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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.

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