The Hypocrisy of Communism and Science

I find it fascinating that when we discuss the Russian Revolution and its affect on Russia’s scientific policy and scientists; we overlook completely the hypocrisy of it all. Karl Marx once said that "In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic." It is this ideology that motivated the October Revolution in 1917. The Bolsheviks quickly turned Russia into a communist state, by taking control of the banks and factories and attempting to eliminate all private property. They wanted a classless/proletarian society. That science should be brought to the masses and you could turn your average factory worker into a physicist overnight. The days of exploiting the workers would be over and the elitist scientific community abolished. This obviously had many issues, the main one being that science is an elite profession for a reason, and you can’t turn factory workers into scientist.
Rather to ensure rapid industrial progress they needed the scientists and this is where we see the re-establishment of scientists as a privileged community. While most of Russia was facing famine and poverty, a so called scholar’s ration had been set up that provided financial, health, cultural, housing assistance and monthly gold ruble allowances based upon seniority. The workers are no longer taking precedence over the scientist. This is not to say that the scientists had it easy, they were the subject of relentless persecution over accountability of their research. Physicists became forcibly focused on finding solutions to pressing technological issues such as metals, fuels, electrification and communications. As time went on we begin to see Russia becoming protective of their scientists and scientific research. Russian scientists became isolated from the rest of the world. The Soviets spent massive amounts of money to bring foreign speakers to lecture about the latest discoveries and research. This was a one way deal as Russian Scientists were unable to travel abroad and soon Russia disappeared behind the “Iron Curtain”.
While Soviet Russia had realized that in order to survive they had to reintroduce capitalism at a low level, where everyone would still work for the state but as well as for themselves (New Economic Plan 1924). This marked the beginning of Russia’s ascension to one of the world’s superpowers at the end of World War 2.