear that the Soviet Union, for all its flaws, was one of the foremost nations (or collection of such) when it comes to scientific endea
by Yetanfou 11y ago
No, it does not. It is clear that the Soviet Union, for all its flaws, was one of the foremost nations (or collection of such) when it comes to scientific endeavours. Where they failed was in the translation of scientific data to 'products', but that is another story.
Modern Russia still has its share of eminent scientists, but they lack the s(t)olid backing of a nation which felt like it had something to prove.
- dharma1 11y agoThat was kind of my point - at least in terms of science they have regressed. Wonder what kind of state support for scientific endeavours they have today?
- briandear 11y agoLysenkoism was certainly a highlight of the Soviet sciences. Mendelian inheritance was considered a capitalist fabrication.
- Yetanfou 11y agoWhat Lysenkoism was to the Soviet Union, is Creationism to the United States of America. Both 'doctrines' are completely nonsensical, but supported by strong religious currents in their respective environments. It just so happened the state religion in the Soviet Union had mortal gods versus the man-on-the-cloud of the born-again evangelical religion entertained by some recent US leaders.
- kryptiskt 11y agoPeople were persecuted and killed because of Lysenkoism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov Your false equivalences trivializes that persecution.
- Yetanfou 11y agoI'd put this persecution more in the hands of Stalin and his cronies. He hardly needed an excuse to persecute and kill anyone, after all.
- pvg 11y agoThat's not how Soviet scientists felt about Lysenko. Just check his Wikipedia page. In 1962 three of the most prominent Soviet physicists, Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich, Vitaly Ginzburg, and Pyotr Kapitsa, presented a case against Lysenko, proclaiming his work as false science. They also denounced Lysenko's application of political power to silence opposition and eliminate his opponents within the scientific community. These denunciations occurred during a period of structural upheaval in Soviet government, during which the major institutions were purged of the strictly ideological and political machinations which had controlled the work of the Soviet Union's scientific community for several decades under Stalin. In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences: He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.
- pvg 11y agoYou'd have to find a period in which the NIH or NSF or, hell, DARPA were handing out grants to creationists to the detriment of everyone else and research universities were hiring creationist professors and firing evolutionary biologists. After which the biologists got arrested. The comparison is close to nonsensical.
- agumonkey 11y agoHow much of this is due to post-war context ? The USA left that period stronger while the planet was trying to heal. Also the USA mindset is so well tuned to crafting products. Ideas coming from european/eastern minds blossomed there.