I've got to run now, so briefly: At some point, a modus vivendi was worked
out, which allowed the propaganda apparatus to do its thing while leaving
scientists and mathematicians alone to do theirs. This has roots towards
the end of the Stalin era, in the late 1940s, when formal logic was once
again taught as a subject. Perhaps by this time Stalin had stopped sending
scientists and mathematicians to the Gulag. But obviously, he and his
henchmen realized that the USSR could not compete in the dawning atomic and
computer age without serious investment in physics, logic, math,
cybernetics. So of course they were encouraged. In this respect, Stalin
proved to be smarter than the dumbass Maoists who looked to peasant society.
At 02:37 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote:
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
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