Abstract
The Perversion of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science By Vadim J. Birstein, Westview, 2001, 512 pages; $32.50
Sakharov: A Biography By Richard Lourie, Brandeis University Press, 2002, 465 pages; $30.00
The great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who was no supporter of the Soviet regime, once said: “You must give our barbarians one thing: They understand the value of science.” It is true that the Soviet Union invested heavily in scientific research and in the education of scientists, but it also repressed scientists and destroyed entire scientific disciplines in the name of science. These two very welcome books throw light on different aspects of that complex history.
At the core of Vadim Birstein's The Perversion of Knowledge is Special Secret Laboratory No. 1, which was established in 1939 by the NKVD (the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, then headed by Lavrenti Beria) to develop poisons and test them on human beings. The experiments were done without the subjects' consent, caused great suffering, and sometimes led to death. The NKVD wanted poisons that would leave no trace and thus be useful for assassinations; the laboratory also tried to develop “truth drugs.” Similar laboratories had existed before 1939, but apparently they did not experiment on living people.
Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent release of thousands of official documents, has Special Secret Laboratory No. 1 come to light. Birstein, a Russian-American geneticist and historian, draws heavily on this mass of new documents. But much remains obscure; we do not know, for example, how many people the laboratory “treated.” Birstein compares the NKVD experiments with those of Nazi and Japanese scientists during World War II. He also mentions human experiments undertaken in the United States and Britain using radioactive materials and nerve gases. A more systematic comparison is needed, however, to draw out the similarities and differences between these programs.
Birstein argues that the NKVD laboratory was made possible by the willing collaboration of many scientists and the extensive system of party and police controls over science. Soviet leaders wanted the military and economic benefits that science could provide, but they did not trust the scientists. In the case of the poisons laboratory, party leaders came to suspect that scientists would use their poison concoctions against the political establishment.
The controls established by the party were not always effective, however; they could be counterproductive, as in biology. In 1948, Trofim Lysenko, with the support of Stalin, attacked work on genetics, which resulted in the dismissal of some 3,000 biologists from their research and teaching positions.
Although the author's focus is biology, he argues that science in general was perverted by the state's instruments of control. Even for the disciplines that did flourish, like physics, the moral cost was high. Birstein notes, for example, that prison labor was used extensively in building installations for the atomic industry, including the institute where weapons were designed.
The book raises some important questions: Can Russian science escape from its Soviet legacy? And what does the Soviet experience tell us about the relationship of science to its social context? Birstein correctly argues that the implications of Soviet history for science have not been squarely confronted in Russia. Although the ideological controls exemplified by Lysenko have disappeared, the role of the security services remain strong and there have been attempts to monitor contacts with foreign scientists.
An equally important question is whether biology is representative of Soviet science as a whole. Birstein suggests that it is, but I think that implies too uniform a picture of Soviet science.
The book's four chapter titles convey the outline of the author's argument: “Science under Siege”; “Deadly Science”; “Collaborators”; and “Resistance.” Some people were brave enough to criticize Lysenko and defend those who were arrested, but the fact that there were so few resisters underscores Birstein's view that most scientists collaborated willingly.
The best known resister was Andrei Sakharov, the renowned Soviet physicist, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize winner who died in 1989. In his biography of Sakharov, Richard Lourie, the translator of the scientist's memoirs, uses transcripts of KGB tapes and the testimony of those who knew Sakharov to complement what he wrote about himself. The result is a very readable account of the life of a man who was caught up in two of the most important developments of the twentieth century–the invention of nuclear weapons and the evolution of the international campaign for human rights.
Lourie's focus is not Sakharov's scientific work (which included, among other things, a design for the hydrogen bomb); rather, the author describes in compelling detail the scientist's family and friends and his importance in modern Russian history.
On the broader issues Sakharov's life raises, Lourie is less successful. At the beginning of the book, he quotes the Oxford-trained theorist Ernest Gellner, who wrote that the triumph of physics and the collapse of Marxism are the two great phenomena of the twentieth century. That makes Sakharov a pivotal figure, in Gellner's view. Yet Lourie does not pursue this interesting idea or ask how the two phenomena are related.
What these books show very clearly is how complex and multifaceted the history of Soviet science is. We cannot understand that history without paying attention to the Soviet system and the controls that were established over science. We also fail to understand it if we ignore the individual scientists–of whom Sakharov was without doubt the most remarkable–and the choices they made while working and living in that system.