Science: Dull or Concealed Dreams

The editor of Moscow’s Komsomolskaya Pravda (Truth of Communist Youth, or “Pravda Jr.”) called two reporters into his office. Said he: “Set all your current work aside and take an assignment into the 21st century.” So the reporters, Sergei Gushchev and Mikhail Vasiliev, interviewed 29 Soviet scientists and wrote a Communist book, obviously meant as a major Soviet showcase: Russian Science in the 21st Century. Now published in the U.S. by McGraw-Hill, the book offers a glimpse at the little-known world of Soviet science. And an unexciting world it seems.

As required by Soviet protocol, the first scientist Gushchev and Vasiliev interviewed was Aleksandr Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (TIME cover, June 2 1958) “We must learn to dream,” he said. “We do not always care to dream, nor are we always capable of dreaming, but without dreams, prospects do not exist and without dreams man, the scientist included, is halted in his progress.”

Run of the River. Nesmeyanov is a world-famed organic chemist, and certainly capable of dreaming impressive scientific dreams. But the book that Komsomolskaya Pravda’s reporters assembled is singularly meager in scientific imagination. One chapter predicts for the 21st century the mechanization of mines—which is already an accomplished fact in many non-Communist countries. Another tells about hydroelectric stations very run-of-the-river examples, that will be built in 50 years in Siberia. A chapter on surgery describes techniques and operations that have been standard in the outside world for many years. Almost the only unfamiliar glimpse of the surgical future is a tentative plan to use refrigerated corpses (here, according to Gushchev and Vasihev, the girl stenographer faints) as sources of human spare parts.

Russian scientists are especially good at theory, but none of the chapters in the book rise above the level of applied science. About the only novel idea is highways with cables carrying high-frequency current under their pavement. The electric field surrounding the cable, says Engineer U. A. Dolmatovsky, will hold automobiles out of contact with the ground and at the same time propel them forward at 150 m.p.h. There will be no accidents no matter how heavy the traffic, because automatically guided cars are free of human error. Such high-speed cars will operate only on main highways. Inside cities says Dolmatovsky, the citizens will use slower, driverless taxis, which will be plentiful and free for all.

Things of the Past. A description of Moscow as it will be in the year 2007 sounds like standard U.S. city planning with plenty of parks and outlying centers for shopping and industry. Russian schools in 2007 will have classes of only 30 pupils a figure considered rather high in many parts of the U.S. Factories will be largely automatic, and their workers will work only four hours per day. Plastics will replace metals for many purposes, and natural fibers will be things of the past. All these advances will be due to Soviet efforts alone.

Why should “Pravda Jr.,” which is perhaps the liveliest Soviet newspaper, sponsor so unimaginative a book about the future? One guess is that Russia’s scientists are not eager to share their private dreams with official reporters. Another is that a not very wonderful world of the future may look sufficiently wonderful to Soviet citizens.