Soviet philosophy of science - dialectical materialism - is an area of intellectual endeavor that engages thousands of specialists in the Soviet Union but passes almost entirely unnoticed in the West. It is true that a few Western authors have examined Soviet discussions of individual problems in philosophy of science, such as philosophical issues of biology, or psychology; nonetheless, no one else in the last twenty-five years has tried to study in detail the relationship of dialectical materialism to Soviet science as a whole. It is an unusual experience, rewarding yet worrisome, to be the only scholar making this endeavor.

Soviet philosophy of science - dialectical materialism - is an area of intellectual endeavor that engages thousands of specialists in the Soviet Union but passes almost entirely unnoticed in the West. It is true that a few Western authors have examined Soviet discussions of individual problems in philosophy of science, such as philosophical issues of biology, or psychology; nonetheless, no one else in the last twenty-five years has tried to study in detail the relationship of dialectical materialism to Soviet science as a whole. It is an unusual experience, rewarding yet worrisome, to be the only scholar making this endeavor.

By the 1980s the Soviet scientific establishment had become the largest in the world, but very little of its history was known in the West. What has been needed for many years in order to fill that gap in our knowledge is a history of Russian and Soviet science written for the educated person who would like to read one book on the subject. This book has been written for that reader. The history of Russian and Soviet science is a story of remarkable achievements and frustrating failures. That history is presented here in a comprehensive form, and explained in terms of its social and political context. Major sections include the tsarist period, the impact of the Russian Revolution, the relationship between science and Soviet society, and the strengths and weaknesses of individual scientific disciplines. The book also discusses the changes brought to science in Russia and other republics by the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A major new contribution to understanding the transition of Soviet society from Stalinism to a more humane model of socialism.