Science Day in the USSR

Science Day in the USSR had a “floating” date - the holiday was celebrated every third Sunday in April Such a tradition did not arise by chance Vladimir Ilyich Lenin drew up his “Sketch of a plan for scientific and technical work” between April 18 and April 25, 1918 With this document, in essence, the era of the heyday of Soviet science began - one of the branches of the national economy, in which at least 1 million Soviet citizens were employed Science in the Soviet Union was one of the most advanced in the world, especially in the field of natural sciences The successes of specialists in biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics have brought the country to a new stage of development The USSR from a semi-feudal country turned into an advanced industrial state that could compete with world leaders At the very beginning, when the Bolsheviks first came to power, there were only 300 scientific organizations in the country It cannot be said that before the overthrow of the tsarist regime there were no people in the country who possessed certain knowledge and made progress in one or another scientific field Of course there were, but education was considered a privilege More than 80% of the population was illiterate The Bolsheviks had to literally start everything from scratch To begin with, they conducted a mass educational program - a process of eliminating illiteracy, during which people were taught to read and write At that time, the Bolsheviks simply did not have the personnel to create a powerful scientific complex By the mid-20s of the last century, almost 70 more scientific organizations had been added to those 300 This was the first success The new state, which had powerful potential, picked up a good pace and relied on the development of national science By the 70s, there were already 856 universities in the USSR alone, without taking into account various scientific committees, academies and commissions The number of engineering personnel has increased sharply In just thirteen years from 1928 to 1941 their number increased from 61,000 to 290,000 Soviet science simultaneously developed in different directions, specialists achieved long-term priority in many areas Our design engineers worked on the development and implementation of innovative technologies in the field of rocketry Thanks to the works of Korolev, Yangel, Glushko, Chelomey, the USSR had the most powerful space program The military-industrial complex was actively developing, the foundation of which was scientific achievements The state invested huge amounts of money in it, since at that time the Cold War was already in full swing and the arms race was in full swing The work of Vavilov, Ginzburg, Landau, Tamm, Ioffe, Frank, Kapitsa, Sakharov, Kurchatov led to several Nobel Prizes, the creation of a hydrogen bomb and a number of discoveries in the field of applied optics, quantum theory, and low-temperature physics Pavlov's experiments ended with the creation of a new branch of science - the discipline of higher nervous activity Thanks to advances in the field of medicine, by the 60s the USSR managed to almost completely eliminate its gap in life expectancy from Western countries Back in the 40s, the active development of cybernetics began in the country Natural science disciplines were a priority, but the humanities did not suffer from a lack of attention Soviet science developed harmoniously The number of historians, philologists and linguists, sociologists, philosophers, literary scholars, and translators grew rapidly in the country According to many modern researchers, the secret of success included several factors It was prestigious to do science A learned person, like a working person, received a high status in society Scientists had good financial support The USSR had enough higher educational institutions where future scientists could receive an excellent education Every year the USSR produced tens of thousands of competent specialists And another extremely important factor was the principle of openness within scientific teams, which is especially noticeable when compared with the work algorithms of similar organizations in the West The specialists worked for a common result; they freely exchanged opinions and ideas, which allowed them to avoid subjective mistakes