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Just a year ago, a Russian announcement made the back pages of American newspapers, if it got in at all. It appeared to be only one more Soviet boast —and a pretty fanciful one at that. Aleksandr Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, flatly declared on June 1, 1957 that the Russians "have created the rockets and all the instruments and equipment necessary to solve the problem of the artificial earth satellite." Had Nesmeyanov made a similar statement last week about Russia's readiness to make a trip to the moon, his declaration would have made the front pages everywhere. A year has made a world of difference. Today, with Russia's giant 1½ ton Sputnik orbiting in space alongside the more finely tooled objects that Premier Khrushchev contemptuously dismisses as the American "oranges," Soviet science is universally acknowledged to belong in the world's top drawer.
Achievements that even the Western scientific community only dimly realized a few years ago now make up a dazzling catalogue that any country could boast about. Sputniks and ICBMs aside, Russia is pushing ahead at flank speed in vast areas of science, and of all programs put through for the International Geophysical Year, its is the biggest and most ambitious. The Soviet Union has the largest (10 billion synchrocyclotron volts) particle accelerator in the world—nearly twice as powerful as the one at Berkeley, Calif., though it has not yet lived up to its expensive expectations. Russia put its first pure-jet airliner into operation two years and more before the U.S., and M.I.T. Physicist Jerome B. Wiesner, who helped develop some of the advanced radar for the DEW line, has warned that Russia's air-defense system "appears to be better than our own."
Massive Concentrations. Fortnight ago the U.S. announced that it had solved the re-entry problem for ballistic missiles, but Aleksandr Nesmeyanov claimed the same thing for his own country back in 1956. The Russians set off the first lithium isotope H-bomb, plan an atom-powered airplane, have the largest fleet of floating oceanography laboratories, now intend to build the world's biggest (220 in.) telescope. Beneath such tangible accomplishments—the hardware showpieces of science—lies a vast network of pure and applied research that is as energetic as any to be found.
How does it compare with the scientific programs of the West? From foolishly dismissing Russian science before the Sputnik many have come to overpraise it. Among the dozens of American, British and German scientists who have visited Russia in recent years, a sounder assessment is now emerging. "The Western scientific picture," concludes West German Biologist Arnold Buchholz, "shows a much more finely woven net of research themes, with a great number of high points, and a higher level of quality. Soviet science is marked by massive points of heavy concentration and a great difference in the level of quality."