
Atomic Light - ozdave
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/08/20/atomic-light-akademgorodok-laboratories-scientists
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pavlov
_There is something else that does not appear in these photos, that could not
appear, and that deserves to be mentioned. Many of the main ideas of
perestroika emerged for the first time from laboratories like these ones.
Soviet science, Soviet laboratories were genuine islands of freethinking.
Accustomed to thinking for themselves, the scientists had begun to draw
conclusions about the failed communist experiment._

This reminds me of a Soviet sci-fi book I recently read, _A billion years
before the end of the world_ , translated to English as _Definitely Maybe_
[1].

I've read a fair amount of Soviet / East Bloc scifi, and it usually tends to
avoid directly commenting on contemporary issues by placing the events in a
distant enough future that the inevitable victory of communism on Earth can be
assumed to have occurred. (In other words, even dark Soviet scifi quietly
presumes a short-term timeline that would be acceptable to Soviet orthodoxy.)

In contrast, _Definitely Maybe_ takes place in Leningrad in the early 1970s
and the main characters are successful Soviet scientists. It's a quite
interesting glimpse into the assumptions of that society, and the latitude of
free thought that scientists still retained.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_\(novel\))

~~~
selimthegrim
It's funny that the same authors wrote
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_Begins_on_Saturday](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_Begins_on_Saturday).

e: I went to college with Yuri Manin's grandson. I'll have to ask him what he
thinks of that book (Definitely Maybe)

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rubidium
The photos look like anything you'd find wondering the ground and basement
floors of science buildings at most major research universities today.

