Education and employment in research institutions was a matter of very sharp social limitations in the USSR. The specific limitations of various periods are explained briefly below.

After 1917 revolution, the country positioned itself as a “state of workers and peasants”, and unjust regulations were introduced for people of another origin, especially for children from intellectuals’ and noble families. Simultaneously, for young people of proletarian origin, who typically had very poor primary education, the doors to higher education were opened. Some short courses named ‘rabfaks’ (faculties for workers) were arranged for them before they entered Universities. This surely could not result in normal high education, but some talented people became professionals even despite of these troubles.

High education was free, but the graduates were obliged to work ‘by distribution’. This ‘distribution’ was arranged by officials and could be only slightly affected by Professors, who tried to keep the most talanted students in the Universities or research institutions for PhD programs. However, selection criteria were also affected by officials, so party members and former proletarians had better chances. Others had to leave for various towns to work at the factories, in primary schools, or in applied scientific institutions in the best case. It was practically impossible to continue in Moscow or Leningrad if the person originated from non-capital town or city.

Starting from mid 1920s, terrible period of Stalin’s repressions resulted in physical annihilation or prisoning of enormous number of people. You can visit Memorial database to understand the scale of this nightmare (many millions). Repressions were specially intensive in 1930s, and continued up to Stalin’s death. The comparable number of people were killed during WWII.

Try to imagine how the continuity in any scientific school can be implemented under all these circumstances.

In respect to Frumkin school, great damage was also caused by the campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans”, which started in 1940s and became less aggressive (but did not cease completely) only after Stalin’s death in 1953. It was strongly, but not only, an anti-Semitic story. The campaign started from repressions against Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Frumkin was a member of this Committee, as well as many other intellectuals) and developed as “anti-Western” as well. Acta Physicochimica URSS, a great journal which published the articles of USSR authors in foreign languages, was closed in the beginning of 1947. Citations of foreign authors were considered as “underestimation of the role of Russian/Soviet science”. Many people (mostly jews) were fired from their institutions and could only find job in engineering in the best case. This story surely delayed the creation of Frumkin Institute and strongly affected the training of next generations because of restrictions on entering the University for a certain category of people. There were the problems of people having relatives abroad, people who refused to join ‘komsomol’ (youth version of the communist party), people who supported dissidents in any form, etc. In respect to nationality, typical limitation for jews was about few percent in the best case (fortunately, technical universities were more affordable).

At the end of 1960s, new trouble appeared, when people started to try to leave USSR. Formally it was only possible to leave for Israel, but many people could not get permission for years. Waiting for permission, they were considered as the renegades, and their colleagues could not support them openly. This is, in particular, Levich’s story, but not only.

We are forced to mention so terrible things to explain that preservation and functioning of the school under these circumstances was sometimes a matter of difficult compromise, and remained very heavy burden during all soviet period.