PHYSICS IN THE SERVICE OF SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION

The rapidly unfolding socialist construction places enormous demands on our work in the field of theory. The physical sciences, which have a direct relation to technology, must be placed wholly in the service of the construction of socialism. The front of natural science is still far from occupying the place that rightfully belongs to it. If in our Party and Soviet press almost no attention is paid to it, it by no means follows from this that matters on this sector stand favorably.

At the conference of Marxist agrarians, Comrade Stalin formulated guiding propositions that must be made the basis for the restructuring of our scientific-research work.

A full year has passed since Comrade Stalin’s speech, but the necessary turn in the work of the natural-science research institutes has still not occurred.

At the beginning of December of the current year, the science sector of the People’s Commissariat of Education convened a conference of physical scientific-research institutes.

This conference revealed a whole series of very serious breaches on the front of physics. The state of scientific-research work in the field of physics deserves to be examined in greater detail, since physics, along with chemistry, is one of the important prerequisites for the industrialization of the country.

What should be the indicators of the work of a scientific-research institution? On this point, unfortunately, we still have no established opinion. Very often the criterion of success in the work of a scientific-research institute of physics is seen only in the fact that, in its subject matter and in the level of elaboration of its topics, it stands at the “level of European science.” As the best indicator of our achievements, people cite, over and over again, the number of works by Russian physicists printed in foreign journals, and the enthusiastic reviews of European physicists.

Undoubtedly, our physical theory must keep pace with and outstrip the physics of Western Europe. But can we base the evaluation of the work of our scientific-research institutions only on a comparative characterization with West European science? Such a simple comparative assessment is completely insufficient. In order to judge the rates of development of our science and those achievements that we have, we must of course not lose sight of what is being done in the West. But at the center of our attention must stand the question of what our physical science gives; what the research institutes give for the direct development of our socialist construction.

If, with this orientation, we approach the evaluation of the work of our research institutes, then the correctness of Comrade Stalin’s thought about the lag of theory behind practice will be revealed with full clarity.

At first glance it seems that there can be no question of theory lagging behind practice in the field of theoretical natural science. What lag, indeed, is possible in theoretical physics, which often develops problems whose practical application at the given moment cannot even be foreseen? To judge the successes of theoretical science by the degree of its applicability in practice means to destroy theory, to reduce it to the level of applied science, to turn theoretical physics into technology.

Such is the usual argumentation of the advocates of “pure independent science.”

The discussions that have taken place on the theoretical front (economics, philosophy, natural science) have shown the full depth of the separation of theory from practice that was characteristic of Marxist scientific workers. What, then, is surprising in the fact that among the enormous number of workers in our research institutes the theories of “pure science and science for science’s sake” are still very widespread.

No matter how much is said and written among us about the connection of scientific-research work with production and socialist construction, it must be acknowledged with complete clarity that there has not yet been a real turn in this question, a genuine restructuring of the work of research institutes and of all scientific-research work in the field of physics.

The close linkage of all scientific-research work with the tasks of socialist construction not only does not mean a lowering of the theoretical level or a diminution of the significance of theory, but, on the contrary, it raises theory itself to its proper height.

It will hardly be an exaggeration to say that the subject matter of our scientific-research work is determined to a far greater degree by the direction of Western European physics than by the general task of completing the construction of the foundation of socialist economy.

This by no means signifies that physics should simply turn into a mere appendage of technology.

PHYSICS IN THE SERVICE OF SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION

Physics will preserve, and must preserve, its tasks and its range of questions. But this must not be achieved through a complete rupture between physics and technology, between theoretical physicists and engineering-technical personnel, as has been the case until now.

Such a separation of theory from practice, the principled demarcation between “pure” and “applied science,” is characteristic precisely of capitalist society.

The main network of our natural-scientific research institutes arose after October; it is the offspring of the October Revolution.

The construction of the network was spontaneous in character. Institutes often arose on the initiative of one or another major scientist, predominantly in the large pre-revolutionary university centers.

This period of “gathering scientific forces,” however, stretched over such a long span of time that only very recently (1930) has the question of a planned construction of the network of scientific-research institutes begun to be raised in earnest.

The construction of the network of scientific-research institutes is completely uncoordinated with our Five-Year Plan.

To this day we still do not have a physico-technical institute in the Urals, although the problem of Kuzbass stands in its full magnitude; and while, for research institutions, a physico-technical institute in Nizhny actually exists on paper, there is no physical center in the North Caucasus either.

This rupture between our construction of a network of scientific-research institutions in the field of physics and the general plan for the industrialization of the country represents a major failing in the work of Gosplan, and has the same root—the separation of theory from practice. Research institutes, as is evident, continue to be regarded as purely theoretical institutions, whose work cannot be directly linked with the tasks of socialist construction.

This rupture and this lack of planning must be eliminated decisively and immediately.

The network of scientific-research institutes must be linked with the distribution of major industrial and agricultural centers. Physico-technical institutes must set themselves the task of in-depth theoretical development of the entire complex of physical processes that underlie production.

If the laboratory of a given enterprise is occupied with studying and improving the technical processes of its enterprise, if a branch institute sets itself the problem of studying the technical side of a given branch of production (electrical engineering, heat engineering, metal), then a physico-technical research institute is occupied with the study and theoretical investigation of an entire complex of physical questions.

With such a formulation of the question, the problem of planning scientific-research work becomes one of the most important problems in the unfolding of scientific-research work.

The question of planning includes three aspects: the planned construction of the network and its linkage with the plan for the development of industry, the linkage of the work of the entire system of scientific-research institutions (factory and plant laboratory, branch institute, scientific-research institute), and, finally, the planning of the subject matter of the work, the planning of production plans for scientific-research work.

The last question stands especially sharply. If on the question of planning the network we for the most part hear no objections, then on the question of planning the subject matter of scientific research the strongest and most widespread idea still remains that “science is free creation.”

The defense of such propositions is nothing other than a peculiar form of expression of class struggle. Such attitudes are linked with the “defense of the right of scientific workers to apoliticality,” with “humanistic ideas,” which manifested themselves so sharply among scientific workers in connection with the trial of the wreckers.

Such apoliticality and neutrality are undoubtedly a nourishing soil for wrecking.

Planning scientific subject matter thus has great political significance.

The task of planning subject matter is complex, but entirely feasible. Unfortunately, our planning bodies have not yet even approached this task (and if they have, it remains buried within their apparatus and has no effect whatsoever on the life and planning of the institutes).

The question of planning, however, cannot be considered apart from the composition and political physiognomy of our research institutes.

When data are presented to us on the state of our scientific-research institutions, these data are usually given in summary form, as average figures for all institutes, including institutes of the social sciences. These average figures distort the actual state of affairs in the natural-science institutes.

The percentage of Communists here is much lower, and the contamination of the institute personnel by alien and hostile elements is much greater here than in the research institutes of the social sciences. But even if one takes the state of affairs in the natural-science institutes, here too the average figures somewhat conceal the obvious trouble that we have on the front of physics. The percentage of Communists among the staff personnel of scientific-research institutes of physics does not exceed two percent, and among graduate students it does not exceed 10–15%. These figures characterize quite vividly our lag on the physics front and the need to devote special attention to the training of seasoned proletarian cadres.

Planning subject matter is of enormous importance in creating a real linkage between the work of the physics institutes and production.

Our institutes not only have no firm and regular connection with the branch institutes and large laboratories at enterprises, but are almost completely unconnected with one another.

The planning of work also includes the creation of strong-

close connection among institutes, their transformation into an organized working collective.

The new socialist methods of work, so widely developed and yielding such brilliant results in enterprises (collectivity of work, brigades, shock work, socialist competition), are absent from our research work.

One often has to hear that these forms of work are supposedly unacceptable in scientific-research work. Such attitudes must be fought persistently.

The process of producing science is also a production process, and not a special sacrament, the lot of a few chosen ones and therefore inviolable.

The working class must master science and is mastering it, resolutely overcoming the separation of science from the worker, which is so characteristic of capitalist society and whose roots were exposed by Marx.

“Spiritual potencies,” wrote Marx in Volume I of Capital, “the driving forces of production, on the one hand extend their scale precisely because on many other sides they disappear completely.

What the individual workers lose is concentrated in capital over against them.

The division of labour in manufacture leads to the result that the spiritual principles of the material process of production confront the workers as another’s property and as a power that dominates them.

This process begins with simple cooperation, develops in manufacture. It is completed in large-scale industry, which separates science from the worker as an independent potency of production and compels it to serve capital.”

The working class must master science and technology, must create its own proletarian scientific-technical cadres.

At the First All-Union Conference of Workers of Industrial Enterprises, Comrade Stalin posed this task with particular sharpness:

“We have solved a number of most difficult tasks. We have taken power. We have turned the middle peasant onto the path of socialism. The most important—

What was necessary from the standpoint of construction we have already done. We have only a little left: to study technology and master science. And when we do this, then we shall attain such tempos as we dare not even dream of. And we shall do this, if we want it in earnest.”

To master science means, for Bolsheviks, to reconstruct it. The reconstruction of all natural science on the basis of dialectical materialism is one of the most essential tasks of the present day. The correct education of new cadres will be possible only when this education is not the simple, passive assimilation of a sum of old knowledge, but is combined with the struggle for dialectical materialism in physics against all and every distortion of it, wherever they may come from. In the work of reconstructing physics, the leading role must belong to dialectical materialism.

Our physics journals suffer from the same shortcomings as the scientific-research institutes. They too are characterized by a detachment from the tasks of socialist construction, by confinement within the framework of “pure science.”

A sharp turn is needed in the work of our journals. The editorial board of our journal considers it necessary that Advances in the Physical Sciences should not only present a picture of the latest achievements of theoretical physics, but should also be an organ of the socialist scientific community; should raise and illuminate questions of the connection of physical science with production, the problems of training cadres, of planning physical subject matter, and the work of our physico-technical and physical institutes.

The journal must cover the most important problems of physics from the standpoint of dialectical materialism and carry on the struggle for the dialectical-materialist reconstruction of physics, offering merciless resistance to and subjecting to profound criticism all idealist and anti-Marxist currents.

It is necessary that our readers take an active part in the elaboration of all these questions on the pages of our journal.