Suppressed Research in The Soviet Union - Policy

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.