The XVII Party Congress and the Tasks of Soviet Physics

The Communist Party comes to its seventeenth congress with the greatest victories. From a backward and agrarian country the Soviet Union has moved into the front rank of the most advanced, most developed industrial countries of the world. On the basis of fulfilling Lenin’s behest concerning the alliance of the working class with the peasantry, firmly carrying out the instructions of the great helmsman of victorious socialist construction—Comrade Stalin—the Party has achieved decisive successes in the socialist industrialization of the country and in the strengthening of the collective farms.

The country’s industry has grown in an insignificant span of historical time to such an extent that already now we are capable, by our own forces, of definitively completing the technical reconstruction of industry, transport, and agriculture.

The country of backward, fragmented individual agriculture, armed with primitive agricultural implements, has been transformed into a country of the largest agriculture in the world, with the most advanced and complex agricultural equipment.

Our construction, both in scale and in technical complexity, often considerably surpasses everything that capitalism accomplished even in the period of its most rapid development. The electrification of the entire national economy—the creation of powerful electric power stations and gigantic electric transmissions, the unfolding of the construction of the Great Volga, the colossal metallurgical combines created by us in the south, in the Urals, and in Siberia, and so forth—such construction, unprecedented in the world in its technical complexity, naturally places before us a number of technical tasks that have not confronted, and do not confront, the rest of the world at all.

However, the full utilization of the hundreds of new enterprises that we have built in recent years according to the latest word of science and technology, and of the reconstructed agriculture that we have created on the bones of almost primitive farming,

impossible unless we master the heights of advanced technology. “The mastering of new enterprises and new technology presents far greater difficulties than the use of old or renovated plants and factories, whose technology has already been mastered. It requires more time in order to raise the qualifications of workers and engineering-technical personnel and to acquire new skills for the full use of the new technology.” This warning by Comrade Stalin pointedly emphasizes the full complexity of the task now before us.

In recent times we have shown on this front as well how Bolsheviks know how to overcome the difficulties that confront them. Was it so long ago that the Stalingrad Tractor Plant was convulsively struggling with the technical troubles of its start-up period? And now it already fulfills its daily output norm of 145–150 tractors per day. The Kharkov Tractor Plant, launched later than the Stalingrad plant, has already approached its full production capacity considerably more quickly, and now is striving to exceed it. The workers and technical personnel of the former “AMO”—the Stalin automobile giant—quickly mastered the new technology and are meeting the full planned norm. The Gorky plant, Ball Bearing, and other largest giants of Soviet construction, put into operation only quite recently, have reduced their start-up period to a minimum, mastering advanced technology and reaching their full design capacity. We are making major progress also in raising the quality of our output. The recent Karakum run turned into a triumph of the quality of the Soviet automobile. At the same time we are making notable progress in reducing cost. For example, a vehicle from the Stalin Automobile Plant costs us no more than a similar automobile of American “General Motors” manufacture. Thus we are learning to build faster, more cheaply, and better than the capitalist West. But these are still only the first steps in the struggle to master advanced technology. The task set before us by Comrade Stalin—“still greater boldness and enterprise in mastering new technology”—has still by no means been solved by us.

Moreover, we cannot be satisfied even with the advanced technology that we have borrowed from the capitalist West. For the further technical improvement of our economy, an even broader development of scientific work in the USSR is required. Even the mastery of the technology borrowed by us from the West cannot take place without this expansion of scientific work. For

for example, the entire instrument-making business of large plants working on the conveyor system requires significantly greater limits of precision, and consequently new measuring technology, than that which was known to the old Russian industry. Giant presses stamping whole automobile parts require constant and precise standards of steel and iron, which calls forth the need for new types of analysis of metals in production, for the development of X-ray methods of investigation, etc.

Here the role of physics, the significance of physical research and experiment in the problem of mastering new technology, becomes clear. It cannot be said that in recent years we have had no successes in this respect as well. Undoubtedly, socialist construction could not but play its decisive role in the development of physics in the USSR.

Our physics, which before the revolution had only a small number of works on theoretical problems and knew only individual researchers who at times produced significant and valuable results, has grown during the years of the revolution to such an extent that we now have powerful research collectives enriching Soviet and world science with their work. The October Revolution brought major achievements in the development of Soviet theoretical physics: the work in the field of studying the structure and properties of the solid state by the school of Academician A. F. Ioffe; the work in the field of the theory of oscillations by Academician L. I. Mandelstam and his pupils; the work of Academician D. S. Rozhdestvensky, Academician S. I. Vavilov and others in the field of optics; the investigations of Gamow, Frenkel, Fock, Tamm, Shubin, Landau, Akulov and others in the field of quantum physics and the theory of the structure of metals, etc.—this is far from a complete and inadequate list of what has been done by Soviet science in the field of theoretical physics.

A brief enumeration of some scientific achievements of the revolutionary period in the field of applied problems of physics illustrates the achievements of the USSR in this respect better than any lengthy discussion. One may point out, for example, that we have now learned to manufacture quite delicate physical instruments (the laboratories of the VEI, the State Optical Institute, the Experimental Plant of the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, the Physical Institute at Leningrad University, etc.). We can now manufacture precise electrical measuring instruments, precision ammeters and voltmeters, galvanometers,

various types of photocells, X-ray installations, highly sensitive seismographs and instruments for the rapid analysis of the results of magnetic and gravitational surveys, optical, photographic, and cinematographic apparatus, microscopes, etc. Already now, in certain matters of scientific assistance to our industries, we have achieved such successes that, even in the development of applied methods of physics, we are already beginning to overtake the West. For example, let us point to the method of optical control of the quality of cast iron (determining the amount of impurities that define the quality and properties of cast iron), developed by G. S. Landsberg; to the work of Dvidenkov and others at the Physico-Technical Institute; to the work of Moscow and Leningrad physicists in the field of radio engineering, and so on.

If we take into account, as has already been indicated above, that before the revolution physics in our country was rather weakly developed, that Russia only occasionally produced isolated significant achievements in the field of experiment and theory against the background of a generally rather low development of science, then the successes listed above (far from complete) of course depict a colossal rise in scientific research work, which has resulted from the development of a whole series of physical and physico-technical institutes and factory laboratories of major scientific importance (the “Svetlana” plant and others), called into being by the October Revolution. However, all this is still only the first steps of that scientific research work which we must unfold in the light of the tasks of the second five-year plan and the fulfillment of Stalin’s slogan of mastering technology.

To a considerable extent we are still lagging behind the advanced capitalist countries (England, the USA, etc.) in the development of scientific research. To overcome this lag, we must, in the shortest possible time, achieve significant successes in the quality of scientific research work. Even now we have the full possibility, both with respect to leading, qualified personnel and with respect to the equipment of our institutes (Leningrad—Moscow—Kharkov and others), to move, in the field of scientific research, toward the formulation and solution of new, enormous theoretical problems. The XVII Party Congress will undoubtedly become, in the history of Soviet physics, a milestone in its transition onto the track of still greater creative work directed toward the investigation and solution of the most important problems put forward by socialist construction.

The solution of this task is aided by the colossal growth of new

research personnel, physics faculties, and scientific-research institutions. Here it is important to note not only the quantitative growth of our personnel, but also their qualitative level. New forces from among the worker and peasant masses have been called to work in the field of physics. These young cadres, preparing for scientific activity in physics faculties and in the postgraduate programs of research institutions, have already brought forward a whole series of highly talented young specialists. This is the best guarantee that the task set before us—of conquering the foremost heights of world science—will be fulfilled.

Looking back over the path traversed by Soviet physics during the years of the revolution, we can say with confidence that all pre-revolutionary science in Russia was, properly speaking, the prehistory of the genuine flourishing of physical research in our country. From the very first years of Soviet power, the party, headed by Lenin and Stalin, laid a new foundation for the development of our scientific-research work. In the years of the civil war, famine, and devastation, when the party threw all its forces into the defense of the besieged republic, the first scientific-research institutes arose (the Physico-Technical Institute, the Optical Institute, the Karpov Physico-Chemical Institute, and others); in those same years our present-day scientific-research literature and journals also began to emerge (Advances in Physical Sciences, Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics, Journal of Technical Physics, and others).

“During the years of the first Five-Year Plan the USSR was transformed into a country of advanced culture. The illiteracy of tens of millions of workers and peasants was eliminated, and the transition to universal compulsory primary education was accomplished. Extracurricular education was widely developed, and the circulation of newspapers, journals, and other printed publications increased sharply. Significant successes were achieved in the development of scientific and technical thought, which independently solved a number of the greatest technical problems.” (From the theses of the report by Comrades Molotov and Kuibyshev at the XVII Party Congress, “On the Second Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the USSR.”)

We have entered a period when the party has the right to demand from scientific-research thought still more profound and broad work, the solution of still greater tasks directed toward the completion of the building of socialism in our country.

We approach the XVII Party Congress confident in our own forces and possibilities, having achieved a gigantic flourishing of science and

of all Soviet culture. The coming years will be years for us of an even more vigorous, genuinely socialist unfolding of scientific work.

At a time when, in Germany, the unbridled rampage of fascism has deprived that country—until quite recently a leading one in scientific and technical respects—of the best physicists in the world (Einstein, Born, Schrödinger, and others); at a time when in the West the campaign against scientific and technical progress is intensifying, a wave of mysticism and idealism is spreading, seizing even the largest Western scholars; at a time when there, as a consequence of the deepening general crisis of capitalism, scientific work is dying down, unemployment is spreading among scientific personnel, and so forth—our Soviet physics is developing unceasingly, expanding and deepening the objects of its research, and boldly taking on the solution of ever newer problems.

The land of the Soviets, surpassing the whole world in its development, must and will have the most advanced science in the world. In this work, enormous and honorable prospects are opening up for Soviet physics.