Although Russians in general have suffered from a significant lack of personal freedoms ever since the days of the Soviet Union, with science it has been quite the opposite and they have been able to perform and publish a wide variety of experiments we could never do here without facing significant political repercussions. I suspect this scientific freedom is due to a combination of:
- Russia having significantly less money, so overpriced monopolies (e.g., the medical industrial complex) simply aren’t viable in Russia, and thus there is no incentive to invest in suppressing competing scientific models. Rather, their culture is incentivized to find the most economical solutions to the problems it faces.
- Russia having a daring culture which is willing to be upfront about challenging entrenched dogmas and exploring unorthodox ideas scientists there found compelling.