ABSTRACT
A series of discussions in various fields of sciences that were initiated for ideological unification at the beginning of the Cold war. Those discussions went, however, far beyond the expectation of the initiators. Some physicists, in many cases minor, second-class physicists, began to accuse other prominent and active physicists for their “idealism” and “cosmopolitanism.” Through the analysis of the minutes and stenographic records of the meetings of the institutes such as the Physics, the Chemical Physics, and the Physical Chemistry, the author confirms the early shift in argument from the criticism against “idealism” to that against “cosmopolitanism or kowtowism (kneeling down before the foreign science)” because of the lack of philosophical talents of the accusers. The political authority that was careful not to harm science itself approved the accusation only in this point. To avoid the harassment from the accusers, the eminent scientists had to rush to the patronage of the political leadership. “The Physics Conference,” which might have brought some destructive damage to contemporary physics if it had been held, was not held, perhaps thanks to some compromising negotiation between a political leader, Dmitrii Shepilov, and a leading organizer of science, Sergei Vavilov.
