U.S. Study Assesses Soviet Scientific Goals

Abstract

The U.S. intelligence community constantly gathers information on Soviet science. But it rarely shares its assessments with the U.S. public. Now, however, a new report on Soviet scientific capabilities has surfaced. Dated December 1985, it was recently handed out at a meeting of officials discussing forthcoming scientific exchanges between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The report reflects everything that has been said up to now about Soviet scientific goals since Mikhail Gorbachev took over the leadership of the Communist Party: that the country hopes to overcome bureaucratic habits that discourage risk and creativity among scientists and engineers, and that stress will be put on fundamental research areas that are economically and militarily relevant. The bureaucratic reshuffling has already begun, the report discloses. Younger scientists, such as G. Marchuk, Y. Velikhov, and Y. Ovchinnikov— who gained their reputations in the applied sciences—are favorites of General Secretary Gorbachev and have been p...