Scientific policy of the USSR in the 1950s–early 1980s in the research of Soviet and American scientists

Abstract

In the 1950s the leadership of the USSR began to realize the country’s technological lag behind the advanced Western countries. In this regard, the Soviet Union began to transform its scientific policy. The search for optimal mechanisms for the organization of science continued until the end of the Soviet period. Scientists and historians of science, being direct participants in these events, assessed the ongoing transformation. This assessment has not always been objective. Nowadays, thanks to new computer technologies, researchers have access to the documents of American specialists who studied the main mechanisms of our country’s scientific policy at the state level in the 1970s-1980s. The purpose of the paper is to compare the conclusions of Soviet and American specialists who studied the scientific policy of the USSR in the 1970s-1980s, and to identify assessments of the main mechanisms for the implementation of scientific policy in the USSR. The main sources of the work were reports by American members of the working group on the study of scientific policy, which had not been used before in Russian historiography. After conducting a comparative analysis of the works, the author comes to the conclusion that Soviet scientific policy developed in the general global mainstream. Some of the science management mechanisms developed in the USSR were innovative. Others did not work at all in the absence of competition and a rigid command system.