From the series Atom and industrialisation of science
In his book Quantum Generations [1999], Helge Kragh, professor of history of science at Aarhus University, Denmark, writes that at the beginning of the First World War most scientists regarded themselves as members of a supranational class, a republic of culture in which nationality was less important than scientific achievements.
When confronted with the reality of war, the supranational ideology broke down almost immediately and was quickly replaced by nationalism: physicists were no longer simply physicists, but German, French, Austrian, and British physicists. The same can be said of Russian physicists.
The nationalisation of Soviet science
Nikolai Krementsov, from the Institute for the History of Science in St Petersburg, in Russian Science in the Twentieth Century [1997] argues that, despite appearances and the myth of a totalitarian State
, the Soviet State was never monolithic.
According to Krementsov, the community of scientists was not a homogeneous entity in its relationship with the State; it was fragmented into numerous groups, each with its own objectives, resources, and relationships with the various components of the State apparatus. Scientists themselves enjoyed a privileged, elite position within the bureaucratic hierarchy.
During the 1920s, the leaders of the scientific community, such as Vladimir Bekhterev, Abram Ioffe, Aleksei Krylov, Sergei Oldenburg, Ivan Pavlov, Vladimir Steklov, Nikolai Vavilov, and Vladimir Vernadsky, maintained strong personal connections with the leaders of the State apparatus. Lenin himself and his comrades Anatoly Lunacharsky (head of the Ministry of Education), Nikolai Gorbunov (Lenin’s secretary), Nikolai Semashko (head of the Ministry of Health), and Gleb Krzhizhanovsky (head of the Central Planning Administration) personally intervened in directing science policy. Bolshevik politics created a vast, diverse, and decentralised network of scientific institutions subordinate to the ministries.
We do not address here the implications of the counter-revolutionary break enacted by Stalinism. The scientific system that emerged in the 1920s closely resembled that of Tsarist Russia, with the main difference being that private funding had disappeared: Soviet science had become State-owned and scientists had been completely co-opted into the system of power relations. It was a privileged class with considerable authority and professional autonomy.
The electrical industry and quantum physics
The electrical industry has played a significant role in the development of quantum physics, primarily through advances in experimental technologies that have facilitated key discoveries.
Towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the study of electricity and magnetism had become fundamental in physics, largely thanks to the work of James Clerk Maxwell [1831-1879] and others, who unified these phenomena into a comprehensive electromagnetic theory. This theoretical framework laid the foundations for further explorations into the nature of light and matter. The close relationship between quantum physics and the electrical industry, and between physicists and research institutes linked to the electrical industry, was reconstructed by Michael Eckert and Helmut Schubert in their book Crystals, Electrons, Transistors, written in 1986 for the American Institute of Physics. There were close ties between Max Planck [1858-1947] and the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR), the German institute whose history we covered in the Internationalist Bulletin of November 2015.
The light bulb – particularly the incandescent lamp – played a significant role in exploring the relationship between light and matter. The study of light emitted by lamps and other heated objects was fundamental to the development of quantum theory.
Electric lighting was in competition with gas lighting. The electric and gas industries needed to compare the different types of lighting. Driven by the German Association of Gas and Water Professionals, the PTR was to conduct experimental measurements to find a reliable light standard and to study incandescent metals on which the incandescent lamp is based. When physicist Friedrich Kohlrausch [1840-1910] became president of the PTR, in his inaugural address he emphasised the economic importance of measures to evaluate the hundreds of different types of electric and gas lamps, in order to determine which were more efficient and thus reduce operating costs.
The measurements were made using what in physics is called a black body, an idealised physical body that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation that strikes it without reflecting it (radiation is the transport of energy in space). However, it is possible to create a laboratory device that essentially behaves like a black body, and the physicists of the PTR were investigating this device. From their measurements, however, discrepancies with classical electromagnetic physics emerged.
When faced with experimental results that contradict present theory, a new theory is necessary. The results of the PTR experimenters led Planck to develop in 1900 his law of radiation, introducing the concept of energy quanta, meaning that the radiation emitted by a black body is not continuous, but occurs in discrete quantities.
Albert Einstein [1879-1955], known for the theory of relativity, was also fundamental to the development of quantum physics. From Planck’s work, he postulated the existence of quanta of light (photons), a theory for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1921. As a touchstone for his idea, Einstein presented the photoelectric effect, on which solar panels are based today.
Russian physicists and industry
Ioffe is a central figure in the development of Soviet science. His connections with German science were close, through Wilhelm Röntgen [1845-1923], the discoverer of X-rays, and Paul Ehrenfest [1880-1933], an Austrian physicist and a friend of Ioffe, who spent a few years of his life in Russia [David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 1994].
When the Bolsheviks took power, Russia was a backward country. In 1920, Lenin set the goal of the electrification of the country, and we must place the history of Russian nuclear physicists in this context.
On February 3rd, 1923, Ioffe, director of the Physical-Technical Institute, gave a speech on Science and Technology
in the new building north of St Petersburg, in which he emphasised the historical role of science in the development of industry. For Ioffe, Soviet physics should not be abstract. Although deeply theoretical, it should make an effective contribution to the technology and to the economic development of the country: the laboratory he headed was to concentrate on applied research for industry.
During the 1920s, the Physical-Technical Institute (now the Ioffe Institute) focused on the mechanical properties of crystals, the physics of dielectrics, the physics of metals, thermodynamic engineering, and theoretical physics. Many of these works had potential applications in the electrical industry and the metallurgical industry, with which Ioffe had close ties.
By the end of the decade, the institute and the laboratory had grown into a large scientific research complex, with more than a hundred full-time physicists, many of whom had studied and conducted research in the West. The institute had become a leading centre of European physics at a time when quantum mechanics was revolutionising physics. Ioffe was a great organiser, and in 1931 the institute was divided into three separate institutes: the Leningrad Institute of Chemical Physics, with Nikolay Semyonov as director, the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute (LFTI), directed by Ioffe himself, and the Leningrad Institute of Electrical Physics, under the direction of Aleksandr A. Chernyshyov.
The difficulties of the 1930s
Ioffe also took the initiative to establish physical-technical institutes in the provinces, to extend the research network from Leningrad (St Petersburg) and Moscow to the new industrial centres that rapidly expanded under the First Five-Year Plan [1928-32]. Four institutes were created in the cities of Kharkov, Sverdlovsk, Dnepropetrovsk, and Tomsk. Many of their staff came from Leningrad.
During that time, the Soviet authorities increased pressure on scientists to contribute to the industrialisation effort. The urgency with which State capitalism was pushing for industrial growth made it necessary to rely on foreign research, particularly from Germany. The 15th Party Congress in 1927 had called for a broader use of the scientific industrial experience of Western Europe and America.
During the First Five-Year Plan, the USSR imported large quantities of machinery and equipment. The 1930s, following the Wall Street crash of 1929, saw many countries adopt protectionist, self-sufficient, and autarkic economic policies. In 1930, the United States enacted the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which introduced protectionist tariffs. The USSR was affected by the closure of global markets in the 1930s, which made imports more difficult, and the Second Five-Year Plan [1933-37] placed greater emphasis on the development of Soviet technology.
Ioffe had been tireless in putting forward to the party and government leaders his idea that physics would provide the basis for future technology. Experiments in his laboratories had shown that less expensive and better electrical insulators could be produced, reducing the costs of electricity transmission.
However, there was a fundamental difference between the industrialisation of Soviet and Western science. In the West, the relationship between science and industry was symbiotic: it was industry, in its technological development, first with the steam engine, then with the chemical industry, and finally with the electrical industry, that needed science. In Russia, on the other hand, industrial backwardness faced a science that was on par with Western industrial countries. For example, Ioffe was friends with Paul Ehrenfest, the Viennese physicist who greatly contributed to bringing modern theoretical physics to Russia in the first decade of the 20th century, when the country was still predominantly agricultural and electrification was in its early stages. There was an uneven development between science and industry. On this basis, conflicts arose between physicists, engineers, industrial managers, and the State’s political apparatus.