Is it great that they focused all their energy into math and science<p>This way they can use their top expertise to explain how 3.8 roentgen is not great but not terrible.<p>Or how did they didn't need to worry about ethics since obviously "boss knows better"
Since there was a "one and only" narrative about history and the future of society, the studies of humanities were quite limited. The "true" economic thought leader was Marx and everything else was considered unorthodox and evil. Popular western fields of study like psychology, sociology and behaviouralism were also considered dangerous or even unheard of.<p>That was compensated by a great push towards exact sciences, accompanied by the fast pace of industrialisation, electrification and mechanisation.
Education was pretty good there comparing to USA. However, what is more important, are chances after education. Where are you gonna end? In USSR, only in some national soviet office, wasting all your talent...
Communism in some parts of the world has better track record when it comes to education and health, for example, in India the state of Kerala was governed by communist party for the most period and it has the best track record in health and education within India. It is also the state that provides most nurses to rest of the India.
If the Soviet Union was still around today would be interesting to see how they would deal with modern science regarding gender and sexuality. Modern Russia keeps many of the same cultural ideas from the Soviet Union yet they are very much against it.