Dialectical Materialism

A young man broke his facial bone on an average autumn day while jumping out of the window of his mistress in an attempt to prevent his wife finding out about the affair. Consequences of an incident like that are likely to vary in severity, but take an unexpected turn when the hero of the story turns out to be the first man in space who was supposed to sit in the presidium of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party as the example to demonstrate the tangible achievements of the regime in high technology and in the creation of the “New Soviet Man”. Moreover, named congress was about to approve the “Moral Code of the Builder of Communism” – due to the incident, in the absence of Gagarin this time.

The dogma of dialectical materialism was the

The dogma was useful for the regime, because it stated that all nature can be explained in terms of matter and energy, and it also implied that a small group of party members can guide society. I will introduce and explain the effects of dialectical materialism on scientific research through the examples of the Soviet space program and the engineering of the “New Soviet Man” (effects on the individual level, expanding to a reorganization of society and its values), of Lysenkoism and genetics (systematic), and of a rare antidote to the monopoly of one ideology through the operation of Vernadskii and his scientific school.

The Soviet Union and the USA both regarded the space race as a proxy for the cold war, and the reasons for building piloted ships were not

Lysenko was an agronomist, who, by clever and cruel political manoeuvres (capitalizing on the charged ideologically charged atmosphere and on bureaucracy), managed to promote his ideas – to the extent, that he became the “dictator” of the field of genetics despite his work being mere pseudoscience. He called his new methods “vernalization”, which included applying moisture and cold to seeds before they were planted, with the aim of shortening the period of growth of cereals, thus minimizing frost damage. However, these methods were neither new, nor beneficial. In general, they did more damage to Soviet agriculture than good. In contrast to well-established geneticists (e.g. Vavilov), Lysenko offered quick, spectacular and seemingly working solutions to the problems of agriculture. He did not bother with systematic data collection, setting up proper control groups, or making the samples large enough for drawing valid conclusions from the results. His often-voiced claim that he was going to reform Soviet agriculture for the benefit of the state framed the criticism he received as his critics lacking enthusiasm for the success of Soviet agriculture. His ideological aggression and his proletarian modesty earned him Stalin’s support and the support of the press, opening up (almost) unlimited possibilities – from being a member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (1934) which he earned by the