2012/04/07 by Helge Kragh, Kragh, Helge
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #FOS: Physical sciences #History and Developments in Astronomy #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) #History and Theory of Mathematics #Multidisciplinary Warburg-centric Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1204.1625
openalex publication_date 2012/04/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Ideological considerations have always influenced science, but rarely as directly and massively as in the Soviet Union during the early Cold War period. Cosmology was among the sciences that became heavily politicized and forced to conform to the doctrines of Marxism-Leninism. This field of science developed entirely differently in the Communist countries than in the West, in large measure because of political pressure. Certain cosmological models, in particular of the big bang type, were declared pseudo-scientific and idealistic because they implied a cosmic creation, a concept which was taken to be religious. The result of the ideological pressure was not an independent Soviet cosmology, but that astronomers and physicists abandoned cosmological research in the Western sense. Only in the 1960s did this situation change, and cosmology in the Soviet Union began to flourish. The paper examines the relationship between science and political ideology in the case of the Soviet Union from about 1947 to 1963, and it also relates this case to the later one in the People's Republic of China.