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Leading scientists welcomed the investment in science and the prominence given to science in official propaganda, but they were unhappy with the bureaucratic and political controls on the scientific community.[365] Many were of course horrified by the brutality of the regime, and some wrote letters to the authorities to seek the release of colleagues who had been arrested.[366]There were those like Landau who regarded the Stalin regime as no better than fascism, but others thought that the repressive character of Soviet rule would be temporary. Vernadskii, for example, saw in the growth of science a cause for hope in the longer term.[367]

The priority given to science inspired admiration abroad. A Soviet delegation including Bukharin and Ioffe attended a conference on the history of science in London in 1931. The papers they presented, which analysed the development of science in its social context, inspired a group of left-wing British scientists to develop influential ideas about science and its social functions.[368]In the following year, Modest Rubenstein, a member of the delegation to the London conference, described in a pamphlet for foreign readers how science and technology would flourish under socialism. The Soviet Union, he wrote, was the first experiment in which 'a genuinely scientific theory' was being applied to the construction and control of social and economic life, as well as to the management of science and technology.[369]

The Second World War and the post-war years, 1941-53

Soviet scientists responded to the German invasion by putting themselves and their knowledge at the service of the state. Many volunteered for service in the Moscow and Leningrad militias, which suffered terrible losses in the early months of the war. Research institutes in Moscow and Leningrad were evacuated to the east, where scientists contributed to the war effort by working to improve arms and equipment as well as production processes.[370] The development of new military technologies did not have high priority until victory was in sight and it was clear just how much progress other countries had made.

Pre-war research on radar and rocketry had been interrupted by the purges. Radar development was resumed during the war, and rocket development at the end of the war.[371] In the spring of 1945 the Soviet Union sent teams of scientists and engineers to Germany to begin the systematic exploitation of German science and technology.[372] Soviet physicists had done pioneering work on nuclear chain reactions, but the German invasion brought that research to an end. Stalin initiated a small nuclear project in September 1942, but it was only on 20 August 1945, two weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima, that he signed a decree converting this project into a crash programme. Special organisations were set up to manage the atomic project, as well as radar and rocket development. New institutions of higher education were established to train the scientists and engineers needed for these programmes.[373]

Stalin more than once expressed the view that another world war was to be expected in fifteen, twenty, or thirty years. The advanced weapons programmes were intended to prepare the country for what he referred to as 'all contingencies'.[374] He promised to give I. V Kurchatov, scientific director of the nuclear project, 'the broadest all-round help'. He told him that he would improve scientists' living conditions and provide prizes for major achieve- ments.[375] 'I do not doubt', he said in February 1946, 'that if we render the proper help to our scientists they will be able not only to catch up, but also to overtake in the near future the achievements of science beyond the borders of our country.'[376]

On 29 August 1949 the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb, a copy of the first American plutonium design, which Klaus Fuchs had given to Soviet intelligence. In August 1953 it detonated a thermonuclear weapon and two years later, in November 1955, a two-stage thermonuclear design; these were independent Soviet designs.[377] The rocket programme was similarly successful. Building on German technology, Soviet engineers developed generations of rockets with steadily increasing ranges. In August 1957 they carried out the first successful flight test in the world of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and in October they used the same rocket to launch Sputnik.[378] Even with the help of espionage and German technology, these were impressive achievements in science and engineering.

In June 1945 over a hundred foreign scientists tookpart in a special celebration by the Academy of Sciences to mark its 220th anniversary. At a reception in the Kremlin attended by Stalin, Molotov made a short speech promising the 'most favourable conditions' for the development of science and technology and for 'closer ties of Soviet science with world science'.[379] The latter promise was soon broken. In May 1947 Stalin told the writer Konstantin Simonov: 'the scientific intelligentsia, professors, physicians . . . have an unjustified admiration for foreign culture.'[380] He started a campaign against subservience to the West: foreign contacts were curtailed; science journals stopped reporting on research done abroad and were no longer published in foreign languages. In the summer of 1947 two medical researchers were severely criticised for conveying to American scientists the results of their work on the treatment of cancer.[381]

Lysenko's fortunes had declined during the war, and in the early post-war years the Science Department ofthe Central Committee supported the geneticists against him. On 10 April 1948, Iurii Zhdanov, newly appointed head of the Science Department and son of Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov, gave a lecture criticising Lysenko's views on evolutionary biology and genetics. Stalin intervened to support Lysenko, telling Zhdanov that the Central Committee could not agree with his position. When Zhdanov replied that the lecture reflected only his personal point of view, Stalin responded: 'the Central Committee can have its own position on questions of science.' 'We in the Party do not have personal views and personal points of view,' he said.[382] The Politburo instructed the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences to organise a meeting on biology, and this took place from 31 July to 7 August 1948. Lysenko gave the main report. Some of his opponents were allowed to speak, but the meeting was stacked against them. Stalin had edited Lysenko's report and had made substantial changes to it. On the last day of the meeting Lysenko invoked the highest authority in Soviet science when he told his audience, 'the Central Committee of the Party has examined my report and approved it'.[383] The August session marked his complete triumph, with damaging consequences for teaching and research in biology.[384]