The myth of Soviet science: From revolutionary enthusiasm to the Chernobyl disaster

This article examines the myth of science as a major ideological foundation of the Soviet state. From the vast campaign to mobilize science to transform nature, the economy and society in the post-revolutionary period to the repression of scientists and the ideologization of science in the Stalinist era; from the celebration of the conquest of space and the mastery of the atom, to the rise of scientific dissidence, the questioning of the Soviet development model, and the crisis provoked by the Chernobyl disaster, the article recounts the rise and fall of beliefs in omnipotent science.