Synopses & Reviews
The newest annual volume of
Osiris,
Intelligentsia Science explores the transformations in science in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, from serfdom to Sputnik, as a series of developments in Russian culture.
The contributors argue that it was the generation of the 1860s that transformed “intelligentsia” into a central notion of Russian popular discourse, cementing its association with revolutionary politics—and with science. Science became the cornerstone of the intelligentsias ideological and political projects, either as an alternative to socialism, or more often as its nominal raison dêtre. The Russian century may in fact be over, but the interrelation of the intelligentsia and science to form “intelligentsia science” proves enduring.
About the Author
Michael D. Gordin is associate professor of history at Princeton University. Karl Hallis assistant professor of history at Central European University in Budapest. Alexei Kojevnikov is associate professor in the Department of History, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Table of Contents
Intelligentsia Science: The Russian Century, 1860-1960
Introduction: Intelligentsia Science Inside and Outside Russia
Michael D. Gordin and Karl Hall
Intelligentsia as Social Organization
The Heidelberg Circle: German Inflections on the Professionalization of Russian Chemistry in the 1860s
Michael D. Gordin
Turning Pedagogy into a Science: Teachers and Psychologists in Late Imperial Russia (1897-1917)
Andy Byford
Organizational Culture and Professional Identities in the Soviet Nuclear Power Industry
Sonja D. Schmid
Intelligentsia as Political Agent
The Phenomenon of Soviet Science
Alexei Kojevnikov
The Conquest of Science: Women and Science in Russia, 1860-1940
Olga Valkova
Wishful Science: The Persistence of T. D. Lysenkos Agrobiology in the Politics of Science
Nils Roll- Hansen
Stalins Rocket Designers Leap into Space: The Technical Intelligentsia Faces the Thaw
Slava Gerovitch
Intelligentsia as Utopia
Taming the Primitive: Elie Metchnikov and His Discovery of Immune Cells
Kirill Rossiianov
The Schooling of Lev Landau: The European Context of Postrevolutionary Soviet Theoretical Physics
Karl Hall
Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia
Asif A. Siddiqi
Notes on Contributors
Index