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The Academy abandoned the concept of pure science and placed a new emphasis on engineering and applied research. This policy rested on the belief that science did not grow by virtue of an internal logic, but in response to the technological demands that society placed on it.[347] The government introduced planning into science, over the objections of many scientists. In a speech to the first all-Union conference on the planning of scientific research in April 1931, Bukharin stressed that scientists should think beyond their research to the application of scientific knowledge in industrial production.[348]

The relationship between science and Marxist philosophy also underwent a crucial shift. In April 1929, the historian M. N. Pokrovskii, president of the Communist Academy, called on Marxists to end their 'peaceful coexistence' with non-Marxist and anti-Marxist scholars. He urged them 'to begin the decisive offensive on all fronts of scientific work, creating their own Marxist science'.[349] Deborin's claim that dialectical materialism should provide guidance to scientists now appeared too conservative. A group of younger, more radical philosophers called for the 'restructuring of the natural and the mathematical sciences on the basis of the materialist dialectic'.[350] There were sporadic efforts to do just that in the early 1930s, but in the summer of 1932 the Central Committee warned against ill-informed attempts to reconstruct scientific

disciplines. [351]

Philosophers were subordinate to the authority of the party Central Committee. They did not constitute an ideological supreme court, passing independent judgement on the acceptability of scientific theories. Stalin made it clear that the primary purpose of theory was to help practice; the correctness of a theory could be judged by its contribution to practice.[352] It was the Central

Committee - or, more precisely, its General Secretary - that would decide how useful a theory was and thus whether or not it was correct. Philosophers had little independent authority, but they were responsible for propagating dialectical materialism and they served as ideological watchdogs, on the prowl to see if they could find anything untoward or suspicious in the work of scientists.[353] They were one of the party's instruments for exercising control over the scientific community.

What emerged from the upheavals of 1928-32 was a large, well-funded, party-controlled R&D effort. 'In the USSR, as nowhere else in the world, all the conditions have been created for the flourishing of science,' Karl Bauman, head ofthe Central Committee's Science Department, claimed in August 1936.[354] But the authorities were not satisfied. The Academy of Sciences, on instruction from the government, organised a conference on physics and industry in March 1936.[355] The main target of criticism was Abram Ioffe, director of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology, the leading Soviet physics institute at the time. He and his institute were attacked for not doing enough to help industry.

In December 1936 the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences held a conference at which T. D. Lysenko and his followers attacked leading geneticists.[356] Practice was crucial here too. Lysenko was a crop specialist who had won support from those responsible for agricultural policy by proposing various practical measures to improve crop yields. His claims were very appealing in the terrible years following collectivisation. Lysenko, who had no training in genetics, accused some of the geneticists of racism and fascism; he and his followers were in turn charged with being anti-Marx and anti- Darwin.[357] The physicists had resisted the introduction of philosophical issues at their conference. The biology meeting, with its name-calling and political accusations, showed how far scientific debate could become politicised. The Central Committee's assertion of authority in science had opened the way to arguments for and against particular lines of research not merely on the grounds of their scientific validity or practical utility, but also on the basis of their political character. Two types of argument now became available in scientific debates: 'quotation-mongering' (the appeal to the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin in support of one's arguments), and 'label-sticking' (the attempt to defeat an opponent by associating him with a political or philosophical deviation).

Lysenko continued to strengthen his position in the late 1930s. He was made president of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1938 and a full member of the Academy of Sciences in the following year. The press portrayed him as a scientist of a new type: a man of the people, patriotic and oriented towards practice. This background gave him credibility in party circles. The fact that he understood very little about genetics did not hinder his ascent. He exploited the political context cleverly and destroyed his opponents by accusing them of political and ideological sins. The leading geneticist N. I. Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in Saratov in 1943.[358]

Important though the Lysenko affair was, it did not characterise Stalinist science as a whole. While some fields suffered, others thrived. It was in these years, for example, that P. A. Cherenkov, I. M. Frank and I. E. Tamm discovered and explained the Cherenkov effect, for which they received the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physics; L. D. Landau did the work on the theory of liquid helium for which he was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize; and P. L. Kapitsa did the research in low-temperature physics that won him the 1978 Nobel Prize.[359]The important difference between physics and biology was not that one was compatible with Marxism-Leninism and the other was not. It was the relationship to practice that determined their fate. Geneticists and plant breeders had no ready response to the crisis in agriculture caused by collectivisation. Lysenko, by contrast, found support among agricultural officials. He attacked the geneticists for their failure to provide practical help and explained that failure in terms of the political and ideological defects of the scientists and their theories, converting the crisis in the countryside into a crisis in science. There was no comparable crisis in industry to make physics seriously vulnerable to attacks of that kind.

The scientific community in the 1930s was subject to rigorous political and administrative controls, pressed to contribute to military and economic development and under permanent scrutiny for its political loyalty. Communists were now in key administrative positions; censorship became more stringent;

and foreign travel came to a virtual stop. Members of the pre-revolutionary scientific intelligentsia still occupied some leading positions, often as institute directors and heads of scientific 'schools', which were networks of patronage and support as well as intellectual communities.[360] Planning, which aimed to eliminate duplication, reinforced these schools and even encouraged the formation of monopolies, with particular fields dominated by individual institutes and their directors. Expansion ofthe scientific community brought large numbers of young people into science, leading to inter-generational conflicts that sometimes acquired a political character. Careerism and personal rivalries took on a political edge, and the practice of denunciation affected the scientific community as it did society at large.

The growth of science took place against the background of continual investigations and trials. The Shakhty trial of 1928 and the Industrial Party trial of 1930 were only the most prominent instances.[361] Researchers at the Academy were arrested and imprisoned or exiled in the 'Historians' case', the 'Slavists' case', the 'Peasant Labour Party case', the 'Leningrad SR-Narodnik Counterrevolutionary Organisation case', and other cases in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These were widely reported in the press, evidently to frighten scientists and engineers and ensure their loyalty to the regime.[362] Repression became more intense in the late 1930s, with the arrest of tens of thousands of scientists and engineers. Some important institutes were destroyed - the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology in Khar'kov is a notable example.[363] The regime's faith in science was matched by suspicion of scientists; its support of science was counterbalanced by repression of the scientific community. The epitome of this paradox was the sharashka, the prison laboratory in which scientists and engineers, who had been arrested for crimes against the state, developed technologies for defending the state.[364]