MARCH SESSION OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE USSR

The present issue is devoted entirely to the reports delivered at the session of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR held in Moscow from March 14 to 20 of this year.

In its structure this session differed substantially both from preceding ones and especially from traditional scientific congresses. Instead of a long series of reports on various scientific questions, the March Session put up for discussion only a very limited number of reports. Of these, the first three—the reports of Academicians A. F. Ioffe, D. S. Rozhdestvensky, and S. I. Vavilov—were accounts of the speakers’ own scientific work and of the work of the research institutes under their direction: the State Physico-Technical Institute and the State Optical Institute in Leningrad. In addition to these reporting papers, the program of the session included three more reports on the fundamental problems of contemporary theoretical physics—the reports of Professors I. E. Tamm, V. A. Fock, and Ya. I. Frenkel.

Although the Physico-Technical and Optical Institutes by no means exhaust the whole of Soviet physics, they are undoubtedly the largest institutes in our country, and through the discussion of their work it was possible to reveal the positive and negative aspects of Soviet physics. Thus the principal content of the work of the March Session was the consideration of the state of scientific work in one of the most important sectors of the theoretical front—in the field of physics. The March Session was a genuine review of Soviet physics. By this structure of the session, the Academy was carrying out the directive given to it directly by the government when the new charter was approved. “We want,” said Comrade V. M. Molotov, “the Academy of Sciences to fulfill the task assigned to it of promoting the general advance of the theoretical, and at the same time the applied, sciences in the USSR, and to be more closely connected with the needs of socialist construction.”

The achievements of Soviet physics over the 19 years of the revolution are enormous. During this time the largest scientific-research institutes of world significance have been created and strengthened, a number of works that have entered world science have been carried out, and cadres of young physicists have grown up. Alongside these unquestionable successes, a number of serious shortcomings have been revealed in the work of our institutes. On a whole series of the most important theoretical problems, the work of Soviet physicists has not occupied a leading ...

proper place in world science. A particularly significant defect is the isolation of scientific work in the field of physics from technology. Given the enormous scale of work in physics in the Soviet Union and the large funds expended on this work, given the existence of an entire network of physico-technical institutes, the contribution of Soviet physics to industry and to socialist construction is still far too modest.

The reports of leading workers in the field of physics were subjected at the session to severe criticism on the part of the Soviet scientific public. “For the first time at this session the voice of genuine self-criticism was heard, without which forward movement in scientific work is inconceivable” (Izvestia, March 22, 1936). The report of Academician A. F. Ioffe provoked an acute discussion. A number of errors in the work of the institute headed by him were pointed out, and special attention was drawn to the existing gap between the institute’s theoretical work and the needs of Soviet industry. The assessment of the level of work in Soviet physics, and especially in technical physics, given in this report was unanimously recognized by the session as excessively optimistic. A number of substantial defects were also noted in the work of the Optical Institute (see the Resolution of the session printed below).

A full report on the work of the session has just been published in Izvestiya Akademii nauk SSSR. Seriya fizicheskaya, Nos. 1–2. Lacking the space to reproduce here all the debates on the reports, we print, along with the reports, the extensive resolution of the session, which sums up the discussion speeches and outlines the further paths for the development of Soviet physics: “The scientists of the Soviet Union face the historic task of broadly developing science in order to assist the further construction of a classless socialist society.

In every way raising the theoretical level of their work, setting themselves broad goals of investigating general physical laws and solving the most important problems of modern physics, Soviet physical institutes must combine this work with the maximum use, at every stage of scientific research, of the possibilities opened up for the practice of economic construction and for strengthening the defense of our great motherland” (Resolution, Section VI).