This is a well-written and fascinating book about science in the years just before and after the 1917 Revolution. I thought his sections on Lysenko's rise to power in the world of Soviet science was particularly well done. In the middle of the book, he provided a large amount of basic information about Soviet history during the period, and I thought there was more of that than necessary to tell the story. On the whole, this is an easy read that gives a good overview of the important players and issues in Soviet science in the first half of the twentieth century.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley.

Even a casual student of Soviet history must remark upon the strange relationship the USSR had with science. It forms major themes in specialist works by historians such as Stephen Kotkin and Loren Graham, and forms an undercurrent in works by Robert Conquest and others. Whereas these writers use Soviet science as a way to explore the internal contradictions which ended the experiment in Socialism, Simon Ings is far more interested in the reason why Soviet science had such a relationship with the state.

For this reason, <i>Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953</i>, is probably best understood as the story of Trofim Lysenko. This is not to say that the book follows Lysenko exclusively, but rather the rise and dominance of the man and his pseudoscientific theories is the climax and falling action of the narrative. The work “describes what…failure meant to a state that justified itself through science, and regarded its own science, Marxism, as the capstone…” Lysenko was the origin of many failures.

Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer based in Britain, and this is his second foray into book-length non-fiction. Similar to Loren Graham’s <i>Ghost of the Executed Engineer</i>, Ings approaches his rather broad topic from the perspective of individuals in Russia and the Soviet Union. Beginning with members of the first generation of scientists who were born and educated under the Tsarist bureaucracy, Ings tracks the general trends in Russian science. Under the Tsar, science was recently brought into a similar state as the rest of Europe; with a national academy of sciences being formed and research institutes beginning to be established, albeit with less capital investment. Russia was, and is, capital poor. These Tsarist experts became necessary for the very existence of the Soviet state: whether it was army officers, engineers, factory managers, or, even, biologists. Under Lenin, these experts were generally accepted and flourished, especially during the NEP.

This intellectual prosperity changes, however, when Stalin begins to solidify power. Philosophically, Socialism could not fail: so therefore failures needed to be blamed on something. These scapegoats could be under foreign influence, as many scientists were claimed to be. Because Germany was a leader in science, and rapidly fell to Nazism, those who followed German theories were easy targets. Other groups were associated with left or right opposition groups, mostly fictional, but nevertheless always lurking in shadows. Some were “wreckers”, counter-revolutionary figures intentionally damaging the Soviet system. But, most victims of Stalin’s terror were people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The constant failures of the political system to accomplish its goals led the government to create a frenzy of internal enemies, neighbors denounced neighbors, children their parents, and scientists their lab partners. Quotas of arrests, deportations, and executions ensured that the innocent would be punished.

Into this arose Trofim Lysenko. A peasant, he rose through the bureaucracy based on his political acumen rather than his scientific abilities. Politically correct in a system which required it, his particular brand of quackery rapidly became the state scientific gospel. He is the central figure in the narrative for good reason. Lysenko was a man who took the rather normal concept of vernalization and used it as a hammer against genetics. This simple biological concept is so central to science that it destroyed the intellectual abilities of generations of Soviet scientists. Notable exceptions include nuclear research and the Soviet space program. As useful as Lysenkos could be in controlling knowledge, neither Stalin or any other leader allowed quackery into what really mattered.

<i>Stalin and the Scientists</i> is very readable, which is the best thing going for it. It was originally published in Britain last year; this is a review of the US release. So, it is a polished work. Ings is able to use his experience as a science writer to condense some very dense and technical science into easy-to-understand language. As an historian, I appreciated this quite a bit. While he isn’t bringing much new to the table—he appears to use entirely secondary or published primary sources; and only English-language (or translated)—he doesn’t claim to be reinventing the wheel. He lacks a clear argument, but succeeds in his stated goals for the book. While specialists will find little they are not aware of, it nevertheless serves an important role in the literature of Soviet history. I can recommend this book highly to casual readers, students, and non-specialists looking to bone up on the era of Stalin.