50 YEARS

OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET SCIENCE

The Great October Socialist Revolution fundamentally changed the position of science in the Soviet Union. The progress of science and technology in our country is determined by the very nature of the socialist system, which has placed science at the service of the people and opened the broadest horizons of scientific creativity to the masses.

Communism can be built only on the basis of a correct knowledge of the objective laws of nature and society, when revolutionary theory becomes a guide to action. Here science becomes not simply a form of knowledge of the world, but an indispensable means of struggle for a new society.

In recent Party documents, Lenin’s proposition that science and communism are inseparable runs like a red thread. As the advance toward communism proceeds, the influence of science on all aspects of life grows ever greater.

In the USSR the artificial partitions between purely theoretical and fundamental research, on the one hand, and applied research, on the other, or between applied research and the engineering-design development of its achievements, have been destroyed. This is emphasized in the formula given in the Party Program: “Science is becoming to the fullest extent a direct productive force.” “The further prospects for the progress of science and technology,” it says there as well, “are determined at the present time above all by the achievements of the leading branches of natural science. A high level of development of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology is a necessary condition for the rise and effectiveness of the technical, medical, agricultural, and other sciences.”

With the establishment of Soviet power, a state organization of science arose for the first time in the history of our country; along with the planned organization of the national economy, the planning of science was introduced. These principles of the organization of science, naturally with allowance made for capitalist social relations and the domination of monopolies in the economy, became an object of imitation in a number of the world’s economically most developed countries. According to data published in America, two out of every three scientists in the United States now work in state research institutions.

In the theses of the Central Committee of the CPSU, “50 Years of the Great October Socialist Revolution,” science is spoken of as an active fac-

the period of communist construction. “In the scientific institutions, higher educational establishments, and other organizations of the USSR, more than 700 thousand scientific workers are employed. This is one fourth of all the scientific workers in the world. A system of coordination and management of science on the scale of the entire country has been created, in which the leading role belongs to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and to the academies of sciences of the Union republics.”

In the general system of the organization of science in our country, our journal has for 45 years already been carrying out its task—to provide primary information on the results of scientific research. Founded in 1922 as an organ of the Russian Academy of Sciences, at first having comparatively modest aims and covering a limited range of scientific problems, the journal was transformed in 1933 into Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR—New Series, intended for the publication of brief communications on original theoretical and experimental investigations having the character of novelty—theoretical or methodological—in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, and biology.

Publishing in recent times about 2,500 articles annually, and having printed since the organization of the “new series” more than 50,000 articles, Reports has contributed substantially to securing the priority of Soviet scientists in the fields of the disciplines covered on its pages.

The body of authors of Reports consists of scientists of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, of the academies of sciences of the Union republics, of branch scientific-research institutes, of higher educational establishments, and also a number of scientists of foreign countries who wish to see the first publication of their new research on the pages of Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

In connection with the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, we greet our authors and readers within the country and abroad, send them wishes for great creative achievements, and express the hope that they will continue to give attention to the current materials which Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR endeavors to bring to their notice for the development of a constant exchange of scientific achievements.

The results of the development of Soviet science over 50 years are one of the vivid and convincing testimonies to the vitality of the Great October. The recognition and high appraisal by the Party and the Soviet people of the role of Soviet science in the revolutionary transformation of our country inspire Soviet scientists to labor and creativity in furthering the construction of the communist system, which ensures the most favorable conditions for the well-being of the people and for the free development of the human personality.