[lostmsu]

What does this have to do with Soviet Union? Soviet Union always had gifted student programs.

[pushingice]

Lysenkoism, usually, when people refer to denial of reality in connection with the Soviet Union.

[inglor_cz]

Also, there was a weird period when cybernetics was considered bourgeoise pseudo-science.

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

Late Stalinism is worth studying, if only to learn how twisted can an entire country become out of fear.

[garbagecoder]

Yeah imagine a country getting freaked out over a few dozens of millions of dead and going crazy and passing a bunch of insane laws and having its politics go insane. It’s not like that doesn’t describe post 9/11 America.

[Viliam1234]

The timing was a bit different though: first the country got crazy, then it passed a bunch of insane laws, then a few dozens of millions died, then they started WW2 (Molotov–Ribbentrop pact), and then a few more millions died.

[lostmsu]

I don't think denial of reality is something that would be strongly associated with SU, and not because it was not prevalent there, but because of its prevalence everywhere else.

[pandaman]

No, Soviet Union only got these programs in 1960s, when it started to suffer fully from its sciences being based on the "scientific Marxism-Leninism" and unable to catch up with advances in the West.

[SamReidHughes]

In short, they’re Commies.