Synopsis
This book considers how physicists, biologists, and engineers have fared in totalitarian regimes. Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin relied on scientists and engineers to build the infrastructure of their states. The military power of their regimes was largely based on the discovery of physicists and biologists. They sought to use biology to transform nature, including their citizens, with murderous effect in Nazi Germany. They expected scientists to devote themselves entirely to the goals of the state, and were intolerant of deviation from state-sponsored programs and ideology. As a result, physicists, biologists, and engineers suffered from the consequences of ideological interference in their work. Many lost their jobs; others were arrested and disappeared in prisons. In physics, this meant rejection of the theory of relativity, in biology in the USSR, the rejection of modern-day genetics.
In this revised edition, Josephson has also analyzed the uses of science and technology in such authoritarian regimes as North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and Cuba. He argues that politics plays an important role in shaping research and development in all countries, but nowhere with greater risk to citizens and the environment than in closed political systems.
Students of European, Chinese, and Russian history, history of science and technology, and environmental history will find provocative and informative discussions in this book.
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Synopsis
Science and technology in totalitarian regimes is associated with images of abusive doctors in concentration camps or dictators controlling genetic resources. Are these cases representative of what constitutes science in totalitarian regimes, or are they anomalies? Based on a synthesis and reinterpretation of recent work, this book presents a balanced view of science in totalitarian regimes by going beyond attacks on their "pseudo-science" to investigate and understand how politics and culture shape science and technology. It rebukes the notion that science operates according to democratic principles, arguing that this view of science is hard to reconcile with the fact that in most totalitarian regimes the science enterprise is dynamic and follows international paradigms both in terms of focus and methodologies that scientists employ. It shows that the scientific successes of Soviet scientists, such as Sputnik and the development of the Tokamuk fusion, despite their subjection to arbitary one-party rule. Turning to a discussion of technology, it argues that two features distinguish large-scale technological systems in totalitarian regimes from those in other systems.
First, the state is the prime mover in technological development. In order to achieve the goals of economic self-sufficincy and military might, the state harnesses the efforts of engineers and scientists to its programmes. Second, large-scale technologies in totalitarian systems require an aesthetic based on gigantomania, the gigantic structures reflecting the efforts of officials and engineers to publicly demonstrate the strength, glory and ligitimacy of the regime.About the Author
Paul Josephson is the author of five other books, including Resources Under Regimes, Industrialized Nature, Red Atom, and New Atlantis Revisited: The Siberian City of Science.
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