Although the years immediately following the Revolution of 1917 were unfavorable to the development of scientific research in Russia, the importance of such work was recognized by Lenin shortly after he took power. In a memorandum written in April, 1918, he outlined a plan for reorganization of the Academy of Sciences; but the political struggle and the Civil War left him little occasion to effect any practical steps in this direction.

During the NEP, the so-called Restoration Period (1921-1928), the Soviet Government undertook measures designed to maintain a certain number of scientific activities. But conditions of work were unstable and research was ineffectively organized. In 1929 the highest scientific body, the Academy of Sciences, was drastically reorganized, deprived of its traditional autonomy, and forced to adjust its work to the practical needs of the new reconstruction of industry and agriculture. At the outset “pure science” was frowned upon, neglected, and even suppressed. But subsequently its great importance was recognized, and the reversal in governmental policy was marked by the establishment of new institutes devoted to fundamental research in such fields as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.