Soviet science

The President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the outstanding physicist Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov, rightly noted that "one of the many miscalculations that led to the failure of the fascist campaign against the USSR was the underestimation of Soviet science." In the USSR, a coherent and effective system for managing and developing science had taken shape, which included the Academy of Sciences, academic and branch research institutes, scientific-production associations, and university science. In addition to the Academy of Sciences, the USSR established the Academy of Medical Sciences (1944), the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (1966), and the All-Union Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) (1929). In 1989, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR numbered 323 full members, 586 corresponding members, and 138 foreign members; there were about 50,000 doctors of sciences in the country. Soviet scientists and Nobel laureates included: in chemistry — Nikolai Nikolaevich Semyonov; in physics — Pavel Alekseevich Cherenkov, Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, Lev Davidovich Landau, Nikolai Gennadyevich Basov, Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov, Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa; in economics — Leonid Vitalyevich Kantorovich.