A valuable book on two counts.

First, for anyone interested in an overview of Soviet science in the 20th century and how it was perverted by a completely top-down approach which placed political value altogether over actual science.

Second, for anyone not familiar with the Soviet police state and its cheerful torture and execution of millions of its own people at the whim of Stalin and his legion of savage henchmen, the Cheka, GPU, NKVD, GRU, MVD, FSB and other state organs. This book concentrates on a small arena, the fates of scientists, but the same cruelty applied to every area of the Soviet Union.

(The composer Dmitri Shostakovich slept on a cot outside his entrance door so that when the secret police came for him in the night they would not disturb his family. Stalin disliked some of his music. He was too famous to kill, so they killed his best friend.)

Of course, Soviet science suffered accordingly, although a few good scientists were somewhat left alone since they were too famous to kill. Most Soviet big science was stolen from the west and copied, except for chemical and biological weaponry, tested on political prisoners and used in assassinations there and around the world.

Thus it is little wonder that the GDP of the entire Soviet Union upon its collapse in 1991 was about that of Denmark. Much of that came from underground as oil and natural gas. ( )