What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience?

At the time the Soviet Union broke apart in the late 1980s, it possessed the largest scientific community in the world. The rapid development, in just a few decades, of such an immense scientific establishment in a social and economic environment strikingly different from the West presents an unusual opportunity for the world’s leading authority on Soviet science to examine how the Russian experience sheds light on the status and character of science and technology throughout the world. The book is organized around five questions, each given its own chapter: Is Science a Social Construction? Are Science and Technology Westernizing Influences? How Robust Is Science Under Stress? How Willing Are Scientists to Reform Their Own Institutions? and Who Should Control Technology?