Policy
Certain scientific fields in the Soviet Union were suppressed primarily after being labeled as ideologically incorrect.
At different moments in Soviet history a number of research areas were declared "bourgeois pseudosciences", on ideological grounds, the most notable and harmful cases being those of genetics and cybernetics. Their prohibition caused serious harm to Soviet science and economics. Soviet scientists never won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine or a Turing Award. (In comparison, they received seven Nobel Prizes in Physics.) This is one of the factors that resulted in the USSR historically lagging in the fields of computers, microelectronics and biotechnology.
Research which was not banned was often subject to political pressure to conform to certain schools of science seen as "progressive."
Further, research was subject to censorship. Hence, scientists and researchers were denied access to some publications and research of the Western scientists, or any others deemed politically incorrect; access to many others was restricted. Their own research was similarly censored, some scientists were forbidden from publishing at all, many others experienced significant delays or had to agree to have their works published only in closed journals, to which access was significantly restricted.
Read more about this topic: Suppressed Research In The Soviet Union
Famous quotes containing the word policy:
“While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The Oregon [matter] and the annexation of Texas are now all- important to the security and future peace and prosperity of our union, and I hope there are a sufficient number of pure American democrats to carry into effect the annexation of Texas and [extension of] our laws over Oregon. No temporizing policy or all is lost.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,—that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,—who is invariably the devil,—and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)