ИСТИНА

Soviet ideology traditionally adhered to the notion of two sciences – progressive “proletarian science” and stagnating “bourgeois science”. The former enjoyed all-round state support, while any forms and shapes of the latter, be that scientific schools or academic associations, were spotted and destroyed. When we speak about struggle with “relics of bourgeois science” in the Soviet Union we usually remember Lysenkoism and numerous other ideological campaigns in mathematics, physics, sociology, linguistics et c. But that was not all. The Soviet state inherited from tsarist Russia a whole system of “bourgeois” scientific institutions, among them Academy of Science and about three hundred scientific societies. Unlike Academy, which was state-owned, those societies were voluntary non-governmental associations and were autonomous in their scientific, administrative, and membership policy. In tsarist Russia they played a key role in organization and support of scientific research but during first decades of the Soviet power these “bourgeois associations of scientists” lost their leading position and were transformed into an instrument of ideological control of science and scientists. The ways how it was done will be discussed in detail using extensive archival data.