Presidents of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the Development of Science and Industry

Abstract

This article, based on published and unpublished sources, examines the continuity of the activities of the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of the Country and the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology, the history of their cooperation with the Academy of Sciences, the State Planning Committee and other commissions. The emphasis was made on the activities of the presidents of the USSR Academy of Sciences, when CSPF (or SOPS in Russian) — Council for the Study of Productive Forces — finally entered the State Planning Committee as the successor to Commission for the study of natural productive forces (CNP or KEPS in Russian) and the coordination of research related to industry was entrusted to a new state body - the State Committee for Science and Technology. The activities of the State Committee for Science and Technology have been discussed in the literature, but the nuances of the work of this institution with the USSR Academy of Sciences are not shown properly. The assessment of the activities of the SCST by the leadership of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in particular by the presidents, was also poorly covered. The author also analyzes one of the early reports of the Joint State Political Directorate (JSPD or OGPU in Russian) on the role of the Academy of Sciences in the young Soviet management system. The general line of interaction between administrative authorities and the USSR Academy of Sciences since the 1920s to 1960s is shown. The results that were obtained thanks to the activities of the Presidents of the Academy A. N. Nesmeyanov and M. V. Keldysh on the way to establishing productive interaction between production, economics and science were revealed. The author reviews the proposal of A. N. Nesmeyanov to make the Department of Technical Sciences as “the headquarters of Soviet science.” An analysis of the documents allows to conclude that in addition to combining administrative and scientific positions, as well as outstanding organizational abilities, the presidents in their attempts to regulate the balance of fundamental and applied research were helped by popularization activities, to which they assigned a significant role. This article, based on published and unpublished sources, shows the views of the presidents of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the coordination of science and industry.