I'm not sure that abstract mathematics was altogether "destroyed" in the Soviet Union's academics, because of some anecdotal evidence I have.
When I was an undergraduate in 1968, the honors math majors ( the best math students) _had_ to take Russian language courses, because so much of the world's advanced math and physics was being done by Soviets. Charles Ralph Dumain It's really sickening to have to read this sort of material, though I am interested in nonstandard analysis in China, about which I know nothing. First of all, the ignorant and destructive Stalinist nonsense against abstract mathematics shows up the obscene degradation of Marxism in backward, modernizing 3rd world countries. Secondly, that anyone would even need to resurrect Marx's math mss to justify abstract mathematics indicated just how bankrupt the authoritarianism institutionalized by Third International Marxism really was. That name Yanovskaya sounds familiar. I wonder if she is the one who strove to keep logic alive during the dark days of the Stalin years. It's interesting in light of the history of resistance of the Russian intelligentsia to despotism. The whole 19th century was a century of such resistance, of which the Bolsheviks were a product. Once the Bolsheviks took power, and the regime degenerated towards the end of the 1920s, the intelligentsia had to figure out a way to survive _them_. With this kind of ignorance lording over scientific work, we can only wonder that the USSR didn't collapse much sooner. We can't wonder, though, that the Chinese Cultural Revolution self-destructed as quickly as it did, since Mao and his friends seem to be even dumber than Stalin was. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Several attempts have been made to inflate Marx's mss for various purposes. I wonder about that fellow from Mozambique, Paulus Gerdus, author of MARX DEMYSTIFIES CALCULUS, who is now into ethnomathematics. I smelled a rat from the beginning, but I haven't looked into this in depth. Overcoming the provincialism of intellectual traditions is not an easy task. With friends like these pissing in the sciences, who needs enemies? _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
