AbstractBeforeglasnost'serious Soviet analyses of science often overlapped with those of western experts in concluding that the Soviet scientific system under-performed. Scholars on both sides saw Soviet science as basically healthy but held back by the rigidities of bureaucracy. Sinceglasnost'Soviet and post-Soviet assessments have been less sanguine, seeing science as having been penetrated by the bureaucratic system to the point where the quality of scientific personnel has been seriously depleted. This suggested that science emerged from the Soviet experience with a lower potential for regeneration than had hitherto been thought. Persistent economic crisis now threatens almost all sections of post-Soviet science, strong as well as weak.