Ethan Pollock's in-depth research into political interventions into science during Stalin's post-war reign has been collected in this book, "Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars". He discusses Stalin's interventions into scientific discussions in genetics, linguistics, political economy, philosophy and physics. Most well-known of these is the discussion around genetics, where Stalin infamously supported the charlatan Lysenko and his "Michurinist" agricultural ideas against the genetics research teams, which were until that time one of the best in the world. Pollock also reveals some similar discussions in less well-known areas though, such as Stalin's declarations on the nature of language, which were his first 'ex cathedra' statements since WWII, and also the last ones of his life.

Pollock puts these interventions very well in context, showing how often the scientific debates were rather political debates, even among the different groups of scientists themselves; often it was more about who could advance at the expense of others in the ranks of academe by making the correct political speeches or by having better connections to the Party leadership than about real science. In that sense, it is not all that much different from academic politics in Western nations today, although the risks were much greater (after all, the losers were often fired from important positions, and even occasionally imprisoned). It was rare (but by no means unknown!) in these days that actual purges would take place through arrest and execution, as had been common in the 1930s, but Stalin did not relent his political pressure on scientists any more than he did on the Party itself, and he relied strongly on the Agitprop office and father and son Zhdanov to make this possible, as Pollock shows.

Although Stalin claimed to want to encourage 'open discussion', in reality he engineered all debates such that his views would end up victorious, and often these interventions did not even help to clarify the "orthodox" position, as scientists and officials scrambled to maintain their own views while integrating Stalin's words into them. In the end, after Stalin's death, the harmful effects of these Party restraints were recognized, and from Khrushchov's leadership on, direct Party intervention into science would be rare, and a lot of the damage undone (Lysenko was one of the first to go).

Pollock's book is overall well-written and readable, although it consists for a greater part of transcripts and descriptions of speeches and conferences, filled with Leninist jargon, about technical topics, which can get somewhat boring. Also it's important to note that this work deals only with post-war Stalinism. That said, it's a solid monograph on the subject.