The gradual alignment of Russian scientific research with the Soviet ideology equally disturbed Polanyi, who set chemistry aside and endeavored to write about the nature of science specifically in reaction to the Vavilov-Lysenko controversy. He condemned the corruption of Russian science, where the authority of science had been replaced “by that of the State,” and advocated the self-government of science to restore the “independence of scientific opinion.” Polanyi argued that both science and truth were lost whenever political liberty fell, as independent thought was subjugated to temporal powers. Therefore, there existed “a common fate between independent science and political liberty.” A free society cultivated science as the boundless quest for new truths whose ultimate uncertainty lay at the core of the liberal values of tolerance and freedom of conscience: science under political direction was thus bound to become an instrument of propaganda.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 79