As long as the Soviet Union has a fairly well-defined ideology, this necessity will remain. In all likelihood, the process will continue to follow the pattern that emerged in the physical science controversies rather than that of the genetics conflict. As has been repeatedly noted, the genetics problem was to some extent unique in its involvement of personalities who dominated the scene and who took personal advantage of the situation in which they found themselves. Moreover, the Soviet Union, like all other countries, is increasingly dependent

upon

science and the fruits of science, for which reason the party leadership will have a keener interest in preventing future controversies from reaching the destructive proportions that marked the genetics conflict.

At the same time, the Soviet leaders are not all-knowing, and they will of necessity have to rely upon the word of their scientific aides that a particular theory is or is not in accord with Soviet Marxism. Thus, the possibility of another "August Conference" remains. The point that must be acknowledged, and it cannot be stressed

too much, is that given the Soviet fusion of party, government, and ideology, a collision between scientific fact and ideological dictate could happen again. This should serve as a warning to any country which attempts to profess officially an allencompassing doctrine of human or material behavior. However "good" or "bad" such a philosophy may be, it will always run the risk of making the wrong choice in its endorsement of scientific theories, and the pace of the modern world does not allow for many unnecessary errors.

By David Joravsky

position of one group within the New Class against another, of scientists against political bosses" (p. 28). The rest is given partly to irrelevancies (the Jewish question and the anonymity of rocket men get a chapter each), but mainly to a characterization of "the New Class" as a whole, with love of status and consumer goods presented as its dominant trait. According to the author, "Mao Tse-tung is right in his discovery that the postStalin Russia has gone bourgeois" (p. 235). Evidently Mr. Parry believes that there is some essential link between the "bourgeois" way of life and the inevitable emergence of a technocracy in the USSR. Unfortunately he neglects not only to prove the existence of such a link but even to explain exactly what it might be. After many pages of sordid anecdotes illustrating the snobbishness, greed,

and generally un-Marxian behavior of "the New Class," he returns abruptly to his prediction of "the" scientists' victory over "the" party, and stops.

The New Class Divided would hardly merit extended consideration, except for the fact that many people, among them some who reject Prof. Parry's prediction, engage in equally superficial talk about "the" party and "the" scientists. His naive questionThe party and the scientists (or technicians or professional people), kto kovo (who will do in whom)? -is still posed and debated by many as if it clearly states the essential issue. (It is as if one asked, as many people used to: The Catholic Church and free minds, kto kovo? Such questions confuse a rational inquiry, for the opposites-Catholicism and free minds, communism and science—are not mutually exclusive.) Others, more

sophisticated, take note of the obvious: the conflict between Communist bosses and Soviet scientists has been ebbing, without any noticeable decline in Communist power. They try to brush off the question whether the growing autonomy of scientists is not changing the nature of Communist power. Their typical comment is that science is compatible with many political systems, or even with any, and that the Communist bosses are growing less obtuse in their management of the scientists, while political power remains where and what it was. A substantial analysis of the conflict (and the cooperation) between bosses and scientists would reveal the simplistic and evasive nature of this argument. But then, had the undertaken author substantial study, he would have abandoned the naive question he began with.

a

Both the question and the evasive effort to brush it aside have their basis in a common myth, which is supposed to explain why the conflict between bosses and scientists occurred in the first place, and why it has been ebbing since 1952. It all began, so the story goes, with Communist efforts to confine the development of science within the ideological framework laid out by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The conflict began to ebb as the Communist leaders asked themselves why they should sacrifice practical benefits for the sake of ideology. Presumably they engaged in an inner dialogue which went something like this: We dislike the new physics, genetics, cybernetics, and marginal economics for ideological reasons, but we like nuclear power, hybrid corn, computers, and rational planning for practical reasons, so we will suppress our ideological qualms and support these sciences.

Those who accept this myth-I often feel that they are the majority of my colleagues in Soviet studiesgo on to argue whether the suppression of ideological qualms is having a significant effect on Communist

political power. It is a footless argument, rooted in a myth, and trailing off in cloudy conjecture. The pity of it is that one need not dig through mountains of sources to discover what political bosses, professional ideologists, and scientists have actually said at any period in Soviet history. Indeed, there have been enough case studies to make it clear that ideological and practical considerations cannot be as neatly separated as they are in the conventional tale. Anyhow, the chronology implicit in the tale is contradicted by the facts: the Communist effort to tell natural scientists what is true in their disciplines began neither with prerevolutionary theorizing nor with the seizure of power in 1917, but with the paroxysm of 1929. And as for the clear-cut philosophy of science left by Marx-Engels and Lenin, anyone who knows what it is ought to tell the philosophers in Moscow. They haven't found it after nearly fifty years of searching.

C

onsider physics, which Prof.

Parry uses as his introducItory case study. He does not stop to ask why neither Lenin nor Stalin nor agitprop2 took a stand in the philosophical discussions of physics during the 1920's. He plunges into "the Soviet terror era of the 1930's," when "the few Russian intellectuals, Jewish or not, who understood Einstein's theories, were too frightened to stand up with their explanations and reassurances. The Soviet scientists, who knew what Einstein's formulae meant in the exploration and exploitation of atomic energy, protested only among themselves. It was only gradually, under the leadership of Kapitsa, that they

2 The term "agitprop" is used here as shorthand for the Central Committee's Sections of Ideology and Science, which grew out of the original Section of Agitation and Propaganda or Agitprop.

gained enough courage to use Einstein's contributions-without mentioning him. For by the mid-1930's his name was a party-decreed anathema" (p. 48).

This fantasy (there is really no other word for it) was created from an émigré physicist's tale of woe, the legend of Peter Kapitsa that Western physicists have been telling ever since his startling return to Russia in 1934 (after thirteen years at Cambridge), and from a few scraps of information in Philipp Frank's life of Einstein.3 Yet the facts are readily available in a number of substantial Western studies, as well as in various issues of such journals as Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk ("Progress of the Physical Sciences") and Pod znamenem marksizma ("Under the Banner of Marxism"). These sources make it clear that Soviet physicists never stopped using Einstein's theories-or those of quantum physics, which have caused Soviet ideologists much more trouble.

The minority of Soviet physicists who adopted the Communist viewpoint in the 1920's were almost entirely proponents of the new physics,* and they vigorously defended the ideological purity of their subject in the 1930's. If Prof. Parry needed a hero, he should have picked Igor

3 See Philipp Frank, Einstein, His Life and Times, New York, 1947.

The best introduction for the uninformed layman without mathematical training—that is, the most likely to engage

his mind without misleading it-is Bertrand Russell's ABC of Relativity (London, 1958). The untutored layman will then be able to appreciate the non-mathematical popularizations written by some of the major innovators. See, for example, Einstein and Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, New York, 1952; Louise de Broglie, The Revolution in Physics, New York, 1953; and Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, New York, 1958. But the fact remains, as L.I. Mandelshtamm pointed out in his famous lectures on relativity, that genuine understanding of the new physics requires mathematical reasoning. See Mandelshtamm, Polnoe sobranie trudov, Vol. V, Moscow, 1955, pp. 91-92. This is one of the reasons why obscurantist ideologists could not penetrate Soviet physics; they were barred by the necessity of mathematical reasoning.

Tamm, who was explaining the new physics to the Communist Academy back in the 1920's, won both Stalin and Nobel Prizes for work done in the 1930's and 1940's (Kapitsa is a Stalin but not a Nobel laureate), and even went so far as to defend his old schoolmate Boris Mikhailovich Gessen (or Hessen) in 1937, when Hessen, the chief party member among Soviet physicists, became an "enemy of the people." I mean no slight to Kapitsa, who is undoubtedly a brilliant scientist and courageous man of principle. But the fact is that his role in the ideological skirmishing on the outskirts of physics was minor and tardy, partly because he found it difficult to adopt the Communist viewpoint, and partly because he is not a philosophically-minded theorist."

5

here is the beginning of a pattern in these facts, a pattern that emerges clearly as one leaves the cult of the personality and examines the biographies of many Soviet physicists and ideologists. Obscurantism never penetrated Soviet physics. It flourished intermittently in the philosophical discussions of physics. Those who led the fight

5 See Akademiia Nauk SSSR, Materialy k biobibliografii uchenykh SSSR, Seriia fiziki, vypusk 9: Igor Evgenevich Tamm, Moscow, 1959. For his lectures to the Communist Academy, see its report, Deiatelnost Kommunisticheskoi Akademii, Moscow, 1928, p. 83. For his defense of Hessen, see the newspaper of Moscow University, Za proletarskie kadry, Jan. 9, 1937. Cf. the issue of April 11, 1937 for an attack which ominously notes that his brother has been exposed as a "wrecker."

6 See Peter L. Kapitsa, Collected Papers, 2 vols., New York, 1964-65. Parry seems to think that Kapitsa's first public defense of autonomous science was his well-known article in Ekonomicheskaia gazeta, March 26, 1962. In fact, Kapitsa had been insisting on the necessity of autonomy for a long time before 1962. See, for example, Nature, March 10, 1945, p. 294, and for a comprehensive discussion of Kapitsa's speech, M. Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty, Chicago, 1951, pp. 84-85. But, like Tamm and a number of other leading physicists, Kapitsa shunned the philosophical discussions of his science, where the battle over autonomy was most intense.

un

against it differed among themselves

in many ways but were alike in their willingness to discuss the philosophical significance of physics in the language of Communist ideology. (Prof. Parry denies the sincerity of party scientists. "Deep down inside their hearts and minds they scorn Karl Marx. . . ." (p. 307). He manages to get down there by skipping over their writings.) The diehard obscurantists were a tiny group of oldfashioned physicists. The party bosses never participated openly and directly in the intermittent quarrel over physics. When they were seized with fits of extreme anxiety about the loyalty of scientists (1930-32, 193638, 1948-51), agitprop had reflex seizures of sympathy for the obscurantists, who seemed quite pure of "Machist" philosophy since they rejected the physical theories that nourished "Machism." It was in those periods that timeserving ideologists like A.A. Maksimov and V.E. Lvov published scandalous attacks on the new physics, which made headlines in the West and caused people who think in headlines to conclude that the new physics was being banned because of its inherent conflict with Communist ideology. Such people ought to examine all the publications of Maksimov and Lvov in chronological sequence. It is a dreary but highly instructive task. These mechanical men of agitprop flipped back and forth between sympathy and antagonism toward the new physics. In the 1950's poor Maksimov's flip-flops were ended; he was made the personification of obscurantism and retired. Lucky Lvov soldiers on, once again defending ideas he used to attack."

The complete bibliographies of these prolific hacks are too long to be given here. For their tergiversations in the 1920's and early 1930's, see Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 1917-32, New York, 1961, Chapter 18. For the fall of Maksimov, see G.A. Wetter, Dialetical Materialism, New York, 1963, pp. 419-20.

The effort to explain physics in terms of theoretical ideology did not cause serious protracted conflict between physicists and the Communist party bosses. One must distinguish between the effort to manage scientists and the effort to explain their work. Physics came through the crisis of the 1930's and 1940's relatively unscathed because the yahoos in agit

prop were not managing research and education in that discipline. They could only bellow, intermittently, obscurantist explanations of it. Much the same was true in chemistry and mathematics. On the other hand, biology, psychology, and economics suffered major damage because militant ignoramuses and their timeservers were given direct control of these sciences. Evidently the Communist bosses made a distinction between sciences that deserved de facto autonomy, even when academic freedom was being vehemently denounced as a survival of capitalism, and sciences that required total reconstruction with the aid of political intervention. Or so it seemed to the party's leaders in the 1930's and 1940's. In the 1950's they began to see that they had suffered humiliating self-defeat in their efforts to reconstruct biology, psychology, and economics. They learned to appreciate anew the benefits of academic autonomy, which their predecessors had endorsed in the 1920's.

Had Mr. Parry made a serious comparison between the fate of biology or economics and the fate of

8 Even in the darkest interlude, 1948-51, when such extremists as Maksimov rejected the physical theories that raised troublesome philosophical problems, the most authoritative ideologists limited themselves to rejection of the philosophical problems. See, for example, Rozental and Yudin, Kratki filosofskii slovar, 2nd ed., Moscow, 1951, pp. 547-49. For a perceptive analysis of some of the serious efforts that Soviet physicists and philosophers have made to solve the philosophical problems of quantum mechanics, see Loren Graham's article "Quantum Mechanics and Dialectical Materialism," Slavic Review (New York), September 1966.

Soviet physics-he has chapters on all three, but they are quite inadequate -he would have had to reconsider the old tale of the war between ideological and practical considerations. Agitprop raged intermittently at the ideological sins of the physicists, but only grumbled occasionally that they might be of greater service to the practical needs of the Soviet economy. The physicists kept their autonomy. Stalin himself and his major lieutenants, not the little men of agitprop, initiated the complaints that the economists and biologists were not serving the practical needs of industry and agriculture, and these specialists quickly found themselves under the direct management of militant ignoramuses and timeservers, who, it seemed to Stalin and his chief lieutenants, did serve the practical needs of the economy. In short, it

was

practical considerations that prompted the bosses' intervention in science, and it was practical considerations that brought the intervention to an end. Students of politics should not be amazed to discover that policies which seem practical often turn out to be wildly impractical. If politicians could separate wishful from factual thinking as readily as their outside critics do, there would be no disasters in history.

It is time to put and end to all the superficial talk about some vague entity identified as Soviet ideology being responsible for the disaster that struck Soviet biology and economics in the 1930's and 1940's. Which element of Soviet ideologies do we have in mind? The economic theories of Karl Marx are not an apt instrument for rational planning, yet they did not prevent Soviet economists of the 1920's from making an impressive start toward rational planning." The promising beginnings were blasted by Stalin in 1929, with the declaration

9 See Alexander Erlich, The Soviet Industrialization Debate, Cambridge, 1960.

that Soviet planners were not serving the practical needs of the economy. In this context Stalin announced the syllogism that would be used time and again to justify political intervention in various sciences: practice is the in various sciences: practice is the ultimate criterion of truth, Communist chiefs are the ultimate judges of successful practice, and therefore Communist chiefs are the ultimate judges of scientific truth. 10 The economics of Karl Marx had very little to do with that syllogism. The political ideology of V.I. Lenin obviously did have a great deal to do with it, but even Lenin's ideology cannot be considered a sufficient cause. If it was, then why did not Lenin subscribe to this syllogism, why did Stalin's wild claim of omniscience come only in 1929, why did he begin to back away from it in 1950, and why did the Communist chiefs choose to exercise their omniscience in economics, biology, and psychology, but not in physics, chemistry, and mathematics? The answers are to be found in the evolving interaction between the perceptions of social realities in the minds of the Communist leaders and the actual realities that they have been trying to master and shape.

Theoretical ideologies, consciously perceived as such, have had relatively little influence on the policies that Communist bosses have adopted in the management of scientists. The unwitting ideologies at work in a politician's mind when he thinks he is reading the most obvious lessons of practical experience these have had an enormous influence.11 They have produced forceful intervention in some sciences but not in others, and a grudging retreat from such inter

10 See Stalin's speech to the conference of "agrarian Marxists" (i.e., agricultural economists) in December 1929. Sochineniia, Vol. XII, pp. 141-72.

11 For this distinction between theoretical and "realistic" ideologies, see my article "Soviet Ideology," Soviet Studies (Glascow), Summer 1966.

vention as its self-defeating effect became overwhelmingly obvious.

Some will say that Communist bosses have learned to be more efficient masters of Soviet scientists by discovering that scientists will be more efficient servants if they are granted autonomy. This is true, but it evades the political significance of the process. By pressing the Stalinist delusion of omnipotence to the point of self-defeat, the party chiefs have learned some of the limits of their power. To learn the limits of power is to undermine totalitarian rule. This is not only a matter of abstract theory. For several years Communist leaders have been praising a growing number of scientists who proved their loyalty to the Soviet state by resisting the orders of its stupid or iniquitous leaders. They have been insisting on the right and duty of the specialist to make decisions within his sphere of competence, which political authorities are not supposed to invade. A handbook on Especially Dangerous State Crimes, apparently intended for legal students and officials, makes a clumsy effort to distinguish between criticism of the state, which is a crime, and criticism of its individual leaders and their policies, which is a right.12 Criticism of the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 serves as an example of the crime; criticism of the "virgin lands" campaign, which was official policy when this book was published, serves as an example of the right. One may hope that the bosses are stumbling toward a rediscovery of the rule that kings are secure on their thrones when subjects are secure in their rights.

It is obviously foolish to speak of a victory of "the" scientists over "the" party. But it is no less foolish to deny that the intellectual autonomy required by science has been undermining totalitarian rule.

12 Osobo opasnye gosudarstvennye prestupleniia, Moscow, 1963, p. 126.

By Shanti S. Tangri

s the economic growth of Communist countries in general and of China in particular likely to make them more peaceful? The answer to this question is as critical as it is controversial.

One school of thought believes that fat and satiated Communists are more peaceful than lean and hungry Communists; that the status, self-satisfaction, self-respect, and respect from others that come with economic achievement and wealth tend to make men and governments less hostile toward one another. In support of this thesis, it is contended that a backward and aggressive Russia under Stalin has evolved into a militarily powerful, politically responsible, and culturally more open and sophisticated society under Stalin's successors, and that all this has been the product of the Soviet Union's rapid economic growth. The same process, it is argued, is repeating itself in Eastern Europe and will recur in

Mr. Tangri is Associate Professor of Economics, Wayne State University (Detroit, Mich.).

Communist China in time. Therefore, the argument runs, Chinese economic development should be helped by trade, aid and credits.

This is an attractive intellectual package, and some of its theoretical components appear to be supported by enough historical, and perhaps psychological, evidence to make the argument quite plausible. In essence, however, the thesis is one of economic determinism: economic growth and development automatically lead to a reduction of conflicts between individuals, groups and governments. As such, it has the weaknesses inherent in all teleology.1

relationship between economic achievement and political behavior is the argument that economic growth in different systems necessarily gives rise to similar organizational and occupational structures and problems, similar decision-making and administrative mechanisms, and similar economic goals and behavior patterns.2 Variations on this theme have usually been referred to as the "convergence hypothesis." Carrying this a step further, it is argued-or assumed that economic convergence in turn generates social, cultural, and political convergence in such important areas as the goals, values, and

A major link in this postulated behavior of individuals and groups,

1 Most theories regarding stages of economic growth contain some elements of economic determinism. Marxism is perhaps the most well-developed and the most deterministic of such theories. W. W. Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, 1960), on the other hand, is an attempt to show that there may be considerable cultural, political and social diversity among societies in a given stage of development, and that one stage does not necessarily and automatically lead to the next stage and a given socio-political configuration.

including those of the political and military elites. This non-economic convergence is held to be conducive to the growth of mature, responsible,

2 For an interesting comparison of Soviet and American managerial problems emphasizing the similarities of problems, structures, goals, and methods of solving problems, see Alfred G. Meyer, "A Political Scientist Looks at the Soviet Union," Graduate Comment, Wayne State University, Vol. VI, No. 3 (April 1963), pp. 4-9.