Science and Ideology in Soviet Society. by George FischerReview by: David JoravskySlavic Review, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 1969), pp. 665-666Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2493986 .

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Reviews 665

Putting interpretive passages of this book aside, the wealth of demographic information presented in the study is unusually rich, and Dodge is to be com- plimented for his outstanding research. However, the chief shortcoming in his interpretation lies in the fact that he does not examine in any significant detail sociocultural values, motivation for public service, impact of communal child-rearing practices, and problems of marriage versus career advancement (with the exception of divorce and abortion laws) for Soviet women. All these deficiencies leave room for more studies of the perplexing question-what is the true role of women in Soviet society?

NIcHOLAs DEWITT Indiana University

SCIENCE AND IDEOLOGY IN SOVIET SOCIETY. Edited by Geor-ge Fischer. New York: Atherton Press, 1967. xiii, 176 pp.

We are approaching the point where students of Soviet history will be frankly puzzled by the question, Why did the Stalinists try to enforce certain views in various sciences? The growth of puzzlement is all to the good. For too long, Stalinist entanglement with the sciences seemed, to Communists and anti-Commu- nists alike, an unavoidable result of Soviet ideology, which supposedly commits adherents to all manner of particular beliefs, from the existence of universal ether in physics to the nonexistence of genes in biology and the falsehood of marginal calculation in economics. Here now are four learned authors reinforcing a basic truth we should have perceived long ago: Soviet ideology is a very fuzzy and elusive thing; simply pointing to it does not explain why Soviet leaders have taken changing stands in various sciences, including no stand at all.

The main effort of these authors is not to discover how and why Stalinists got involved in efforts to impose particular dogmiias on particular sciences. Their attention is concentrated on the current process of disengagement, which began in 1950 with Stalin's emancipation of linguistics and is now observable, though halting and feeble, even in the social sciences. Without a long-run historical ap- proach, and without a rigorous effort to be consistent in the use of their basic concept, Soviet ideology, the authors generate some confusion as well as enlighten- ment. I counted four genera and six species of the concept, appearing and dis- appearing as randomly as the various arguments for ABM: (1) Thought whose function is "to legitimate social action." This breaks down into two species: wishful as opposed to realistic thought, and cynical talk to the masses, justifying what the bosses do for their own private reasons. (2) Sacred as opposed to profane thought; the body of sacred doctrines. This breaks down into two species: nonverifiable but meaningful beliefs that commit one to action, and meaningless beliefs that can be interpreted ainy way one pleases. (3) The official mentality; the way that leaders think. This is the least useful meaning, because it is the vaguest; one might as well dispense with the concept of ideology altogether. (4) Two meanings derived from Mannheim: "false consciousness," or, more generally, thought that is deter- mined by one's life situation. In my opinion, this is the most useful meaning of all, for it requires systematic examination of the interaction between changing thoughts and changing situations.

The authors shed intermittent light on that interaction in their recurrent comments on the "practical necessities" that have been shaping Soviet attitudes

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666 Slavic Review

toward sociology (George Fischer), philosophy (Richard De George), cybernetics (Loren Graham), and economics (Herbert Levine). Unfortunately space does not permit a summary of the valuable information they provide on the current state of Soviet work in these fields. I have an uneasy feeling that they leave an overall impression of more significant progress than the real situation would justify. But this intuitive feeling probably reflects little more than the current ebbing of Western respect for Soviet science. \Vhen the authors prepared their papers, the Soviet Union was still in the race to the moon. Now the Soviet cosmonauts seem to have dropped out, and the OECD has issued a report on Soviet science which gives a picture of shocking waste, mismanagemenit, and missed opportunities in many more important fields than space engineering. Will we ever be able to see the develop- ment of Soviet science wie es eigentlich gescheheni. ist? That depends on our chanlg- ing ideologies as well as theirs. Gloomy uncertainty is the first and abiding consequence of serious thought about ideology.

DAVID JORAVSKY Northwestern University

THE UNREDEEMED: ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE SOVIET UNION. Edited by Ronald I. Rubin. Foreword by Abraham J. Heschel. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, [1968]. 317 pp. $10.00.

This is a valuable collection of essays, documents, and eyewitness accounts, all bearing on the precarious position of Jews in the Soviet Union. It is somewhat marred by sensationalist editing and an emotional foreword and introduction that allow the reader no choice except to be "gripped with horror." Still, the serious and patient reader who has weathered the high-pitched verbosity of the first forty-odd pages will be rewarded by a rich fare of intelligent and sober factual analysis and perceptive reporting. He will find two calm and careful but razor-sharp and penetrating dissertations, "The Status of the Jews in the Soviet Union" (Moshe Decter) and "Soviet Law and the Jews" (William Korey), an imaginative and badly needed profile of Sovetish Hejintand, the only Yiddish-language journal published in the Soviet Union since 1961 (Joseph Brumberg), a detailed and well-documented examinlation of Trofim Kichko's notorious anti-Semitic concoction, "Judaism Without Embellishment" (Moshe Decter), of special interest just now when Kichko has re-emerged from the shady walls of the Ukrainian Acadenmy of Sciences into the Soviet "front line" against Zionism and Israel. That campaign is skillfully explored and interpreted in "Soviet Jewry and the Six-Day War" (Abraham Brumberg).

Pride of place, in the opinion of this reviewer, goes to the brilliant case study "Passover and Matzoh-A Case History of Soviet Policy" (Moshe Decter). It probes into the motives and meaning of the Soviet authorities' prohibition of the baking of Matzoh for the Passover festival. Decter sees it as part of a general policy of cultural and spiritual strangulation by way of attrition: the attempt to reduce Jewish national festivals and symbols that appeal to large sections of Soviet Jews-including the young, the Russianized, and the irreligious to whom God is neither "apparent" nor "at hand" but simply irrelevant-to sacramental symbols and ritualistic practices attractive only to the few and the old. The respective attractions of national as compared with religious symbols is highlighted in the eyewitness account of the "Rejoicing of the Law" (Elie Wiesel) and the account

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