Physics and Politics in Revolutionary Russia

Paul R. Josephson

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520074828
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520911475
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Biological Sciences

Aided by personal documents and institutional archives that were closed for decades, this book recounts the development of physics—or, more aptly, science under stress—in Soviet Russia up to World War II. Focusing on Leningrad, center of Soviet physics until the late 1930s, Josephson discusses the impact of scientific, cultural, and political revolution on physicists' research and professional aspirations.

Political and social revolution in Russia threatened to confound the scientific revolution. Physicists eager to investigate new concepts of space, energy, light, and motion were forced to accommodate dialectical materialism and subordinate their interests to those of the state. They ultimately faced Stalinist purges and the shift of physics leadership to Moscow. This account of scientists cut off from their Western colleagues reveals a little-known part of the history of modern physics.


Aided by personal documents and institutional archives that were closed for decades, this book recounts the development of physics—or, more aptly, science under stress—in Soviet Russia up to World War II. Focusing on Leningrad, center of Soviet physics un

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Plates
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Politics of Tsarist Physics
• The Russian Revolution and the Search for a National Science Policy1
• 3 The Russian Association of Physicists and the Founding of the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute
• The Flowering of Soviet Physics: National Achievements and International Aspirations During the New Economic Policy
• Physics During the First Five-Year Plan: Industrialization and Stalinist Science Policy
• Cultural Revolution and the Natural Sciences
• Theoretical Physics: Dramatis Personae
• Theoretical Physics: Dialectical Materialism and Philosophical Disputes
• The Great Terror and the Assault on the Leningrad Physics Community
• Epilogue
• Appendix A: The History and Politics of Soviet Physics
• Appendix B: The Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute
• Appendix C: Publication
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index