English

RAS PresidiumВопросы истории естествознания и техники Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki

ISSN (Print) 0205-9606
ISSN (Online) 2713-041X

Yu. I. Krivonosov

Author ID: 70619

By this author

S. I. Vavilov and the story of the "History of the invention of Photography"

Issue 1 from 01.03.2008

66 0

V. L. Ginzburg and «obsequiousness before the West»

Issue 3 from 01.09.2004

130 0

Institute for the History of Science and Technology: the tragedy of 1936-1938

Issue 1 from 01.03.2002

Based on the hitherto unstudied archival documents, the article analyzes the tragic events in the existence of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology following its relocation to Moscow in 1936. Despite the efforts of the institute’s first director, Nikolai Bukharin, to keep its structure and protect the personnel from the ever-increasing political pressures (revealed in his 1936-1937 correspondence with vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, G. M. Krzhizhanovskii, and its permanent secretary, N. P. Gorbunov, appended to the article), the persecution ran through its ranks, sparing neither Bukharin himself, not his deputy, academician A. M. Deborin. After academician V. V. Osinskii (who had suceeded Bukharin as the institute’s director) was arrested and executed in 1937, the institute was left in shambles. Although a number of famous scientists (most notably, Vladimir Vernadsky) made energetic attempts to find a new director, no one wanted to assume such a threatening position, and in March of 1938 the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences solved to liquidate the institute altogether.

136 0

Higher Mathematics and Higher Authority

Issue 2 from 01.06.2001

This collection of articles reveals the dramatic events in the history of Soviet mathematics, dating back to the 1940s and 1950s. Dedicated to an out standing Russian mathematician and philosopher, Andrei Ivanovich Lapin (1922—1996), they focus on the period of his imprisonment for “antiSoviet propaganda” in 1950—1952. The paper by lurii Krivonosov presents a number of documents pertaining to that term: a letter on the importance of research performed by Lapin in prison, signed by the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ President A. I. Nesmeianov and its Chief Secretary A. V. Topchiev on 5 March 1952; the authorization to publish the results of that work, signed by L. P. Beriia, G. M. Malenkov, and N. A. Bulganin on 8 March 1952; a confirmation of this desicion, sent by lu. A. Zhdanov to M. A. Suslov on 3 April 1952; and a letter recommending the publicati on of Lapin’s work (under a fictitious name!), signed by M. Suslov, S. Kruglov, and A. Nesmeianov on 25 April 1952. These documents are commented on in the article by Sergei Demidov; the rest two papers present the memoirs of Lapin by his longtime friend and teacher Igor Shafare vich and his spouse Izabella Bashmakova. The collection reveals the enorextent of centralization characteristic of the Stalinist state (the question of publishing the work of a PhD candidate was discussed by three members of the country’s chief political authority, the Politburo!); at the time, it shows that Soviet citizens were far from becoming the “cogs and wheels” of a unified oppressive mechanism envisaged by its creator.

162 0