The Soviet Union’s Religious Experience

At several points during the course Professor Maleki has made the argument that aspects of science are not that different from religion. While I respect his objectivity in discussing his profession, I have always been a proponent of science being superior to religion. In some ways I saw science as the eventual answer to all problems, with religion’s irrationality standing in its way. While this still might be true, through the reading on the glorification of physics in the Soviet Union, I can see how the belief in science can become so great, that it basically becomes religious.

In the years after World War Two Stalin valued the development of nuclear physics with the belief that another world war with the west was inevitable. When Khrushchev came to power he changed the definition of how nuclear physics would influence the Soviet Union and he may have even increased its prominence. As the new Soviet leader backed away from many of the extreme aspects of Stalin’s regime he pushed for coexistence with the west. This meant that physics would be used to benefit the Soviet Union domestically more than ever before.

In typical Soviet fashion the nation mobilized to make every aspect of Soviet industry and life better by the smashing of the atom. Marxism and its unlimited faith in science helped this scientific momentum take over various sectors of the economy and give physicists unprecedented political power. With the Soviet government’s lack of public exposure, its scientists became increasingly less accountable. The enthusiasm over what might come from physics allowed scientists to spend money on projects that were often far fetched and unsafe. Additionally, the communist party increased its propaganda exclaiming science as superior to religion. The Soviet people treated physicists like rock stars and sent in fan mail proposing ideas that they truly needed faith to believe in. Marx once called religion “the opium of the masses” and it is hard to argue that science wasn’t serving the same purpose in the Soviet Union during this period.

One of the things that truly amazed me was Trofim Denisovich Lysenko and his rejection of genetics. Perhaps it is unfair to judge him and supporters from a modern day viewpoint, but Lysenko’s claims seem to be ridiculous. The Soviet Union’s leadership seems to have supported Lysenko partly because of their religious fervor towards science. They believed science could achieve anything, and if a scientist said wheat could be improved without genetics, then it was possible. Further, there was certainly opposition regarding Lysenko’s claims from the scientific community, but Khrushchev and other politicians generally chose the more fantastic scientific ideas. While there were surely honest scientists in the Soviet Union it appears that the ones mostly willing to exaggerate the abilities of science got the most funding and political power. As the reading states, the leadership of scientists and politicians during this period valued economics and politics over morality. Science can achieve great things, but it is not a good or evil in and of itself. Unfortunately the lack of responsible behavior by many in the Soviet Union involving science, occasionally did more harm than good. I’ll still take science over religion, but I’m coming to the realization that both are fallible and that while government has a role in science, there must be boundaries between the two.