Scientific journals published in USSR were assumed to follow general ideological trends determined by the communist party. This was mostly achieved by publication of Editorial texts supporting current party attitudes, which were typically formulated/announced at the party congresses (but not only). Besides ideology, communist party also had its opinion concerning scientific and technological directions to be accented, and this resulted in selective support of these “fortunate directions” (no grants were available, but the support assumed positions for scientists and money for equipment as provided by the government). Usually new directions appeared in frames of a new five-year plan (“пятилетка”).
When viewing the contents of the old journals, we met a lot of the texts of this sort, and collected some representative items. This is mostly of interet for historians, but it seems to be also useful for better understanding of the atmosphere in which science in USSR was forced to develop. These texts are in Russian exclusively, so we provide brief comments to the content.
Towards the XVII party congress // Zhurnal Fizicheskoi Khimii. 1934. V. 5. P. 1-2. Physical chemistry is requested to provide theoretical basis for the practical work of engineers. Flotation, adsorption, and catalysis for chemical industry are mentioned inthisrespect. There is also the request to enhence the development of molecular structure research and photochemistry. Scientists of the USSR are encouraged to enter the arena of the international science <a plan to start trilingual Acta Physicochimica URSS is announced in this context>.
New tasks of physical chemistry // Zhurnal Fizicheskoi Khimii. 1958. V. 32. P. 1449-1450. Communist party issued the document on the priority development of chemical industry, and specifically the production of synthetic materials. This means that polymer research becomes the priority. Some other branches were lucky to be supported in the limits of polymer context: catalysis for monomers production and for polymerization, radiation chemistry of polymers, mechanochemistry, polymers spectroscopy, and chemical thermodynamics of the monomers.