Summary:

In 1958 construction began on Akademgorodok, a scientific utopian community modeled after Francis Bacon's vision of a "New Atlantis." The city, carved out of a Siberian forest, 2,500 miles east of Moscow, was formed by Soviet scientists with the full support of Nikita Khrushchev. They believed that their rational science, liberated from ideological and economic constraints, would help their country surpass the West in all fields. In a lively history of this city, itself a symbol of de-Stalinization, Paul Josephson offers the most complete analysis available of the reasons behind the successes and failures of Soviet science - from advances in nuclear physics to politically induced setbacks in research on recombinant DNA. Read more...