My observation working in mathematical and theoretical physics is that for a while there were two communities working in parallel with almost no contact. Lots of things appear at about the same time (within a couple of years say) independently from both communities. Lots of the Soviet papers were translated into English, but still things get misattributed and contributions get lost in history.

Thanks Dear Prof. Andrew James Bruce

A real good example was a discussion between A. Kolmogorov and N. Wiener about the axiomatics of Probability theory; Wiener said something like this: “if Kolmogorov already did all the work, I will not work on it anymore” But the reality was that they were working at the same time regardless on the subject.

It will be nice to know as well. Following.

A good question. Following answers.

In my opinion the researcher from Eastern Europe are underrepresented in the Reseachgate. That is the main reason of the lack of their contributions.

Thanks Dear Prof. Grzegorz Litak I have seen many Academics and Doctors of Science from The URSS Academy of Sciences with great contributions not being cited or even mentioned their publications!

While the contention is true, I personally think that one of the main reasons may be Russia's great sensitivity to confidentiality of scientific developments in its constant rivalry with the western world, especially the United States. Since the majority of the papers are published in Russian, gateway mechanisms like Researchgate do not receive such papers in the first place. After all, we should look at the number of Russian members at Researchgate and the contributions they have made so far.

Dear Prof Reza Biria the american institute of physics translated major soviet journals, all paper are in English as well! That I don´t understand.

Reza Biria

>Since the majority of the papers are published in Russian,

Echoing a previous comment, the same is true of many mathematics papers. But for sure not all.

Americans traslated all interesting papers Dear Prof. Andrew, thanks for sharing.

It is a programmed selection mechanism, sometimes scientific journals and books in English are not tracked citation

The majority of scientists (middle level) from the former USSR countries used to cite mainly russian language papers for domestic journals (even later translated). This is due to previously restricted access to foreign journals and lack of people knowing English. Currently, this tendency is slowly changing, mainly forced by the needs to submit papers into high level foreign journals. Anyway, previuos separation of two scientific worlds still plays a role in predomination of citing of domestic papers. The same is abroad, some times national or regional solidarity prevails over scientific diversity in reference lists (not always). On my opinion, citing should be initiated by feeling of respect to good done research work of another authors.

Agreed with You Dear Prof Pavel. Thanks for your answer!

I am surprised with this revelation!

Well Dear Dr. Chigbogu. Thanks. ResearchGate should have the answer. Of course not all papers, but it could be due to the lack of doi identity or something like that in former URSS publications. I really don´t know if the American institute of Physics added doi or another fingerprint to former URSS publications that they translated. My Regards.

I think because papers were written in Russian language.

Thank for your valuable input Dear Prof. Vadim S. Gorshkov

I would like to comment additionally (although I don´t understand it well) that the pdf source for those articles (for example for old JETP papers) is embedded in such a way, that is difficult for the RG algorithm to recognise the citations. I guess.

Indeed Dear Prof. Vadim S. Gorshkov

Thank for your input Prof. Mohamad Abdulhai

Thank you so much for the link Dear Prof. Vadim S. Gorshkov

I appreciate it :)

Soviet science was very unusual. Much of it remained in the USSR. I know a lot of valuable information that is far ahead of its time. for example, research on infectious diseases. An example is the study of the manifestation of plague in vivo. The point is not only that they are in Russian. It was a different semantics. Now it’s hard to understand. For example, for me, science in the USSR was an option of escaping from Soviet reality. But such a formulation of the question gives rise to the corresponding standard of scientific work. It is thought that this is the main problem.

Dear Prof. Dmitry Nikolaenko

Thank you so much for your valuable input. I agree with you that there are fields where the URSS science went far away from the western science, and indeed it was an option for scaping the soviet times. I would like to hear some comments about the corresponding standard which I believe was very high.

The Phenomenon of Soviet Science by Alexei Kojevnikov. Second Series, Vol. 23, Intelligentsia Science: The Russian Century, 1860–1960 (2008), pp. 115-135

Dmitry Nikolaenko "option of escaping from Soviet reality" - agree, but not only then. We were people with another mentality and that was reflected even in technical papers and books. Citing "another world" was not supported by the lack of information and spiritual borders. The same was abroad. But the main problem is in reviewing practice, which still is of much lower quality in journals of former USSR countries.

Of course, not only an escape from Soviet reality. It was a different world. Everything was different. Militarized science. Of particular note is the standard of the ideologization of science in the USSR. It was precisely Soviet science. It was adapted specifically for the USSR. It is no coincidence that in the post-USSR it began to turn into a parody. + In the USSR there was one standard of corruption in science. There were a lot of fake sciences. Marxism-Leninism is everywhere! Even in geology. Post-USSR has a different standard of corruption. An interesting process. But working here is now almost impossible. I look in Ukraine and Kiev. Insanity is complete.

Dear Friends,

True science is not for us, it is for the future.

If we generate garbage, or « science » serving a tyranny, we will have long term disaster.

The only things that last are what we give away.

Personally, I have received caskets of science jewels, upon which I would trust my life - and many from Russian scientists.

Not

Dear Profs. Jerry Michael Jesseph , Dmitry Nikolaenko , Pavlo Krot and Vadim S. Gorshkov

I just would like to add one very humble opinion: After all these years (more than 25 since the end of the URSS), personally, I haven´t seen the first serious science for everybody book written by one famous western scientist (similar to those that wrote URSS academicians & professors wrote). Thanks God, the old ones remain around the internet in electronic format & also in several languages, avaliable for the youngest generation :)

After the dissolution of the USSR, much of what had been produced in the scientific field was deliberately "put aside" (and there is no need to explain by whom).

However, as has already been pointed out, part of that literature has survived and indications have already been given where to find it.

Actually, no sense to look in the past, but sometimes I meet in modern papers methods or something else, which is declared as a novel invention or approach, but really it is a forgotten one from the times of USSR. Probably, "iron shield" played its role.

Dear Prof. Vadim S. Gorshkov

A RG member asks the interesting & intriguing question: Are there negative temperatures?

I answer after going back & checking my stat mech russian notes: Dear ... look at the 1960 paper by Prof. Yu "Rumer Negative & limiting temperatures" JETP, 38, 1899-1902 (June, 1960).

That was the way we were taught in the former URSS by some great Professors :)

Long life of the science contributions of Prof. Yuri Borisovich Rumer, Prof. Vadim S. Gorshkov

Some excerpts of his biography for all readers of this thread:

"...Rumer was arrested on the Arbat Street in April 1938 as an accomplice of the "public enemy", Landau, when he was going to a birthday party. One of his brothers was jailed earlier on an unrelated case as part of Stalin's purges. Landau was arrested too, but released after one year owing to the extraordinary efforts of Prof. Pyotr Kapitsa. While in jail Rumer first worked on plane flutter and wobble problems in a sharashka situated at an Omsk suburb. Later in 1946 he was transferred to Taganrog..." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Rumer

Thank you all for your great input!

So glad to see the lively discussion.

Yes, If we think we are new, always best to look at the deep past.

Humans have always been quite smart.

Like all of you.

Best,

Jerry

Dr. P. Contreras… thanks for this important question.

follow

I agree with Dr Andrew James Bruce comments.

All responses add value to the discussion thread. In addition, the 'same old wine in new bottle' seems to work just fine in some cases, especially, when those in charge are not interested in scrutinizing various issues for their own reasons.

What about Biowarfare?

Yes, dear Vadim S. Gorshkov. However, this is not always the case...

Dear Profs. Aristidis Matsoukis , Vadim S. Gorshkov

Dear thread participants, during cold war times---the high school & the high education---soviet systems were among the first in the world. I am not a communist, but some facts should be recognized :)

We can read & comment about this external post I found recently, trying to answer another thread:

http://factsanddetails.com/russia/Education_Health_Transportation_Energy/sub9_6a/entry-5141.html

Dear thread participants. I hope you all are in good health.

I apologise for being off-line. We are facing major issues including any kind of online communication & general supplies.

My God be with all.

Possibly the reason is language.

Thank you so much for your post Dear Prof. Isam Alkhalifawi ,

Some institutions in America translated Soviet papers, not all but some of the main journals were directly translated. Of course, this situation changed after the cold war.

An interesting question. I wonder if citations from Chinese, Arabic, Persian etc. journals are also counted in RG. If we can only access and cite work which has been translated into English, then we may not be as advanced in certain disciplines as we would like to believe. This underlines the need for anglophone researchers to invest in learning other languages so they can read important works in the original languages they were written in.

Interesting proposal Dear Prof. Oswell Namasasu

Thank you so much for your post. There are several issues regarding this matter, as you can see. Of course technology helps, but still there is a way ahead.

Dear thread participants, I found the following Science report and I do not agree with the claims in it. Here there is a huge commercial content from those who have the major budget, I think!

Russian journals retract more than 800 papers after ‘bombshell’ investigation

By Dalmeet Singh ChawlaJan. 8, 2020.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/russian-journals-retract-more-800-papers-after-bombshell-investigation

C.C. Vadim S. Gorshkov

Thank you so much for your first-hand expert view on this issue Prof. Vadim S. Gorshkov

Dear all, I will post several short reviews about some scientists from the former USSR. Mainly, those no well known in the western.

The first one, I use excerpts from Wikipedia review:

Viktor Mikhailovich Zhdanov (Russian: Виктор Михайлович Ждaнов) ( 1914 – 1987) was a Soviet virologist. He was instrumental in the effort to eradicate smallpox globally.

Zhdanov was born in the village of Shtepino (in present-day Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine).

In 1946, Zhdanov was invited to become Chief of the Epidemiology Department of the I. I. Metchnikoff Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Kharkiv, becoming its director two years later.

His work in virus classification saw him admitted to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses as a life member.

In 1958, Zhdanov, as Deputy Minister of Health for the Soviet Union, called on the World Health Assembly to undertake a global initiative to eradicate smallpox. The proposal (Resolution WHA11.54) was accepted in 1959.

He chaired the Soviet Union's Interagency Science and Technology Council on Molecular Biology and Genetics, which among its many functions directed the Soviet biological weapons program.

Despite Zhdanov's relative obscurity, some have argued that Zhdanov has done "more good for humanity" than any other human in history".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Zhdanov

See also please:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/world/europe/vaccine-repurposing-polio-coronavirus.html

Until the 19th century, Latin was the official language of science. Now English plays this role. Those who ignore this circumstance find themselves in scientific isolation, with all the ensuing consequences. I experienced this in full, as they say in Russia, "on my own skin." When I managed to break out of the "language ghetto", I found that about 80 of my publications were completely inaccessible. There are separate scientific schools in Russia that are fully integrated into world science. However, the bulk of the scientists, which constitutes Russian science, is still isolated, and the isolation is perhaps increasing.

Thank you so much for your post, Dear Prof. Vladimir Rotkin, I agree with you. I see it here in my own country. The gap between developed countries and mine is again becoming bigger, the language of communication is one of the causes, the education sector is severely distorted and dismissed by our isolation.

The second one, I will continue using excerpts from Wikipedia review:

Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich (1914, Minsk, Moscow 1987) - Soviet physicist and physicochemist. Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1958; Corresponding Member 1946), Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, Professor.

Some of the Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich achievements:

Three times Hero of Socialist Labor (1949, 1954, 1956). Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1956) and four Stalin Prizes (1943, 1949, 1951, 1953).

• Zeldovich was an autodidact. He was regarded as having a remarkably versatile intellect, and during his life he explored and made major contributions to a wide range of scientific endeavours. From a given opportunity in May 1931, he secured an appointment as a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and remained associated with the institute for the remainder of his life. As a laboratory assistant, he received preliminary instructions on the topics involved in the physical chemistry and built up his reputation among his seniors at the Institute of Chemical Physics.
• In the course of his work on nuclear weapons, Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich did ground-breaking work in radiation hydrodynamics, and the physics of matter at high pressure. Among his younger colleagues in Sarov, which worked in this area was Mihail Aleksandrovich Podurets, which is known also for his contribution to the theory of gravitational collapse. Between 1950 and 1953, he performed calculations necessary for the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb that was verified by A. Sakharov, although the two groups worked in parallel on the development of the thermonuclear fusion. However, it was Sakharov that radically changed the approach to thermonuclear fusion, aided by V. Ginzburg in 1952. He remained associated with the nuclear testing program while heading the experimental laboratories at Arzamas-16 until October 1963, when he left for academia.
• Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich worked on the theory of the evolution of the hot universe, the properties of the microwave background radiation, the large-scale structure of the universe, and the theory of black holes. He predicted, with R. Sunyaev, that the cosmic microwave background should undergo inverse Compton scattering. This is called the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, and measurements by telescopes such as the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope has established it as one of the key observational probes of cluster cosmology. Zeldovich contributed sharp insights into the nature of the large scale structure of the universe, in particular, through the use of the Lagrangian perturbation theory (the Zeldovich approximation) and the application of the Burgers' equation approach via the adhesion approximation.

The third one, I will continue using excerpts from Wikipedia review:

Academician Ilya Mikhailovich Lifshitz (1917 - 1982) was a leading Soviet theoretical physicist.

Ilya Mikhailovich is known for his works in solid-state physics, electron theory of metals, disordered systems, and the theory of polymers.

• Lifshitz's points and Lifshitz's theory of Van der Waals interactions.
• Lifshitz-Slyozov-Wagner theory of Ostwald ripening,
• Lifshitz tails in the density of states of a disordered system,
• Lifshitz transition happening when Fermi surface topology changes,
• Lifshitz-Kosevich formula.
• Lifshitz notion of spectral shift function, which was later developed by Mark Krein.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Lifshitz

The fourth one, I will continue using excerpts from Russian Wikipedia review:

Academician Sergei Vasilyevich Vonsovsky, 1910 – 1998. He was a prominent Soviet and Russian solid-state theoretical physicist.

Sergei Vonsovsky led researches in the field of metal physics studying the transition metals behaviour and their alloys. He created the ferromagnetic theory for alloys and developed the theory of magnetic anisotropy. He also worked at the field of the transition metal superconductors, in particular, he studied the problem of coexistence of superconductivity and ferromagnetism.

• He was the Founder of the Ural scientific school on the solid-state theory of transition metals and physics of magnetic phenomena.
• His Works are in the field of the quantum theory of solids, the many-electron theory of metals and semiconductors, the theory of Ferro- and antiferromagnetism, superconductivity.
• In 1934-1936. together with S.P. Shubin built the polar and s-d-exchange models of crystalline solids.
• Created the theory of transition metals, alloys and rare earth compounds, taking into account the relationship between the magnetic and electrical properties of this group of substances.
• He laid the foundations of the theory of ferromagnetism of alloys, developed the theory of the phenomena of magnetic anisotropy and magnetostriction.
• A significant cycle of his works concerns the theory of superconductivity in transition metals and alloys, the problem of the simultaneous existence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity.

Some books, not all:

• S. V. Vonsovsky & Y. S. Shur, Ferromagnetism (Moscow, 1948)
• S. V. Vonsovskii, Ferromagnetic Resonance (Pergamon: Oxford, 1966)
• S. V. Vonsovsky, Magnetism (Wiley, 1974), in two volumes
• S. V. Vonsovsky, Magnetism of elementary particles (Moscow, 1975)
• S. V. Vonsovsky and M. I. Katsnelson, Quantum Solid State Physics (1989)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Вонсовский,_Сергей_Васильевич

https://ppt-online.org/472944

Screenshot of Academician Sergei Vasilyevich Vonsovsky books on theoretical solid-state physics.

taken from: https://ppt-online.org/472944

Yes that's so true, many a indexing is not registered in RG, so the actual citations are way more than what shown in RG.

Indeed, Dear Prof. Sumanta Chakraborty. Thank you so much for your kind replay.

Dear Prof. Vadim S. Gorshkov

Academician Sergei Vasilyevich Vonsovsky worked on many very hard solid state physics problems in binary and ternary compounds, before the invention of first-principle calculations, I guess. I agree that to be a Doctor of Sciences at the age of 28, it is really very hard.

I was not aware about this, thank you all.

You are welcome, Prof. Omkar Singh Kushwaha .

May be results/effects of cold war.

Thank you for your answer, Dear Prof. Aijaz Panhwar. Some journals were not translated because of the cold war, but some of them were.

Maybe Research gate is not comfortable with URSS journals.

Thank you for your post, Dear Prof. Maurice Ekpenyong. My guess now is that more than other factors, the databases of many URSS journals are still the same as 30 years ago.

Challenge of incompatibility, please researchgate should think of upgrading their database

Thank you so much for your post, Dear Prof. Andem Bassey Andem, many USSR journals were only edited in the Russian language. the character of the Cyrillic alphabet may be a factor of incompatibility here.

The fifth one, I will continue using excerpts from Russian Wikipedia review [1]:

Prof. Yuri Borisovich Rumer (28 April 1901 – 10 February 1985) was a Soviet theoretical physicist, he was a close friend of Lev Landau and was arrested with him during the Great Purge in 1938.

A distinctive feature of his bright talent is originality and courage of thought. He is the author of a number of extremely interesting and original works in the field of general relativity, quantum theory of light, quantum electrodynamics, etc.

His most well-deserved fame is enjoyed by his fundamental research in quantum chemistry. The methods developed by him are widely used by all researchers working in this field.

In April 1938, on the Arbat in Moscow, Yu. B. Rumer was arrested “as an accomplice of the enemy of the people, Landau,” when he went with friends to celebrate his birthday. Together with him, L. D. Landau and M. A. Korets were arrested as authors of an anti-Stalinist leaflet.

I enjoy very much his works on the negative absolute temperatures found in JETP and in the following classical work: Rumer Yu. B., Ryvkin M. Sh. Thermodynamics, statistical physics and kinetics, --- Novosibirsk: Publishing house Nosib. University, 2000.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Rumer

[2] Румер, Юрий Борисович — Википедия

Dear Professor P. Contreras!

Thank you very much for your kind words and sincere interest in the scientific works of Soviet scientists!

Dear Prof. Alexey Beskopylny, I do it with respect and admiration. Thank you.

Pedro L. Contreras E.

Dear Researcher,

I had absolutely no idea about this. Thank you for making us aware about this. Is this because of some political reasons?

Best regards,

Anamitra.

Dear Anamitra Roy!

There is no politics here. Most of the articles, including world-class ones, are written in Russian. and only after 2010 Russia is actively published in English.

Best regards,

Alexey

Alexey Beskopylny

Dear Researcher,

This is very vital point. If language is the issue, then its very sad. The world is getting deprived of so many good writings.

Thank you for making us aware about this matter.

Best regards,

Anamitra.

Dear Profs. Anamitra Roy and Alexey Beskopylny, thank you for your participation.

Yes, there is no politics here as Prof. Alexey Beskopylny says, just technology and idiomatic issues (Cyrillic alphabet), I guess.

Pedro L. Contreras E.

Dear Professor,

Thanks to you for this wonderful question. It gave me information about an area, regarding which I had zero knowledge.

Best regards,

Anamitra.

My pleasure, Dear Prof. Anamitra Roy. Thank you.

This time I took a screenshot, definitely citations in Cyrillic are missing in RG!

I think mostly journal articles from USSR are written in russian language and still not translated in English.

Indeed, Dear Prof. Aijaz Panhwar, there is still a tradition to write in the Russian Language, but all search engines should be able to recognize Cyrillic as well, I guess. Thank you.

Dear Prof. Vadim S. Gorshkov

I guess that your post deserves attention, let's see if we have some participants willing to talk about it. Thank you.

The sixth one, and probably one of the most significant physicists of the USSR period.

Academician Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock (1898 - 1974)

Arrested * on political charges in 1937, during the Great Purge, he has quickly released thanks to the Russian physicist Pyotr Kapitsa, who appealed directly to Joseph Stalin.

* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vladimir-Aleksandrovich-Fock

Some of the first works of Prof. Fock:

• The relativistic generalization of the Schrödinger equation.
• The motion of a spinless charged particle in the presence of magnetic and electric fields.
• An approximate description of a system of interacting fermions (electrons in an atom).
• A self-consistent field method later called the Hartree-Fock method.
• The "hidden" symmetry of the hydrogen atom, which explains the additional degeneracy of energy levels by four-dimensional rotations.
• The method for describing systems with a variable number of particles in configuration space --- the method of secondary quantization in Fock space.

And many more... I will dedicate another post to his methods in QM.

http://fock.phys.spbu.ru/english/fock_en.htm

To complement the previous post of one of the founders of Modern Physics, I attach the link of the "in memorial" for Prof. V. Fock written in the Steklov mathematical institute of the RAS:

http://www.mi-ras.ru/index.php?c=inmemoriapage&id=29904&l=1&id=29904

Thank you for the post, Dr. Alok Dhaundiyal

I guess talent was lost in recommendations :))

Thank you, for your post, Dr. Alok Dhaundiyal

33 years ago I felt that pleasant pain, Dr. Alok Dhaundiyal

Soviet Science School came from Peter the Great reform, ~1709 year. Euler, Bernoulli's and so on...

https://medium.com/@khrzhanovskiy/the-terrible-education-of-peter-the-great-dae9a4561f84