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Physics moves to the provinces: the Siberian physics community and Soviet power, 1917–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2017

PAUL JOSEPHSON  and
ALEKSANDR SOROKIN
PAUL JOSEPHSON
Affiliation:
Department of History, Colby College, Waterville, Maine 04901, USA. Email: prjoseph@colby.edu.
ALEKSANDR SOROKIN
Affiliation:
Dotsent, Department of History, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia.
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Abstract

The rich tradition of Siberian science and higher education is little known outside Russian academic circles. Using institutional history, this article focuses on the founding and pre-war period of the Siberian Physical Technical Institute, the establishment of its research focus and its first difficult steps to become a leading centre of R & D in Siberia. Based on archival materials, the article describes how local and national physicists justified the institute's creation by demonstrating ties with industry and building on the presence of a cohort of locally trained physicists, whose numbers were augmented by Leningrad specialists. The strength of local cadres enabled the institute to navigate civil war and cultural revolution successfully. Physicists were able to take advantage of ongoing industrialization campaigns to gain support to create the institute, although local disputes and economic problems slowed its further development. The article describes the circulation of scientific, political and philosophical knowledge between Moscow, Leningrad and the provinces, and the impact of Bolshevik rule and Stalinism on the Siberian physics enterprise.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 297 - 327
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Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2017 

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71 Architectures contribute to the flow of people and ideas, as Galison, Peter and Thompson, Emily, eds., and their co-authors show in The Architecture of Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999 Google Scholar. The designers of Akademgorodok chose the architecture of buildings and their physical layout with respect to one another in part to promote interdisciplinary scientific discussions and research.

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87 Josephson, op. cit. (33), pp. 170–171.

88 Ginzburg, V., ‘Protiv Biurokratizma, Perestrakhovki i Nekompetenentnost’, in Afanas′ev, Iu.N., ed., I Nogo ne Dano, Moscow: Progress, 1988, pp. 136–144 Google Scholar.

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93 Krasnoe Znamia, 2 August 1933, n.p.; and A.V. Litvinov, ‘Professorsko-Prepopavatel′skii Korpus Tomskogo Universiteta (20–30-e gg. XX v.)’, candidate dissertation, history, Tomsk State University, 2002, p. 238.

94 Tartakovskii apparently knew Boris Hessen, and worked with him to see German books and articles on quantum mechanics translated into Russian.

95 Sorokin, A.N., ‘Pervaia Regional′naia Fizicheskaia Konferentsiia v Tomske Vesnoi 1934 Goda kak Iavlenie Konsolidatsii Nauchnogo Soobshchestva dlia Resheniia Zadach Industrializatsii Sibiri’, Vestnik NGU. Seriia: Istoriia, Filologiia (2012) 11(1), pp. 131–136 Google Scholar.

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97 ‘Besposhchadno Razoblachat′ i Osuzhdat′ Konkretnykh Nositelei Rabolepiia pered Burzhuaznoi Nauki’, Krasnoe Znamia, 17 September 1936, n.p.; and Krasil′nikov, S. A and Klikushin, M.V., Anatomiia Odnoi Ideologicheskoi Kampanii: ‘Luzinshchina’ v Siberi: Sovetskaia Istoriia: Problemy i Uroki, Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1992 Google Scholar.

98 Materialy k Bibliografii Uchenykh TGU: V.D. Kuznetsov, Tomsk: TGU, 1972, pp. 53–54 Google Scholar; and Kosterev, op. cit. (61), p. 90.

99 GANO, f. 3, op. 10, d. 1095, l. 47 and f. r-1562, op. 1, d. 578, ll. 29–30.

100 Ranyuk, Pavlenko and Khramov, op. cit. (2).

101 Vizgin, V.P., ‘“Iavnye Skrytye Izmereniia Prostranstva” Sovetskoi Fiziki 1930-x gg. (po Materialam Martovskoi Sessii AN SSSR 1936 g.)’, Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki (1990) 1, pp. 63–84 Google Scholar. On the debates in the sciences over philosophical issues see Krementsov, op. cit. (80).

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103 Kosterev, op. cit. (61), p. 94.

104 Krasnoe Znamia, 9 April 1936, n.p.

105 GATO, f. r-1562, op. 1., d. 700, l. 27.

106 GATO, f. r-1562, op. 1., d. 700, l. 3 ob.

107 Fominykh, S.F., Professora Tomskogo Universiteta: Biograficheskii Slovar’, vol. 2, 1917–45, Tomsk: TGU, 1994, p. 414 Google Scholar.

108 GATO, f. r-1562, op. 1, d. 883, l. 27.

109 GATO, f. r-1562, op. 1, d. 882, l. 27.

110 Kuznetsov, ‘Moi Put′ v Nauke’, typed manuscript, Archive of the Museum of History of TGU, p. 216. Kuznetsov wrote his memoirs after the death of Stalin, as a pensioner yet still director of SFTI. The 250-page text is engaging, but often based on faulty memories of events long before. Some of its content can be balanced against his personal fund at GATO (F. R-1562), which holds a rather complete record of documents, accounts, correspondence and so on with all of the institutions and organizations that played a role in Tomsk physics. Unfortunately, Kuznetsov's diaries are nearly impossible to read because of miserable handwriting.

111 Gorelik, G.E. and Frenkel′, V.Ya., Matvei Petrovich Bronstein and Soviet Theoretical Physics in the Thirties, Basel: Birkhäuser, 2011, pp. 22–26 Google Scholar.

112 Our thanks to Gennady Gorelik, who shared material from Russian archives on Ivanenko's arrest, incarceration and exile to Tomsk in December 1935, and his ‘rehabilitation’ in August 1989.

113 Ivanenko grew bitter over his fate, and became a vocal critic of fellow theoreticians for their alleged idealism and angry that he never gained admission to the prestigious academy, nor received proper credit for his discoveries on nuclear structure. In 1944 he participated in a movement originating at MGU that attacked academy physicists that was anti-Semitic in tone, and criticized servility before the West that grew to national proportions during the Zhdanovshchina. For more on Ivanenko's thinking and motivations see Gorelik, Gennadii, ‘Razmyshleniia Posle Kruglogo Iubeliia’, Znanie-Sila (2005) 11, pp. 28–39 Google Scholar.

114 S.A. Krasil′nikov, ‘“Repressivnyi Vektor” Nauki v Vostochnykh Regionakh Strany’, in Kirillov, A.K., ed., Lichnost′ v Istorii Sibirii XVIII–XX Vekov: Sbornik Biograficheskikh Ocherkov, Novosibirsk: Sova, 2007, pp. 271–281 Google Scholar. Some of those repressed included N.A. Chinakal, director of the Mining Geological Institute; V.V. Reverdatto, director of the Medico-Biological Institute; and Iu.B. Rumer, director of the Institute of Radiophysics and Eletronics who was in an aviation sharashka from 1938 to 1950, but was released under the personal recognizance of Lev Landau and moved to Akademgorodok. Many other Akademgorodok scientists were children of repressed parents, including the one-time chair of the Siberian division, V.A. Koptiug.

115 Kabanov, M.V., 60 Let Sibirskomu Fiziko-Tekhnicheskomu Institutu: Istoriia i Perspektivy Razvitiia, Tomsk: Izdatel′stvo TGU, 1988, pp. 7–11 Google Scholar.

116 GATO, F. R-1562, op. 1, d. 524, l. 8 and d. 506, l. 27; and GATO, f. R-1638, op. 1, d. 90, ll. 7–8. See also Sorokin, Aleksander, ‘Vzaimodeistvie Nauchnogo Soobshchestva Fizikov Sibiri i Vlasti v Pervoe Poslevoennoe Desiatiletie (na Primere Tomskogo Nauchno-Obrazovatel′nogo Kompleksa)’, Bylye Gody (2013) 27(1), pp. 120–125 Google Scholar. On Lysenkoism see, among many other works, Joravsky, David, The Lysenko Affair, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970 Google Scholar. See also Gordon, op. cit. (81), for discussion of the importance of not tarring the history of Soviet physics with the brush of Lysenkoist vernalization.

117 Ioffe, A.F., Osnovnye Predstavleniia Sovremennoi Fiziki, Moscow: Gostekhteorizdat, 1949 Google Scholar; and Arkhiv LFTI, f. 3, op. 1, ed. Khr. 195. For an example of the press attack on Ioffe see Kuznetsov, I.V. and Ovchinnikov, N.F., ‘Za Posledovatel′noe Dialektiko-Materialisticheskoe Osveshchenie Dostizhenii Sovremennoi Fiziki (o Knige A.F. Ioffe “Osnovnye Predstavleniia Sovremennoi Fiziki”)’, Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk (1951) 45(1), pp. 113–140 Google Scholar.

118 One of the world's most serious nuclear accidents occurred at the Chemical Combine on 6 April 1993, when a tank containing a highly radioactive solution exploded. See IAEA, The Radiological Accident in the Reprocessing Plant at Tomsk, Vienna: IAEA, 1998 Google Scholar. See also Rashid Alimov, ‘People vs. Siberian Chemical Combine’, Bellona Foundation, 2 October 2001, at http://bellona.ru/bellona.org/english_import_area/international/russia/nuke_industry/siberia/seversk/22031.

119 Hill, Fiona and Gaddy, Clifford, The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, Washington: Brookings Institution, 2003 Google Scholar.