Vladimir Nikolaevich Kessenikh: Soviet Physicist between Center and Periphery

Abstract

The name of Vladimir Nikolaevich Kessenikh (1903–1970) is closely related to the history of radio physics research in Tomsk, one of the leading Soviet research and education centers. He was one of the foremost Soviet authorities in radio physics in the 1930s – 1950s. His making as a scientist occurred in the context of formation of Soviet science organization system. One of the last representatives of the prerevolutionary P. N. Lebedev’s scientific school of physics, Kessenikh witnessed in full measure the times of Stalinism. In this connection, we analyze the scientist’s professional strategy in the situation of the ideologized Party-state system and the nature of center – periphery relations within the Soviet physics community in the period under study, as exemplified by a scientific biography of Kessenikh who had been a professor at both Tomsk and Moscow Universities. The article also describes his key role in Tomsk’s radio engineering rising to the level of radio physics as a standalone, autonomous sphere of scientific research, from which a number of promising research fields have stemmed. It is emphasized that Kessenikh’s professional ambitions had a significant impact on the organizational and structural configuration of local research and education space. The trajectory of his moving within the center – periphery coordinate frame in Soviet physics, shown in the article, demonstrates the patterns in the history of science construction in the USSR as well as the traces of ideocratic metanarrative.