Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953

Written by Simon Ings

Narrated by Tim Bruce

An epic history of science in the Soviet Union, following the scientists who survived Stalin's rule and helped to reshape the world Scientists throughout history, from Galileo to today's experts on climate change, have often had to contend with politics in their pursuit of knowledge. But in the Soviet Union, where the ruling elites embraced, patronized, and even fetishized science like never before, scientists lived their lives on a knife edge. The Soviet Union had the best-funded scientific establishment in history. Scientists were elevated as popular heroes and lavished with awards and privileges. But if their ideas or their field of study lost favor with the elites, they could be exiled, imprisoned, or murdered. And yet they persisted, making major contributions to 20th century science. Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the Revolution through the death of the "Great Scientist" himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine. But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781501949623

Simon Ings

Simon Ings is the author of eight previous novels and two works of non-fiction, including the Baillie Gifford longlisted Stalin and the Scientists. His debut novel Hot Head was widely acclaimed. He is the arts editor of New Scientist magazine and splits his time between a sweltering penthouse in Dubai (not his) and possibly the coldest flat in London. simonings.com @simonings

Reviews for Stalin and the Scientists

[chrisriesbeck · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An exhaustive and sometimes exhausting history of science in Russia, with some time spent on the period just before the Communist revolution, and at then end on how things did and didn't change under Khrushchev. Most of the focus is on biology, particularly genetics, and agriculture. Less time is spent on physics and the space program, perhaps because this area was somewhat less dominated by political factors. Like War and Peace, there are seemingly hundreds of character arcs to follow, but the story of Lysenko dominates. Though Ing says several times "I'm not an academic", the bibliography is 30 pages long and there are 28 pages of footnotes. For me, the book opens well, establishing the nature of Russia government under the tsars and its relationship with science, and the transition to Communism, the tensions between Lenin and Stalin, and how central the challenges of feeding Russia were to everything. The book also ends well as Russia emerges from Stalinism, sort of, and makes an interesting case for how cybernetics provided an umbrella for the return of serious science in a variety of domains. The big middle of the book is a slog though. Though chapters are basically ordered temporally, there's a lot of jumping around in time as different people are introduced and followed. Worse, there are frequent transitions from one person to another, as the history hops from one thread to another to another. It's like a Charles Ives piece with many snippets of music but rarely any sustained arc. There are many quotes from various scientific debates, that consistently failed to help me understand the personal, philosophical, and political battles they were meant to illustrate.So an A for effort and depth, and B for story telling.

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is actually not that much Stalin in this book all things considered, with most of the first third being devoted to what it meant to practice science in the early Soviet Union, though since much of the story is being told through the prism of the Lysenko Affair the “Boss” is a big part of this tale. As for what is really going on Ings is examining how the pretensions of Marxists to being the practitioners of a science conflicted with the actual practice of theoretical science. The foundational issue is that the Marxist conception of science was a very mechanistic and reductionist affair and they had a hard time dealing with post-Newtonian developments.Even more problematic though were what developments in the human and life sciences meant for the Bolshevik program. The implications there being that the Bolshevik ambition to be “engineers of human souls” was not achievable, and this was a total anathema. As it was it took the demise of Stalin and the craze for Cybernetics to finally put Lysenko in his place whereas my impression is that Russian psychology and psychiatry has only started to recover in the wake of the fall of the Soviet state.The note that Ings chooses to conclude on is to make a nod to Nicolai Fedorov and Russian Cosmism with its obsessions of perfecting humanity and transcending the natural world if one only had enough will and enough knowledge; the implication there being that the natural world was expendable in the pursuit of perfection and immortality. Ings actually has some respect for this vision, not to mention the desperate Soviet efforts to transform society with the week tools at hand. What Ings looks askance at in the end is our version of scientism in the West which allows us to entertain delusions that our power will always allow us transcend our own burn rate in regards to the resources at hand.

[hadden_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Readable work on the history of Soviet Science. Some of the early materials get bogged down, and there is a definite bias toward the bio-sciences and nuclear bomb subjects. However, the book did clear up some stories I have read elsewhere by supplying more information and background. There was also little information of the spoils taken from Germany at the end of the World War II, and about the captured scientists, except for a few individuals and items. Whole factories were dismantled and removed to the Soviet union, along with many of their scientific and technical working staff. Entire libraries were removed as well, with little accountability. They collectively gave a boost to post-war Soviet industry and science. Science under Stalin was always precarious, and favorites like Lysenko prospered while others were oppressed. A good understanding of free thought and the politicization of science under Soviet rule is hard to describe, but the author does a good job at attempting to describe this conundrum, which was very similar in many ways to the life of free thought and science research under fascist Germany.