21.08.2026, Moscow.
The Silicon Valley in the US was designed according to the principles of the Soviet science towns, the leader of the Essence of Time movement, political scientist and philosopher Sergey Kurginyan said on August 7 on the Conversation with a Sage program on Radio Zvezda.
Meanwhile, the Soviet academic centers were ruined, with the involvement of the security services, by rigid ideology and the enforcement of a stupid market-oriented model preventing any development of the science towns.
According to Kurginyan, scientific career in the USSR was a very strong channel of vertical mobility. Having achieved a candidate and then a doctoral degree, a scientist became one of the highest-paid people in the country. A junior research associate without a degree had a salary of 105 rubles per month, and after he reached a candidate degree his salary was 195 rubles. Senior research associate in the USSR had about 300 rubles, and after he reached a doctoral degree his salary was 500 rubles.
“The country was in a situation when scientific intelligence was a real channel of vertical mobility,” the leader of Essence of Time explained.
In the Soviet Union it was understood that progress in science and technology had to be encouraged in order not to lose against the Americans, Kurginyan stressed. Scientific towns (Pushchino, Protvino, Chernogolovka etc.) received huge investments. The purpose was “to create an environment of a special kind of commune living and uplift to make it all grow faster.” However, all that was ruined.
Another negative factor, according to Kurginyan, was “a false feeling of specialness” cultivated in the physics and mathematics schools, which prevented students from actually evolving into outstanding scientists.
“What ruined it? A rigid ideology, which was already rejected by this community, while no development of this ideology was offered,” the political scientist said. Thus, on the one hand, the state killed the communist ideology, and on the other hand, the Strugatsky Brothers at the behest of the Committee for State Security popularized ideas that were contrary to the communist ones; to this end, they exploited the feeling of elitism among the scientific and technological personnel, which had a reason to appear, too.
“Later I met one of those chosen ones, he was a computer technician, while I had become a candidate of science,” he noted.
Also, while the Silicon Valley was modeled on the Soviet scientific towns using Pentagon money, the Soviet academic centers were ruined by, among other things, the market-oriented model. This is why the Soviet “silicon valley” lost against the American one.
According to Kurginyan, our defeat took place due to the fact that “a terrible, stupid, market-oriented, capitalist, absolutely idiotic model was enforced in these academic centers, and our security services were involved in this.”
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
