Customer Reviews

Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridge Studies in the History of Science)

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This study does the important job of outlining major Soviet achievements in the hard sciences (especially mathematics and physics), which are missed by too many popular sources. But the author's social-historical commentary is very superficial, and the appendix on technology completely misses the majority of development connected with military applications (which were mostly classified). There is essentially nothing here that one cannot get from a TIME magazine article from the 1960s-80s. Particular "technologies" are mentioned in a very superficial way which leaves one in doubt of the author's grasp of the technical issues involved, and wide generalities are repeated with no original historical analysis. This argument from ignorance is completely inexcusable now that much of Cold War projects are in the public domain (see, for e.g. Ken Alibekov's "Biohazard" or any of the open source material in Russian). Unfortunately most of the declassified archival material is only read by specialists, and the few popular expositions are in Russian. It is extremely unlikely that any historian of science would have the technical expertise to make a comprehensive synthesis, or even understand the points at issue.

A much better read would be "Science, Philosophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union" by the same author, which is much more informative.