Stalin and the Scientists [antikvár]

Preface Come, brethren, let us look in the tomb at the ashes and dust, from which we were fashioned. Verse from the Orthodox burial service This book - about more or less the whole of scientific life in the Soviet Union, from its birth until the mid-1950s - grew out of my fascination with someone other than Joseph Stalin. Alexander Romanovich Luria's classic neuropsychological case study The Mind of a Mnemonist^ was one of the first books of modern popular science: a slim book that shaped a genre. In it, Luria described the strange world of Solomon Shereshevsky, a man with a memory so prodigious it ruined his life. Some years ago I met another Luria obsessive who wondered aloud if there was room for a new biography. 1 did some research and hit a wall. Luria's most astonishing achievement, in a career full of astonishing achievements, was his ability to lead a normal life. He betrayed no one, nor was he betrayed. He led a happy family life and enjoyed many close friendships with colleagues abroad. His work was as sound as it was brilliant. Luria's life and work are endlessly fascinating from a scientific point of view but, for a biographer, there is little to tell that has not already been told. Yet here was a man - a Jew in a country goaded by the state into anti-semitism - who exposed himself again and again to political risk, who was repeatedly interrogated, sacked and admonished, whose work was forever being banned. Luria's career was an extraordinary demonstration of Winston