Stalin and the Scientists

In Europe, by about the middle of the nineteenth century, it did seem possible that religion, philosophy, psychology, science and politics might achieve some sort of mutual understanding.

Physiologists attacked psychologists. Laboratory pathologists denounced clinicians.

Several scientists of world importance spent their careers in ‘research prisons’.

Around 18 million people passed through the gulag system

created a vast system of labour camps managed by a government agency known by its acronym: Gulag

guaranteeing them virtually unlimited funds. For others it was a disaster.

five-year economic plans

chief operatives in the Caucasus.

marginalised and ultimately destroyed by a man who had barely figured in the 1917 revolution

led them from trauma wards to orphanages, and from the invention of the lie detector to expeditions in remotest Uzbekistan.