JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
To the Editor: To the article by Dr. Hunshurger ("Theoretical chemistry inRussia," THIS JOURNAL, 31, 504 (1954)), I can add some facts about chemistry in Russia which should be of interest to your readers. Ideological pressure in the domain of chemistry, exaggerated praise of Russian scientists, and claims that. the Russians must be credited with all achievements in science and technology are quite new. During the first two decades after the communists seized control, chemists were almost free of such pressures. This was probably because the so-called classicists of MarxismLeninism wrote very little about chemistry. The situation a t that time is reflected in the following incident: I n the early twenties one of the secretaries of the com-
munist party's central committee, proposing to a professor that he organize a course in chemistry for a group of propagandists, asked if it were possible to mention the dialectic in chemistry; he added that he did not know if any dialectic in chemistry existed. The chemist who wanted t o give his course a Marxist character needed only to include a few more-or-less irrelevant quotations from Marx or Lenin. More servile ones planned their courses on "the industrial base." For example, I saw a text in organic chemistry which, instead of the usual chapters on Hydrocarbons, Alcohols, etc., was divided into parts such as Oil Industry, Fermentation Industry, and the like; but the hydrocarbons were described under the first division, the alcohols under the second, etc. And our ideological guardians were satisfied with such naive methods! I know of several cases in which young men who were interested in other branches of knowledge chose chemistry as their specialty because they hoped that, as chemists, they would be free from ideological pressure. During the same period i t was thought t o be suspicious, at least, if one emphasized the services of prerevolutionary Russian scientists. Professor S. Reformatsky, a t the University of Kiev, always made note of the work of Russian chemists (or, as he usually said, "our countrymen") in his lectures. He did this
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without any exaggeration. For example, in his lecture about the stmctural theory of organic compounds he began with the standard phrase: "The German KekulB, the Englishman Couper, and the Russian Butlerov. . . ." This practice irritated the secretary of the university's party committee, who once said angrily, "I would be glad to know what Professor Reformatsky means when he says 'our countrymen.' " Russian patriotism was a deadly sin a t that time because "the proletariat has no fatherland." Now, of course, all this is changed and a chemist as well as any other scientist risks being trapped in the pit of ideological heresy. The worst part of it is that nobody knows what is permitted and what is criminal. Persecution of the resonance theory, for example, began only recently; and the same works of Syrkin and Dyatkina which were condemned in 1950 were highly praised in 1945 a t the time of the 220th jubilee of the Academy of Sciences. A. SEMENTSOV
