When I was an undergraduate working in a molecular biology lab my two mentors, Andrei and Svetlana were Russian emigrants. Andrei taught me, in the 00s, that he couldn’t do the level of molecular biology in Russia because the downstream effects decades later put them far behind in the technical and cultural knowhow. Genetics was banned.
> More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents.
It had elements of capitalism, like private ownership and focus on trade via monetary means, but its economy was largely based on slavery and your position within the system was based almost entirely on where you were born and to whom. It's a pre-industrial system, capitalism isn't really the correct description for it.
I mean, obviously not? History is way more complicated than this, just because certain elements fit doesn't mean we look at it and go "yeah that's capitalism mate". Historians generally use capitalism as a description for economic systems from 19th century onwards - before then the correct answer is usually "it's complicated". I appreciate that can be frustrating if we just want to slap a simple recognizable label on things, but history doesn't always fit what we want it to be.
Julius Rosenburg is an obvious one. The Nazis executed gobs of scientists. And I'm certain I could find other examples if needed, but that is off the top of my head.
The National Socialists were socialists so that undermines not reinforces your point:
- they implemented communist policies like mass nationalization schemes with some of the resulting "companies" being amongst the largest organizations in the world
- they wanted to fully nationalize the entire economy after the war
- they passed large amounts of left wing legislation
- they, obviously, called themselves socialists constantly. Hitler said "I am a fanatical socialist".
- they openly hated capitalism. A big part of their hate for Jews was that they associated Judaism with international capital. Same reason Marx was an anti-semite.
Ah, I guess I made up that it was The Constant... what I must have been thinking of is the episode on Lysenkoism by the legendary Melvyn Bragg on In Our Time.
Apologies for leading you astray at first. I couldn't find it FOR THE LIFE OF ME either.
If you guys aren't already fans of In Our Time, I'm delighted to be the one to turn you on to it. It's the Liberal Arts education you didn't get in school... And I say that as someone who GOT a Lib Arts education.
There are over a thousand episodes and it's all a brilliant quick study on an unbelievable variety of subjects.
During the 1940-s. And yet it undermined the molecular biology research in the USSR. It's very easy to destroy the institutions of scientific research.
I'm sure, nothing like this can happen in the US. It's not possible that people in power will just use theological and ideological reasons to just deny sound scientific results.
No they were in college in the 80s when things were more open, but Andrei’s point was that compared to a lot of other sciences, molecular biology like cloning genes was decades behind because of the past.
When I was an undergraduate working in a molecular biology lab my two mentors, Andrei and Svetlana were Russian emigrants. Andrei taught me, in the 00s, that he couldn’t do the level of molecular biology in Russia because the downstream effects decades later put them far behind in the technical and cultural knowhow. Genetics was banned.