AbstractThe Soviet Union seems to be behind the western scientific level in many areas including instrumentation, information and computer infra-structures. The changes being made by the new soviet political and scientific leaders could herald considerable improvements, but on past experience the impact of the changes will be gradual.Soviet scientists demonstrate an excellence in mathematics which will come to the fore when state-of-the-art computers are available to them. It may be that this conceptual ability that allows the generalisation that Soviet scientists are of ten first with new scientific concepts but generally lag behind the West in innovating, is paradoxically due in part to the restricted freedom of communication in the Soviet scientific research environment. This leads to a relatively slow diffusion of new ideas and technologies.