On the immigration of mathematicians to the Soviet Union in the period 1929-1941

1929 was not only the year of the beginning of the deepest economic crisis in the West, but also the year of the beginning of the active industrialization of the USSR. The interrelation of these phenomena was the reason for the arrival in the USSR of foreign specialists and skilled workers. Most of them came to work. However, there were specialists who came to the USSR for political reasons, who wanted to help build a “new” society. This trend intensified in 1932-33. after the Nazis came to power in Germany. For political reasons only about 3 thousand people came from Germany to the USSR. Many mathematicians were among them. The report will present very briefly the life and main features of mathematical creativity of about 20 people, most of them doctors of science. Among them is C. Burstin (Academician of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Socialist Republic), Professor F. Frankl (a research supervisor of M.V. Keldysh), Professors H. Müntz, A. Plessner, A. Walfisz, F. Noether, and others. The life of these mathematicians in the USSR fell on the peak of repression, which to some extent affected almost everyone, some after the war. A special group consisted of mathematicians who found themselves in the USSR in 1939–40 as a result of the annexation of Western Ukraine and the Baltic states to the USSR. Some of them went to the West, e.g. Anthony Zygmund, and some took over Soviet power and collaborated with it, in particular, Stefan Banach, Leon Chwistek, Zalman Skopets and others.