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Preparations soon began for a conference on physics, a sequel to the 1936 meeting. The organising committee met forty-two times between 30 December 1948 and 16 March 1949. The discussions were sharp and bitter, with divisions not only between physicists and philosophers but also between different groups of physicists at the Academy of Sciences and at Moscow University.[385]The draft resolution called for a 'struggle against kowtowing and grovelling before the West' and criticised individual physicists such as Ioffe, Kapitsa and Landau. What effect such a resolution would have had on physics is not clear, for it did not attack quantum mechanics and relativity theory directly in the way that Lysenko had condemned genetics. In the event, the physicists were reprieved. The meeting was cancelled in the middle of March, some days before it was due to start.[386]

It appears that leading physicists in the atomic project warned Beria and Stalin that a conference would interfere with the development of nuclear weapons.[387] A similar logic was used by a group of nuclear physicists who wrote to Beria in 1952 to complain about philosophers who 'without taking the trouble to study the elementary bases of physics' try to refute 'the most important achievements of modern physics'.[388] They went on to claim that the philosophers' activities might interfere with the nuclear project.[389] In neither case - I949 or I952 - did the party make a definitive ruling in favour of the physicists. The possibility of a conference on physics was held in reserve.

Further discussions took place in the early 1950s, in linguistics, physiology and political economy, and Stalin was deeply involved in each of them.[390] He published his thoughts on linguistics and political economy.[391] He gave Iurii Zhdanov conspiratorial advice on the conference on physiology, telling him to organise the supporters of Pavlov on the quiet, and only then to convene the conference at which 'general battle' could be waged against Pavlov's opponents.[392] But Stalin's interventions raised a fundamental problem: if the Central Committee could have its own position on scientific questions and could adjudicate the truth or falsity of scientific theories, how was it to decide what the correct position was, which theories were true and which false? 'It is generally recognized', Stalin wrote in his commentary on linguistics, 'that no science can develop and flourish without a battle of opinions, without freedom of criticism.'[393] Stalinist discussions, however, were usually initiated in order to destroy, or to reinforce, a particular school or monopoly (Marrist linguistics, Michurinist biology, Pavlovian physiology), and that presupposed that the Central Committee had already decided what it wanted the outcome to be.

In his pamphlet on linguistics, Stalin reasserted Marxism's scientific status. 'Marxism', he wrote, 'is the science ofthe laws governing the development of nature andsociety ... the science ofbuilding communist society' (emphasis added). As a science,' he wrote, 'Marxism cannot stand still; it develops and is perfected.' It did not 'recognize invariable conclusions and formulas, obligatory for all epochs and periods. Marxism is the enemy of all dogmatism.'[394] This suggests that he did not regard Marxism as a fixed point on which the Central Committee could base 'its own position on questions of science'. In his comments on Lysenko's I948 report, he had rejected the idea that socialist natural science was necessarily different from bourgeois natural science.[395] But if Marxism did not provide a key, and scientific monopolies could stifle the truth, how was the Central Committee to make its judgements? It is tempting to see Stalin, in his last writings, struggling with a problem that he himself had created: how could the Central Committee use effectively the authority it claimed on questions of science, without destroying the science on which the power of the state was coming increasingly to depend?

De-Stalinisation and science 1953-68

Encouraged by success in nuclear weapons development and space flight, the post-Stalin leaders placed great hopes in science and technology. Investment in science grew very rapidly in the fifteen years after Stalin's death, and the number of 'scientific workers' rose from 192,000 in 1953 to 822,000 in 1968. New science cities such as Akademgorodoknear Novosibirsk and Zelenograd near Moscow were founded in the expectation that research would flourish there. Boris Slutskii caught the mood of the time in his 1959 poem 'Physicists and Lyric Poets': 'Physicists it seems are honoured, lyric poets are in the shade', the poem begins. There is no point in disputing this, writes Slutskii; greatness is now to be found not in the poet's rhymes, but in logarithms.[396]

The Soviet Union nevertheless lagged behind the West. Kapitsa had written to Stalin in July 1952 to lament the poor condition of Soviet science, and he was not alone in his concern.[397] The tendency towards technological stagnation in the economy was also a source of anxiety.[398] After Stalin's death, the government convened several meetings of engineers, plant directors and scientists to discuss the introduction of new technologies into industrial production. It then established the State Committee for New Technology and created the position of Deputy Minister for New Technology in the industrial ministries.[399]This was the first of a series of administrative reforms designed to stimulate technological progress.

In his letter to Stalin Kapitsa had deplored the way in which science was subordinated to practical needs. It was essential to support fundamental research, he argued, because scientific discoveries could give rise to new technologies; radar, television, jet propulsion and atomic energy were among the examples he mentioned. Kapitsa was challenging the orthodox view that it was the technological needs of society, rather than the internal logic of science, that stimulated scientific progress. Eventually the official position changed, and the 1961 party programme declared that 'science will itself in full measure become a direct productive force'.[400] In the reforms of the Academy of Sciences between 1959 and 1963, a number of technical institutes were moved from the Academy to the appropriate industrial ministries, thus reversing the thrust of the Academy's reform in the late 1920s.[401]

Economic growth was coming to depend more on new technology and higher labour productivity than on the addition of new workers to the labour force. Barriers to technological innovation were, however, deeply embedded in the institutional structure of the economy.[402] First, there was a serious lack of development facilities, because the government had invested heavily in research and production but had neglected engineering development, a crucial phase in the transfer of research into production. Second, factories were reluctant to introduce new products or new processes, because innovation would interfere with their ability to meet plan targets. Third, administrative barriers existed between the R&D system and industrial production, and there were different agencies responsible for R&D, with a resulting lack of policy co-ordination. Khrushchev carried out various administrative reforms, but these did little to improve the situation.[403] Military R&D performed more successfully, not because the defence sector operated according to some ideal of central planning, but because the political leadership devoted considerable resources and effort to overcoming the barriers to innovation that existed elsewhere in the economy.[404]