Introduction: Stalin, science, and politics after the Second World War --; "A Marxist should not write like that": the crisis on the "philosophical front" --; "The future belongs to Michurin": the agricultural academy session of 1948 --; "We can always shoot them later": physics, politics, and the atomic bomb --; "A battles of opinions": Stalin intervenes in linguistics --; "Attack the detractors with certainty of total success": the Pavlov session of 1950 --; "Everyone is waiting": Stalin and the economic problems of communism --; Conclusion: science and the fate of the Stalinist system.