A. Kasyan

Sergey Ponomarev

The ideological discussions conducted in the various fields of Soviet science in the late 1940s — early 1950s have been extensively studied by historians. Most of these studies, however, have focused on what happened in the country’s centers, Moscow and Leningrad. This paper provides an account of one “provincial” ideological discussion in physics, which took place at Gorky State University in the early 1950s, centered around the work of its professor G. S. Gorelik. A detailed examination of this case reveals certain features distinguishing it from “central” discussions; their analysis warns today’s historians against stereotyping the relationships between ideology and science at the end of Stalin’s epoch.