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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In short, they’re Commies.