Having settled to Estonia after the USSR annexed Estonia, Gustav Naan, a loyal communist and graduate of the Higher Party School of the AUCP(b) (1946) published a number of Stalinist-oriented polemic pieces (treating Estonian history and politics from the pro-Soviet perspective, e.g. "Eesti kodanlike natsionalistide ideoloogia reaktsiooniline olemus″ ('The Reactionary Essence of the Ideology of Estonian Bourgeois Nationalists'), 1947).
In 1948, Naan published an article in Voprosy filosofii[2] on the philosophical implications of the theory of relativity, criticizing 'physical idealists' of the US and Britain;[3] in 1951, however, he published an article that decried vulgar materialist critics of the relativity theory whilst being ″tolerant on philosophic questions to a striking degree in Stalinist Russia, considering its place and time of publication″.
He often juxtaposed what he saw as a science-based world-view with a trivial thinking (Estonian: "argimõtlemine"), which he saw both among common people, the intelligentsia as well as the ruling classes.
The influential 1968 article "Võim ja vaim" (roughly "The Power and the Mind") was widely read among the liberal intelligentsia, who interpreted it as a critique of the administrative/bureaucratic socialism and command economy.
Having gained much public support in the 1970s for his relatively bold opinion pieces on topics like family, the rising divorce rate (that he argued was more or less a normal development), morals and sex (the importance of which, he argued, was being downplayed out of pseudomoralistic argumentation), he soon became a despised figure for his anti-independence stance, which was reflected in his newspaper articles of the time (e.g. his article «С ног на голову» ('From (standing on) Feet to (standing on) Head', Estonian title "Kõik pea peale″), condemning the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration passed by the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR, was published in Pravda, 23 November 1988.).