Colby College Digital Commons @ Colby Faculty Books 1997 New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science Paul R. Josephson Colby College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/facultybooks Part of the Asian History Commons, and the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons Recommended Citation Josephson, Paul R., "New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science" (1997). Faculty Books. 1. https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/facultybooks/1 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Books by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colby. New Atlantis Revisited New Atlantis Revisited AKADEMGORODOK, THE SIBERIAN CITY OF SCIENCE PAUL R. JOSEPHSON PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright 1997 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Josephson, Paul R. New Atlantis revisited : Akademgorodok, the Siberian city of science / Paul R. Josephson p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-691-04454-6 (cl : alk. paper) 1. Science—Russia (Federation)—Akademgorodok (Novosibirsk)—History. 2. Russia (Federation)—Politics and government. I. Title. Q127.R9J67 1997 338.947′06—dc21 96-45577 Portions of this book previously appeared in somewhat different form in “ ‘Projects of the Century’ in Soviet History: Large-scale Technologies from Lenin to Gorbachev,” Technology and Culture, vol. 36, no. 3 (July 1995): 519–559, copyright 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology, reprinted with permission from University of Chicago Press; and ‘‘New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, Siberian City of Science,’’ in Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 89–107, reprinted with permission from M. E. Sharpe, Inc. This book has been composed in Berkeley Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America by Princeton Academic Press 12345678910 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION xi INTRODUCTION xiii CHAPTER ONE From Moscow, Leningrad, and Ukraine to the Golden Valley 3 Lavrentev Meets Novosibirsk 5 Khrushchev and Akademgorodok 8 A City of Science in Siberia 10 The Era of the Lowly Brick Has Ended! 14 The Soviet Scientific Hardware Store 21 Cadres Decide Everything! 23 Utopia in the Golden Valley 31 CHAPTER TWO Colliding Beams and Open Traps 43 The Atom in Soviet Culture 45 A Home for Wayward Accelerators in Siberia 50 Colliding Beams 54 Electron Cooling and Acceleration of Heavy Particles 59 Big Science and Industrial Accelerators 61 Fusion and the Promise of Virtually Unlimited Energy 67 Akademgorodok Spring (with Apologies to Czechoslovakia) 77 Siberian Physics in the 1990s 79 CHAPTER THREE Siberia—Land of Eternally Green Tomatoes 82 The Nine Lives of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko 83 Genetics Underground 87 Napoleon to the Rescue 100 The Institute of Cytology and Genetics: Personalities and Growing Pains 103 The Institute without Walls Opens Its Doors 108 The Industrialization of Agriculture 111 Will There Be Green Tomatoes in the 1990s? 116 CHAPTER FOUR Machines Can Think, but Can Humans? 120 Soviet Cybernetics and Computers in the 1950s and 1960s 121 Akademgorodok’s Computer Troika 124 The Development of the Computer in the USSR 128 vi CONTENTS Informatization versus Computerization 130 Ershov Arrives at Akademgorodok 133 The Computer Center’s Research Program, 1960–1990 138 Automated Management Systems 150 Artificial Intelligence in Akademgorodok 153 Computer Science Enters the 1990s 159 CHAPTER FIVE Siberian Scientists and the Engineers of Nature 163 Siberia Faces the Shovel and Ax 167 Paper Mills and Pure Water 172 Baikal Meets the Bulldozer 183 The Siberian Rivers Diversion Project 185 ‘‘Projects of the Century’’ Fall on Hard Times 191 Baikal, Diversion, and Siberian Development under Gorbachev and Yeltsin 197 CHAPTER SIX The Siberian Algorithm 204 Economic Science from Stalin’s Moscow to Akademgorodok 205 Aganbegian Arrives at Akademgorodok 210 Economics East of the Urals 212 Siberian Economics Research under Aganbegian 217 Taylorism Revisited 218 Kantorovich and Linear Programming in Siberia 220 Applied Economic Research for Siberian Development 224 BAM—Magistral of the Century 229 Sociology Reborn: Tatiana Zaslavskaia in Akademgorodok 232 Discontent in the Soviet Countryside 239 The Novosibirsk Report 243 Market Relations and Political Turmoil 249 CHAPTER SEVEN Crackdown: The Communist Party and Academic Freedom in Akademgorodok 263 What If They Gave a Party and the Scientists Came? 265 The Partkom of Akademgorodok 273 Science and Politics in Soviet Russia 277 The Innovation Beltway 281 Science and Ideology in Akademgorodok 289 Ideological Showdown 296 An End to Academic Freedom 302 EPILOGUE 305 NOTES 311 INDEX 343 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IN THE FALL of 1989 I first visited Akademgorodok. At that point I was gathering research materials for a political and cultural history of postwar Soviet atomic energy programs. From the first minutes of my arrival I could feel differences in lifestyle and work ethic that were to distinguish Akademgorodok from other Soviet cities. People were more helpful and open in all personal contacts. In contrast to hectic Moscow, the pace of life was slow and no crowd crushed you in the streets, although buses were often packed. But then, you could walk everywhere on beautifully wooded paths. The variety of food, clothing, and other goods in stores was smaller than in Moscow, but the lines rarely as long and the people always more polite. With great joy, in one of those stores I bought my son cross-country skis for less than a dollar that he used for two winters in New Hampshire before outgrowing them. Akademgorodok im- pressed me in all respects as a fine place to live and work. On this first occasion I finished preliminary research after an all too short ten-day trip, concluded a four-month stay in the USSR, and returned home. A few months later Peter Dougherty, my editor at Princeton University Press, called me to find out if I knew anyone who might write a history of Akademgorodok. After a few months’ discussion, I decided I was that person. I am grateful to Peter for suggesting the topic of this book and seeing it come to fruition. In the fall of 1991 I returned to Akademgorodok. I had the good fortune to work in the archives of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences; the Communist Party Archive of the Novosibirsk Region; and the archives of several institutes that figure prominently in this story. They are the Institute of Nuclear Physics; the Institute of Cytology and Genetics; the Institute of Economics and the Organization of Industrial Production; and the Computer Center, including the personal papers of computer scientist Andrei Ershov. I would like to express my thanks to the director of the Siberian Division, Valentin Koptiug, and to the directors of those institutes, Vladimir Shumnyi (Cytology and Genetics) and Anatoli Alekseev (Computer Center) for granting open access to their institutes. Andrei Trofimuk, director emeritus of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, kindly granted access to his personal papers concerning Lake Baikal. Boris Elepov, director of the public library in Novosibirsk, put the resources of his staff and the library’s collection at my disposal. I was also able to read the institutional newspaper at Sibakadem- stroi, the organization responsible for building Akademgorodok. Tatiana Khodzher helped me find my way at the Limnological Institute in Irkutsk; Raissa Astafieva made my visit to the Computer Center in Akademgorodok run smoothly. I especially wish to thank my colleagues among the physicists. Aleksandr Skrinskii, director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, endorsed any request I viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS had for access to other facilities with remarkable speed; Stanislav Popov, its academic secretary, made it possible for me to work in the institute’s archive (and to play basketball on Tuesday evenings); and Andrei Prokopenko, of the foreign department, facilitated my living and travel plans. Without their help I could never have accomplished what I did in such a short time. Even more important was the assistance of several close friends in Akademgorodok who made life away from my family pass quickly. Experi- mental physicist Vadim Dudnikov and his wife, Galia, made me feel that I had a home away from home. Margarita Ruitova, a theoretician and expert on solar physics, and her husband, Dmitrii Ruitov, a plasma specialist, made certain that I met with their colleagues and friends who could tell me some- thing about the history of Akademgorodok. Iurii Eidelman, an experimentalist, and his wife Violeta, shared their warm home and knowledge of Siberia with me on many cold nights. Theoretical physicist Viktor Fadin ensured that my early trip to Akademgorodok led to fruitful later visits. Biologist Sasha Kerkis and his family often invited me to share in the good Siberian life. They wel- comed me into their homes, took me to