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Book Stalin s Great Science

    Book Details:
  • Author : A. B. Kozhevnikov
  • Publisher : Imperial College Press
  • Release : 2004
  • ISBN : 9781860944192
  • Pages : 392 pages

Download or read book Stalin s Great Science written by A. B. Kozhevnikov and published by Imperial College Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-class science and technology developed in the Soviet Union during Stalin's dictatorial rule under conditions of political violence, lack of international contacts, and severe restrictions on the freedom of information. Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists is an invaluable book that investigates this paradoxical success by following the lives and work of Soviet scientists ? including Nobel Prize-winning physicists Kapitza, Landau, and others ? throughout the turmoil of wars, revolutions, and repression that characterized the first half of Russia's twentieth century.The book examines how scientists operated within the Soviet political order, communicated with Stalinist politicians, built a new system of research institutions, and conducted groundbreaking research under extraordinary circumstances. Some of their novel scientific ideas and theories reflected the influence of Soviet ideology and worldview and have since become accepted universally as fundamental concepts of contemporary science. In the process of making sense of the achievements of Soviet science, the book dismantles standard assumptions about the interaction between science, politics, and ideology, as well as many dominant stereotypes ? mostly inherited from the Cold War ? about Soviet history in general. Science and technology were not only granted unprecedented importance in Soviet society, but they also exerted a crucial formative influence on the Soviet political system itself. Unlike most previous studies, Stalin's Great Science recognizes the status of science as an essential element of the Soviet polity and explores the nature of a special relationship between experts (scientists and engineers) and communist politicians that enabled the initial rise of the Soviet state and its mature accomplishments, until the pact eroded in later years, undermining the communist regime from within.

Book The Perversion Of Knowledge

Download or read book The Perversion Of Knowledge written by Dr. Vadim J. Birstein and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-09-09 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Soviet years, Russian science was touted as one of the greatest successes of the regime. Russian science was considered to be equal, if not superior, to that of the wealthy western nations. The Perversion of Knowledge, a history of Soviet science that focuses on its control by the KGB and the Communist Party, reveals the dark side of this glittering achievement. Based on the author's firsthand experience as a Soviet scientist, and drawing on extensive Russian language sources not easily available to the Western reader, the book includes shocking new information on biomedical experimentation on humans as well as an examination of the pernicious effects of Trofim Lysenko's pseudo-biology. Also included are many poignant case histories of those who collaborated and those who managed to resist, focusing on the moral choices and consequences. The text is accompanied by the author's own translations of key archival materials, making this work an essential resource for all those with a serious interest in Russian history.

Book Soviet Science under Control

Download or read book Soviet Science under Control written by Jeffrey L. Roberg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roberg examines the relationship between the political leadership of the Soviet Union and Soviet science. Previously, this relationship was typically characterized as one of Communist Party dominance over the sciences. He argues that the relationship between scientists and the leadership is better viewed as bi-directional. The author concludes that scientists had an influence on policy-makers in the areas of nuclear policy and human rights although not to the same degree as the Party had on science and scientists.

Book The Soviet Art of Brainwashing

Download or read book The Soviet Art of Brainwashing written by Lavrent Beria and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-01-21 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PSYCHOPOLITICS - ""The art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaus, and masses, and the effecting of the conquest of enemy nations through ""mental healing."" The former Commissariat for Internal Affairs Beria introduces Soviet Spy students in the methods to brainwash, and control of 'the enemy'. Both on a one-on-one level as well as on a group level, this explosive textbook has been translated and now published. Ever since American prisoners of war in Korea suddenly switched sides to the Communist cause, the concept of brainwashing has continued to concern us. Has it stopped just because the Soviet Union is no more? The only way to know is to understand how it takes place. Learn how it really IS possible to force any thinking person to act in a way completely alien to his character. What makes so-called brainwashing so different from the equally insidious effects of indoctrination and conditioning, or even 'mental health'?

Book Restricted Data

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alex Wellerstein
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2021-04-09
  • ISBN : 022602038X
  • Pages : 558 pages

Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-04-09 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--

Book Beria

    Book Details:
  • Author : Amy Knight
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 1993
  • ISBN : 9780691010939
  • Pages : 344 pages

Download or read book Beria written by Amy Knight and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the biography of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin's notorious police chief and for many years his most powerful lieutenant. Beria has long symbolized the evils of Stalinism, yet because his political opponents removed his name from public memory after his execution in 1953, little is known of him.

Book Problems of Communism

Download or read book Problems of Communism written by and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Beria Affair

    Book Details:
  • Author : D. M. Stickle
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 1992
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 234 pages

Download or read book The Beria Affair written by D. M. Stickle and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barely four months after the death of Stalin, Beria, the feared head of the MVD (predecessor of the KGB) was suddenly arrested in the Kremlin by Marshall Zhukov and ten armed soldiers acting in conjunction with N Khrushchev, G Malenkov, A Mikoyan and others. Immediately dozens of Beria's deputies were arrested or killed. Virtually all local and republic MVD heads were arrested. Within days a crucial and top-secret Plenum of the Central Committee CPSU convened. The significance of this meeting is considered impossible to overestimate in the history of the USSR. Besides examining the questions of Beria's antiparty and antigovernment activities, the meeting examined the critical issues in society at the time. This Plenum laid the groundwork for the path toward freedom from totalitarianism. Ahead lay the momentous 20th Party Congress, the denouncing of the Cult of Personality, the closings of prison camps and mass rehabilitations. This book offers the complete text of the secret transcripts of these meetings.

Book A Visit to Soviet Science

Download or read book A Visit to Soviet Science written by Stefan Heym and published by New York : Marzani & Munsell. This book was released on 1959 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First hand interviews with top Soviet scientists in the fields of cybernetics, computers and nuclear and space engineering.

Book Stalin and the Scientists

    Book Details:
  • Author : Simon Ings
  • Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
  • Release : 2017-02-21
  • ISBN : 0802189865
  • Pages : 491 pages

Download or read book Stalin and the Scientists written by Simon Ings and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century.” —Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy 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. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2016 A New York Times Book Review “Paperback Row” selection “Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid . . . Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today.” —The New York Times Book Review “A must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union.” —The Washington Post

Book The Soviet Art of Brainwashing

Download or read book The Soviet Art of Brainwashing written by Lavrent Beria and published by . This book was released on 2017-12-26 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychopolitics - "The art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaus, and masses, and the effecting of the conquest of enemy nations through "mental healing." The former Commissariat for Internal Affairs Beria introduces Soviet Spy students in the methods to brainwash, and control of 'the enemy'. Both on a one-on-one level as well as on a group level, this explosive textbook has been translated and now published. Ever since American prisoners of war in Korea suddenly switched sides to the Communist cause, the concept of brainwashing has continued to concern us. Has it stopped just because the Soviet Union is no more? The only way to know is to understand how it takes place. Learn how it really Is possible to force any thinking person to act in a way completely alien to his character. What makes so-called brainwashing so different from the equally insidious effects of indoctrination and conditioning, or even 'mental health'?

Book Stalin and the Bomb

    Book Details:
  • Author : David Holloway
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2008-10-01
  • ISBN : 0300164459
  • Pages : 507 pages

Download or read book Stalin and the Bomb written by David Holloway and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.

Book Bloodlands

    Book Details:
  • Author : Timothy Snyder
  • Publisher : Basic Books
  • Release : 2012-10-02
  • ISBN : 0465032974
  • Pages : 546 pages

Download or read book Bloodlands written by Timothy Snyder and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century. Americans call the Second World War “the Good War.” But before it even began, America’s ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its meaning today.

Book The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev

Download or read book The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev written by Maria Rogacheva and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new contribution to understanding the transition of Soviet society from Stalinism to a more humane model of socialism.

Book Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars

Download or read book Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars written by Ethan Pollock and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1945 and 1953, while the Soviet Union confronted postwar reconstruction and Cold War crises, its unchallenged leader Joseph Stalin carved out time to study scientific disputes and dictate academic solutions. He spearheaded a discussion of "scientific" Marxist-Leninist philosophy, edited reports on genetics and physiology, adjudicated controversies about modern physics, and wrote essays on linguistics and political economy. Historians have been tempted to dismiss all this as the megalomaniacal ravings of a dying dictator. But in Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, Ethan Pollock draws on thousands of previously unexplored archival documents to demonstrate that Stalin was in fact determined to show how scientific truth and Party doctrine reinforced one another. Socialism was supposed to be scientific, and science ideologically correct, and Stalin ostensibly embodied the perfect symbiosis between power and knowledge. Focusing on six major postwar debates in the Soviet scientific community, this elegantly written book shows that Stalin's forays into scholarship can be understood only within the context of international tensions, institutional conflicts, and the growing uncertainty about the proper relationship between scientific knowledge and Party-dictated truths. The nature of Stalin's interventions makes clear that more was at stake than high politics: these science wars were about asserting that the Party was rational and modern, and about codifying the Soviet worldview in a battle for the hearts and minds of people around the globe during the early Cold War. Ultimately, however, the effort to develop a scientific basis for Soviet ideology undermined the system's legitimacy.

Book Khrushchev Lied

Download or read book Khrushchev Lied written by Grover Furr and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book On Stalin s Team

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sheila Fitzpatrick
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2015-09-15
  • ISBN : 1400874211
  • Pages : 379 pages

Download or read book On Stalin s Team written by Sheila Fitzpatrick and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first chronicle of Stalin's inner political and social circle—from a leading Soviet historian Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men and political window dressing. On Stalin's Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin was a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Drawing on extensive original research, Sheila Fitzpatrick provides the first in-depth account of this inner circle and their families. She vividly describes how these dedicated comrades-in-arms not only worked closely with Stalin, but also constituted his social circle. Stalin's team included the wily security chief Beria; Andreev, who traveled to provincial purges while listening to Beethoven on a portable gramophone; and Khrushchev, who finally disbanded the team four years after Stalin's death. Taking readers from the cataclysms of the Great Purges and World War II to the paranoia of Stalin's final years, On Stalin's Team paints an entirely new picture of Stalin within his milieu—one that transforms our understanding of how the Soviet Union was ruled during much of its existence.