Re: A historical episode

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

There is a US Stalin, also.

BUSH ABUSES SCIENCE SAYS REPORT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31318-2003Aug7.html

WASHINGTON POST - The Bush administration has repeatedly
mischaracterized scientific facts to bolster its political agenda in
areas ranging from abstinence education and condom use to missile
defense, according to a detailed report released yesterday by Rep. Henry
A. Waxman (D-Calif.)






Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> Academician E. Kruglyakov, who is a nuclear
> physicist, wrote a book (in 2001) which I am now
> reading. Kruglyakov is the deputy director of a
> large Russian Academy of Science institute in
> Novosibirsk. Let me translate a story described
> on page 199.
>
> "Do you remember destruction of genetics and cybernetics?
> =2E . . That destruction was organized in the Propaganda
> Department of the Central Committee of Communist Party.
> =2E . .  Let me tell you that only a miracle saved physics
> =66rom a similar act of destruction. I had a conversation with
> I. Golovin, the deputy director of Kurchatov=92s Institute. He
> said that one day Beria [the secret police chief] suggested
> to I. V. Kurchatov that idealistic physics, such as quantum
> mechanics and theory of relativity, should be purged.
> Igor Vasilevich immediately replied that the atomic bomb
> design is based on these two theories. The purging is
> not desirable because the country needs the bomb.
> Beria informed Stalin about this conversation. This
> resulted in the cancellation of a session whose
> purpose was to discuss an attack on physics.=94
>
> I did not know about this story; perhaps others might
> also be interested. That is why I am posting this
> description. Kurchatov was the scientific director of
> the first Soviet atomic bomb project.
> Ludwik Kowalski