Abstract
The present study seeks to reveal the unknown political factor of the philosophical-ideological disputes over physics in the pre-war Soviet Russia. Previous studies on this issue assumed conflicts between the two definite fractions to have a basic framework: courageous leading physicists on one hand, and foolish communists or old-generation scientists on the other. Such a distinct dichotomy, however, may have to be reconsidered after studying archival material. That is to say, the relationship between A.A. Maksimov, one of the representatives of communist ideology, and V.F. Mitkevich, a prominent specialist of the electrical technology, was more ambivalent than it seems to be. These two men apparently had a common aggressive character: both of them charged leading physicists, such as Ya. I. Frenkel' and A.F. Ioffe, of having an idealistic view. Yet, the correspondences exchanged between these 'opponents' clearly show that they severely disagreed (until 1937) on issues such as ontological views on mathematical notions or terminologies to be used in the dispute. Occasionally, the communist even criticized the electric engineer for overemphasizing the dangers of modern physical theories to materialism, an official Soviet philosophical system. Hence, until the mid 1930's, Mitkevich and Maksimov did not become confident allies of each other. This awkwardness might be regarded as one of the reasons why the dispute over the interpretation of modern physics did not result in a clear break between the professional physicists and the 'opponents'.
