What were these books? I don't speak Russian, so I'll probably follow up with: who were a few important mathematicians who worked in factories?
I’ve heard a few stories of people being demoted from desk jobs to manual labor after applying for exit visas, but that’s not quite the same as never getting a desk job in the first place. I've heard a lot of stories of badly-connected pure mathematicians being sent to applied think tanks, but that's pretty cushy and there wasn't much obligation to do the nominal work, so they just kept doing pure math. I can't remember them, but I think I've heard stories of mathematicians getting non-research desk jobs, but doing math at work.
Masha Gessen: Perfect Rigour: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century
This is a story about one person, but there is a lot of background information on doing math in Soviet Union.
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