THIS PAGE IS STILL VERY INCOMPLETE.
IT WILL BE UPDATED, RE-STRUCTURED AND IMPROVED OVER TIME.
Note: I realize this page describes many scientists also from the pre-revolutionary period. This is because progressive, revolutionary, democratic and materialist scientists from the pre-revolutionary period served as the inspiration and foundation for Soviet scientists. Countless great scientists worked in pre-revolutionary Russia, but they faced persecution or did not receive necessary support. Many great scientists such as K. A. Timiryazev became communists and others like I. P. Pavlov and V. I. Vernadsky supported the revolutionary democrats, and read their works. Still others did not delve into politics, but supported materialist views through their scientific work.
“Only conscious organisation of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that production in general has done this for men in their aspect as species. Historical evolution makes such an organisation daily more indispensable, but also with every day more possible. From it will date a new epoch of history, in which mankind itself, and with mankind all branches of its activity, and especially natural science, will experience an advance that will put everything preceding it in the deepest shade.” (Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature)
“no natural science and no materialism can hold its own in the struggle against the onslaught of bourgeois ideas and the restoration of the bourgeois world outlook unless it stands on solid philosophical ground. In order to hold his own in this struggle and carry it to a victorious finish, the natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist.” (Lenin, On the Significance of Militant Materialism)
“To expect science to be impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers’ wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital.” (Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism)
“Contrary to idealism, which denies the possibility of knowing the world and its laws, which does not believe in the authenticity of our knowledge, does not recognize objective truth, and holds that the world is full of “things-in-themselves” that can never be known to science, Marxist philosophical materialism holds that the world and its laws are fully knowable, that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and practice, is authentic knowledge having the validity of objective truth, and that there are no things in the world which are unknowable, but only things which are as yet not known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the efforts of science and practice.” (Stalin, Dialectical and historical materialism)
SCIENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION
Soviet science was rooted in the progressive materialist traditions of Russia and the world. Materialist philosophy and natural science in Russia begins in the 18th century with M. V. Lomonosov (1711-1765), the son of a peasant, who contributed to all fields of science and also to poetry and literature. The materialist trend in philosophy was continued by the writer A. N. Radischev (1749-1802), who brought it to the 19th century.
In the 19th century the great revolutionary democrats N. G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889), V. G. Belinsky (1811-1848), A. I. Herzen (1812-1870) and others spread revolutionary socialism, materialist and dialectical philosophy in the Russian empire. They achieved the highest peak of philosophical development in the pre-marxist period, though not fully reaching scientific socialism or dialectical materialism. Many revolutionary democrats were philosophers and art critics, but N. A. Dobrolyubov (1836-1861) also contributed to the theory of pedagogy while D. I. Pisarev (1840-1868) can be credited with bringing darwinism to Russia.
In the 19th century progressive scientists in the Russian empire participated in the democratic revolutionary movement in the ranks of socialists (A. N. Bakh and others), condemned tsarism (I. P. Pavlov, V. I. Vernadsky, A. G. Stoletov and countless others), and others, without necessarily taking part in open politics, fought in favor of materialist philosophy and science despite persecution (I. M. Sechenov, I. I. Mechnikov, N. A. Umov, brothers A. O. and V. O. Kovalevsky etc.).
In biology the progressive trend was characterized by the darwinists. Contrary to many western bourgeois darwinists, progressive darwinists in the Russian empire condemned reactionary malthusianism (K. A. Timiryazev, D. I. Pisarev etc.) and later reactionary weisism-mendelism (K. A. Timiryazev, I. V. Michurin, I. P. Pavlov etc.). In the Soviet period this developed to Soviet creative darwinism and Michurin agrobiology.
Russia was the foremost country in soil-science. The pre-revolutionary materialist scientists V. V. Dokuchaev and P. A. Kostychev are the founders of modern soil-science. Their materialist theories inspired the great Soviet agricultural ecologist V. R. Williams, the great Soviet geo-bio-chemist V. I. Vernadsky and the great Soviet biologist T. D. Lysenko, laying the basis for the Lysenko-Williams doctrine and the Stalin plan for the transformation of nature.
In physiology and psychology, I. M. Sechenov (1829-1905) developed a materialist theory explaining the emergence of consciousness in his book “Reflexes of the Brain”. As a result he was prosecuted by the tsarist government. His work was further developed by the great physiologist I. P. Pavlov, who laid the basis for the dialectical-materialist understanding of physiology and psychology.
The pre-revolutionary chemist A. M. Butlerov (1828-1886) developed a materialist model of the structure of chemistry. D. I. Mendeleev (1834-1907) developed the periodic table of elements, demonstrating the transformation of quantity into quality in chemistry. His discovery was highly praised by Marx and Engels.
A. G. Stoletov (1839-1896), P. N. Lebedev (1866-1912), N. A. Umov (1846-1915) and others pioneered a materialist model of physics.
Materialist epidemiology was pioneered by D. S. Samoilovich (1744-1805) despite receiving absolutely no support from the tsarist regime, which allowed his discoveries to fall into obscurity. N. I. Pirogov (1810-1881) developed materialism in medicine and supported democratic reforms. Nobel prize winner I. I. Mechnikov (1845-1916) discovered phagocytes. In the late 19th century G. N. Minkh, V. K. Vysokovich and others also worked on disease prevention. Their work was further continued by their colleagues, revolutionaries and Soviet scientists N. F. Gamaleya, who developed successful anti-cholera vaccines and D. K. Zabolotny who carried out expeditions to Asia discovering the sources of various global pandemics.
The first vaccine against the plague was developed by student of Mechnikov, Soviet scientist Vladimir Khavkin (1860-1930) and the first successful anti-plague vaccine applied on a vast scale was developed by Soviet scientist M. P. Pokrovskaya in (1934).
In the Russian empire there had been countless great scientists who made tremendous advances, despite getting no support from the government and being hindered by tsarism. N. I. Lobachevsky (1792-1856) discovered non-euclidian geometry, but his discovery was not appreciated at the time. A. S. Popov (1859-1906) invented the first radio simultaneously with the Italian Marconi. A. F. Mozhaisky (1825-1890) developed a working aircraft in the 1880s (the so-called “first airplane in the world” by the Wright brothers was built in 1903). N. A. Teleshov (1828-1895) invented one of the first jet aircrafts. P. N. Yablochkov (1847-1894) invented an early carbon arc lamp, but due to lack of customers in Russia he was forced to emigrate to France. A. N. Lodygin invented the light bulb before Thomas Edison, but due to persecution for his support of revolutionary socialism, he had to emigrate to the US in 1884.
Because of tsarism the discoveries of Russian scientists remained unknown, or were covered up by western imperialist propaganda and forgotten.
Due to lack of funding in Russia I. I. Mechnikov and countless other scientific workers had to study abroad, usually in France. Mechnikov emigrated to France permanently. Women were not allowed into universities in the Russian empire. The outstanding mathematician, the first woman in the world to receive a scientific doctorate, S. V. Kovalevskaya (1850-1891) had to study in Germany and teach in Sweden, as she was explicitly forbidden to work in tsarist Russia by the government. One of the first female chemists in the world, Y. V. Lermontova (1846-1919) also had to study in Germany and despite receiving support from progressive Russian scientists (A. M. Butlerov, V. V. Markovnikov, I. M. Sechenov etc.) she retired from science once she returned to the Russian empire.
In the Soviet period all the neglected pre-revolutionary scientists began to receive tremendous government support. The outstanding biologists K. A. Timiryazev and I. V. Michurin praised the October Revolution. Despite his initial doubts, I. P. Pavlov also praised the Soviet government for its generous support for science and for its attempt to build a better society. The pioneer of rocketry K. E. Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), who had received only neglect and repression from tsarism, also began receiving support from the Soviet government.
Soviet science achieved the highest level in the world.
Modern geochemistry was founded by Soviet scientists Stalin Prize winner V. I. Vernadsky and A. Fersman. Based on the work of Dokuchaev and Kostychev, Vernadsky developed the concept of the biosphere, understanding it as a dialectically evolving whole. Soviet chemists rejected the agnostic and idealistic resonance theory and further developed the materialist understanding of A. M. Butlerov.
Soviet physics was also the most advanced in the world. Order of Lenin recipient E. E. Fedorov developed the principles of complex meteorology in the 1920s. In the 1930s Stalin Prize winners K. A. Petrzhak and G. N. Flerov discovered nuclear fission in nature. The first nuclear power plant in the world was built in the USSR in 1951. The USSR had countless outstanding physicists: A. F. Ioffe, Y. I. Frenkel, V. A. Fok, L. I. Mandelstam, D. D. Ivanenko, D. V. Skobeltsyn, A. I. Leipunsky, N. S. Akulov and others, the participants of the nuclear weapons program, Stalin Prize and Nobel Prize winners I. Y. Tamm, P. A. Cherenkov, I. M. Frank and Stalin Prize winner I. V. Kurchatov.
Soviet scientists rejected idealistic interpretations of Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum physics. They developed dialectical materialist interpretations of these theories, and while they remain incomplete, they represent the highest stage that physics has ever achieved in this realm, as bourgeois physics has ended up in a total dead end.
Soviet astronomers debunked all supernatural explanations for the creation of the world. The only scientific cosmogonic trend was created in the USSR. The great Soviet scientist explorer Otto Schmidt developed the first (though still somewhat limited) materialist theory of the origin of our planet. Stalin Prize winner V. A. Ambartsumyan developed the scientific theory about the origin of stars. Soviet astronomers rejected the bourgeois notion that new matter is created by an expanding universe, which violates the law of the conservation of energy. Soviet astronomers also rejected the pseudo-scientific notion of a heat-death and various theories about the end of the world, which all are mere attempts to demonstrate the divine creation of the world.
The Soviet Union was the leading power in space research. It achieved the world’s first space satellite (Sputnik-1 in 1957) and sent the first human into space (Yuri Gagarin in 1961). The basis for Soviet satellites and rocketry was created in the Stalin era by followers of Tsiolkovsky: V. P. Gluschko, S. P. Korolev, D. I. Blokhintsev and others. World class airplanes were developed by A. N. Tupolev (Tupolev planes), A. G. Brunov (Mig-15 etc.) and others.
In biology the most advanced Michurinist agrobiology and creative darwinism was developed, together with the ground-breaking new cell theory of Stalin Prize winner O. B. Lepeshinskaya, which demonstrated the origin of cells from simpler non-cellular living matter. Michurinist, Stalin Prize winner A. I. Oparin developed the materialist theory about the origin of life (“primordial soup”). Based on a truly materialist understanding of heredity, revolutionary agricultural methods and new superior varieties were developed by Stalin Prize winner T. D. Lysenko and his comrades. N. V. Tsitsin also received the Stalin Prize in 1943 for his creation of a drought resistant perennial wheat. Tremendous agrotechnical developments were made by Stalin Prize winner T. S. Maltsev and other innovators.
In Soviet physiology the only scientific trend, that of Pavlov, became dominant. In his life-time Pavlov received tremendous support from the Soviet government and his work was continued by K. M. Bykov, A. G. Ivanov-Smolensky and others. Pavlov’s ideas were also developed in medicine and biology together with Michurinism.
The basis of all scientific psychology is the research of materialist scientists, the writings of Marx and Lenin on consciousness. However, the writings of Engels on evolution, and those of Stalin on linguistics, together with Pavlov’s theory of the second signaling system, finally helped solve the remaining problems for the creation of a consistently scientific school of psychology in the early 1950s.
The Stalin-era USSR was also a leading world power in computer technology. The first electronic computer in Europe, the Soviet MESM, became operational in 1950. Its successor BESM-1 went into operation in 1952 and was the fastest computer in Europe.
M. V. LOMONOSOV (1711-1765) (polymath, universal genius)
Mikhail Lomonosov lived long before the Soviet Union, but deserves mention because he was recognized as the greatest Russian scientist in history. Lomonosov was a universal genius, contributing to practically every field of science: chemistry, biology, physics, minerology, optics, astronomy, as well as history, art and linguistics. He founded modern geology and influenced the formation of the modern Russian written language. Among his discoveries were the atmosphere of Venus and the conservation of mass in chemical reactions. His work was profoundly materialistic. Lomonosov came from a peasant family and originated materialist philosophy in Russia. He was also the first significant Russian scientist. His scientific and philosophical ideas were not recognized in his own day.
In 1940 the Moscow State University (which Lomonosov had founded) was renamed to Lomonosov University.
The great Soviet geologist A. Fersman said about Lomonosov:
“Dozens of books and hundreds of articles were written about Lomonosov; the most prominent investigators, scientists, writers and poets devoted their best pages to the analysis of this giant of Russian thought and it is still impossible to exhaust this subject, because the genius of Mikhail Lomonosov, this Arkhangelsk pomor was so great and profound…
Courage, resolve and daring bordering on stormy fantasy, a thirst to know everything, down to the root of things and to the source of all sources, and a capacity for profound philosophical analysis in combination with a brilliant ability to conduct experiments, without which he could not think of science, were some of Lomonosov’s traits. And whereas seven cities of antiquity debated the honour of keeping Homer’s grave, more than a dozen different sciences and arts arc lighting for the main heritage’ of Lomonosov: physics and chemistry, mineralogy and crystallography, geochemistry and physical chemistry, geology and mining, geography and meteorology, astronomy and astrophysics, regional science and economics, history, literature, philology and engineering. To be sure, Lomonosov was, as Pushkin was wont to say: a “whole university’’ in himself.” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, pp. 347-348)
“Geochemistry for everyone” by A. Fersman contains information on Lomonosov’s work on chemistry, geology, minerology etc. especially the chapter “From the history of chemical ideas”.
“Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasilyevich (1711-1765). Lomonosov was a great Russian scientist, poet, founder of materialistic philosophy and natural science in Russia. The son of a peasant-Pomor from the village of Denisovka, near Kholmogory, Arkhangelsk province. Lomonosov from an early age passionately strived for knowledge. In 1730 he left for Moscow and, having overcome many difficulties associated with his peasant origin, entered the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy there. In 1735 he was sent to the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, and after a while abroad, from where he returned in 1741. The Academy of Sciences with its foreign dominance did not recognize Lomonosov as a scientist for a long time. Only in 1745 he was approved as professor of chemistry.
The materialist tradition in the development of advanced Russian philosophy and science originates from Lomonosov. Lomonosov’s scientific activity was distinguished by its versatility. Lomonosov’s achievements in the field of chemistry and physics are especially significant. Lomonosov’s great scientific feat is the discovery of the law of conservation of matter and motion as a universal natural law and its theoretical and experimental substantiation. Already in his first natural-scientific works, Lomonosov comes to the conclusion about the constancy of matter and motion. Lomonosov gave a detailed substantiation of the law he discovered in 1748: “All changes occurring in nature occur in such a way that as much as is added to what is added, the same amount is subtracted from the other. So, as much substance as is added to one body, the same amount is taken away from another … This law of nature is so universal that it also extends to the rules of motion.” Later, Lomonosov substantiated this law in the work “Discourse on the hardness and fluidity of bodies” and in other works. The law of conservation of matter is rightfully called the Lomonosov Law. Lomonosov proved this law experimentally by weighing substances before and after a chemical reaction. Lomonosov’s position on the conservation of motion was confirmed in the concrete form of the law of conservation of energy after almost a hundred years. Thus, Lomonosov has priority in discovering the universal law of conservation of matter and motion, which lies at the foundation of modern natural science, especially physics and chemistry. Justifying the proposition about the non-destructibility and non-creation of matter and motion, Lomonosov thereby defended the indissolubility of matter and motion. The law of conservation of matter and motion Lomonosov came to the motion of particles of matter.
Lomonosov is the founder of chemical atomistics, revealing the atomic-molecular structure of matter. He believed that “corpuscles” (molecules) are composed of the smallest particles – “elements” (atoms). “Corpuscles,” wrote Lomonosov, “are homogeneous if they consist of the same number of the same elements connected in the same way … dissimilar when their elements are different and connected in different ways or in different numbers; the infinite variety of bodies depends on it.” Lomonosov’s understanding of heat as a mechanical motion of “corpuscles” is based on the law of conservation of motion. In Reflections on the Elastic Force of Air, Lomonosov developed the theory of the structure of air on the basis of molecular-kinetic concepts that played a huge role in the further development of science. Lomonosov resolutely fought against anti-scientific views, which in the 18th century. dominated in natural science, for example, against the metaphysical concept of “caloric.”
In Reflections on the Cause of Heat and Cold, Lomonosov wrote that “there is a sufficient basis for heat in motion. And since motion cannot occur without matter, it is necessary that a sufficient basis for heat lies in the motion of some matter.” Lomonosov expresses ingenious ideas that various natural phenomena are caused by different forms of motion of matter. Lomonosov laid the foundation for a completely new science – physical chemistry, linking physical theories and research methods with the solution of chemical problems. Lomonosov paid considerable attention to the development of the mining and metallurgical business. In the field of geology, he first put forward the idea of development.
He investigated the wealth of the subsoil of Russia, found out the conditions of navigation along the Northern Sea Route. A supporter of the heliocentric theory in astronomy, the multitude of worlds and the infinity of the universe, Lomonosov was the first to discover the air atmosphere around Venus and, in opposition to the teachings of the church, admitted the possibility of life on other planets. He basically correctly explained the causes of climate change on earth, the presence in the North in the frozen layers of the earth of the remains of animals and plants that are not characteristic of the conditions of the North. Lomonosov predicted that at high air densities, deviations from the Boyle-Mariotte law should be found. Lomonosov was the first to introduce in chemistry the method of quantitative (weight) reception as a systematic method of research, and invented a number of instruments for use in navigation, meteorology, geodesy, physics, chemistry, etc.
Lomonosov solved the main question of philosophy materialistically. With his research, he made a breach in the metaphysical worldview that prevailed at the time; on a number of issues Lomonosov pursued the idea of development. At the same time, due to the limited knowledge of that time, he considered mainly mechanical laws and properties of nature. He considered the main properties of matter to be extension, force of inertia, impenetrability, mechanical motion. Lomonosov contrasted the materialistic view of atoms to the idealistic monadology of Leibniz, which he sharply criticized. Rejecting Leibniz’s spiritual monads, Lomonosov called corpuscles “physical monads.”
Lomonosov’s views contain elements of dialectics. He already considers the world around us as constantly changing and developing. In his work “On the Layers of the Earth,” he talks about the changes and evolutionary development of the plant and animal kingdoms, puts forward a bold theory about the plant origin of peat, coal, oil, amber, an evolutionary theory of the origin of soils. Lomonosov considered motion as “eternally” existing. In his work “On the heaviness of bodies and on the eternity of the primary movement,” he writes: “… the primary movement can never have a beginning, but must last forever.”
Lomonosov developed a materialistic theory of knowledge. He proceeded from the fact that the source of knowledge is the external world, which affects the human senses. He was a staunch opponent of the Cartesian idealist theory of “innate ideas” and Locke’s “inner experience.” Lomonosov spoke in favor of combining experimental data with theoretical conclusions. He condemned those who divorced cognition by reason from sensory perceptions, who metaphysically opposed synthesis to analysis. In the theory of knowledge, Lomonosov assigned a large place to experience, understanding the latter in a narrow sense, in the sense of a scientific experiment and sensory perception of objective reality. Lomonosov sharply criticized the idealist theory of the so-called “secondary qualities,” arguing that “secondary qualities” exist as objectively as primary ones.
“With Lomonosov,” wrote Belinsky, “our literature begins.” Lomonosov was the founder of Russian grammar. Thanks to Lomonosov, a new grammar based on living Russian speech came to replace the dead, scholastic schemes of the old grammar. As a poet, Lomonosov performed primarily with poems in which he called for the development of the arts and sciences in Russia, for the spread of Enlightenment among the Russian people.
For a number of years, Lomonosov waged a stubborn struggle for the creation of domestic science, he did a lot for the development of natural science in Russia, for combining advanced science with practical tasks. Lomonosov was the first Russian scientist to receive the title of Academician. He was the founder of Moscow University (1755) and advocated the transformation of the Academy of Sciences. Lomonosov fought against the clergy, sharply castigating the ignorance of the priests. As a historian, as a patriot, he fought against the distortions of Russian history and against the dominance of the reactionary “German party” in the Academy of Sciences. Lomonosov loved his people dearly; he believed in the great future of the Russian people. The last edition of Selected Philosophical Works of M. V. Lomonosov was published in 1950.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
A. N. RADISHCHEV (1749-1802)
Alexander Radishchev was a revolutionary democrat, materialist, writer. His most famous work is “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”.
“Is a sense of national pride alien to us, Great-Russian class-conscious proletarians? Certainly not! We love our language and our country, and we are doing our very utmost to raise her toiling masses (i.e., nine-tenths of her population) to the level of a democratic and socialist consciousness. To us it is most painful to see and feel the outrages, the oppression and the humiliation our fair country suffers at the hands of the tsar’s butchers, the nobles and the capitalists. We take pride in the resistance to these outrages put up from our midst, from the Great Russians; in that midst having produced Radishchev, the Decembrists and the revolutionary commoners of the seventies; in the Great-Russian working class having created, in 1905, a mighty revolutionary party of the masses; and in the Great-Russian peasantry having begun to turn towards democracy and set about overthrowing the clergy and the landed proprietors.” (Lenin, On the National Pride of the Great Russians)
“The initiator of the revolutionary-democratic trend in Russian social thought, A.N. Radishchev (1749-1802), was an outstanding economist of his time. Radishchev, resolutely attacking serfdom and defending the oppressed peasantry, made an annihilating criticism of the serf-owning system, exposed the exploiting nature of the wealth of the landlords and serf-owners, the owners of manufactories and traders and justified the right to ownership of land of those who worked it with their labour. Radishchev was firmly convinced that the autocracy and serfdom could be liquidated only by revolutionary means. He worked out a system of economic measures which were progressive for, his time, and the realisation of which would have secured Russia s advance to a bourgeois democratic system.” (POLITICAL ECONOMY A Textbook issued by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R)
“Radishchev, Aleksandr Nikolayevich (1749-1802). Radishchev was the founder of revolutionary emancipatory thought in Russia, the founder of Russian revolutionary literature. The development of revolutionary and emancipatory thought in Russia was closely connected with those heroic traditions that Radishchev laid the foundation for. Lenin highly appreciated the merits of Radishchev as a thinker and revolutionary leader, as a fighter against serfdom and Tsarist despotism.
In the era of Radishchev, serfdom in the most cruel forms raged in Russia. Having suppressed the Pugachev revolt, the frightened government of Catherine II fell upon the peasants with new punitive measures, new fierce decrees that intensified the already unbearable serfdom. The peasantry responded with new revolts. The question of the struggle against serfdom arose before the best, progressive people in all its acuteness. Radishchev did not remain a calm observer of this unbridled arbitrariness and violence against the people, he raised his voice of protest against serfdom and autocracy.
A striking evidence of this is his famous book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (1790), published in Radishchev’s own printing house and published anonymously. For Russia at that time, the publication of the book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” was like a thunderclap. Its creation and publication was a heroic deed of a revolutionary. In his book, Radishchev masterfully depicts the horrors of serfdom, the oppressed position of the Russian working people – the breadwinners of society, the producers of all the wealth of the country.
In condemning the flagrant arbitrariness of the serf-owners, Radishchev reaches deep political conclusions; he sees the root of evil not in individuals or violations of the law, but in the law itself, in the serf system, in the autocracy. Catherine II ordered the arrest of the author and a severe reprisal against him. He was sent to the prison of Ilimsk in Siberia “for ten years of hopeless stay.” But neither prison, nor the threat of execution, nor exile broke the freedom-loving spirit of Radishchev. In Siberia, Radishchev wrote the famous philosophical treatise “On Man, his Mortality and Immortality,” taking on the struggle of a materialist, resolutely opposing idealism and mysticism.
After the death of Catherine II, Radishchev’s friends achieved his return from Siberia. They even managed to include him in the commission for drafting laws. But this did not change Radishchev’s attitude to serfdom and autocracy. He kept aloof, still sharply opposed arbitrariness and put forward projects for a radical change in the state system, thus inciting the serf-owners against him. He was threatened by a new arrest. Hounded by the Tsar’s servants, Radishchev committed suicide. Before his death, he said: “The offspring will avenge me.”
The first noble revolutionary Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev was an outstanding thinker of his time, an artist of words, a philosopher and an economist. Together with Lomonosov he is rightfully considered the founder of Russian materialist philosophy. His materialism is remarkable for its revolutionary content, a protest against serfdom and Tsarism. Speaking out against the idealism and mysticism of the Masons, against their reactionary views, Radishchev argued the primacy of matter, arguing that the brain is a material organ of thought. In his views on matter, he as a whole did not go, and even could not at that time go beyond the metaphysical concepts of the 18th century.
But the idea of development is already noticeably making itself felt in his deep reasoning. He looked at motion as an inalienable property of matter. He criticizes the idealistic theory of preformism (Haller and Bonnet) as pseudo-scientific, as a product of idle fantasy, as well as the doctrine of “entelechy,” which was the source of vitalism. Radishchev approached the understanding of the influence of the environment on the development of organisms, to the idea of the inheritance of acquired traits. At the same time, Radishchev criticized the theory of vulgar materialists who equated thought with matter.
In matters of cognition, Radishchev also took materialistic positions, believing that thought has as its source the sensory perception of reality. Putting forward and substantiating the theory of natural equality of all people without distinction of class and race, Radishchev branded and exposed the oppression of some people by others. He criticized the racist theories of the “natural” division of society into slaves and slave-owners, condemned the savage arbitrariness of the autocracy and substantiated the right of the oppressed people to revolt and overthrow the rule of tyrants. He condemned the slavery that prevailed in America with shame. His accusatory words against American planters and slave traders have not lost their meaning today. Radishchev expressed ingenious – for the 18th century – thoughts on the role of agriculture, industry and technical inventions in the historical progress and in the mental development of a person.
Linking the tasks of social education with the general tasks of the struggle against serfdom and autocracy, Radishchev also made a great contribution to the development of advanced Russian and world pedagogical science. M. I. Kalinin noted that Radishchev’s thoughts on education to this day can be considered progressive. Radishchev’s views were the highest achievement of social and political thought of his time. The significance and influence of his revolutionary ideas went far beyond the borders of Russia. But above all, Radishchev had a tremendous influence on the subsequent development of revolutionary thought in Russia itself. The Decembrists and the revolutionary democrats of the 1840s and 1860s learned from Radishchev, they were inspired by his selfless struggle against the autocracy.
Radishchev devoted all his life to the struggle for the freedom and happiness of his people, his Motherland. He deeply believed in the mighty forces of the Russian people, in the great future of his native country. The main works of Radishchev are “A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” “A Letter to a Friend Living in Tobolsk,” “The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov,” “On Man, His Mortality and Immortality,” an ode to “Freedom” and others. The selected philosophical and socio-political works of Radishchev were published in 1952.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
BIOLOGY
A. A. KAVERZNEV (1748-1787, evolutionist, biologist)
Afanasy Avvakumovich Kaverznev was a Russian pre-revolutionary biologist, who was among the first scientists to suggest that species have evolved.
“long before Lamarck, the doctrine of the evolution and variability of species was systematically presented by the Russian scientist Afanasy Kaverznev. However, Kaverznev’s book Philosophical Discourse on the Rebirth of Animals was published during his stay in Leipzig in 1775 in a small edition in German, and the author considered it necessary to keep silent about it, knowing that its content would not meet with sympathy in reactionary circles in Russia. The book and its author were forgotten and remained unknown to this day.” (The article “Lamarck” in Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
K. A. TIMIRYAZEV (1843-1920) (Botanist, Physiologist, Darwinist)
Timiriazev was the biggest defender of Darwinism in Russia and was a true communist and a true scientist. As someone who deeply understood Darwinism, he was among the first to strongly criticize the reactionary Malthusian aspects in Darwinism. Timiryazev also was quick to recognize that the scientific merit of mendelism was extremely exaggerated, and that mendelism was used to attack Darwinism.
“Kliment Arkadievich Timiryazev (1843 – 1920) – great Russian scientist, biologist, fighter for Darwinism, the founder of the modern doctrine of photosynthesis. Imbued in his youth with the revolutionary democratic ideas of the great Russian thinkers of the middle of the 19th century, Timiryazev devoted all his scientific and social activities to serving advanced science and the working people.
For his progressive convictions, Timiryazev was persecuted by the Tsarist government. Beginning in 1894, he was under constant surveillance by the secret police. Under the influence of revolutionary ideas and the ever-growing labor movement, Timiryazev, even under Tsarism, came close to the ideas of socialism. While he was never a member of any party, his reputation as a sympathizer with revolutionary ideas was such that in 1917 workers of the Moscow-Kursk railway elected the 75-year old Timiryazev as their deputy to the Moscow Soviet, and in 1918 fellow revolutionary-minded scientists made him a member of the Socialist Academy. The People’s Commissariat of Education appointed Timiryazev a member of the State Scientific Council.
Timiryazev appeared in the press exposing the insolent slander of the Anglo-American imperialists against the Russian people, and exposed the imperialist, predatory goals of the campaign of “14 states” against the young Soviet Republic. On April 27, 1920, VI Lenin wrote to Timiryazev: “I was delighted to read your remarks against the bourgeoisie and for Soviet power.” Lenin had in mind Timiryazev’s book Science and Democracy, in which the scientist called people of science to unity with the working people. The last words of Timiryazev, uttered by him a few hours before his death, show that the great scientist had come to the conclusion that, of all sides fighting in the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks were the only one with a definite program for the improvement of the lives of the Soviet peoples: “The Bolsheviks pursuing Leninism, I believe and am convinced, are working for the happiness of the people and will lead them to happiness … Convey to Vladimir Ilyich my admiration for his ingenious solution of world problems in theory and in practice. I consider it a pleasure to be a contemporary of his and a witness to his glorious work. I bow to him and want everyone to know about it.”
In his philosophical views, Timiryazev was a staunch materialist, waging an irreconcilable struggle against idealism. In his writings, he subjected to devastating criticism the line of idealism in philosophy, starting with Plato and ending with the philosophizing squires of imperialism (Bergson, Mach, James and others). In his research, Timiryazev was guided by the “historical method” containing a number of elements of materialist dialectics – the recognition of the universal connection and development of phenomena in nature, the struggle of opposites, causality, necessity, etc. Timiryazev was a remarkable popularizer of science. His books “Charles Darwin and His Teachings,” “Historical Method in Biology” and others are still the best presentation of Darwin’s theory. Timiryazev’s book “The Life of a Plant” is also very popular. Timiryazev made a significant step forward in comparison with Darwin with his truly materialistic interpretation of the development of the organic world.
Unlike the so-called “orthodox” Darwinists, Timiryazev considered the most important factors of evolution not to be intraspecific struggle, but to the external environment, which changes the organism, heredity, which reinforces these changes, and selection, which gives the organisms an expedient form. The organism and the environment are considered by him in an indissoluble unity. In this regard, he highly appreciates the positive side of Lamarck’s teachings – about the dependence of organic forms on the environment. “Only the combination of this side of Lamarckism with Darwinism promises a complete solution of the biological problem,” Timiryazev wrote.
He recognized that the variability of organisms is due to their adaptation to environmental conditions. He was the first to put forward a provision on the body’s requirements for environmental conditions. By his indication of the alternation of stages of development in plants, Timiryazev emphasized the presence of qualitative transformations in the ontogenetic development of the organism. This position was subsequently developed by I.V. Michurin, who created the theory of staged development of plants. Timiryazev recognized the possibility of not only sexual, but also vegetative hybridization, and also pointed out the great importance of cross-pollination of plants. He sharply criticized Weissmannism and Mendelism for recognizing the existence of a special substance of heredity, allegedly not amenable to the influence of the environment. The works of Timiryazev in the field of the study of photosynthesis were of great importance for the development of biology.
Timiryazev proved that this phenomenon, like the phenomena of inorganic nature, is subject to the law of conservation of energy. Thus, he dealt a crushing blow to the “vitalistic” doctrine of a special “vital force” allegedly inherent in animals and plants. Timiryazev does not limit the task of biology to the knowledge of the laws of development of animals and plants, but raises the question of a conscious change in organic forms. He argues that science should teach the farmer how to grow two ears where one used to grow. Timiryazev wrote the work “Agriculture and Plant Physiology,” in which important provisions of agronomic science were developed.
Before the Revolution, Timiryazev was able not only to defend the materialistic core of Darwinism, but also to develop it further, preparing a qualitatively new stage in the development of biology – the Michurin doctrine.
This is an outstanding achievement of the great Russian biologist and thinker. For many decades Timiryazev stood at the head of the advanced materialist biology in its struggle against the reactionary, idealistic direction represented by all kinds of anti-Darwinists, Weissmannists, vitalists and other “ists” and “logs,” as Timiryazev himself called them. Timiryazev sharply condemned the vulgar transfer of biological laws to the field of social phenomena. In 1937-1940. The Works of KA Timiryazev were published, vols. 1-10; in 1948-1949 Selected Works were published.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
The Life Of The Plant by K. A. Timiryazev
“Mendel” (article for encyclopedia “Pomegranet”) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“Luther Burbank” (article for encyclopedia “Pomegranet”) (in Russian, but auto-translate works)
The Baltic Deputy (1936) A very good movie inspired by the life of Timiryazev.
The great Soviet biologist T. D. Lysenko said:
“Eminent biologists, like V. O. Kovalevsky, I. I. Mechnikov, V. M. Sechenov and particularly K. A. Timiryazev, defended and developed Darwinism with all the passion of true scientists.” (The Situation in the Science of Biology,1948)
V. O. KOVALEVSKY (1842-1883) (Paleontologist, Darwinist)
Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevsky carried out important scientific work and translated many works of Darwin into Russian for the first time. His brother Alexander Kovalevsky, an embryologist, was also a significant materialist scientist.
On the Osteology of the Hyopotamidae by V. O. Kovalevsky
A. O. KOVALEVSKY (1840-1901, embryologist, Darwinist)
Alexander Onufrievich Kovalevsky was an important materialist scientist.
“Alexander Kovalevsky, the famous embryologist… trained the students to have clear materialist ideas…” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 74)
I. I. MECHNIKOV (1845-1916) (Zoologist, Immunologist, Darwinist)
Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov was also deeply influenced by Darwin’s work and helped propagate it. He discovered phagocytes and received a Nobel prize in physiology in 1908 for his work on immunity.
“Nikolai Umov, the physicist, and Alexander Kovalevsky, the famous embryologist… trained the students to have clear materialist ideas, taught them to seek in the external world for the causes of internal changes, as Sechenov had done when he proved that the external world determines the character of the higher nervous activity of animals and man, as Mechnikov and Pasteur had done when they explained the role of the external world in the origin and spread of diseases.
The higher course students remembered how Mechnikov had once begun one of his lectures with the words:
“There is a disease which causes restriction in man’s field of vision. First he sees everything round him, then what might be called blinkers form round his eyes. Finally he can only distinguish one shining point in front of him.”
Mechnikov said no more for a moment but narrowly watched his audience. Then he concluded:
“If some scientists voluntarily inflict this disease on themselves, by concerning themselves only with their own narrow speciality, their own subject of observation, one can definitely forecast that they will create nothing truly great or truly important for humanity.”” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, pp. 74-75)
“Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1845-1916) – an outstanding Russian biologist, one of the founders of microbiology, comparative embryology and pathology; the theorist of Darwinism, who creatively developed this doctrine. Mechnikov’s worldview was formed under the influence of revolutionary, anti-serfdom sentiments and advanced ideas of the great revolutionary democrats of the 1860s. Mechnikov was one of the progressive leaders of Russian materialistic science and a fighter against ideological reaction in science.
He made a huge contribution to the development of zoology, embryology, microbiology, pathology, anthropology, Darwinism, etc., in the field of zoology, he described new species of annelids and sucking ciliates, and also developed biological methods to combat insects harmful to agriculture (bread beetles), which was carried out by infecting their larvae with a fungus (green muscardine). Together with A.O. Kovalevsky, Mechnikov is the founder of evolutionary embryology.
He is the author of remarkable works on the study of the embryonic development of various groups of animals (sponges, hydromedusa), insects, etc. As a result of these studies, general patterns of embryonic development of various groups of animals were established, their genetic relationship and unity of origin were proved. Thus, a great contribution was made to the creative development of Darwin’s teachings. Mechnikov also creatively developed Darwin’s theory on the issue of inflammation and immunity. Based on twenty years of research, Xi created a coherent phagocytic theory of inflammation and immunity. Before Mechnikov, the phenomena of inflammation were explained through Virchow’s metaphysical theory of cellular pathology. Virchow was an enemy of Darwinism and fought against its spread in science.
Mechnikov, on the contrary, proved the fruitfulness of the ideas of Darwinism and its historical method in the development of problems of pathology. Ardently promoting and defending Darwinism, Mechnikov, however, did not approach it dogmatically. He criticized the reactionary Malthusian idea of overpopulation, adopted by Darwin to explain the reasons for the struggle for existence and selection. On questions of the theory of knowledge, Mechnikov opposed idealism and metaphysics. He rejected the religious-priestly teaching about the soul and its immortality. “Science,” he wrote, “cannot admit the immortality of the conscious soul, since consciousness is the result of the activity of the elements of our body that do not possess immortality.” Mechnikov criticized various forays of obscurantists in science: vitalists, spiritualists, teleo-iatics like Gustave Le Bon, Oliver Lodge and other mystics.
He passionately fought against the “fashionable” reactionary philosophers – James, Bergson, Hartmann, Nietzsche, considering them the most harmful ideologists of unscientific reaction. The difficult working conditions resulting from constant persecution by the ruling circles of Tsarist Russia forced Mechnikov to emigrate abroad. He lived in a foreign land for 28 years. However, living far from his homeland, he remained its ardent patriot and did not break close ties with his friends who were in Russia. He was an ardent champion of the emancipation of women, advocated for women’s education, for the social rights of women.
Mechnikov covered socio-political issues from the wrong positions. He mistakenly believed that only science is the decisive force for eliminating social evil and injustice. Fighting against political and ideological reaction, he did not see the real forces of social development and did not understand the laws of society. He approached the interpretation of social problems from idealistic and positivist positions. The main works of Mechnikov: “Studies on the nature of man” (1903), “Studies of optimism” (1907), “Forty years of searching for a rational worldview” (1912), the collection “On Darwinism.”” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
Works of Mechnikov:
Immunity in infective diseases
The experimental prophylaxis of syphilis [with Maisonneuve & Roux]
The prolongation of life : optimistic studies
The new hygiene : three lectures on the prevention of infectious diseases
The nature of man : studies in optimistic philosophy
On the comparative pathology of inflammation (Lectures delivered at the Pasteur Institute in 1891)
Embryologische Studien an Medusen. Ein Beitrag zur Genealogie der Primitiv-organe
M. F. Kashchenko (1855-1935, zoologist, Darwinist)
Mykola (Nikolai in Russian) Feofanovich Kashchenko was a Soviet professor of zoology and comparative anatomy and rector of Tomsk University, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1919). He was a student of Z. I. Stretsov, corresponded with I. V. Michurin.
“I warmly welcome the regional meeting on fruit growing. I see the development of horticulture in Siberia in the breeding of my Siberian varieties from seeds using my methods. My wish is to widely use the experience of Siberian gardeners Kashchenko, Olonichenko, Krutovskyi, Lysavenko, and Lukashchev. I hope that Siberia will have its fruits and berries”. (I. V. Michurin’s letter to a Siberian fruit growing conference)
“Along with Timiryazev, who at that time carried out the creative popularization and development of Darwin’s evolutionary theory in Moscow, Professor M. F. Kashchenko of Tomsk University also defended Darwinism in distant Siberia.
In lectures on the course of zoology, in public reports, in the press – wherever there was an opportunity for this, M. F. Kashchenko promoted the foundations of Darwin’s teachings.
Among the preserved archival materials and printed works of M. F. Kashchenko are his articles and the texts of reports devoted to Darwinism. In them, the author acts as a consistent defender of Darwin’s teachings, expresses deep faith in a great future and the flourishing of creative Darwinism.
M.F. Kashchenko always emphasized the multifaceted nature of Darwin’s teaching, its importance for the flourishing of biological science. In his speech delivered at a solemn meeting at Tomsk University on 22.11.1909, M. F. Kashchenko said: “Charles Darwin devoted his entire life to the development and proof of his theory. At the same time, he developed many very important questions related to the idea of natural selection, such as protective coloration, sexual selection, the origin of cultivated plants and domestic animals, and the origin of man. So, next to the main theory of natural selection, he created several additional theories, and therefore the whole set of his teachings is quite truthfully called Darwinism.”
Developing certain propositions of Darwin, M.F. Kashchenko talks about the harmfulness of the dogmatization of this teaching, about the future development of its ideas. “It would, of course, be very naive to think,” writes M.F. Kashchenko – that Darwin revealed everything to us. On the contrary, very, very much of the development of the living world needs further study and clarification, and of course there will be many new theories that will open up new horizons for us.”
Mykola Feofanovych Kashchenko was a representative of creative Darwinism. He devoted his entire conscious life to the study of the animal and plant world, and especially to its change in accordance with the needs of society.” (Academician N. F. Kashchenko is an outstanding Michurinist biologist) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“M.F. Kashchenko supported the views of Darwin, Timiryazev and Michurin about the possibility of vegetative hybridization. In this regard, speaking of the “breeding of new cultural breeds through hybridization,” he wrote in 1914: “I am trying to create large-fruited varieties of nightshade by simple sequential selection. But this does not prevent, of course, simultaneous breeding of new varieties from the same material in a different way, namely, through hybridization, which sometimes gives something completely new and original. I combined an ordinary black nightshade with a blue eggplant, and a yellow-fruited variation of a black nightshade with a red eggplant, and the second time the combination was carried out both sexually and by the so-called graft hybridization.”” (Academician N. F. Kashchenko is an outstanding Michurinist biologist) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“Being a supporter of the theory of transmission of acquired characteristics by inheritance, he writes: “accidental traumatic injuries are not inherited, but prolonged and subtle influences are transmitted.”” (Memories of M.F. Kashchenko) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Very informative sources on M. F. Kashchenko’s life:
Academician M. F. Kashchenko is an outstanding Michurinist biologist (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Memories of M.F. Kashchenko (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
A. N. SEVERTSOV (1866-1936, biologist)
Aleksey Nikolaevich Severtsov was an influential Soviet biologist, founder of the evolutionary morphology of animals.
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1920), Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1925), Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1925), founder of the Russian school of evolutionary morphologists . The Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Ecology of Animals of the USSR Academy of Sciences is named after him.
T. D. Lysenko and I. I. Prezent promoted Severtsov’s legacy and protected it from distortions.
MICHURINIST BIOLOGY, MODERN CREATIVE DARWINISM
(often called ‘Lysenkoism’)
Before the October Revolution Ivan Michurin lived in economic difficulties which hindered his scientific research. He still created countless new plant varieties and American corporations tried to hire him. However, he did not want to leave his homeland. After the revolution his scientific work began on a bigger scale. He developed a truly materialist concept of heredity and had a deep and creative understanding of Darwin’s discoveries. Afterwards he was attacked by the capitalists, aristocratic scientists and out-of-touch dogmatists.
“Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855-1935) – a great biologist who raised Darwinian scientific biology to a new, higher level. A new, higher stage in the development of the materialistic science of living nature is associated with the name of Michurin. Michurin’s life is divided into two sharply different periods – pre-revolutionary and Soviet.
Before the 1917 Revolution Michurin lived and worked, conducting all the experiments at his own expense, without any encouragement. His deeply popular business – the development of new varieties of plants – he spent on a tiny personal plot at his own risk and fear. His ingenious ideas were not recognized under Tsarism. American businessmen, having found out about the wonderful new varieties of fruit plants he had bred, offered him to move to America. But the great patriot refused this offer.
The Revolution gave him the opportunity to develop his scientific and practical work. Michurin’s site was transformed into a huge nursery. Scientific research institutes were created that developed and introduced Michurin’s ideas into agricultural practice. In 1934 Michurin wrote: “The dream of my whole life is coming true: the new valuable varieties of fruit plants that I have bred have moved from the experimental plots not to individual rich kulaks, but to the massifs of collective and state farm orchards, replacing low-yielding, bad, old varieties.”
If Darwin only explained the laws of the organic world, Michurin created a scientific theory about the ways of changing this living world. In his scientific work and worldview until 1917 Michurin directly developed the militant materialism and democracy of the great Russian scientists and revolutionary democrats of the mid-19th century. After 1917 he illuminated and solved the problems of agrobiology.
Michurin said that the roots of natural science lie in nature, that natural science is spontaneously attracted to dialectics. In the preface to the third edition of the book “Principles and Methods of Work” Michurin wrote: “For dialectics there is nothing final, absolute, sacred once and for all. On everything and in everything it reveals the stamp of inevitable disappearance, and nothing can resist it, except for the Continuous process of becoming and destruction, endless ascent from the lowest to the highest.” This principle is always the basic principle in my work, passing like a red thread through all my numerous experiments, which I put in the improvement of existing and in the breeding of new varieties of fruit and berry plants.” Always and in everything Michurin was guided by the idea of development. Each individual, he wrote, develops to the fullness of its specific properties, and then gradually loses them, grows old and, finally, dies. The species changes in the same way as everything in nature – “everything flows, everything changes.”
Michurin was convinced of the omnipotence of science and practice, of the possibility of knowing nature and mastering all the secrets of the formation of species. He constructed his theory as a consistently scientific theory, but reconciled with no concessions to idealism. Michurin considered the organism in close connection with the conditions of its existence, recognizing the decisive importance of the exchange of substances between the organism and nature. He contemptuously rejected the idealistic intricacies of the Weissmannists, Mendelists and Morganists with their unknowable “things in themselves,” with mysterious mystical genes, with the exaltation of randomness in science and practice, and with all his work he refuted these ideas. As a true revolutionary in science, he was not afraid to point out the weak and erroneous sides of Darwin’s teachings. Michurin creatively developed the biology of Darwinism.
The greatest experimenter, Michurin created and developed scientific methods for the conscious management of plant life and the practical transformation of living nature. The teaching created by Michurin includes:
1) the theory and methods of artificial hybridization (sexual and vegetative, intraspecific and distant),
2) the theory and methods of directed education of organisms,
3) the theory and methods of artificial selection. All these three aspects of Michurin’s doctrine constitute an indissoluble unity and are an example of the creative application of dialectics to understanding the essence of heredity and the variability of organic forms, to the practice of breeding new varieties of plants in the interests of socialist society.
Michurin devoted his whole life to the working people. He considered his nursery a workshop for the creation of new varieties that would more fully meet the “needs of the working people.” “My achievements are in a classless socialist society,” Michurin wrote in 1932. Our goal, he said, “is to alter the properties of plants in a direction desirable for working people.” Michurin formulated the task of biological science: “We cannot wait for favors from nature; it is our task to take them from her. “
Implementing this revolutionary principle, Michurin devoted his entire life to reworking the nature of plants. The creation of new varieties cost Michurin decades of hard and systematic work. His main method, as he himself wrote, consisted in a constant “striving forward, in strict verification and restructuring of experiments.” More than 300 new varieties of fruit and berry plants were developed by the great scientist. But his most valuable legacy is his theory, Michurinist biology.
He was not a communist, yet he was grateful to the Soviets for the conditions they created for his work. He always wanted to see his work become accessible to the people, and since this happened only in his old age under the public education system established in the USSR, he thanked the Soviets for this. “The Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government,” he wrote, “did everything for the prosperity of the work I had begun.”
Michurin was a patriot of his homeland. Even before the revolution, he condemned those scientists and leaders who pinned all their hopes in improving Russian gardening with help from abroad. “It’s a shame,” he wrote, “to think that all the best can be obtained only from abroad.”” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
Michurin (1948) A nice Soviet film about the life and career of I. V. Michurin. Click the CC button for subtitles.
Trofim Lysenko developed many scientific theories and concepts which became highly useful. His early research on vernalization and the theory of phasic development were recognized by the scientific community. Lysenko developed and applied the discoveries of Michurin. He opposed all idealism, dogmatism and separation of theory from practice. For Lysenko, practice was always the criterion of truth.
Lysenko came into conflict with snob-scientists who did not want to focus on real life problems. Lysenko came into conflict with the supporters of mendelian genetics (so-called ‘orthodox genetics’ invented by the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel). For this reason Lysenko is attacked today. His critics claim that “Lysenko did not believe in genes”. However, this is a falsehood. Lysenko disagreed with the mendelists’ idealist definition of genes. For the mendelists, heredity (genes) were totally separate and isolated from the organism, they could not be influenced or altered by changes to the organism or to its living conditions. The genes were conceptualized as indestructible – even immortal – by idols of the mendelists such as August Weismann. Lysenko could not agree with these idealist, metaphysical and mystical notions.
For Lysenko, heredity was a more complicated interaction between the chromosomes and the DNA, the entire organism, and its environment. The heredity of an organism cannot be reduced to isolated genes, and these genes cannot be seen as unchanging. Lysenko produced significant discoveries. He helped reduce effects of plant-disease, contributed significantly to preventing famine during WWII, demonstrated the harmful effects of inbreeding in agriculture and combated distortions of darwinism. Lysenko promoted the theoretical developments of Michurin, Timiryazev, V. R. Williams and others, and systematized them to what he called Michurinist Agrobiology, or Soviet Creative Darwinism. Lysenko and his colleagues invented new agricultural techniques, new plant varieties and considerably improved agricultural yields.
Lysenko disagreed with the idea that animals evolve purely individualistically. He said that mutual aid of animals of the same species living in the same group or herd, is just as important (if not more important) than competition. Lysenko’s view was shared by the great Darwinist Timiriazev, but it is considered heretical by western “neo-darwinists”.
Lysenko also disagreed with the notion invented by western mendelist Thomas Morgan, that evolution and heredity are completely random. Lysenko said there must be reasons and laws governing evolution, mainly environmental factors, and heredity must also be influenced by the environment. Lysenko said that if heredity was completely random, we could never breed any plants or animals. His opinion was shared by Michurin who famously said: “We cannot simply wait for favors from nature, we have to wrest them from her”. Michurin meant that agriculturists must use scientific methods to breed new plants, instead of merely waiting for results from the supposedly random processes. For all these reasons Lysenko was attacked by his opponents.
Lysenko strongly opposed using western inbred corn, because it was unsuitable to Soviet conditions, unsustainable and risky. He was proven correct when Khrushchev’s attempt to use western inbred corn in the USSR failed completely. Western farming methods have been shown to be risky, prone to pests without constant use of massive amounts of poisons, and ecologically unsustainable.
Later I will write a full article about Lysenko (with sources) and debunk many of the myths about him.
T. D. Lysenko earned the following awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Ukrainian SSR (1931)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1941) – for the well-known work on the summer planting of potatoes and planting potatoes with freshly harvested tubers.
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1943) – for the scientific development and introduction into agriculture of a method of planting potatoes with the tops of food tubers.
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1945)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1949) – for scientific research in the field of advanced Michurin biological science, summarized in the scientific work Agrobiology, published in 1948.
-I. I. Mechnikov Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1950) – for outstanding works in the field of biology and the development of creative Soviet Darwinism, which led to the most important practical results in agriculture.
-Medal “For Labor Valor” (1959)
-8 Orders of Lenin
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
-Medal “In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow”
-Jubilee medal “For Valiant Labor (For Military Valor). In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
The Great Force (1950) is another nice film about Michurinist biology.
Land In Bloom by V. Safonov (pdf) (archive) (An excellent and entertaining history of biological sciences from before Darwin to Soviet Science. Recommended reading)
“LYSENKO, VIEWS OF NATURE AND SOCIETY –
REDUCTIONIST BIOLOGY AS A KHRUSCHEVITE REVISIONIST WEAPON” (book by Alliance ML. This book has a lot of good information and debunks many lies about Lysenko. It is one of the better books available on the topic. However, the book also makes many mistakes, relies on bad, unreliable capitalist sources, and in particular gets the section on Lepishinskaya entirely wrong – and only due to relying on bad sources!)
The Fundamentals of Michurin Biology by V. N. Stoletov (Audiobook)
I.V. Michurin – The Great Remaker Of Nature by A. N. Bakharev
The philosophical significance of the theoretical legacy of I.V. Michurin by A. A. Rubashevsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Fly-lovers and human-haters by Prof. A. N. Studitski (Russian) (English)
Works of Lysenko:
Agrobiology: essays on problems of genetics, plant breeding and seed growing
Theory of Vernalization (1935)
Plant Breeding and the Theory of Phasic Development of Plants (1935) with I. I. Prezent
Intravarietal Crossing and Mendel’s so called “Law” of Segregation (1938)
Hereditary Constitution
Controlling the nature of plants (1940)
Converting Winter Wheat (1940)
Degeneration of Potatoes (1943)
Improving potatoes by culture
Vegetative Hybrids (1946)
Soil Nutrition of Plants (1953)
Distant Hybrids (1954)
Sunflowers and Broom Rape (1954)
Hybrid Maize (1955)
Soviet Biology: Report to the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1948)
New Developments in the Science of Biological Species (1951)
“Biology is Not Reducible to Chemistry and Physics” by Prezent and Lysenko
Works of Michurin:
The results of sixty years of work (1949) (text) (archive) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Principles and methods of work (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Breeding new cultivated varieties of fruit trees and shrubs from seeds (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Selected Works of Michurin (English) (Russian)
Seeds, their life and preservation (1915)
The Orchid Lily (1915)
Pyrus elaeagnifolia (1915)
Noodle Squash (1925)
Improving pear trees by layering (1929)
Layering Tubes (1929)
Vegetative Approximation (1929)
Age and condition of parents (1929)
Frost-resistant Peaches (1929)
High Atmospheric Pressure (1929)
Breeding Apples
Photoperiodism
Vegetative Pear (1932)
Short-Season Grapes (1934)
Selection of Seedlings (1934)
Actinidia varieties (Kiwi fruit)
Hybridizing (1952)
Pear grafted on Lemon (1952)
Hansen on Michurin and Tsitsin (1941)
Liang: China’s Achievements in Michurin Genetics (1959)
Konstantinova: Michurin methods, alfalfa (1960)
Works of Luther Burbank: (An American plant-breeder, who was widely respected in the USSR)
Luther Burbank (biography) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Luther Burbank. Wilbur Hall. Harvest of life (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Selected Works of L. Burbank (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Beach Plum, Prunus maritima (1901)
Crinums (1912)
California Poppies (1914)
California Poppies part 2 (1914)
Burbank, Wilks: Shirley Poppies
Walnuts (1914)
Giant Winter Rhubarb (1914)
Raspberry-Blackberry Hybrids (1914)
White Blackberry (1914)
Raspberry x Strawberry Hybrids (1914)
Domesticating the Camassias (1914)
Heuchera micrantha, curled leaf (1914)
Corn Selection – Illinois (1914)
Fatherless Beans (1914)
Shasta Daisies (1914)
Stamen Counters (1914)
Stoneless Plums (1914)
Plum hybrids with Prunus maritima & P. besseyi (1914)
Sunberry (1914)
Hybrids of pears with apples, quinces (1914)
Papago Sweet Corn (1919)
Sorghum Pop (1920)
Smith: New Winter Rhubarb (1903)
Harwood: Burbank’s California Poppies (1905)
Bland: Burbank’s Winter Rhubarb (1915)
Howard: Burbank the Pariah — of Scientists (1945/6)
Others:
M. V. Ritov. Selected works (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
The Green laboratory by B. Dizhur (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
In The World Of Soviet Science by Oleg Pisarzhevsky
Finnish works on Michurinism:
Darwin and the continuers of his work by Erkki Rautee (translated by myself)
On living matter and its transition to cell form by Heikki Kuusinen (translated by myself)
Capitalism threatens humanity with starvation by A. Hulkkonen (translated by myself)
“Excerpt against eugenics” (translated by myself)
O. B. LEPESHINSKAYA (1871-1963, Michurinist microbiologist)
Olga Borisovna Lepeshinskaya was a michurinist biologist who studied the development of cells. She demonstrated how cells developed during their lives, and how living matter organized itself. Laureate of the Stalin Prize of the first degree (1950), Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1950). Recipient of the Order of Lenin (1946) and Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
There is an article on Lepeshinskaya in In The World Of Soviet Science by Oleg Pisarzhevsky
A world discovery that has been silenced. (About the works of O. B. Lepeshinskaya) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“How life appears” (1953) [a verification of Lepeshinskaya’s discovery by Imre Töró]
A. N. STUDITSKY (1908-1991, Michurinist medical biologist)
Alexander Nikolaevich Studitsky was a Soviet histologist, doctor of biological sciences, laureate of the Stalin Prize (1951) and recipient of the Order of the Badge of Honor. Studitsky particularly studied regeneration and wound-healing. He applied michurinist teachings to his work and demonstrated their validity in practice: he successfully regenerated muscles from minced tissues, and managed to re-grow completely healthy avian bones from small fragments.
Studitsky’s achievements are impressive but they’ve been acknowledged even by modern-day capitalist researchers, for example:
Relationship Between the Tissue and Epimorphic Regeneration of Muscles, Carlson
The Regeneration of Skeletal Muscle – A Review, Carlson
Types of Morphogenetic Phenomena in Vertebrate Regenerating Systems, Carlson
List of some scientific papers and articles by Studitsky
A. N. BAKH (1857-1946, biochemist)
“Bakh, Aleksei Nikolaevich. Born Mar. 5 (17), 1857, in Zolotonosha, Poltava Oblast; died May 13, 1946, in Moscow. Soviet scientist and revolutionary figure; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR) (1929); Hero of Socialist Labor (1945). Founder of a school of Soviet biochemistry.
Bakh’s father was a technician. In 1875 Bakh entered the University of Kiev, from which he was expelled in 1878 for participation in student political activities. He was exiled to Belozersk for three years. When he returned to Kiev he entered the People’s Will organization. Beginning in 1883 he lived underground and did revolutionary work in Yaroslavl and Kazan. He gave lectures to the workers and popularized K. Marx’ economic teachings. On the basis of these lectures he wrote the book Hunger the Tsar (1883). After 1885 he lived as an émigré in France, the USA (1891–92), and Switzerland, and did scientific work. From 1905 to 1918, Bakh adhered to the Socialist Revolutionaries.
In 1917, Bakh returned to Russia. In 1918 he organized the Central Chemical Laboratory of the All-Russian Council of the National Economy of the RSFSR, which later became the L. Ia. Karpov Physicochemical Institute. Bakh was director of the institute until the end of his life. In 1920 he founded the Biochemical Institute of the People’s Commissariat of Health. In 1928 he became the head of the All-Union Association of Workers of Science and Engineering. In 1935, Bakh and A. I. Oparin organized the Institute of Biochemistry of the AN SSSR. Bakh was its director. (In 1944 the institute was named after him.) He was president of the D. I. Mendeleev All-Union Chemical Society (beginning in 1935). Between 1939 and 1945, Bakh was academician secretary of the Division of Chemical Sciences of the AN SSSR.
According to Bakh, the uniqueness of the living world in a chemical sense lies not so much in the peculiarities of its composition as in the diverse chemical transformations that are continuously going on in living organisms. Bakh’s attention was drawn to three basic problems of biochemistry: the chemism of carbon assimilation by green plants, which is the basis of the formation of organic substances in nature; the problem of oxidation processes that take place in the living cell, particularly the chemism of respiration; and the study of enzymes (enzymology). In his work on the assimilation of carbon dioxide by green plants, Bakh gave a new explanation of the nature of the formation of sugar in the process of carbon dioxide assimilation. He viewed the assimilation of carbon as a combined oxidation-reduction reaction that occurs by means of components of water. Proceeding from this point of view, he showed that the source of the molecular oxygen that is given off during assimilation is not carbon dioxide, as was formerly believed, but water.
Studying the role of peroxides that are formed during assimilation, Bakh arrived at a clarification of the nature of oxidation processes (1893–97). He gave final formulation to the peroxide theory of slow oxidation, according to which the energy necessary to activate molecular oxygen during spontaneous oxidation is supplied by the body being oxidized. These properties are possessed only by chemically unsaturated bodies that enter into interaction with the oxygen in the air and activate it. The activated oxygen interacts with the substance being oxidized and forms peroxide. The peroxide theory acquired special significance in the development of concepts on the chemism of respiration.
Bakh showed that oxidation is based on a series of enzyme oxidation and oxidation-reduction reactions that follow each other sequentially in a long chain of chemical transformations. He created new experimental methods for the investigation of enzymes. These methods are still used in both experimental and practical work at clinics, experimental stations, and factory laboratories. The results of Bakh’s work in enzymology are used in modern industrial biochemistry in the production of bread, beer, tea, and tobacco, in the retting of flax, in salting fish, and so forth.
Bakh was a deputy to the First Convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He won the Lenin Prize (1926) and the State Prize of the USSR (1941). Bakh was awarded four Orders of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
WORKS:
Sbornik izbrannykh trudov. Leningrad, 1937.
Zapiski narodovol’tsa, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1931.
REFERENCES:
Aleksei Nikolaevich Bakh. Moscow, 1946.
Bakh, L. A., and A. I. Oparin. Aleksei Nikolaevich Bakh: Biographicheskii ocherk: K 100–letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia, 1857–1957. Moscow, 1957.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article by A. I. OPARIN)
A. I. OPARIN (1894-1980, Michurinist biochemist)
Alexander Oparin was a biochemist who studied the origins of life from non-living matter. In 1924 he presented the hypothesis that life has emerged through the chemical evolution of carbon based molecules in the so-called ‘primordial soup’. Throughout his career Oparin further developed this idea. He showed convincingly how life emerged naturally without the need for any kind of supernatural creator. Oparin refuted both idealist vitalism and mechanistic models, and defended the correctness of dialectical materialism.
Oparin received the following awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1944)
-Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class (1945)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1969)
-5 Orders of Lenin (1953; 1964; 1967; 1969; 1974)
-Lenin Prize (1974)
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
-Medal “In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow”
-Jubilee medal “For Valiant Labor (For Military Valor). In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
-A. N. Bakh Prize
-I. I. Mechnikov Gold Medal
-Lomonosov Gold Meal
There is an article on Oparin in In The World Of Soviet Science by Oleg Pisarzhevsky
Works of Oparin:
The Origin Of Life (1952)
The Origin Of Life (1955)
The origin of life on the earth (1957)
“Oparin, Aleksandr Ivanovich. Born Feb. 18 (Mar. 2), 1894, in Uglich. Soviet biochemist. Founder of a scientific theory on the origin of terrestrial life. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946; corresponding member, 1939). Hero of Socialist Labor (1969).
Oparin graduated from Moscow University in 1917 and subsequently worked in a number of institutions of higher learning and research institutes. From 1942 to 1960 he was head of the subdepartment of plant biochemistry at Moscow University. In 1935, together with A. N. Bakh, Oparin organized the Institute of Biochemistry at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was deputy director of the institute until 1946, when he was made director. From 1948 to 1955 he was academician-secretary of the department of biology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
Oparin’s main works deal with biochemical principles of processing plant raw materials, enzyme activity in plants, and the origin of life on earth. He showed that biocatalysis is the basis of the production of a number of food products, and he developed the principles of Soviet technical biochemistry. Oparin’s first remarks on the origin of terrestrial life were made in 1922, and his book The Origin of Life was published in 1924. According to Oparin, life originated on earth as a result of the evolution of carbonaceous compounds.
Oparin became the president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life in 1970, and he has been its honorary president since 1977; he also is an honorary member of the academies of sciences of Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, Cuba, Spain, and Italy. He is also a member of the Leopoldine German Academy of Researchers in the Natural Sciences. A recipient of the Lenin Prize (1974), the A. N. Bakh Prize, and the I. I. Mechnikov Gold Medal, he has been awarded five Orders of Lenin, two other Soviet orders, and several foreign orders and medals.
WORKS
Izmenenie deistviia enzimov v rastitel’noi kletke pod vliianiem vneshnikh vozdeistvii. Moscow, 1952.
Vozniknovenie zhizni na Zemle, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1957.
Zhizn’, ee priroda, proiskhozhdenie i razvitie, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1968.
“Istoriia vozniknoveniia i razvitiia teorii proiskhozhdeniia zhizni.” Izv. AN SSSR Ser. biol., 1972, no. 6.
REFERENCE
A. I. Oparin, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1964. (AN SSSR: Materialy k biobibliografii uchenykh SSSR: Ser. biokhimii, fasc. 6.)” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
S. I. KUZNETSOV (1900-1987, microbiologist)
Sergei Ivanovich Kuznetsov, Russian scientist, microbiologist, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1960), Cavalier of the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, laureate of the USSR State Prize (1985), laureate of the Naumann Medal of the International Limnological Society (1971).
Born to a peasant family. In 1923 he graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Department of Moscow University. One of the first employees of the Department of Microbiology at Moscow State University, in 1942-1943 he served as the head of the department in Moscow. In 1931-1941 he headed the laboratory at the limnological station in Kosino, in 1941-1946 he headed the laboratory at the wastewater treatment plant in Lyubertsy. He headed the laboratory at the Institute of Microbiology of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1942. Founder and head of the microbiology laboratory at the Institute of Biology of Inland Waters of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Borok.
Kuznetsov worked mainly in the field of aquatic microbiology (microbiological processes as the main factor in the oxygen regime of lakes; the role of microorganisms in the circulation of substances in lakes; the use of radioactive isotopes of carbon and sulfur to study the intensity of the processes of the circulation of substances in water bodies) and the geological activity of microorganisms (in oil fields, during the formation and destruction of sulfur deposits and sulfide ores).
He received the following awards:
-Order of Lenin
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor
-Prize named after S. N. Vinogradsky of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1970)
-Naumann Medal of the International Limnological Society (1971)
-USSR State Prize (1985)
Species of bacteria Desulfotomaculum kuznetsovii and Giesbergeria kuznetsovii are named after S. I. Kuznetsov.
ISAAK PREZENT (1902-1969, Michurinist, Philosopher)
Prezent was one of the most important michurinist philosophers of science and a close collaborator of T. D. Lysenko. Doctor of Biological Sciences (1930), Academician of VASKhNIL (1948). He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1943).
Embryo Culture (1948)
Vegetative Tomato Hybrid (1948)
“Biology is Not Reducible to Chemistry and Physics” by Prezent and Lysenko
И. В. Мичурин и его учение, Презент, Исаак Израилевич [I. V. Michurin and his doctrine, Isaak Prezent]
G. V. PLATONOV (1918-2006, Michurinist, Philosopher of science)
I. E. GLUSHCHENKO (1907-1987, agrobiologist)
Doctor of Agriculture Science; Professor; Director, Laboratory of Plant Genetics, Institute of Genetics, USSR Academy of Science, since 1939; member, All Union Lenin Academy, of Agriculture Science, since 1956. Order of Red Banner of Labor; two Stalin Prizes, 1943, 1950. Member of the Communist Party since 1938.
ВЕГЕТАТИВНАЯ ГИБРИДИЗАЦИЯ РАСТЕНИЙ [Vegetative hybridization of plants] (1948)
The importance of vegetative hybridization to understanding the heredity of plants (1950)
Glushchenko: Polyfertilization (1957)
N. I. NUZHDIN (1904-1972, agrobiologist)
Graduated from the Yaroslavl Pedagogical Institute in 1929, employee of the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1935. Received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945). In 1949-1952 he headed the Department of Zoology at the K. A. Timiryazev Agricultural Academy in Moscow.
D. A. DOLGUSHIN (1903-1995, agrobiologist)
Agrobiologist and selectionist. Doctor of Agriculture Science since 1936; full member, All-Union Lenin Academy, of Agriculture Science, since 1948. Stalin Prize, 1941; Order of Red Banner of Labor.
V. N. STOLETOV (1906-1989, agrobiologist)
The Fundamentals of Michurin Biology by V. N. Stoletov (Audiobook)
List of some scientific papers and articles by Stoletov
N. V. TURBIN (1912-1998, agrobiologist)
Oddities of Segregation (1948)
List of some scientific papers and articles by Turbin
I. D. KOLESNIK (1900-1953, agrobiologist)
Ivan Danilovich Kolesnik graduated from the Poltava Agricultural Institute (1931), researcher at the Research Institute of Fruit and Berry Farming of the Ukrainian SSR (1931-1935), senior researcher at the Ukrainian Institute of Selection (1935-1938), experimental base of the All-Union Agricultural Academy of Agricultural Sciences “Gorki Leninskie” (1939-1941), All-Union Agricultural Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1941-1946). At the same time, in 1942-1946, deputy head of the Main Directorate of the Vegetable Rubber Industry of the People’s Commissariat of the Rubber Industry of the USSR.
Since 1946, director of the Research Institute of Natural Rubber, since 1947, head of the laboratory of mass-production experiments of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Candidate of Agricultural Sciences (1937), Academician of VASKhNIL (1948).
I. D. Kolesnik was awarded the Great Gold Medal of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (1939), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1940), the Stalin Prize (1943) and the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War” (1946)
“As far as the hill sowing of kok-saghyz is concerned, I only suggested the idea. For the elaboration and practical application of this method credit must be given to Stalin Prize winner I. D. Kolesnik and to the collective-farm members of Kiev Region.” (Lysenko, Why bourgeois science is up in arms against the work of Soviet scientists, Agrobiology, p. 511)
B. P. TOKIN (1900-1984, agrobiologist)
Boris Petrovich Tokin was a Soviet biologist, doctor of Biological Sciences (1935), rector of Tomsk University, founder of the Department of Embryology (1949) of Leningrad State University named after A. A. Zhdanov. President of the Leningrad Society of Nature Testers (1966-1984), creator of the doctrine of phytoncides. Hero of Socialist Labor. Laureate of the Stalin and State Prizes.
He was born in 1900 in the Mogilev region, Belarus, in the family of an apprentice craftsman. From the age of 10, he began working in a printing house as a sorter. In 1918 he graduated from the Volsk real school. He participated in the Civil War 1917-1922 and joined the RCP (b) in 1918. He did party work throughout 1921-22 and served in the Red Army in 1923-24. At the same time studied at the medical faculty of the 1st Moscow University, then moved to the biological department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. He graduated from the University in 1930. From 1929 he worked as a senior researcher at the Laboratory of Experimental Biology at the Moscow Zoo. Then, without leaving work at the zoo, he studied at the graduate school of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1928, B. P. Tokin proposed the term “phytoncides” (from the merger of ancient Greek φυτόν (plant) and Latin caedo (kill)) for toxic volatile substances of some plants with antimicrobial properties (bactericides of plant origin). Later he would earn a Stalin Prize for this research.
In the 1930s Tokin opposed the theory of O. B. Lepeshinskaya and put forward his own theory of cell ontogeny as its development between two divisions. In the 1930s he was the director of the K. A. Timiryazev State Biological Institute. In June 1936, Tokin was appointed rector of Tomsk State University, but was fired in 1937, expelled from the CPSU (b) and arrested in February 1938. A year later he was released and rehabilitated.
From March 1939 he worked at the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology of Tomsk State University. In 1941, he initiated the creation of the Tomsk Committee of Scientists, which brought together university staff for scientific research to help the army. During the Great Patriotic War Tokin developed further ways of using plants for anti-microbial and medicinal purposes, to help alleviate the shortage of medicines.
From 1945 to 1955 Tokin worked in the Institute of Experimental Medicine (VIEM) and was the professor and head of the department of embryology of the Leningrad State University. In 1950 he became a laureate of the Stalin Prize.
Tokin attacked reactionary mendelism-morganism. At the beginning of 1950, Tokin also sent a letter to the CC of the CPSU(b), where he reported that the secretary of the Jewish Masonic lodge, Professor D. N. Nasonov, professors P. G. Svetlov, A. A. Brown, A. D. Brown and certain others had formed a conspiratorial nationalist zionist group (see the section on Svetlov).
In 1966-1984 he was the president of the Leningrad Society of Naturalists (LOIP).
He earned the following awards:
-Laureate of the Stalin Prize of the third degree (1950) for the scientific work “Phytoncides” (1948)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1957)
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1961)
-Order of Lenin (1967)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1971)
-Order of the October Revolution (1980)
-Honorary citizen of the city of Volsk, Saratov region
-Various medals
A. S. MUSIYKO (1903-1980, corn breeder)
Alexander Samsonovich Musiyko, Ukrainian Soviet corn breeder. Corresponding Member of VASKhNIL (1956).
His career:
-1927-1930 district agronomist,
-1930-1931 agronomist for the organization of MTS,
-1931-1933 postgraduate student at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Grain Farming,
-1933-1939 chief agronomist of the grain department of the Odessa regional land department,
-1939-1941 senior research fellow in the department of grain crops, 1945-1973 head of the department of selection and seed production of corn and rye, 1958-1971 director, 1973-1980 senior research fellow-consultant at the All-Union Institute of Selection and Genetics (Odessa).
-From 1941 to 1945 he served in the Red Army and took part in the war.
-Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (1951), Professor (1952), Corresponding Member of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1956).
A scientist in the field of selection and seed production of grain crops. Author of 7 varieties and 3 hybrids of corn (bred on the basis of seeds purchased in the USA in 1955 by farmer Garst ), one variety of rye and one variety of buckwheat. Published more than 25 books and pamphlets.
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize, third degree (1947) – for the invention and introduction into agricultural practice of artificial pollination of corn, sunflower, rye, buckwheat and other agricultural crops
-two Orders of Lenin (1948; 1962)
-three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1949, 1958, 1966)
-Medal “For Labor Valor” (1954)
-Lenin Prize (1963)
-Order of the October Revolution (1971)
-Five VDNKh (All-Union Agricultural Exhibition) Gold Medals.
P. O. MAKAROV (1905-1975, Michurinist cytologist)
Pyotr Osipovich Makarov was a Soviet biologist and cytologist, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1950), laureate of the I. I. Mechnikov Prize (1950). Member of the CPSU since 1942.
P. O. Makarov graduated from the biological department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Leningrad University in 1928. From 1936 to 1941 he was Associate Professor of the Faculty of Biology at Leningrad University. In 1939 he defended his doctoral thesis on the problem of general and cellular anesthesia. From 1941 to 1944 he participated in the Great Patriotic War. He was the head of the department of general biology of the Leningrad Sanitary and Hygienic Medical Institute (1944-1960), professor of the department of general and comparative physiology (1945-1948), head of the laboratory of cytogenetics (1948-1960) of Leningrad University. In 1950 he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. Makarov was the head of the Department of Cytology and Histology of the Leningrad University from 1960 to 1967.
P. O. Makarov was the author of over 120 scientific papers, including 2 monographs, mainly on cell morphology and physiology. About 20 dissertations were prepared under his leadership, including 2 doctoral dissertations. He served as chairman of the board of the Leningrad society “Knowledge” .
Makarov opposed reactionary mendelist idealist pseudo-science. In 1949, in Leningrad, he gave a public lecture entitled “The Failure of the Cytological Foundations of Weismannism-Morganism”, published in 1949 by the Leningrad Society “Knowledge”.
Makarov earned two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and was given the I. I. Mechnikov (1950) prize for the collection “Against the reactionary Morganism-Mendelism”
F. K .TETEREV (1906-?, biologist)
Filipp Kuzmich Teterev, biologist, doctor of biological sciences (1961). He worked with I. V. Michurin in his nursery, graduated in 1932 from the Michurin Fruit and Vegetable Institute . Member of the Great Patriotic War. For many years he worked at the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry. Author of many varieties of cherries, cherries, honeysuckle. Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1950) and awarded 2 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor as well as medals.
“The level of biological sciences in the USSR is unprecedented as a result of applying the teachings of Michurin and the work of his great students: Professor Tsitsin, Professor Lysenko, Teterev, Kardon, Williams, Maksimenko and others.” (Kurt Morgenstern, The Soviet materialist biology of Michurin)
“The breeder Teterev realized Michurin’s wish to cover the almond kernel with the flesh of a good cherry instead of a worthless shell. He succeeded in crossing the almond with the cherry. Other researchers succeeded in growing an oil fruit tree, the Amokade, for the Russian south. Their tasty fruits contain 40% oil and nine vitamins. A very great breeding achievement is the Komsomol strawberry. It has large fruit, is ready to ship, produces large yields, has an excellent taste and achieves full harvests.” (Kurt Morgenstern, The Soviet materialist biology of Michurin)
A. A. AVAKIAN (1907-1966, Michurinist Biologist)
Colleague of T. D. Lysenko. Graduated from Yerevan Agricultural Institute (1931). He worked as an agronomist-cotton grower at the Sardarpat state farm of the Armenian SSR (1931-1932). Postgraduate student of the All-Russian Research Institute of Plant Growing (1932-1935). Senior researcher, head of the department of genetics of the All-Union Research Institute of Selection and Genetics (1936-1939). Head of the genetics department of the experimental base of the All-Union Agricultural Academy of Agricultural Sciences “Gorki Leninskie” (1939-1941). Head of the Laboratory of Plant Genetics at the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1941-1944). Senior researcher, head of the potato department of the Moldavian Agricultural Complex Experimental Station of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Moldavian SSR (1944-1946). Head of the laboratory of genetics, and. O. director, senior researcher at the experimental base of the All-Union Agricultural Academy of Agricultural Sciences “Gorki Leninskie” (1946-1966). Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (1941), corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946), full member of VASKhNIL (1948).
Avakian was awarded the following prizes:
2 Stalin Prizes (1941, 1951)
Order of Lenin (1949)
Order of the Badge of Honor (1939)
Small Gold Medal of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (1939)
N. M. SISSAKYAN (1907-1966, biochemist)
Norayr Martirosovich Sissakyan, Soviet Armenian biochemist. Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1960; corresponding member from 1953), academician of the Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences (1965; corresponding member since 1945). His main works were on the study of the patterns of enzyme action in the process of metabolism, biochemistry of plant drought resistance, technical biochemistry, space biology.
He played a part in the Soviet space program, directly participated in the selection of the first cosmonauts, and helped create the criteria for their training. In 1964 he was elected Chairman of the XIII session of the General Conference of UNESCO.
He received the following awards:
-3 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1945, 1954, 1961)
-Order of the Badge of Honor
-2 USSR Academy of Sciences A. N. Bach prizes (1950, 1966)
-I. I. Mechnikov Prize of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1951)
-Stalin Prize of the third degree (1952) for the scientific work “Enzymatic activity of protoplasmic structures” (1951)
A crater on the Moon is named after Sissakyan.
I. K. MAKSIMENKO (1907-1976, biologist)
Ivan Kyrylovych Maksymenko, breeder scientist, geneticist, doctor of biological sciences, professor, member of the Academy of Sciences of the Turkmen SSR (since 1959), Hero of Socialist Labor (1965), Honored Worker of Sciences of the Turkmen SSR, Honored Agronomist of the TSSR.
He was awarded the Order of Lenin (1965), three Orders of the Red Banner (1944, 1950, 1957), two orders of the Badge of Honour (1949, 1954), I. V. Michurin Gold Medal (1961), medal “For Labor Valor” (1952) and other medals.
“The level of biological sciences in the USSR is unprecedented as a result of applying the teachings of Michurin and the work of his great students: Professor Tsitsin, Professor Lysenko, Teterev, Kardon, Williams, Maksimenko and others.” (Kurt Morgenstern, The Soviet materialist biology of Michurin)
“The researcher Maksimenko succeeded in cultivating cotton in a wide variety of colors that are lightfast and washable. It is not yet possible to foresee what opportunities this will create for the textile industry.” (Kurt Morgenstern, The Soviet materialist biology of Michurin)
“The main areas of scientific research are selection and seed production of cotton. He revealed the regularities of hereditary changes in cotton plants during remote hybridization and developed methods for accelerating the breeding process. I obtained a number of thin-fiber varieties with a compact habit of a bush, which are distinguished by high yield, early ripening and good technological qualities of the fiber. For the first time in the USSR, he brought out varieties of cotton with naturally dyed fiber, which was a strategic raw material during the German-Soviet war (camouflage made of natural brown and green cotton could not be recognized from the air). The author of valuable varieties of fine-fiber cotton” (Wikipedia)
V. N. REMESLO (1907-1983, Michurinist plant breeder)
Vasily Nikolaevich Remeslo was a Ukrainian Soviet breeder. CPSU member since 1942. Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (1964). Academician of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1964) and the USSR Academy of Sciences (1974). Inventor of widespread varieties of grain crops. Author of over 200 scientific papers, including 5 monographs. Some of his works have been published abroad.
Remeslo carried out experiments on vernalization under N. I. Vavilov, and adopted Michurinist methods. His Mironovskaya 808 variety, according to Remeslo, was obtained from the Artemovka spring wheat variety by “shaking up the heredity” during winter sowing. This method is also known as “turning spring varities into winter varities” and is one of the components of the Michurin doctrine. The use of the “remaking method” continued at the Mironovsky Institute of Wheat, as well as in other large breeding centers, and after the death of V. N. Remeslo. A number of winter wheat varieties were obtained in this way.
Academician V. V. Morgun explains the transformation of spring varieties into winter varieties by thermal mutagenesis. “The method of alterations… is essentially a method of obtaining mutations through the use of low temperatures, the mutagenicity of which has been proven.” In this capacity, the phenomenon of the transformation of spring forms into hereditarily winter ones and back continues to be studied at the Mironovsky Institute of Wheat Selection and Seed Growing (wikipedia).
President of VASKhNIL M. A. Olshansky told Khrushchev in a letter dated July 14, 1964 that Remeslo shares the direction in biology developed by Academician T. D. Lysenko:
“V. N. Remeslo not only shares Michurin’s teaching, but also knows how to use it in breeding work. On the basis of this teaching, the winter wheat variety “Mironovskaya 264” was bred, then an even more winter-hardy and productive variety “Mironovskaya 808”; now an even more productive variety “Kievskaya 893″ has been submitted to the state commission for variety testing, and a number of even better varieties are approaching agricultural crops.”
V. N. Remeslo was one of the signatories of the “letter of the 24” in defense of Lysenko.
He received the following awards:
-Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class (1945)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1950)
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1958)
-Lenin Prize (1963) – for the development of high-yielding varieties of winter and spring wheat, winter and spring barley
-twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1966; 1977)
-four Orders of Lenin (1966; 1973; 1975; 1977)
-Order of the October Revolution (1971)
-V. Ya. Yuryev Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1976)
-National Prize of the GDR, 1st class (1976)
-USSR State Prize (1979) – for the development of new intensive winter wheat varieties that have become widely used
-Honored Scientist of the Ukrainian SSR
M. A. OLSHANSKY (1908-1988, agrobiologist, Michurinist breeder)
Mikhail Alexandrovich Olshansky was a Soviet agrobiologist, agronomist and breeder.
Olshansky was born to a poor family in Ukraine and graduated from the Maslovsky Institute of Breeding and Seed Production in the Kyiv region in 1928. He became a Candidate of Agricultural Sciences, Professor (1936), Academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1948). In 1960-1962, he was Minister of Agriculture of the USSR. Member of the CPSU (b) since 1932. He retired in March 1965, when Michurinism was overthrown by the revisionists.
On July 14, 1964, Olshansky wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU and N. S. Khrushchev, criticizing the reactionary morganist and anti-communist Zhores Medvedev, and demanding that Medvedev’s “streams of dirty slander” against T. D. Lysenko be stopped.
Olshansky worked at numerous research institutes and also in the Supreme Soviet. He published around 100 scientific papers. He created valuable new varieties such as Kenaf No. 5136; cotton “Odessa-1”. The website of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences states that this variety “is distinguished by high yield, early maturity, fiber yield and length, and bolls size.”
Olshansky received the following awards:
Large silver medal of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (1940)
Stalin Prize of the second degree (1941) – for the breeding of the cotton variety “Odessa No. 1” for new cotton-sowing areas
Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” (1945)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1948)
Order of Lenin (1949)
Stalin Prize of the first degree (1951) – for the scientific and production development of issues of the nesting method of sowing forests.
N. V. TSITSIN (1898-1980, botanist, biologist)
Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939), VASKhNIL (1938; vice-president in 1938-1948). Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1968, 1978); Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1978) and the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1943).
“Academician Tsitsin, by crossing wheat with couch grass, produced a new variety of perennial wheat that is impervious to drought. In a conversation he had with Academician Tsitsin, Comrade Stalin said: “Be bolder in your experiments, we will support you.” (A History of the USSR, ed. A. M. Pankratova (1948) vol.3, p. 380)
Hansen on Michurin and Tsitsin (1941)
K. A. MESHCHERSKAYA (1909-1991, pharmacologist)
Kira Alexandrovna Meshcherskaya was a Soviet biologist and pharmacologist, doctor of medical sciences, professor. Her husband was the noted scientist, Order of Red Star winner, D. M. Steinberg.
Meshcherskaya was born on June 10, 1909 into an aristocrat family in Smolensk province. Having received a home education, then a secondary education in a Soviet school, Kira Alexandrovna studied at the 2nd Leningrad Medical Institute from 1926 to 1931. After graduating from high school, Meshcherskaya was sent to work as a doctor at the health center of a mechanical plant in Kemerovo. Returning two years later to Leningrad, from 1933 to 1935 she worked as a junior researcher at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (VIEM). At this period she was fired from her job in connection with administrative actions against her aristocratic family. However, she was transferred to other work and demonstrated her loyalty to the Soviet power and communism. She worked for a year at the Kazakh Research Institute for the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood (Alma-Ata ), then for another year as a district pediatrician in Leningrad, without leaving scientific studies, which she devoted to her free time from her main work.
After defending her Ph.D. thesis at Leningrad University (specialty: biology) in 1937, she was accepted as an assistant at the Department of Pharmacology of the Pediatric Medical Institute and began preparing her doctoral dissertation, which was interrupted by the Great Patriotic War. Meshcherskaya volunteered for the front.
In June 1941, she was drafted by the City Military Commissariat of Leningrad into the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. During the Great Patriotic War, she served as a battalion doctor, head of the sanitary service of a separate sanitary battalion, chief toxicologist of the 23rd Army (Leningrad Front). She used coniferous tincture in the army as an antiscorbutic agent. She proved that when using the mud solution of Gorky Lake on the 15th day of treatment, complete healing of wounds occurred. When this solution was used orally at a dose of 0.5 ml per 100 grams of water for 14 days, the ulcerative surfaces of the stomach healed. During the war, K. A. Meshcherskaya received four military ranks, was awarded orders and medals, and was demobilized with the rank of major in the medical service. She joined the CPSU(b) in 1943.
After demobilization, Meshcherskaya returned to teaching at the pediatric institute. After defending her doctoral dissertation in pharmacology in 1947 on “Analysis of the toxic effect of potassium ions and its features in different periods of animal growth (On the problem of age-related physiology)”, she worked as a senior researcher at the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research Institute (Leningrad). Then she headed the department of pharmacology of the Chelyabinsk (since 1949) and the departments of biology and pharmacology of the Blagoveshchensk (since 1952) medical institutes. In both universities she was vice-rector for academic and scientific work. From 1968 to 1986 she headed the Department of Pharmacology at the Vladivostok State Medical Institute.
Professor K. A. Meshcherskaya was engaged in active social work, she was the permanent chairman of the Primorsky branches of the I. P. Pavlov All-Union Society of Physiologists and the society of pharmacologists; was the chairman of the Primorsky biomedical section of the All-Union Society “Knowledge” etc.
Her war medals and other awards are numerous. Among others, they include:
Order of the Patriotic War II degree, April 6, 1985
Order of the Red Star, October 2, 1943
Order of the Badge of Honor
Military Merit Medal, November 6, 1942
Medal “For the Defense of Leningrad”, June 1, 1943
Medal “For the victory over Germany”
D. M. STEINBERG (1909-1962, entomologist)
Dmitry Maksimilianovich Steinberg was Soviet entomologist, doctor of biological sciences, professor (1949). His first wife was the noted scientist, fighter and Order of the Red Star winner K. A. Meshcherskaya.
Born in 1909 in St. Petersburg, D. M. Steinberg is the son of composer M. O. Steinberg, and grandson of composer N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. He graduated from the Faculty of Biology and Soil Science of Leningrad State University in 1930. From 1931 he worked at the All-Union Institute of Plant Protection, taught at the Department of General Biology of the 2nd Leningrad Medical Institute. In 1941-1945 he was on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, volunteering for a division of the people’s militia. At the same time, in 1942-1944, he was the head of the department of general biology of the 2nd Leningrad Medical Institute, which he headed after the death of P. P. Ivanov (1878-1942).
In 1945-1962 he worked at the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad:
in 1949-1953 he was the head of the expedition to study the fauna of the steppes of Western Kazakhstan and the deserts of Turkmenistan; in 1954-1959, the deputy director of the institute for science; since 1960, head of the laboratory of experimental entomology and theoretical foundations of biological control of insect pests and vice-president of the All-Union Entomological Society.
D. M. Steinberg is the author of about 40 scientific papers on taxonomy, morphology and physiology of insects; problems of diapause, cold resistance and phytoperiodism in insects; issues of biological factors in the fight against insect pests.
D. M. Steinberg earned the Order of the Red Star (1944), Medal for the Defense of Leningrad, and the Order of the Badge of Honor (1953)
B. G. IOGANZEN (1911-1996, agrobiologist, ecologist)
Bodo Germanovich Ioganzen was a Soviet biologist, one of the founders of the development of ecology as a science in the USSR. Doctor of Biological Sciences (1944), Professor (1945).
Born in 1911 in Tomsk in the family of a famous ornithologist, entomologist and phenologist, professor G. E. Iogansen. In 1928 B. G. Iohanzen entered the zoological department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of TSU, in 1932 he graduated from the university with a degree in ichthyology and hydrology. In 1932-1935 he worked as a researcher, head of the scientific department of the West Siberian Fisheries Station in Tomsk. Since 1934, the scientific and pedagogical activity of B. G. Ioganzen began at TSU as an assistant to Professor M. D. Ruzsky. In 1935, he was approved with the academic rank of associate professor and appointed acting head of the Department of Ichthyology and Hydrobiology of TSU. In 1936 he defended his Ph.D. thesis on the topic “Morpho-biological features of cyclostomes of Siberia”. At the same time, in 1935-1941, he worked at the Biological Research Institute at TSU. In 1940-1942 and in 1944-1987 he was the head of the Department of Ichthyology and Hydrobiology of TSU. For more than 30 years he was the head of the faculty of TSU: Faculty of Biology in 1939-1942, 1944-1948, then Faculty of Biology and Soil from 1954-1964 and from 1973-1985.
For about 20 years he lectured on Darwinism. From June 26, 1964 to January 26, 1971, he was the rector of the Tomsk State Pedagogical Institute (the first head of the institute with this title of position), in 1971-1972 vice-rector of the TSPI for scientific work.
Ioganzen is the author of about 800 scientific papers and was given two Orders of the Badge of Honor and a Silver medal of VDNKh (the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy of the USSR).
Ioganzen was a defender of Michurinist materialist biology. Reactionary L. N. Medvedev stated that “in the late 80s, B. G. Ioganzen and E. D. Logachev… tried to revive Lysenko’s… ideas” (L. N. Medvedev, “Pseudoscience enters education”)
S. S. PEROV (1889-1967, Michurinist biochemist)
Sergei Stepanovich Perov was a Soviet scientist. The main works in the field of biochemistry, physical and colloidal chemistry and lactology. He was the founder of a new branch of biochemistry, the biochemistry of protein substances. Professor (1930), academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935), Doctor of Chemical Sciences (1936). Perov spoke at the August session of VASKhNIL in 1948 in defense of T. D. Lysenko.
He graduated from the gymnasium in Vologda, entered St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1913. After graduating from the university, he returned to Vologda, where he worked as a laboratory assistant. In 1918 he joined the RCP(b); carried out the instructions of the party to organize the work of the printing house and the scientific and technical committee of the Gubsovnarkhoz.
In 1920 he was elected professor in the department of colloid chemistry at the VMHI, the Vologda Dairy Institute, after some time he was hired by the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture as a scientific consultant. Later he worked as the head of agricultural education at the Glavprofobra, deputy director of the Timiryazev Research Institute, director of the Protein Laboratory of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1930–35 and since 1943) and the Protein Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1935–42), professor at the Moscow Veterinary Academy (1932–41) and the Moscow Fur and Fur Institute (1930-34 and 1949-55), head of the Protein Laboratory of the All-Russian Research Institute of Animal Husbandry.
He received the Stalin Prize for scientific research on protein biochemistry, published in the following works: “Protein protoacids of a number of seeds of herbaceous, shrubby and woody plants”, “Weight loss of the purest protein protoacid at 105 °”, “Basic principles of pure vegetable feed protein technology”, “Colloidal properties of the purest casein protein protoacid in an active acidic medium” (Reports of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 1947-1948). S. S. Perov developed a method for obtaining fodder protein for farm animals, which was tested at the Yermolino state farm in the Moscow Region in 1952-1958.
He wrote more than 150 scientific papers, including:
-Primary analytical methods for studying animal protein // Reports of VASKhNIL. 1956. Issue 9. S. 7-10.
-Muscle proteins of agricultural animals / Co-author A.P. Sadokova // Reports of VASKhNIL. 1957. Issue 5. S. 30-34.
-On some harms in the thinking and behavior of the advocates of artificial insemination // Livestock breeding. 1958. No. 4. S. 87-88.
-On the colloidal state of salts of casein protoacid / Co-author A.P. Sadokova // Dokl. VASKHNIL. 1964. Issue. 4. S. 37-39.
-Protein substances of the blood serum of the Romanov sheep and the effect of sour protein on the live weight of lambs / Co-author A.P. Sadokova // Proceedings -of the All-Russian Research Institute of Physiology and Biochemistry of Farm Animals. 1965. T. 2. S. 16-29.
-Casein protein protoacid. Methods of obtaining and physico-chemical characteristics, M., 1947;
-Physical and chemical indicators of a number of protoacids in the dynamics of concentrations and temperatures (On the problem of the structure of protein substances), M., 1951.
S. S. Perov was awarded the following state awards and prizes:
-Stalin Prize (1949).
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1949)
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
-Medal “In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow”.
M. F. IVANOV (1871-1935, animal breeder)
Mikhail Fedorovich Ivanov was a significant Soviet animal breeder, teacher. He was one of the founders of the zootechnical experimentation industry in the USSR. He was awarded the Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR in 1929 and was elected to the position of academician of VASKhNIL in 1935.
“Academician V. R. Williams contributed a great deal to the theory of agrobiology in the sphere of agronomy, as has Academician M. F. Ivanov in the field of animal husbandry.” (Lysenko, Engels and certain problems of darwinism, Agrobiology, p. 350)
“In the field of sheep breeding, for example, 21.4 kg of wool, significantly improved quality and 157 kg of live weight are reported for the Askania-Rambouillett breed for animals bred by M. F. Ivanov.” (Kurt Morgenstern, The Soviet materialist biology of Michurin)
D. M. FEDOTOV (1888-1972, biologist)
Dmitry Mikhailovich Fedotov was a Soviet biologist, founder of the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics (1921 ), founder of the Museum of Zoology and Invertebrates of Perm University, founder and first director Kama Biological Station, Deputy Director of the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology (1944–1949).
The first scientific articles by D. M. Fedotov are devoted to the fauna and systematics of spiders. In the future, these studies were continued by his first Perm student D. E. Kharitonov. Later, D. M. Fedotov dealt with general issues of biology: morphology and phylogeny of echinoderms , evolutionary problems of echinoderms, intestinal gills and chordates: “Carboniferous lamellar-gill mollusks of the Donetsk basin” (1932), “Echinoderms” in Fundamentals of paleontology (1934), “Harmful turtle” ( 1960), “Evolution and phylogeny of invertebrates” (1966), “Issues of functional morphology and embryology of insects” (1968). The data he received were included in textbooks and are recognized as classics.
He was awarded the The order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945), and the rank of Honored Scientist of the RSFSR.
V. V. PASHKEVICH (1856-1939, biologist)
Vasily Vasilyevich Pashkevich, Soviet scientist, specialist in the field of fruit growing, Doctor of Biological Sciences (1934), Academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935), Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1935).
In 1882 he graduated from St. Petersburg University, receiving a master’s degree in natural sciences. After graduating from the university, he trained for two years in Germany and Austria. From 1894 he worked in the Department of Agriculture of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property, from 1922 in the department of applied botany and breeding, reorganized in 1924 into the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops (since 1930 – the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry). He was a professor at the Leningrad Agricultural Institute since 1922.
The main works are devoted to the study of varieties (pomology) of apple trees and other fruit crops. Conducted numerous surveys of gardens in various regions of the USSR.
A. P. REDKIN (1875-1966, animal breeder)
Andrey Petrovich Redkin was a Soviet scientist in the field of livestock engineering and agronomy, honorary academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hero of Socialist Labor (1965).
Since 1930 Redkin was a consultant to the Glavsvinovod (Main Directorate of Pig Breeding Sovkhoz in the Ministry of Sovkhoz of the USSR), a researcher at the Institute of the Meat and Dairy Industry and the All-Union Institute of Animal Husbandry. He was the author of a large number of scientific works in the field of breeding, crossing breeds, feeding. Under his leadership, the Kalikinsky and Murom breeds of pigs were bred, which showed high productivity in the conditions of central Russia. During the Great Patriotic War, he was engaged in writing the textbook “Pig Breeding”, which subsequently withstood fourteen reprints in the USSR and was published abroad. For great services in agricultural science, Redkin was awarded the title of Honored Scientist of the RSFSR in 1946. Since 1956 he taught as a professor in the Moscow Timiriazev Academy.
He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle medal in 1965.
A. S. FAMINTSYN (1835-1918, botanist)
“Famintsyn, Andrei Sergeevich. Born June 17 (29), 1835, in Moscow; died Dec. 8, 1918, in Petrograd. Russian botanist and public figure. Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1884; adjunct professor, from 1878).
In 1857, Famintsyn graduated from the University of St. Petersburg, where he was a student of A. S. Tsenkovskii. He became an instructor at the university in 1861 and served as a professor there from 1867 to 1889. In 1890 he founded and became the first director of the laboratory of plant anatomy and physiology of the Academy of Sciences. (The laboratory is now the K. A. Timiriazev Institute of Plant Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.)
Famintsyn was the founder of the St. Petersburg school of plant physiologists, who included I. P. Borodin, A. F. Batalin, and D. I. Ivanovskii. In 1887 he wrote the first Russian-language textbook on plant physiology. Famintsyn principally studied photosynthesis and plant metabolism. He proved that assimilation of CO2 and the formation of starch could occur under natural illumination. He and O. V. Baranetskii were the first—in 1867—to isolate the green cells of algae from lichens. Famintsyn discovered the symbiosis of algae and radiolarians and developed the theory of symbiogenesis. In 1901 he introduced the study of the natural sciences and mathematics to the Russian educational system; that same year he became the chairman of the Bureau of Bibliography in these subjects at the Academy of Sciences. Famintsyn and V. I. Vernadskii organized the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia. Famintsyn served as president of the Free Economic Society from 1906 to 1909, and he was appointed honorary president of the Russian Botanical Society in 1915.
WORKS
Obmen veshchestv i prevrashchenie energii v rasteniiakh. St. Petersburg, 1883.
Uchebnik fiziologii rastenii. St. Petersburg, 1887.
“O roli simbioza v evoliutsii organizmov.” Zapiski Imperatorskoi AN Fiz.-mat. otdelenie Seriia 8, 1907, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 1–14.
REFERENCES
Borodin, I. P. “Andrei Sergeevich Famintsyn (1835–1918).” Zhurnal Russkogo botanicheskogo obshchestva, 1919, vol. 4, no. 1 (references).
Senchenkova, E. M. “Andrei Sergeevich Famintsyn (K 40-letiiu so dnia smerti).” Botanicheskii zhurnal, 1960, vol. 45, no. 2 (references).
Istoriia i sovremennoe sostoianie fiziologii rastenii v Akademii nauk. Moscow, 1967.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article by D. V. LEBEDEV)
A. N. KRASNOV (1862-1914, botanist)
“Krasnov, Andrei Nikolaevich. Born Oct. 27 (Nov. 8), 1862, in St. Petersburg, died Dec. 19, 1914 (Jan. 1, 1915), in Tbilisi. Russian botanist and geographer.
Krasnov, who graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1885, was a professor at the University of Kharkov from 1889 to 1911. He participated in botanical expeditions to the Altai, Tien-Shan, the Caucasus, North America, Japan, China, Java, India, Ceylon, and the Mediterranean. Krasnov’s principal works are on the history and present-day vegetation of Middle Asia, of the steppes of the northern hemisphere, and of the subtropical tea-growing regions of Asia. He was one of the pioneers of Russian subtropical farming, particularly the cultivation of tea and citrus crops in the Caucasus. Krasnov is buried in the Batumi Botanical Garden, which he founded in 1912.
WORKS
Geografiia rastenii. Kharkov, 1899.
REFERENCES
Beilin, I. G., and V. A. Parnes. Andrei Nikolaevich Krasnov. Moscow, 1968. (List of works.)” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
V. L. KOMAROV (1869-1945, botanist)
Botanist Vladimir Leontievich Komarov was awarded numerous awards such as Hero of Socialist Labor (1944), three orders of Lenin (1939, 1944, 1945) and two first degree Stalin Prizes in 1941 for the work “The doctrine of the species in plants” and in 1942 as part of a team for the work “On the development of the national economy of the Urals in war conditions”. Komarov was the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1936 to his death in 1945.
V. N. LYUBIMENKO (1873-1937, botanist)
Vladimir Nikolaevich Lyubimenko was a Russian Soviet botanist, specialist in plant physiology, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1922, USSR Academy of Sciences since 1925) and full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (since 1929).
Lyubimenko worked in numerous areas of botany, writing 200 scientific works. He studied practical plants of economic value (tea, rubber etc.), worked in plant cytology, was the first to measure volume variations in plant cell nuclei based on different types of cell division.
His most famous discoveries relate to the effect of sun light on plants, their pigment, nutrient intake etc. He created new instruments for measuring these phenomena. He studied the chlorophyll content of 600 species, dividing them into light-loving and shade-tolerant. He was the first to prove the existence of a “light threshold”, i.e. the minimum needed for photo-synthesis.
He also studied photoperiodization and ecological factors on chlorophyll content. The establishment of the most important patterns and evolution of the process of photosynthesis, the clarification of the relationship between the plant and the light factor is the most important merit of V. N. Lyubimenko, which placed him among the leading phytophysiologists of the ecological direction.
Having become interested in the protochlorophyll discovered by K. A. Timiryazev and N. A. Monteverde, Lyubimenko began to look for it and discovered its presence in the skin of pumpkin seeds. He made numerous discoveries and confirmed the conclusion of K. A. Timiryazev about the participation of the oxidative process in the formation of chlorophyll. Lyubimenko traced the evolution of plastid pigments in different plant organs. He established a physiological similarity between the autumn yellowing of leaves and the ripening of fruits.
V. N. Lyubimenko wrote several general biological works: on pigments (jointly with V. A. Brilliant-Lerman) – “Plant Coloration” (1924), on aerial nutrition – “Matter and Plants” (1924) and “Photosynthesis and Chemosynthesis in the Plant World” (1935). These works are original scientific research. They cover the history of the issue, critically develop the research of scientists on this problem, provide extensive lists of literature and present the author’s own works. V. N. Lyubimenko wrote an extensive “Course in Botany” (1923), which was translated into foreign languages.
P. P. IVANOV (1878-1942, embryologist)
Piotr Pavlovich Ivanov was a Soviet embryologist and a professor. He studied segmentation in annelids and arthropods and proposed the differentiation of two kinds of segments in segmented organisms and the developmental (or ontogenetic) idea of heteronomous metamery where several segments fuse to perform a common function.
Ivanov graduated from the 1st classical gymnasium in 1896 and joined St. Petersburg University. His research was on the regeneration of segments in the worm Lumbriculus variegatus for which he received a gold medal in 1901. He then went to the biological research station, Naples to study regeneration in marine annelids. In 1906 he received a A. O. Kovalevsky scholarship scholarship to visit the Sunda Islands and collected a large number of invertebrates and made studies of Limulus mollucanus, Xiphosura and Scolopendra. In 1911 he studied in Munich. His master’s thesis at St. Petersburg University was on a comparative study of regeneration in annelids. In 1919 he became a professor at St. Petersburg University and began an embryology laboratory in 1922. In 1932 he moved to the Institute of Experimental Medicine and became the head of experimental embryology. He received a doctorate in 1932. He published a book on general and comparative embryology in 1937 in which he proposed the theory of primary heteronomy which he had begun in 1928. Ivanov’s ideas were proposed from 1928 onwards in a series of papers.
Ivanov’s school of students who became embryologists of note included L. N. Zhinkin, D. M. Steinberg, and K. A. Meshcherskaya. Out of his students P. G. Svetlov became a reactionary morganist.
G. S. ZAITSEV (1887-1929, botanist, plant breeder)
Gavriil Semyonovich Zaitsev, Soviet biologist, botanist, plant breeder.
V. A. BRILLIANT-LERMAN (1888-1954, plant physiologist)
Varvara Aleksandrovna Brilliant-Lerman was a Soviet plant physiologist.
Born to a poor intelligentsia family. In 1912, she graduated from the Bestuzhev Higher Women’s Courses (the only possibility, since it was not possible for women to receive university education or any other kind of higher education under the Tsar). From 1913 to 1920, she worked at the Department of Plant Physiology of the Petrograd University, and from 1913 to 1926, she worked in the laboratories of a number of universities in Petrograd. From 1920, she worked in the Main Botanical Garden of the RSFSR, and from 1931, in the Botanical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences , where from 1945 to 1954 she headed the Department of Ecology and Plant Physiology.
The main scientific works are devoted to the physiological specifics of photosynthesis. She established the optimum of photosynthesis with some water deficiency in assimilating cells (1925). In 1936 she showed that photosynthesis is a function of a living plant, and not an ordinary physical and chemical process. She studied the influence of acidity, concentration of K, Ca, Mg ions in the soil, oxygen in the air and other environmental factors on the intensity of photosynthesis.
A. N. BEKETOV (1825-1902, botanist)
Andrei Nikolaevich Beketov was a pre-revolutionary materialist Russian botanist, teacher, organizer and popularizer of science, public figure, botanist (morphologist, taxonomist, botanist-geographer). The founder of the geography of vegetation in Russia. He was the teacher of K. A. Timiryazev.
“Turning to the study of the role of light in the life of organic forms, K. A. Timiryazev continued and developed the scientific research of his teacher, the outstanding evolutionist A. N. Beketov.” (I. I. Novinsky, On the unity of the organism and the environment (1952))
A. V. SOVETOV (1826-1901, soil agronomist, soil scientist)
“Sovetov, Aleksandr Vasil’evich. Born Nov. 12 (24), 1826, in the village of Gul’nevo, in present-day Dmitrov Raion, Moscow Oblast; died Nov. 24 (Dec. 7), 1901, in St. Petersburg. Russian agronomist.
In 1850, Sovetov graduated from the Gory-Goretsk Agricultural Institute (now the Byelorussian Agricultural Academy); he taught at the institute from the time of his graduation to 1859. In 1853 he was sent to Germany, Belgium, and other European countries for two years to study their agricultural systems. He was appointed chairman of the agriculture department of the University of St. Petersburg in 1859.
Sovetov’s main works dealt with land cultivation, soil science, animal husbandry, and the processing of farm products. He developed rational agricultural procedures, and he studied the soils of the chernozem provinces of Russia. Sovetov critically generalized the Russian and European experience in feed-grass cultivation and land-cultivation systems. He was the first agronomist in the world to recognize the relationship between the development of land-cultivation systems and social and economic conditions.
In 1860, Sovetov became head of the agricultural department of the Free Economic Society and editor of the society’s Trudy (Transactions). He published Materials for the Study of Russian Soils in 1885–96 (jointly with V. V. Dokuchaev) and in 1898–1900 (jointly with N. P. Adamov).
WORKS
Izbr. soch. Moscow, 1950. (Bibliography.)
REFERENCES
Sobolev, S. S. “Vydaiushchiisia agronom A. V. Sovetov (1826–1901). Pochvovedenie, 1951, no. 6.
Krokhalev, S. S. “A. V. Sovetov—kak predshestvennik Vil’iamsa v uchenii o sistemakh zemledeliia.” Doklady Moskovskoi sel’sko-khoziaistvennoi akademii im. K. A. Timiriazeva, 1949, issue 11.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article by A. P. BERDYSHEV)
M. A. MENZBIR (1855-1935, zoologist)
Mikhail Alexandrovich Menzbir was a Soviet zoologist and zoogeographer, Honored Professor of Moscow University and Rector of Moscow University (1917-1919), full member of the Academy Sciences of the USSR (1929), founder of Russian ornithology.
In 1874 he graduated from the Tula Gymnasium and entered the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. Among his university teachers are professors N. A. Severtsov, Ya. A. Borzenkov, S. A. Usov and others.
In 1878, M. A. Menzbir graduated from Moscow University with a gold medal for an essay on the morphology of Diptera and was left at the university to prepare for a professorship.
In 1882 he defended his thesis for a master’s degree in zoology on the topic “Ornithological geography of European Russia”, which became a classic work in zoogeography. In 1886 he defended his dissertation for the degree of doctor of zoology.
In 1911, he left the university (together with rector V. I. Vernadsky) in protest against the police intrusion into the university while pacifying student “riots” and in protest against the violation of the autonomy of higher education by the reactionary policy of the Minister of Public Education L. A. Casso.
In 1917 he created the laboratory of zoogeography and comparative anatomy of the Moscow State University (he was in charge in 1917-1930). Organizer of the Laboratory of Zoogeography of the Academy of Sciences (1930). In 1915-1935, M. A. Menzbir was President of the Moscow Society of Naturalists , of which he had been a member since 1880. In addition to MOIP, M.A. Menzbier was a member of many Russian and foreign scientific societies: the Zoological Society of France (1884), the American Ornithological Union (1884), the London Zoological Society, the British Ornithological Union (1894), the German Ornithological Society (1930) and others. He was also one of the founding members of the Russian Paleontological Society (1916).
The Menzbier Ornithological Society at the Russian Academy of Sciences is a reorganized All-Union Ornithological Society, established on February 19, 1983 and named after Menzbier.
P. P. SUSHKIN (1868-1928, zoologist)
Pyotr Petrovich Sushkin was a Soviet zoologist and paleontologist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1923).
A. A. RICHTER (1871-1947, plant physiologist)
Andrei Aleksandrovich Richter, Russian and Soviet plant physiologist; founder of the Department of Plant Anatomy and Physiology (1917), dean of the agronomic and physics-mathematics faculties, rector of Perm University (1921-1923); corresponding member (1929), academician (1932) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, academician of VASKhNIL (1935). Laureate of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945), the Order of Lenin (1946), Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”.
Richter worked in various areas of plant physiology. While studying photosynthesis, he experimentally confirmed the theory of chromatic adaptation, showing that red algae better use green and blue rays complementary to their color; he improved a device for the precise analysis of small volumes of gas (the Polovtsov-Richter device), which was widely used in physiological laboratories.
P. N. KONSTANTINOV (1877-1959, plant breeder)
Pyotr Nikiforovich Konstantinov was a Soviet plant breeder and academician of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935). Laureate of the second degree Stalin Prize (1943).
In 1906 he graduated from the Moscow Land Surveying Institute. In 1913-1929 he was an employee of the Krasnokutsk Agricultural Experimental Station. In 1920-1929 he was the director of this station.
Personally and together with other breeders, he developed 18 varieties of grain crops, as well as perennial grasses. The most famous of them are the varieties:
-Melanopus 69 and Gordeiforme 189 (durum spring wheat)
-Erythrospermum 841 (soft spring wheat).
In 1929-1937, he was the head of the department of plant growing, genetics, selection and experimental methods at the Kuibyshev Agricultural Institute, becoming the organizer of the selection station at this educational institution.
He received the following awards:
-two Large Gold Medals of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (1939, 1955)
-Stalin Prize , 2nd degree (1943) – for many years of outstanding work in the field of science and technology
-two Orders of Lenin (1947; 1951)
-three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
In 1955 he signed the infamous “Letter of Three Hundred”, which is a disgrace to his career.
S. N. BOGOLYUBSKY (1885-1976, zoologist)
Sergey Nikolaevich Bogolyubsky was a Soviet zoologist, professor (1935), corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1946), Honored Scientist of the RSFSR. Specialist in evolution, morphology and embryology of domestic animals. He was awarded the Order of Lenin.
The scientific interests of S. N. Bogolyubsky were formed on the basis of deep knowledge in comparative anatomy received from M. A. Menzbier and P. P. Sushkin in his student years and under the significant influence of the ideas of A. N. Severtsov, presented in “Etudes on the Theory of Evolution” (1912).
The themes of Bogolyubsky’s scientific works are related to domestication, morphology and embryology of domestic animals. In developing the ideas of A. N. Severtsov, he was the first to study the evolution of breed and constitutional changes associated with domestication. Later, he dealt with the problem of the relationship between phylembryogenesis and mutations in domestic animals. He also dealt with applied issues of zootechnics.
Bogolyubsky was the author of more than 160 scientific papers, popular science publications, fundamental textbooks, and many articles in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Among Bogolyubsky’s students there are 19 doctors of sciences, more than 20 candidates of sciences, academicians and corresponding members of VASKhNIL.
A. P. SHEKHURDIN (1886-1951, breeder)
Alexey Pavlovich Shekhurdin, Russian and Soviet scientist-breeder.
He graduated from a village school and a two-year college. In 1901-1904 he studied at the Aleksandrovsk-Nartasskaya agricultural school in the Vyatka province. He was sent to work in the village of Krotkoye (Tula province), and for several years he managed the farm on the estate of Professor I. A. Stebut.
In 1911 he worked as a laboratory assistant at an agricultural experimental station in Saratov. He was the first in Russia to apply methods of interspecific, intergeneric and complex stepwise hybridization in the selection of grain crops. In 1920-1924 he bred several promising varieties of spring wheat.
In 1928 he graduated from the Saratov Agricultural Institute. Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (1936). Professor (1945). In 1946-1948 he worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Department of Selection and Seed Production of the Saratov Agricultural Institute.
Based on the spring wheat varieties obtained by Shekhurdin, his students developed the Saratovskaya 29 variety in 1960, which gained worldwide fame.
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize , 2nd degree (1942) – for the creation of the wheat varieties “Lutenscens S-605” and “Lutenscens S-758”
-two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (including 1946)
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1947)
-Order of Lenin
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”
N. N. LADYGINA-KOTS (1889-1963, zoopsychologist, primatologist and museologist)
Nadezhda Nikolaevna Ladygina-Kots was a Soviet zoopsychologist, primatologist and museologist, doctor of biological sciences, one of the organizers of the Darwin Museum in Moscow, senior research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1945), Laureate of the Order of Lenin, Honored scientist of the RSFSR.
N. N. Ladygina-Kots, “Development of forms of reflection in the process of evolution of organisms” (1956) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
CHAGANAK BERSIYEV (1881-1944, agricultural innovator)
“The late Chaganak Bersiyev, a Kazakh collective-farm member and one of the foremost millet growers, achieved most admirable results. He obtained yields for millet that have not been matched anywhere in the world for any grain whatever, namely, 1,200 to 1,300 poods per hectare. This record even surpassed the yields that theoretical calculations had forecast as the highest possible.” (Lysenko, The tasks of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the USSR, Agrobiology, p. 494)
“The western part of north Kazakhstan is famous for its millet. It was here, in the Aktyubinsk Region, that the Kazakh collective farmer Chaganak Bersiev raised the record crop of 20.1 tons of millet per hectare in 1943. (This is roughly equivalent to 9 short tons per acre.) Before the advance of the collective farms the soil in these parts of the country yielded no more than about three-tenths of a ton of millet per hectare—less than one-sixtieth of Bersiev’s record.
Calculating the amount of solar energy a plant is capable of absorbing, the celebrated Russian scientist Williams maintained that it is possible to raise the yield of cereals to over 8 tons per acre. This would appear fantastic, but Soviet collective farmer Bersiev, has not only justified Williams’ forecast, but has even surpassed it. And this peasant was a Kazakh, a representative of the people whom the tsarist colonizers considered incapable of pursuing field husbandry. Bersiev’s initiative has developed into a nationwide movement. The collective farmers have been won over en masse to advanced agrotechnical methods of millet cultivation.” (N. Mikhailov, The sixteen republics of the Soviet Union, pp. 63-64)
Bersiyev was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1940.
V. P. BUSHINSKY (1885-1960, agrobiologist)
Vladimir Petrovich Bushinsky was a Russian scientist in the field of soil science and agriculture. Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939), Academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1948). Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1937).
“He graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute (1911), in 1906-1915 he participated in the research work of the Department of Soil Science.
Since 1914, associate professor at the Higher Courses for the Training of Specialists in Meadow Growth. Since 1916 professor. In 1916-1922 head. chair of soil science of the Saratov Agricultural Institute, at the same time in 1918-1921 professor and dean of the agronomic faculty of Saratov University .
In 1921-1928 in the bodies of the People’s Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR . Simultaneously with 1922 head of the Department of Soil Science of the Moscow Forestry Institute and Professor of the Department of Soil Science of the Moscow Agricultural Academy.
From 1922 to 1951 he was director of the All-Union Institute of Agrosoil Science, the Institute for the Study of Salt and Irrigated Lands, and head of the Soil and Biological Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since 1939, head of the Department of Soil Science of the Moscow Agricultural Academy.
Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (1937).
In 1948, he sharply criticized the work of the Soil Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in the spirit of the decisions of the August session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.” (Wikipedia)
He was given the following awards:
3 orders of the Red Banner of Labor
2 orders of the Red Star
Order of the Badge of Honor
Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1937)
Medal of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition
S. I. OGNEV (1886-1951, zoologist)
Sergey Ivanovich Ognev was a scientist, zoologist and naturalist, remembered for his work on mammalogy. He graduated from Moscow University in 1910, the same year in which he published his first monograph. In 1928, he became a professor at the Moscow State Pedagogical University. He published a variety of textbooks in zoology and ecology. His magnum opus, Mammals of Russia and adjacent territories, was never completed.
He is remembered in the species names of three mammals: Talpa ognevi, Cnephaeus ognevi, and Plecotus ognevi, and the common name of Ognev’s Mouse-tailed Dormouse.
Laureate of the Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (April 10, 1942) – for the multi-volume publication “Beasts of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia” (1942) and another Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (1951) – for the popular science work “Life of the Forest”, 5th edition (1950). Awarded the Order of Lenin and medals.
L. K. GREBEN (1888-1980, animal breeder)
Leonid Kondratievich Greben, Soviet scientist in the field of breeding of agricultural animals. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and VASKhNIL (1948). Hero of Socialist Labor (1968).
He graduated from the K. A. Timiryazev Moscow Agricultural Academy in 1924 and became an agronomist-livestock breeder. The formation of his views was greatly influenced by outstanding luminaries of zootechnics E. A. Bogdanov, M. F. Ivanov, P. N. Kuleshov.
He taught agronomy at the Kolomna School of Peasant Youth in 1924–1925. From January 1925, together with M. F. Ivanov, he worked at the Zootechnical Experimental Breeding Station in the Askania-Nova Reserve. He was a research fellow, deputy head of the Askania-Nova Zootechnical Experimental Station in 1925–1930.
In 1928, he published an article entitled “Sheep Breeding in Askania-Nova”, which is still relevant today. He conducted experiments to study the effect of sheep grazing on the grass of the virgin steppe. Having acquired extensive research experience, as well as teaching at the Higher Courses for Sheep Breeders, in 1930 he was elected professor and head of the sheep breeding department at the Omsk Agricultural Institute. Along with teaching, he launched the first breeding work in Western Siberia to create purebred meat-wool semi-fine-wool sheep breeding.
From the end of 1934 to 1944, he was deputy director for research, head of the pig breeding laboratory (1944–1953), and senior research associate and consultant on pig and sheep breeding (1953–1980) at the All-Russian Research Institute of Agricultural Hybridization and Steppe Acclimatization of Animals “Askania-Nova. Doctor of Agricultural Sciences since 1936.
In 1938, he began work on breeding a fast-growing breed of pigs that was well adapted to local climatic conditions. He defined the methodology for breeding a crossbred meat-wool breed of sheep.
At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he took on the responsibility of saving the heredity of breeding herds and wild animals of the zoo. In the situation of a shortage of rolling stock on the railway, he had to personally organize the evacuation of animals on their own to the North Caucasus, to the Volga and Kalmyk steppes. He managed to save both people and animals, sometimes risking his own life.
He continued creating new improved animal breeds after the Great Patriotic war.
He has written 250 monographs, 13 books and textbooks, and numerous articles published by him represent great value and development of the theory of breed science.
He received the following awards:
-3 Orders of Lenin
-The Order of the Badge of Honor
-2 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor
-Hero of Socialist Labor
-Honored Scientist and Technologist of the Ukrainian SSR
P. A. BARANOV (1892-1962, botanist, historian of botany)
Pavel Aleksandrovich Baranov was a Soviet botanist, specialist in the field of morphology (embryology), anatomy and biology of plants, researcher of wild and cultivated vegetation and historian of botany. Order of Lenin laureate, corresponding member of the USSR academy of sciences, Honored scientist of the Uzbek SSR.
Pavel Baranov was born in Moscow to a family of peasants from the Yaroslavl province. He studied at a parochial school, then at the Trade School. Without receiving a gymnasium education, he independently prepared for the matriculation exam, passing it as an external student in 1910. He graduted from Moscow University in 1917. After graduation , he remained at the university (1917-1920), simultaneously teaching at the Moscow gymnasium, secondary school (1917-1920), and also at the Land Surveying Institute of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR in Moscow (1918-1920).
From 1920 to 1944 he worked at the Central Asian State University (CASU), stood at the origins of this university, director of the Botanical Institute of CASU (1921-1930), director of the Fundamental Library of CASU (1928-1944 ). Since 1928 he was professor of the department of morphology and anatomy of plants at CASU. From 1930 to 1938 head of the Cytological and Anatomical Laboratory of the All-Union Research Institute of Cotton Growing, director of the Central Asian branch of the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing (1934-1935).
Baranov led many botanical expeditions in Central Asia: to Talas Alatau in 1921, western Tien Shan (1923-1927); Darvaz (1927); Kopetdag (1928-1929); led the Pamir expedition (1933-1943) – he is one of the organizers of the Pamir Biological Station. In 1940 he was appointed director of the Botanical Institute of the Uzbek branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Tashkent.
During the Great Patriotic War, Baranov studied sugar beets. On September 29, 1943, he was elected a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since 1944, Baranov worked as Deputy Director of the Moscow Botanical Garden of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Deputy Director for Research and Head of the Laboratory of Plant Morphology and Anatomy of the Main Botanical Garden of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1945-1952), while simultaneously teaching from 1948 to 1952 he was Professor, Head of the Department of Botany at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute named after V. I. Lenin , from 1952 to 1962 he worked as Director of the V. L. Komarov Botanical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1949 he was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Moldavian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
He wrote more than 150 scientific works on the problems of ontogenesis and plant morphogenesis, complex botanical study of cotton, grapes, agricultural development of high-mountain territories, the history of botany, and took part in the creation of the fundamental monograph “Flora of the USSR”.
He was a member of scientific committees, bureau and participation in international congresses, participant of the VII International Botanical Congress in Sweden (1950), participant of the VIII Congress in France (1954), member of the Bureau of the Department of Biological Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1953-1955). Member of the Presidium of the National Committee of Soviet Biologists (1958).
He was a deputy of the Leningrad City Soviet of Working People’s Deputies from 1953 to 1955.
He received the following awards:
-Honored Scientist of the Uzbek SSR (1944)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (November 4, 1944) – for outstanding services in the training of specialists for the national economy and cultural development
-Order of the Red Star (1945)
-Order of Lenin (1953)
Medals of the Soviet Union
D. A. KISLOVSKY (1894-1957, animal breeder)
Dmitry Andreevich Kislovsky, animal scientist, Doctor of Agricultural Sciences, honorary academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1956). Recipient of the Order of Lenin and Medal “For Distinguished Labor” (1940).
Wrote works on the theory and practice of breeding farm animals (variable crossing, line breeding, inbreeding, etc.). Created a doctrine of animal breeds. Participated in the development of a new breed of horses: the Soviet heavy draft horse.
He graduated from Moscow university in 1917 and worked as an instructor and then as an agronomist in the Aleksinsky district land department. D. A. Kislovsky was the organizer and first director of the agricultural school in the village of Yudinki, Aleksinsky district.
In 1936-1957 he was a professor at the K. A. Timiryazev Moscow Agricultural Academy, where he studied issues of genetics and animal breeding. He worked together with Professor E. Ya. Borisenko (1897-1986). The trend pioneered by him is known today as the Kislovsky-Borisenko school, which remains influential.
T. S. MALTSEV (1895-1994, agrotechnician)
Terenty Semyonovich Maltsev is famous for developing a new system of plowing. In WWI Maltsev was imprisoned by the Germans and in 1919 together with other prisoners he created the Russian section of the Communist Party of Germany. He returned to the USSR and in the 1920s he acted as a village council chairman and started his work on farming technique. In the 1920s he created a farming cooperative with other villagers. He joined the CPSU(B) in 1939. Maltsev was self-taught and his personal library consisted of thousands of books. He was elected an honorary academician.
He has received the following awards:
Hero of Socialist Labor (1955 and 1975)
Hammer and Sickle Gold Medal (1955 and 1975)
Six Orders of Lenin (1942, 1955, 1966, 1973, 1975, 1985)
Order of the October Revolution (1971)
Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1949 and 1972)
Order of the Badge of Honor (1957)
Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
Large gold medal of the All- Union Agricultural Exhibition (1940)
Large gold medal named after I. V. Michurin (1954)
Honored Worker of Agriculture of the USSR (1983)
Stalin Prize of the third degree, 1946 – for improving the varieties of grain and vegetable crops and for the development and implementation of advanced agrotechnical farming methods in agriculture, which ensured high yields in the arid Trans-Urals
W. R. Williams Prize, (1973)
Order of the “Star of Friendship of Peoples” in gold, 1986, German Democratic Republic
Honorary Academician of VASKhNIL (1956)
Honorary citizen of Russia and diploma of the Council of the Russian Chamber – for special services to the people “in the preservation and development of the best traditions of the Russian peasantry”, (1992)
Honorary citizen of the Kurgan region (2003)
Honorary citizen of the city of Shadrinsk (1975)
In 1989, the grain growers of the Central Aimag of Mongolia established a prize named after. T. S. Maltsev.
E. YA. BORISENKO (1897-?)
Efim Yakovlevich Borisenko, Soviet animal breeder. Co-worker of D. A. Kislovsky.
P. N. YAKOVLEV (1898-1957, Michurinist plant breeder)
Pavel Nikanorovich Yakovlev, Soviet breeder of fruit and berry plants, Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (1941), professor (1945), academician of VASKhNIL (1948). Student and close follower of I. V. Michurin. Member of the CPSU since 1942.
In 1924-1934 he worked in Michurinsk, in the Experimental Pomological Nursery named after I. V. Michurin. In 1926 he became the head of the main department of this nursery. In 1941, P. N. Yakovlev was awarded a doctorate and in 1945 the title of professor and full member of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In 1935-1957 he was a research fellow, deputy director of the Central Genetic Laboratory named after I. V. Michurin. At the same time he was a professor of the Fruit and Vegetable Institute and head of the department of selection and seed production of this institute.
His pear varieties Osennyaya Yakovleva, Lyubimitsa Yakovleva, Severyanka are included in the standard assortment of the Central Black Earth Zone regions.
On August 2, 1948, Academician P. N. Yakovlev spoke at a session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, where he supported the point of view of I. V. Michurin and T. D. Lysenko on the issue of the feasibility of vegetative hybridization of plants.
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize , 2nd degree (March 13, 1941) for well-known works on distant intergeneric hybridization and for the development of new varieties of fruit and berry plants
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1949)
-I. V. Michurin gold medal (1953)
-Order of Lenin (1954) – for long service and impeccable work
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”
E. P. SPANGENBERG (1898-1968, ornithologist)
Evgeny Pavlovich Spangenberg was a Soviet ornithologist, candidate of biological sciences, laureate of the Stalin Prize (1952).
Evgeny Spangenberg was born on February 25, 1898 at the Andrianovka station (now Chita Oblast ). His father was a railroad engineer. In 1919-1921 he served in the Red Army. In 1922, Evgeny Spangenberg entered the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1930.
Since 1931, Evgeny Pavlovich became a senior researcher at the All-Russian Research Institute of Hunting, Fur Breeding and Reindeer Husbandry, since 1944 he became an assistant professor at the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov . Candidate of Biological Sciences (1945). Since 1946, Evgeny Spangenberg has been working at the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, first as the head of the herpetological department, and later, in 1950, in the ornithological department. Here he became a senior researcher, having worked for 18 years, until the end of his life.
Eugene Spangenberg has written several books about his work. His most famous book is Notes of a Naturalist, which was reprinted 15 times. He won his second degree Stalin Prize (1952) for the 5-volume scientific work “Birds of the Soviet Union” (1951).
P. A. BARANOV (1899-1985, agrochemist)
Pavel Aleksandrovich Baranov, Soviet agrochemist, academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1948).
Pavel Baranov was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. He graduated in 1925 from the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Polytechnic Institut. In addition to this, he also entered the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Chemical-Technological Institute, which he graduated from in 1931. In 1931, he moved to Moscow, where from 1931 to 1932 he worked at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Soil Science. In 1932, he got a job at the All-Union Institute of Fertilizers and Agro-Soil Science and worked there for the rest of his life, while from 1945 he held the position of professor, from 1948 he headed the laboratory of mineral fertilizers, and from 1965 he held the position of scientific consultant.
His main publications are devoted to the study of focal plant nutrition and the processes of transformation of granular and liquid fertilizers in the soil depending on the methods of their application, the development of methods for determining the need of soils for fertilizers and general issues of soil science. He wrote 200 scientific papers, a number of which were published abroad.
He received the following awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1949)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1954)
-D. N. Pryanishnikov Prize of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1973)
-Order of the Badge of Honor
-Two scientific medals of the USSR
I. A. SIZOV (1900-1968, flax and hemp specialist)
Ivan Aleksandrovich Sizov, Soviet scientist in the field of flax and hemp cultivation, Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (1952), professor (1952), Corresponding Member of VASKhNIL (1956). CPSU member since 1927. Graduated from the Leningrad Agricultural Institute (1926).
His career is the following:
-1926-1929 Deputy Head of the Belarusian Branch of the All-Russian Research Institute of Plant Growing (VIR).
-1929-1941 Senior Researcher, Head of the Department of Industrial Crops, since 1929 Deputy Director of VIR.
-1941-1946 service in the Red Army , participant in the Great Patriotic War, political worker, captain.
-1946-1968 Deputy Director, Director of VIR (1961-1965), simultaneously Head of the Department of Industrial Crops (1946-1968).
-Specialist in the field of flax and hemp cultivation. corresponding member of VASKhNIL (1956).
He was awarded the Order of Lenin, 2 Orders of the Badge of Honor (1949), the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class (1944), the Order of the Red Star (1944), and 4 medals. He published around 70 scientific works.
P. P. LUKYANENKO (1901-1973, Michurinist plant breeder)
Pavel Panteleimonovich Lukyanenko, Soviet breeder, plant grower. Academician of VASKhNIL (1948), academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1964), Stalin prize laureate.
In 1926 he graduated from the Kuban Agricultural Institute and worked in Yessentuki as a technician. In the 20s he worked as a experimental field manager in Korenovskaya village and in a Kuban-Black Sea Research Institute. He was a Senior Researcher in Krasnodar Breeding Station in In 1930-1956. From 1941 he was a Deputy Director for Research. From 1956 to 1973, he worked at the Krasnodar Research Institute of Agriculture, as a senior researcher and head of the department for breeding cereal and leguminous crops. In 1964, he was vice-president of VASKhNIL for the North Caucasus and Central Black Earth Region.
Lukyanenko was the first signatory of the “letter of the 24” defending T. D. Lysenko against his attackers.
In his work Lukyanenko used the method of intraspecific hybridization of distant forms of winter wheat and subsequent selection, accelerated selection schemes in greenhouses and chambers. Created low-growing varieties of winter wheat.
Forty-six varieties of wheat bred by Lukyanenko were submitted to State Variety Testing. One of the unique varieties is “Bezostaya 1”. Norman Borlaug, called the Bezostaya-1 variety the best variety of wheat bred to date. This variety was used also by foreign countries, in Eastern Europe, Iran, Turkey, and other arid regions. By 1972, Bezostaya-1 occupied 18 million hectares in the world.
He was nominated to the following foreign institutions:
-Member of the European Association of Plant Breeders (1965);
-Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1965);
-Honorary citizen of the city of Dobrich (1966);
-Foreign member of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the People’s Republic of Belarus (1967);
-Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (1968);
-Honorary Doctor of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the GDR (1971).
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize , Second Degree (1946) – for the development of new methods of breeding agricultural crops and for the development of new high-yielding varieties of winter wheat “Pervenets”, “Krasnodarka”, “Novoukrainka 83”
-three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1950, 1956, 1961)
-twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1957, 1971)
-three Orders of Lenin (1957, 1966, 1971)
-Lenin Prize (1959) – for the development of selection methods, creation and widespread introduction into collective and state farm production of winter-hardy and high-yielding varieties of winter wheat with high flour-milling and baking qualities
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1966)
-Order of “Georgy Dimitrov” (NRB, 1966)
-Order of the Yugoslav Banner with Gold Star (1967)
-Order of Labor (Czechoslovakia, 1968)
-Order of Scientific Merit, 1st degree (Romania, 1970)
-Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1972)
-USSR State Prize (1979 posthumously) – for the development of new intensive winter wheat varieties that have become widely used
-I.V. Michurin Gold Medal
-Three Large Gold Medals of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition and the All-Union Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy
V. I. RAZUMOV (1902-1981, plant physiologist)
Viktor Ivanovich Razumov, Soviet scientist in the field of plant physiology, Corresponding Member of VASKhNIL (1956).
Born in Vologda. Graduated from the Leningrad A. I. Herzen Pedagogical Institute (1926).
1926-1929 trainee, junior assistant at the State Institute of Experimental Agronomy.
1929-1941 junior, from 1931 senior research fellow, from 1933 head of the development section of the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing (VIR).
1941-1945 service in the Red Army, participant in the Great Patriotic War.
Since 1946, head of the laboratory of plant physiology; since 1972, scientific consultant at VIR .
Doctor of Biological Sciences (1950), Professor (1951), Corresponding Member of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1956).
He established the phenomenon of “photoperiodic aftereffect”, discovered the role of light intensity in the photoperiodic reaction, and proved the dependence of the photoperiodic reaction of cultivated plants on their origin.
He was awarded the Order of Lenin (1954), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1949), 3 USSR medals, and the I.V. Michurin gold medal. He published around a 100 scientific works.
I. A. KHALIFMAN (1902-1988, Michurinist, entomology popularizer)
Iosif Aronovich Khalifman was a Russian Soviet writer and popularizer of entomology. Candidate of Biological Sciences. Member of the Writers’ Union of the USSR (1960). Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1951) for the book “Bees”. Received the Order of the Badge of Honor.
He wrote books on other insects too, not just bees, and some of his books were also popular abroad. He supported the views of T. D. Lysenko.
Article about Khalifman by V. A. Gubin [in Russian, but you can read with auto-translate]
F. G. KIRICHENKO (1904-1988, plant breeder)
Fyodor Grigorievich Kirichenko, Ukrainian Soviet breeder. Hero of Socialist Labor (1958). Academician of VASKhNIL (1956). Member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1929.
In 1928 he graduated from the Maslovka Institute of Selection and Seed Production named after K. A. Timiryazev. Since 1932 he worked at the VSGI (Odessa), and headed the department of selection and seed production of wheat (1932-1941, 1944-1954 and since 1959), and worked as its director (1954-1959).
Under his leadership and with his participation, 5 high-yielding winter-hardy and drought-resistant varieties of winter soft wheat of the steppe ecotype were bred at the institute. F. G. Kirichenko was the first in the history of steppe agriculture to create winter hard wheat (varieties Michurinka, Novomichurinka, Odesskaya Yubileinaya), which yields 35-45 centners per 1 ha.
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize, second degree (1949) for the propagation and introduction of the high-yielding drought-resistant winter wheat variety “Odesskiy No. 3” and spring barley “Odesskiy No. 9” and “Odesskiy No. 14”
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1950)
-three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1954, 1966, 1974)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1958)
-three Orders of Lenin (1958, 1962, 1984)
-Lenin Prize (1959) for the development of selection methods, creation and widespread introduction into collective and state farm production of winter-hardy and high-yielding varieties of winter wheat with high flour-milling and baking qualities
-USSR State Prize (1962)
-Order of the October Revolution (1971)
-six medals of the USSR and the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (including The Medal “For Labor Valor”
Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”)
-Honored Scientist of the Ukrainian SSR (1979)
-He was nominated as a honorary member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1961).
P. A. VLASYUK (1905-1980, plant physiologist)
Pyotr Antipovich Vlasyuk, Soviet scientist, specialist in plant nutrition physiology, agrochemistry and soil science. Professor (1931), doctor of agricultural sciences (1942), academician of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1948), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1948).
Graduated from Lisyanskaya primary school, Uman Agricultural College (1926) and Leningrad (1930) agricultural institutes. Worked asl aboratory assistant, assistant, head of the agrochemical laboratory, director of the Uman agricultural experimental station (1926-1931). Head of the agrochemical laboratory of the All-Russian Research Institute of Sugar Industry (1931-1941). Head laboratory of agrochemistry (1939-1944), director (1944-1946) of the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
Deputy Director (1946-1952), Director (1952-1973) of the Institute of Plant Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. President of the Ukrainian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1956-1962).
Head of the Department of Soil Science at Kiev University (1947-1956). Head of the Department of Agrochemistry of the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy (1956-1980). Deputy of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR of the fifth convocation.
He received the following awards:
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1944)
-2 Orders of Lenin (1944, 1956)
-Honored Scientist of the Ukrainian SSR (1956)
-Order of the October Revolution
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1965)
-medals of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR
-V. Dokuchaev Prize
-Medal “For Labor Valor”
S. F. DEMIDOV (1905-1980, Michurinist agricultural economist)
Sergei Fedorovich Demidov, economist in the field of agriculture. Doctor of Economics (1973), professor (1959), academician of VASKhNIL (1948-1965).
He graduated from the K. A. Timiryazev Moscow Agricultural Academy in 1929. In 1929-1930 he worked as an agronomist of the Zaikovsky district collective farm union and MTS. In 1930-1938 he was a postgraduate student, senior research fellow, and head of a sector at the All-Russian Research Institute of Agricultural Economics. From 1938 to 1954, he worked in the USSR State Planning Committee as head of the agricultural management department and deputy chairman.
In 1948-1954 he was a professor and head of the Department of Agriculture at M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. From 1954 to 1957, he worked in the USSR State Planning Committee as deputy head of the department of the State Economic Commission. From 1957 to 1980, he was a professor and head of the Department of Agricultural Planning at the Moscow Agricultural Academy.
In his work as an economist he participated in planning the national economy of the USSR and the preparation of scientific and methodological foundations for planned agriculture. He published over 100 scientific papers.
He spoke at the August session of VASKhNIL in 1948, defending the teachings of I. V. Michurin and T. D. Lysenko against the reactionary direction of Weismannism (Mendelism-Morganism) in biological science. Demidov advocated the development of a grassland farming system, which, in his words, brought “exceptional, downright striking results”. In order to restore soil fertility Demidov proposed to develop systems of proper soil cultivation according to the teachings of agronomists Sovetov, Dokuchaev, Kostychev, Timiryazev, Williams, to plant forest shelterbelts, and to develop pond and irrigation systems. Demidov harshly criticized the soil scientist Professor A. A. Rode for his monograph “The Soil-Formation Process and Soil Evolution”: “Who will believe this soothsayer who decided to scare us during the transition to communism?” It is time, concluded Demidov, “to decisively put an end to the “farms” in science, which still bear the names of “schools.” It is necessary to develop all branches of science on a single, unique scientific basis – dialectical materialism, on the basis of the teachings of Marx–Engels–Lenin–Stalin, and not in such a way as to preserve different directions in science and try to reconcile them”
He received the following awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1941)
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1942)
-Order of Lenin (1944)
-7 USSR medals.
B. A. KUZNETSOV (1906-1979, zoogeographer)
Boris Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov was a Soviet theriologist, gamekeeper, and zoogeographer. Recipient of the Order of the Badge of Honor, Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1967).
He was born into the family of the famous constructivist architect A. V. Kuznetsov. Early on he became interested in studying wildlife, and turned his room into an aviary for birds. He kept voles, house mice, various amphibians (including an axolotl in the bathroom sink), and fish at home. In 1920, his father, being acquainted with the director of the zoological museum, G. A. Kozhevnikov, asked him to direct his son’s interests in the right direction. From the age of 14, Boris led excursions around the museum and became a voluntary assistant to its curator.
He completed preparatory courses and in 1922 entered the natural sciences department of the physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow University. He specialized in the department of zoology and comparative anatomy of vertebrates, studied with M. A. Menzbir, B. M. Zhitkov, S. I. Ognev. In 1924, he took part in an expedition to Central Asia with D. N. Kashkarov. In 1927, he graduated from Moscow State University. In the 1920s and 1930s, he participated in numerous expeditions to the Urals, Kazakhstan and Eastern Siberia.
While still a student (since 1924) he began working as an intern at the Central Forest Experimental Station in Losiny Ostrov. From 1927 to 1930 he was a laboratory assistant there. In 1928 he conducted field research in the steppe part of Dauria and on the Yablonovy Ridge.
In 1927–1936, he was a postgraduate student, assistant, and associate professor at the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates at Moscow University. He taught practical courses in zoology and read two special courses on applied science. In 1935, he was awarded the academic degree of candidate of biological sciences. In 1938, he submitted his work for the title of candidate of agricultural sciences. In 1939, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic of zoogeographic zoning of the USSR.
Concurrently, he was a professor and head of the fur merchandising department at the All-Union Zootechnical Institute of Fur and Raw Materials Economy of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade (later the Zootechnical Institute, Moscow Fur and Fur Institute). He worked there until 1955, when the institute was transferred to Irkutsk. In 1943-1945 he was the chief zoologist of the Main Directorate for Nature Reserves.
In 1956 he moved to teaching at the Moscow K. A. Timiryazev Agricultural Academy where he remained a professor and head of the Department of Zoology and Darwinism until the end of his life.
Under the supervision of B. A. Kuznetsov, about 30 candidate dissertations were defended. He is the author of 150 works, including several textbooks and many monographs.
N. I. FEIGINSON (1906-1984, Michurinist breeder)
Noy Ilyich Feiginson, Soviet breeder, biologist, phytopathologist. Candidate of Agricultural Sciences. Doctor of Biological Sciences (1949).
Follower of I. V. Michurin, supporter of T. D. Lysenko. He was a research associate at the Central Laboratory of Mass Experimentation, All-Union Institute of Plant Protection in Leningrad, then deputy director for research at the Mordovian State Breeding Station. In 1948, Associate Professor N. I. Feiginson headed the Department of Genetics and Breeding of the Biology and Soil Faculty of Moscow State University.
Author of works on plant pathophysiology and virology, theoretical biology, genetics of acquired characteristics in the spirit of T. D. Lysenko’s teaching. Under his editorship, a volume of selected letters of Charles Darwin was published (1950).
P. F. GARKAVYI (1908-1984, plant breeder)
Prokofiy Fomich Garkavyi, Ukrainian Soviet plant breeder, Stalin prize laureate, member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1943.
Graduated from the Maslovka Institute of Selection and Seed Production in 1928. Candidate of Agricultural Sciences (1937), academician of VASKhNIL (1972, corresponding member since 1964).
Worked as a technician, inspector of the Kyiv regional control and seed station (1928-1930). Postgraduate student of the Kiev branch of the Ukrainian Institute of Postgraduate Studies (1930-1931), postgraduate student of the Ukrainian Institute of Selection (1931-1932). Senior research fellow of the genetics department of the Ukrainian Institute of Selection (1932-1934). Senior research fellow of the grain crop selection department (1934-1947), head of the barley selection department (1947-1984) of the All-Union Selection and Genetics Institute.
A prominent scientist and breeder. Author of 17 varieties of spring and 10 varieties of winter barley. He was the first to substantiate the conclusion about the need for widespread use of the hybridization method in barley breeding, as a result of which the first hybrid variety in domestic breeding, Odesskiy 14 was created.
He authored more than 150 scientific works. A number of works have been published abroad.
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize, Second Degree (1949) – for the propagation and introduction into production of the high-yielding drought-resistant winter wheat variety “Odesskiy No. 3” and spring barley “Odesskiy No. 9” and “Odesskiy No. 14”
-three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1949, 1954, 1966)
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1958)
-three Orders of Lenin (1962, 1971, 1978)
-Lenin Prize (1963) – for the development of high-yielding varieties of winter and spring wheat, winter and spring barley
USSR State Prize (1977) – for the development and introduction into production of spring barley “Donetsky-4”, “Nutans-244”, “Odesky-36”, “Moskovsky-121”
-Honored Scientist of the Ukrainian SSR (1968)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1971)
-Order of the October Revolution (1973)
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”
-Medal “In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”
N. G. BELENKY (1908-1997, plant physiologist, biochemist)
Neo Gdalevich Belenky, Soviet physiologist and biochemist in the field of studying agricultural animals and birds, Doctor of Biological Sciences (1943), professor (1944), academician of VASKhNIL (1948). CPSU member since 1938.
He graduated from the Leningrad Agricultural Institute in 1930. In 1930-1931 worked in the Leningrad Dairy and Gardening Institute as an assistant. In 1931-1938 worked in the Moscow Zootechnical Institute of Poultry Farming, first as an assistant, rising to position of professor and head of the department of physiology of farm animals and birds. Simultaneously he worked in the All-Russian Research Institute of Poultry Farming (Zagorsk) as Director.
In 1938-1943 he was the director and deputy director for research and acting director of the All-Russian Research Institute of Animal Husbandry of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
In 1941-1943 he was the Chairman of the Moscow Regional Committee of Trade Unions of Higher Schools and Scientific Institutions.
In 1943-1970 he was the Moscow Chemical-Technological Institute of Meat and Dairy Industry head of the department of physiology, toxicology and radiology. All-Russian Research Institute of Meat Industry head of the department of organ preparations and blood substitutes.
From 1970 to 1997, he was a consultant at the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
During his career Belenky worked in scientific specialization, increasing the productivity of livestock farming, obtaining tissue substrates of animal origin (endocrine-enzyme raw materials) in a single technological cycle. He developed a method for treating horses from tetanus and is the creator of the first blood substitute “Belenkogo’s Therapeutic Serum” (BTS).
He invented the medical preparations allochol, gonadostimulin, antisclerotin. Under Belenky’s leadership, the following preparations were created: chymopsin, chymotrypsin, ribonuclease, insulin, deoxyribonuclease, mammothcin and heparin.
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize (1949) for research in the field of blood substitutes
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1949)
-Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class (1985)
-10 medals of the USSR and the Russian Federation
-3 VDNKh (USSR agricultural exhibition) medals.
K. K. YENIKEYEV (1910-1984, plant breeder, fruit-specialist)
Khasan Karimovich Yenikeyev, Soviet scientist, breeder-fruit grower, specialist in selection and variety study of stone fruit crops. Doctor of Biological Sciences (1958), professor (1960), laureate of the Stalin Prize (1952). He was interested in the work of L. Burbank and bred 12 varieties of plum, 13 varieties of cherry and 4 varieties of sweet cherry, was engaged in the study of sea buckthorn, organizer of expeditions to survey populations of cherry, sweet cherry, plum, sea buckthorn and selection of their best species. Participant of several international conferences and symposia on horticulture, member of the editorial board of the journal “Agrobiologia”.
After receiving secondary education, he found a job at the Moscow Biological Station of Young Naturalists. In 1930, he moved to Kozlov (renamed Michurinsk) to work in a nursery (first as a worker, then as a technician) under I. V. Michurin. In 1935 he graduated from the local Fruit and Vegetable Institute (now Michurin State Agrarian University), in 1939 he carried out postgraduate studies at the Institute of Plant Growing. In 1940-1945 he held the position of senior research fellow at the I. V. Michurin Central Genetic Laboratory.
From 1945 until the end of his life he worked at the Moscow Fruit and Berry Station (now the All-Russian Selection and Technological Institute of Horticulture and Nursery): in 1945-1957 he was a senior research fellow, in 1957-1967 he was deputy director for research and (since 1961) head of the selection department; in 1967-1984 he headed the laboratory, and then the group on stone fruit crops and sea buckthorn.
He received the following awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1949)
-Stalin Prize (1952) “for the development and introduction into production of new valuable varieties of plum, apricot, raspberry, currant, garden strawberry and gooseberry.”
-medals ” For Valiant Labor during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 “, I.V. Michurin Gold Medal, USSR Agricultural exhibition Gold Medal
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1982)
Scientific conferences have been held in memory of Hasan Karimovich; thus, the Resolution of the scientific conference “Breeding of stone fruit crops: directions, tasks and development prospects”, dedicated to the 105th anniversary of his birth, notes his great contribution “to the development of breeding and genetics of stone fruit crops, the special scientific and practical significance of his work”. The cherry variety “In Memory of Yenikeev”, obtained by crossing the Zhukovskaya x Korinka species, was named in his honor.
FORESTRY
V. D. OGIEVSKY (1861-1921), G. N. VYSOTSKY (1865-1940) & G. F. MOROZOV (1867-1920)
Vasily Dmitrievich Ogievsky, Georgy Nikolaevich Vysotsky and Georgy Fedorovich Morozov, were the top forestry experts of pre-revolutionary Russia. Vysotsky also worked with the Soviet state. They supported progressive policies such as nationalization of forests. They followed the theories of V. Dokuchaev.
“Some forestry experts like Morozov, Vysotsky and Ogiyevsky, who were well acquainted with forest life, made correct practical recommendations but at that time it was beyond their power to change biological theory, to throw overboard the reactionary thesis of intraspecific struggle. Therefore, the practical recommendations of these scientists were shelved indefinitely while the false theoretical propositions on forest cultivation persisted until the recent past.” (Lysenko, Agrobiology, p. 565)
“”These observations were the occasion for a special report by G. N. Vysotsky in 1893 in which he developed his idea that underbrush should be introduced instead of elms. In his opinion the underbrush would shade the soil during the first few years, the same as the elms did, but would not choke off the oaks.” [M. K. Tursky’s textbook Silviculture (1929)]
I have quoted this passage from Tursky’s textbook in order to show that In practice some foresters discerned, practically sensed, the existence of interspecific struggle and mutual assistance. They also knew that different species under different conditions behave differently toward each other. Practical forest cultivation shows that combinations of secondary forest-tree species must be chosen with skill so that they may help and not hinder the dominant species, such as oaks and pines.” (Lysenko, Agrobiology, p. 566)
“Some foresters recommended that oaks be sown or planted not singly but patchwise. Ogiyevsky, true enough, experimented in patchwise sowing of oak on a rather large scale, on hundreds of hectares, not for the steppe but for the forest zone (Tulskiye Zaseki). He sowed about 200 acorns on each 2 sq. m. patch. He saw and realized that in a forest zone the oaks’ chief enemy is the aspen and in order to protect the oak from the aspen he sowed the former thickly in patches in the expectation that a great number of oak sprouts on a small patch of land would be able to withstand the pressure of other species. As we know, this experiment of Ogiyevsky’s proved a splendid success.
That Ogiyevsky’s experiment in thickly planting forests patchwise should be made use of in our practical work is not the only point here. This old-time experiment also implies that its author realized from his observation of forest life that what existed in nature was not intraspecific but interspecific competition while in science false theses continued to exist.” (Lysenko, Agrobiology, p. 566)
P. V. VOROPANOV (1902-1984, arborist)
Peter Vasilievich Voropanov was a specialist in the field of forest inventory and forest management, arborist, doctor of agricultural sciences (1950), professor (1952).
Born in Ust-Tsilma, Komi ASSR. Graduated from the Leningrad Forestry Institute (1924). He worked in various administrative and research positions.
He published about 80 scientific papers. 30 candidates of agricultural sciences were trained under his supervision. He was an expert of the Higher Attestation Commission and a member of a special council for the defense of doctoral dissertations.
P. V. Voropanov published a three volume manual “Lectures on forest inventory”, which went through three editions (1961, 1962, and 1963). In collaboration with other scientists, he prepared reference books for workers in the forest industry and forestry. The “Forest Auxiliary Book” (authors: A. A. Tyurin, I. M. Naumenko, P. V. Voropanov) has practical significance to this day. He was awarded two Orders of the Badge of Honor and medals.
OTHERS:
The political economy of hybrid corn (a critique of hybrid corn) by Jean-Pierre Berlan & R.C. Lewontin. The authors follow mendelism, but this is a good article.
The commoditization of science [Audio version] (a critique of profit-motive in science) by Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin. The authors follow mendelism, but this is a good article.
Stalin’s Environmentalism by Stephen Brain [Audio version]. This is a bourgeois article but it demonstrates the environmental protection (of forests in particular) in the Stalin era.
Soviet Environmentalism in the Stalin era by the FinnishBolshevik (text version)
“Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature” [in Spanish but you can read with auto-translate]
GEOLOGY AND SOIL SCIENCE
VASILY DOKUCHAEV (1846-1903, geologist, pioneer of ecology, founder of modern soil science)
V. Dokuchaev was the founder of modern Soil Science. He lived before the Soviet Union, however his work was continued by Soviet scientists. The weakening quality of soil in the Russian Empire and resulting famines inspired Dokuchaev to create modern soil science. He had to struggle against the Tsarist authorities. His work was continued and further developed by Soviet scientists, particularly Vasily R. Williams and T. D. Lysenko.
Dokuchaev discovered the reasons for the weakening of soil fertility. The reasons were related to depletion, climate change and structure of the soil. He began to understand the soil as an interrelated process of chemical, biological and hydrological factors. He advocated the planting of large forest shelter-belts to halt desertification and climate change. This plan started to be implemented in the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature, but was cancelled by revisionists after Stalin’s death.
Dokuchaev also advocated protection of forests and waters in order to protect nature, the soil, climate, and as a result also the fragile agriculture of Russia. These protections were implemented only in the Stalin era but dismantled by revisionists immediately after Stalin’s death.
During his research of the Russian Chernozem Dokuchaev began to understand the soil as an evolving phenomena with a history. This concept of the evolution of soil was the crucial thing which helped V. I. Vernadsky make his discoveries.
The Fundamentals of Michurin Biology by V. N. Stoletov (Audiobook) contains information on the career and discoveries of Dokuchaev.
Tchernozéme (terre noire) de la Russie d’Europe (Dokuchaev’s famous work Russian Chernozem in French)
Short scientific review of Proffessor Dokuchaev’s and his pupil’s collection of soils, exposed in Chicago, in the year 1893
“Vasily Vasilievich Dokuchaev (1846-1903) – a great Russian scientist, geologist, founder of soil science, one of the founders of scientific agronomy, public figure and democrat. Dokuchaev was the successor of the best materialistic and democratic traditions in Russian science, laid down by Lomonosov and Radishchev. Dokuchaev, as a major naturalist, approached the problems of soil science of materialistic positions, considering nature as a whole, and individual phenomena and processes as organically interconnected and arising from one another.
Dokuchaev considered soil science to be a synthetic science, since soils, being the result of an extremely complex interaction of factors, “require their researcher to constantly excursions to the field of a wide variety of specialties ….” Being an encyclopedically educated scientist, Dokuchaev appeared in natural science as a revolutionary; he established the general principles and laws of the genesis, evolution and geographical distribution of soils, outlined the ways of their study and rational use for the needs of agriculture. Already at the beginning of his scientific career, Dokuchaev moved from purely geological work to extensive physical and geographical studies of soils, which allowed him to accumulate experimental material of a large volume and significance.
Dokuchaev created the classical theory of the origin of rivers and river valleys, substantiating the nature of the development of erosion processes. Dokuchaev for the first time undertook a grandiose expeditionary study of the chernozem soils of the East European Plain, the Caucasus and the Crimea, precisely “that fertile soil that constitutes the indigenous, incomparable wealth of Russia ….” The result of these works was the first ever soil map of European Russia and the work “Russian Chernozem” (1883) – the true basis of genetic soil science, which should rightfully be placed alongside Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”
Dokuchaev’s doctrine of the genesis and evolution of soils is one of the greatest achievements of materialistic natural science. He created a harmonious “doctrine about those polysyllabic and diverse relationships and interactions, as well as about the laws governing their secular changes, which exist between the so-called living and dead nature ….” Dokuchaev proved that the soil is a kind of the fourth kingdom of nature, a special natural-historical body that arises as a result of the interaction of the parent rock and a complex of soil-forming factors: climate, plant and animal organisms, ground and ground waters, the relief and age of the country and human impact. Dokuchaev considered the soil-forming process dialectically as “eternally changing functions” that is soil-forming in space and time.
The creation of an independent soil science was of great importance in the field of theory and practice, since it made it possible to objectively study the soil cover of various zones, and also opened up the possibility of systematically managing the soil-forming process and continuously improving the agronomic properties of soils. Dokuchaev brilliantly substantiated the theory of soil zones and types of soil formation, gave the scientific basis for the genetic classification of soils; he established “a connection that lives and functions between soils and precisely whole plant and animal associations …” (podzolic soils – taiga, gray forest soils – forest-steppe, chernozems – meadow steppe, chestnut-brown – semi-desert steppe, gray soils – desert steppe) …
Dokuchaev was the first to establish a dialectical connection between soil and landscape, considering the soil to be not only an essential part, but also a mirror of the landscape, a complex set of surrounding natural conditions. The interests of Dokuchaev, a great scientist and patriot, were very broad and inextricably linked with the practice of agriculture. He believed that only on the right natural-historical scientific basis can various kinds of really practical measures be built to raise agriculture.”
To this end, he studied ravines and floodplains of rivers, the reasons for their shallowing, established the causes and outlined measures to combat drought and soil erosion, and approached the problems of reclamation and reclamation of bog soils. Dokuchaev at the same time substantiated a zonal, differentiated choice of agronomic measures (crop rotation, grass sowing, tillage, fertilization, irrigation, etc.). He demanded the study of all the conditions of agriculture “comprehensively and without fail in their mutual connection.” Dokuchaev believed that science in the hands of the people is a powerful transformative force. In his opinion, the forces of nature unfavorable for agriculture are terrible only when they are not known; “We just need to study them and learn how to manage them, and then they will work for our benefit.”
In his work “Our steppes before and now” (1892) Dokuchaev outlined a set of measures to transform the nature of the arid steppe landscape and turn it into a blossoming forest-steppe: field-protective afforestation, afforestation of rivers, ravines, ravines, sands and wastelands; the creation of structural soils and the improvement of their physical properties through grass cultivation; introduction of correct tillage, moisture conservation, snow retention, retention of melt and rainwater, regulation of river levels, construction of ponds and reservoirs, irrigation of estuary and local runoff, application of fertilizers, selection of crops and varieties appropriate to local conditions, etc. In this respect, Dokuchaev “outgrew his time for an entire epoch” (Williams).
Dokuchaev’s ideas entered the golden fund of agronomic science; they gave a powerful impetus to the development of related branches of natural science: biogeochemistry, dynamic geology, hydrogeology, etc., thereby laying the foundation for progressive Russian schools in the field of a whole range of sciences. According to Williams’ just assertion, Dokuchaev “belongs to the most outstanding scientists of the late 19th century, scientists of world significance,” whose name is “deservedly in the forefront of the classics of natural science.”
Dokuchaev was an outstanding teacher and public figure, a patriotic scientist, an ardent champion of the development of Russian science.
He organized the Soil Committee, the scientific journal “Soil Science,” created the first Department of Soil Science, did a lot for the development of higher agronomic education in Russia, the training of scientific personnel and the spread of the influence of advanced Russian science abroad. He considered it his duty to work for science and write for the people. At the world exhibitions in Paris and Chicago, Dokuchaev received the highest awards, and his ideas, further developed by his students, were universally recognized by the scientists of the world.
Dokuchaev, along with the correct materialistic interpretation of the basic provisions of geology, soil science and agriculture, made some sociological and philosophical mistakes. Thus, Dokuchaev overestimated the role of geographical conditions in the development of human society. Standing on the positions of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, Dokuchaev argued that nature does not make leaps in its development. Dokuchaev’s big mistake was the recognition of the “absolute laws” of the constancy of the relationship between the country’s climate, natural zones, soil and plant and animal organisms inhabiting it, etc. Dokuchaev underestimated the leading role of the biological factor in the genesis and evolution of soils.
Dokuchaev’s progressive teaching on transforming the nature of the steppe landscape and raising soil fertility could not be realized under the conditions of Tsarist Russia. After the 1917 Revolution, Dokuchaev’s soil science, enriched and developed by V.R. Williams) and other Soviet scientists, turned into an important branch of natural science, fruitfully serving socialist agriculture.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
P. A. KOSTYCHEV (1845-1895, one of the founders of soil science)
P. A. Kostychev together with Dokuchaev helped create modern soil science, which was continued by Soviet scientists, particularly Vasily R. Williams and his co-workers.
A. A. IZMAILSKY (1851-1914, soil scientist)
Alexander Alekseevich Izmailsky was a pre-revolutionary scientist, agronomist and soil scientist.
“The achievements of domestic agronomic science, in particular, the scientific discoveries of Dokuchaev, Kostychev, Izmailsky, Timiryazev, did not find application in pre-revolutionary agriculture in Russia.” (V. A. Kovda, “A program of great construction and transformation of nature”)
Izmailsky was born in the Petrovsky district of the Saratov province in the family of a poor gentry. He began to study at a real school in his county town, continued his studies in Moscow – at an agricultural school, after which in 1870 he entered the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy . He successfully completed it in 1875 “with the right to receive the degree of candidate of agriculture, subject to the submission of a gymnasium or an equal certificate and a satisfactorily written reasoning”, but he could not provide a certificate.
In 1879, A. A. Izmailsky took the post of teacher at the Kherson Zemstvo Agricultural School. In 1883, Izmailsky became a member of the Poltava Agricultural Society, and 12 years later its vice president.
Izmailsky’s books “How our steppe dried up” (Poltava, 1893) and “Soil moisture and groundwater in connection with the terrain and the cultural state of the soil surface” (Poltava, 1894) were awarded the Makariev Prize of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, gold medals of the Moscow and Poltava Agricultural Societies, the Free Economic Society and an honorary diploma from the Nizhny Novgorod Fair. In the fight against drought, Izmailsky attached great importance to agrotechnical measures (deep plowing, rocker fallows, working the field across slopes, the destruction of weeds, etc.), and emphasized the importance of fertilizers in the fight against drought.
During the work on the soil-geological study of the Poltava province (1886-1889), V. V. Dokuchaev met with Izmailsky, friendly relations and creative cooperation arose between them. Later, Dokuchaev will repeatedly refer to the studies of A. A. Izmailsky in his works, in January 1894 Dokuchaev will invite Izmailsky to the leadership of the Special Expedition of the Forestry Department to work in the Voronezh province , but due to the exacerbation of A. A. Izmailsky’s illness, he was forced to abandon the proposal. As a result of the introduction of his experimental methods, the Kochubey estate that he managed, turned into a green oasis in the middle of an arid province.
According to the memoirs of V. R. Williams, the Petrovsky Academy made an offer to A. A. Izmailsky to take the chair, but the authorities did not allow this because of his progressive politics.
K. K. GEDROYTS (1872-1932 soil scientist, agrochemist)
Konstantin Kaetanovich Gedroyts (sometimes spelled Gedroitz) is the founder of colloidal soil chemistry.
Graduated from the St. Petersburg Forestry Institute in 1898. Received the title of Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 1927. The same year, he was elected president of the International Association of Soil Scientists and awarded the Lenin Prize.
Was elected Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (soil science , agronomic chemistry) in 1929. Became Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1930. He was also a Corresponding Member of the Czechoslovak Agricultural Academy.
“Academician K. Gedroitz, well-known soil scientist, was the first to divine the geochemical nature of the soil. He found in it the particles which retain different metals, especially potassium, and demonstrated that the fertility of the soil in large measure depended on the potassium atoms which are so lightly and so loosely connected with it that each plant cell could absorb these atoms and make use of them for its own life. And it is by absorbing these lightly-bound, seemingly free-hanging, potassium atoms that the plant develops its sprouts.” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, p. 147)
VASILY R. WILLIAMS (1863-1939, soil scientist, ecologist)
Well-known Russian scientist, soil researcher, grassland ecologist, agronomist, one of the founders of agricultural soil science. Head of Timiryazev Academy in 1907-1908 and 1922-1925. Williams developed the travopol’e system which protected soil and increased agricultural yields by planting grasses and other protective plants.
He was awarded the Order of Lenin, was elected into the Supreme Soviet, and was a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences
The teaching of Williams was synthesized together with the teachings of I. V. Michurin, into Michurinist agrobiology, Soviet Creative Darwinism.
“Vasily Robertovich Williams (1863-1939) – an outstanding Russian geologist, soil scientist, agronomist and public figure. The beginning of Williams’ scientific activity coincided with the period when Dokuchaev’s genetic soil science was created, the basic laws of soil genesis and evolution were established. Dokuchaevsk’s soil science took only the first steps to meet the needs of agriculture. However, Dokuchaev’s direct students later moved away from the problems of Fertility and, under the influence of metaphysical views, tried to develop soil science in isolation from the practice of agriculture. The merit of Williams was that he defended and creatively developed Dokuchaev’s genetic soil science, created a new biological trend in soil science, inextricably linked with the needs of agriculture, allowing to purposefully increase soil fertility in order to obtain increasing yields of agricultural crops. Williams’ motto has always been Dokuchaev’s instruction that the earth is constantly improving when handled correctly.
Proceeding from Dokuchaev’s factors of soil formation (parent rocks, climate, plant and animal organisms, relief and age of the country), Williams was the first to substantiate the leading role of a biological factor (higher and lower plants and microorganisms) in the genesis and evolution of soils, and also pointed out the enormous transformative role the agricultural practice of a person creating cultural varieties of soils. Williams characterizes soil formation as “a single, grandiose in terms of time and space, the process of influencing the parent rock of biological elements of the land, in the correct rhythmic repetition, passing through the entire territory of the earth’s land from pole to pole.”
The modern theory of Williams on a single soil-forming process is understood as a change in the periods and stages of soil formation in connection with a consistent and regular change of plant formations and changes in climate and geological conditions in the Quaternary. Williams gave scientific justification for the passage of separate natural periods of a single soil-forming process (podzolic, soddy, steppe, desert). Williams masterfully used the achievements of soil microbiology to explain the dynamics of soil processes, showing the decisive influence of biochemical reactions on soil fertility and plant nutrition.
Williams enriched Dokuchaev’s doctrine of soil zones with new scientific content, showed the continuity of the process of soil formation in time and space, and thus gave the concept of the absolute and relative ages of soils. At the same time, Williams characterized the genesis and evolution of soil types on the territory of the USSR, especially in the non-chernozem zone. Williams considered the essence of the soil-forming process to be a dialectically unified and contradictory process of continuous synthesis and destruction of organic matter, which determines the rate of soil formation and the dynamics of soil fertility, soil is a derivative of the biosphere, and there is no soil outside of life.
Williams created the doctrine of the biological cycle of chemical elements against the background of a large geological cycle. The expansion of the biological cycle of substances and an increase in the mass of the biosphere lead to an increase in the soil-forming process, an increase in the accumulation of elements and an increase in soil fertility.
Williams was the first to scientifically substantiate soil fertility as “… the ability to simultaneously satisfy both different and irreplaceable factors of plant life in the maximum required quantities …,” the most favorable combination of which takes place in structural soil. For the progressive growth of soil fertility and plant productivity, it is necessary to influence the entire sum of terrestrial and cosmic factors, for this complex of conditions represents one organic whole, all elements of which are inextricably linked.
Williams substantiated the agronomic significance of the soil structure, which is practically the most important soil property, which determines the strength and stability of crops and the absence of their spontaneous fluctuations. Williams connected the natural soil-forming process with the problem of soil fertility, and the problems of soil science – with the problems of agriculture. He pointed out the enormous agrotechnical importance of perennial grasses in crop rotation, enhancing the sod process, leading to the creation of a structure, the accumulation of humus, and an improvement in the physical and agrochemical properties of the soil.
Williams developed the agronomic views of Dokuchaev, Sovetov, Sibirtsev, Kostychev, Izmailsky; he substantiated the grass-field farming system as “a historical necessity for Soviet agriculture.”
It provides for the correct scientific organization of the territory with the placement of field and fodder crop rotations, meadow lands and field-protective afforestation. For grass crop rotations, Williams developed crop rotation schemes with the sowing of cereal-legume herbal mixtures, with a progressive system of tillage, the use of organic and mineral fertilizers and irrigation of agricultural plants. Williams’ scientific ideas as one of the creators of the grass-field farming system will be widely used in agricultural practice. Williams was the first to establish a dialectical relationship between soil fertility and plant productivity; he showed that the only way to obtain high yields of agricultural crops and the development of animal husbandry is by progressively improving the conditions of soil fertility.
Williams’ scientific work was multifaceted. Under his leadership, extensive studies of the soils of Mugan, Kara Kumov, the foothills of the Pamirs, Western Siberia, Altai, the Volga region and the non-chernozem zone were carried out, which made it possible to create the world’s largest soil-agronomic museum – a true treasury of scientific agronomy. Williams was a pioneer of the tea industry in the subtropics, the organizer of the field irrigation, basic MTS and a number of scientific institutions, a permanent consultant and mentor of a large army of scientists, agronomists and collective farmers. He considered it necessary to correctly combine three branches of agricultural production: crop production, animal husbandry and agriculture, which, according to Williams, follow from one another and are inextricably linked. The people deservedly called Williams the chief agronomist of the Soviet Union.
He tried to revise not only soil science, but also a number of branches of agronomy, defended the principle of partisanship in science and fought for the unity of theory and practice. “The powerful influence of materialistic dialectics,” he wrote, “allowed our agricultural science to shake off the age-old chains of slave traditions and to destroy the cult of extreme theories.” As a convinced Russian patriot (despite his American descent from his father’s side), he waged an irreconcilable struggle against cosmopolitanism, for the priority of national science, exposing reactionary Western theories in agriculture (the “law of diminishing soil fertility,” metaphysical theories of Mendelism-Morganism, the theory of “eternal” soil zones, “ultimate” theories, the theory of “full return” and shallow plowing, monoculture, etc.).
It should be noted that Williams made significant mistakes in his scientific activities. Thus, Williams recommended his schemes of grass field crop rotations without taking due account of the zonal soil and climatic conditions, underestimating winter crops and a steam wedge, and misinterpreted a number of issues of agrochemistry and melioration (drainage, the use of mineral fertilizers, etc.).
Some Soviet scientists and agronomists dogmatically interpreted certain provisions of Williams’ teachings, seeking their stereotyped introduction into agricultural production; others showed an unacceptable underestimation of the outstanding works of Williams, not seeing the progressive foundations of his doctrine as a whole behind individual errors. The task is to creatively develop Williams’ rich scientific heritage, included in the golden fund of Soviet agronomy, to discard a number of erroneous propositions that do not correspond to the modern level of Soviet science.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
The Fundamentals of Michurin Biology by V. N. Stoletov (Audiobook) contains information on the career and discoveries of Williams.
“Prof. V. R. Williams” by E. John Russell (written on the occasion of the death of Williams)
I. V. TYURIN (1892-1962, soil scientist)
Ivan Vladimirovich Tyurin was a Soviet soil scientist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (corresponding member since 1946, full academician since 1953), Academician of the Polish Academy (1956), Academy of Sciences of the GDR (1957). Member of the Dokuchaev Society of Soil Scientists.
I. V. Tyurin was born in the village of Verkhniye Yushaly, Ufa province. In 1919 he graduated from the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow. In 1919-1930 he worked in Kazan at the University and the Institute of Agriculture and Forestry (since 1928 he was a professor).
In 1930-1941 and 1944-1951 he was professor at Leningrad Forestry Academy and at the same time in 1944-1952 at Leningrad University. In 1930-1941 and since 1943 he worked at the Soil Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, since 1949 as director. Since 1953 he was the editor-in-chief of the Soil Science journal.
The scientific works of I. V. Tyurin were devoted to the problem of increasing soil fertility, the chemistry of soil organic substances. Of particular interest are his research in the field of soil humus. He developed original methods for analyzing the composition of soil humus, as well as a number of new methods for chemical analysis of soils (for determining humus, nitrogen available to plants, etc.).
Author of the textbook “Course of Soil Science for Forestry Colleges” (1933), the book “Soil Organic Matter and Its Role in Soil Formation and Fertility”, the paper “The doctrine of soil humus”, (1937) and others.
He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945) and the Order of Lenin (1953).
N. A. TSYTOVICH (1900-1984, soil scientist, geological engineer)
Nikolay Aleksandrovich Tsytovich was a Soviet scientist and teacher in the field of soil mechanics, geomechanics and engineering geology, Doctor of Technical Sciences (1940), Professor (1943). Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1943). Academician of the USSR Academy of Construction and Architecture (1956).
N. A. Tsytovich was the founder of permafrost engineering, a world-renowned scientist who headed the Soviet school of soil mechanics and foundation engineering for a long time.
He received the following awards:
-Two Orders of the Red Star (22.5.1945, 10.12.1945)
-Medal “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945” (1945)
-Stalin Prize, second degree (1950) – for the development of the fundamentals of frozen soil mechanics
-Three Orders of Lenin
-Order of the October Revolution
-Three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor
-Order of the Badge of Honor
-Honored Scientist and Technologist of the RSFSR (1969)
-Medal “Hammer and Sickle” (1980)
“Tsytovich, Nikolai Aleksandrovich. Born May 13 (26), 1900, in the village of Mkhinichi, Cherikov Raion, Mogilev Oblast. Soviet specialist in soil mechanics, geomechanics, foundation engineering, and engineering geology. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943).
After his graduation from the Leningrad Institute for Civil Engineers (now the Leningrad Construction Engineering Institute) in 1927, Tsytovich took part in the building of large industrial and hydraulic engineering structures. Over a period beginning in 1930 he taught at a number of higher educational institutions in Leningrad. In 1943 he joined the staff of the Institute of Geocryology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1952 he was appointed head of the subdepartment of soil mechanics, beddings, and foundations of the V. V. Kuibyshev Moscow Construction Engineering Institute. From 1947 to 1953, Tsytovich was chairman of the Presidium of the Yakutsk Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1957 he was named president of the National Association of the USSR of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering.
Tsytovich’s main works deal with the development of the scientific principles of the construction of buildings and other structures on permanently frozen ground. His textbook for higher educational institutions Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics (1934) has been translated into English, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Rumanian, Korean, Vietnamese, and several other languages.
Tsytovich received the State Prize of the USSR in 1950 and has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, four other orders, and various medals.
WORKS
Osnovaniia ifundamenty. Moscow, 1970. (Coauthor.)
Mekhanika merzlykh gruntov (obshchaia i prikladnaia). Moscow, 1973.
Mekhanika gruntov, 4th ed. Moscow-Leningrad, 1963.
REFERENCE
Sheliapin, R. S. “Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tsytovich (k 75-letiiu so dniia rozhdeniia).” Osnovaniia, fundamenty i mekhanika gruntov, 1975, no. 3.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article by V. L. KUBETSKII)
P. A. TUTKOVSKY (Geologist)
Pavel Apollonovich Tutkovsky (biography) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Autobiography of P. A. Tutkovsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Bibliography of P. A. Tutkovsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Works of P. A. Tutkovsky:
Fossil deserts of the northern hemisphere (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Geological research along the Kiev-Kovel railway under construction (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Volyn excursion guide (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Geographical reasons for the invasions of the barbarians (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Natural distribution of Ukraine (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Amber in the Volyn province (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Who didn’t like the landscapes of Ukraine (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Coast of the Lva River (Geographical and geological description) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
The oldest mining industry in Volyn (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Glossary of geological terminology (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Landscapes of Ukraine (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Caucasian beauty Azalea (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Geological outline of Vladimir-Volynsky, Kovelsky and Ovruchsky districts of Volyn province (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Southwestern edge. Popular natural history and geographical essays (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
N. S. KURNAKOV (1860-1941, chemist, geochemist)
Nikolai Semyonovich Kurnakov is internationally recognized as the originator of physicochemical analysis. He also was one of the principal founders of the platinum industry in the USSR. A chemical reaction that he pioneered, known as the Kurnakov test, is still used to differentiate cis from trans isomers of divalent platinum and is his best-known contribution to coordination chemistry.
Kurnakov was a colleague of D. I. Mendeleev. He received several prizes for his work, for example, the Mendeleev Prize in 1936, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in 1939 and the Stalin Prize in 1941. The mineral kurnakovite was named in his honor.
Kurnakovplayed an important role in finding the first potassium deposits in the USSR. The discovery was made while Kurnakov was working in the laboratory on the composition of salt from old Permian salt-works. After Kurnakov found a high potassium content in the salt, Geologist P. I. Preobrazhensky carried out the test borings which confirmed the discovery. He became famous for this potassium deposit, which is the largest in the world.
P. I. PREOBRAZHENSKY (1874-1944, geologist)
Pavel Ivanovich Preobrazhensky is famous as discoverer of the world’s largest deposit of potassium-magnesium salts (Verkhnekamskoe). This discovery was made based on the initial findings of N. S. Kurnakov.
Preobrazhensky worked in the territory controlled by white general Kolchak in 1919-20 and was appointed as minister of public education. As a result he was arrested by the Reds and sentenced to forced labor when Kolchak was defeated. However, Maxim Gorky and V. I. Lenin intervened on his behalf. He was given the opportunity to serve the proletariat through his scientific work. He became professor in 1922 and was the head of the Departments of Geology and Mineralogy of Perm University in 1923-1924. He became Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences in 1935. He made the famous potassium discovery in 1934. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1934 and the Order of the Badge of Honor in 1944.
“Russian explorers tried for many years to find potassium deposits in Russia. Individual conjectures proved fruitless until the persistent work of a whole school of young chemists supervised by Academician N. Kurnakov resulted in the discovery of the world’s largest potassium deposits. The discovery was accidental, but accidents in science are usually the result of long and laborious preparation, while the “accidental discovery” is nearly always merely the last step in the lengthy struggle for the effectuation of a definite idea and a reward for a protracted and persistent search.
This also holds true of the discovery of potassium. Academician Kurnakov had studied the country’s salt-lakes for many decades and his mind persistently searched for the remains of the ancient potassium lakes. While working in the laboratory on the composition of salt from old Permian salt-works Nikolai Kurnakov noticed in some cases a high potassium content.
On a visit to one of the salt-works he observed a small piece of brown-red mineral which reminded him of the red potassium salts, the carnallites of the German deposits. True, the personnel of the salt-works were not sure where this piece had come from and whether it had not been from the collection of the salts they had received from Germany. But Academician Kurnakov took the piece, put it in his pocket and went to Leningrad.
Upon analysis he found much to everybody’s surprise that the piece was potassium chloride. The first strike was made, but that was not enough; it was still necessary to prove that this piece of potassium had come from the entrails of the Solikamsk earth and that there were large deposits there. A hole had to be bored, some salt extracted under the difficult conditions of the twenties and its composition studied.
P. Preobrazhensky, one of the most prominent geologists of the Geological Committee, undertook to do the work. He pointed out the necessity of boring deep holes, and soon these holes reached thick layers of potassium salts, thus opening a new era in the history of potassium over the entire surface of the earth… A small piece of brown-red salt noticed by the keen eye of a scientist in the laboratory of the works thus led to the solution of one of the greatest problems, the problem of potassium. The country was now in a position not only fully to provide the fields with fertilizer and to increase their yield, but also to create a new potassium industry and to produce the most diverse potassium salts so indispensable to chemical production.” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, pp. 150-153)
V. I. VERNADSKY (1863-1945, mineralogist, founder of geochemistry, biogeochemistry and radiogeology)
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology. He invented the concept of the ecological biosphere (though he wasn’t the first to coin the word itself). He is most noted for his 1926 book The Biosphere and was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1943.
The founders of geochemistry were Russian and Soviet scientists and the field of geochemistry was largely founded in the USSR. All the greatest discoveries of geochemistry were made by Soviet scientists.
“Geochemistry is still a young science and it has come to the fore mainly owing to the work of Soviet scientists.” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, p. 18)
“Soviet geochemistry has made such headway that it has quite deservedly won the most honourable place in world geochemical science. The basis for the Russian school of geochemistry was laid at Moscow University by academicians V. Vernadskv and A. Fersman” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, p. 357)
However, A. Fersman notes in his book also the significance of American scientist F. Clarke (1847-1931) and the Norwegian scientists J. Vogt (1858-1932) and V. Moritz Goldschmidt for the birth of geochemistry. (Ibid. p. 357)
Geochemistry for everyone by A. Fersman contains information on Vernadsky, especially the chapter “From the history of chemical ideas”.
There is an article on Vernadsky in In The World Of Soviet Science by Oleg Pisarzhevsky
Vernadsky was still criticized for idealistic views, for example:
“Academician Vernadsky’s article “The time problem in modern science” (his lecture at a sitting of the Scientific academy) was published in the bulletin of the scientific academy no.4, 1932″ and it contained “openly and blatantly idealist statements” (V. Adoratski, E. Kolman, A. Maksimov, M. Mitin, P. Judin, V. Raltgevitsh, “Questions of the day on the philosophical front“)
E. S. FEDOROV (1853-1919, crystallographer, minerologist)
Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov was a pre-revolutionary and Soviet mathematician, crystallographer and mineralogist. His son was the Soviet climatologist, academician E. E. Fedorov.
“Fedorov, the founder of all modern crystallography” (Ya. P. Terletsky, “On one of the books of academician L. D. Landau and his students”) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“Fedorov, Evgraf Stepanovich. Born Dec. 10 (22), 1853, in Orenburg; died May 21, 1919, in Petrograd. A founder of contemporary structural crystallography, geometer, petrologist, mineralogist, and geologist. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1919).
The son of a military engineer, Fedorov graduated from the Military Engineering School in 1872. In 1874, after brief service in a sapper unit, he audited courses at the Medical and Surgical Academy and then enrolled as a student in the chemistry section at the Technological Institute. After developing an interest in crystallography, he entered the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg in 1880, graduating in 1883. Fedorov joined the staff of the Geological Committee in 1885 and carried out geological research in the Northern Urals from 1885 to 1890. In 1894 he was a mining engineer at Tur’inskie Rudniki in the Urals. In 1895 he was appointed professor at the Moscow Agricultural Institute. After the revolutionary events of 1905, Fedorov became the first elected director of the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg. His reelection in 1910 was nullified by the government, which feared the development of revolutionary sentiments among the students and believed that Fedorov promoted such development. He was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1896 and an adjunct of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1901. He resigned from the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1905 after failing to obtain support for the establishment of a mineralogical institute.
Fedorov began writing his first major work, Principles of the Theory of Figures (1885), when he was 16 years old. This fundamental work contained the ideas of most of Fedorov’s subsequent discoveries in geometry and crystallography. In particular, this work introduced parallelohedrons, that is, the convex polyhedrons upon which Fedorov based his theory of crystal structure. From 1885 to 1890 he wrote a series of papers on the structure and symmetry of crystals, culminating in the classic work The Symmetry of Regular Systems of Figures (1890). This work presented the first derivation of the 230 space groups known as Fedorov groups. The groups were derived at almost the same time by the German mathematician A. Schoenflies. Correspondence between Fedorov and Schoenflies contained mutual consultations on the derivation of the space groups, and Schoenflies later published a letter in which he confirmed that Fedorov’s derivation was the first.
While studying fundamental aspects of crystallography, Fedorov also developed a universal theodolite method in goniometry and crystal optics. In 1889 he proposed both a design for a two-circle (theodolite) goniometer for measuring angles in crystals and a new method of depicting crystals with the aid of a stereo-graphic reference system. In 1891 he invented the universal stage, which made it possible to examine a crystal under an optical microscope in different directions and to measure the crystal’s optical constants. Fedorov first described the universal theodolite method in the monograph The Theodolite Method in Mineralogy and Petrology (1893), and the method won worldwide recognition.
Fedorov’s later research in crystallography dealt with the development of crystal chemical analysis, which is a method of determining the composition of crystalline substances from the results of goniometric studies. Fedorov’s research in crystallography was summarized in his Courses in Crystallography (1891, 1897, and 1901).
In the last years of his life, Fedorov studied certain aspects of a “new geometry,” in which circles, spheres, vectors, planes, and other geometric forms replace the point as the fundamental element. Fedorov used a special feature of the new geometry, namely, the existence of n-dimensional systems, to depict, for example, crystal structures and the multicomponent composition of complex chemical compounds.
In theoretical petrology and mineralogy, Fedorov derived the relationship between the gross chemical composition of plutonic rocks and the minerals contained in the rocks. He also developed a classification and nomenclature for rocks and devised a method for the graphical representation of the chemical compositions of rocks and such complex minerals as micas, chlorites, and tourmalines with the aid of the Fedorov chemical tetrahedron. Fedorov studied and described many natural and synthetic crystals, identified several new mineral species and rocks, and proposed the idea of the magmatic segregation of minerals with sorting by specific weight (1896–99).
Fedorov’s works also dealt with the descriptive and physical geology and ore deposits of the Urals, the coast of the White Sea, and other regions, as well as with other topics in geology.
Fedorov’s ideas were developed in the works of his students, who included V. V. Nikitin, A. K. Boldyrev, and A. N. Zavaritskii. Fedorov had the rare pleasure of seeing his theoretical ideas realized in practice. The atomic structures of crystalline substances (especially minerals), as determined by means of X-ray structural analysis, strictly conformed to Fedorov’s symmetry groups.
The Academy of Sciences of the USSR established the E. S. Fedorov Prize in 1944.
WORKS
Nachala ucheniia o figurakh. [Moscow] 1953.
“Simmetriia i struktura kristallov.” Osnovnye raboty. [Moscow] 1949. (Contains a bibliography.)
REFERENCES
Shafranovskii, I. I. E. S. Fedorov, velikii russkii kristallograf. Moscow, 1945. (Contains a bibliography.)
Shafranovskii, I. I. E. S. Fedorov. Moscow-Leningrad, 1951.
Kristallografiia: Sb., fasc. 3. Leningrad, 1955.
Trudy in-ta istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, issue 10. Moscow, 1956. Pages 5–84.
Universal’nyi stolik E. S. Fedorova [Sb.]. Moscow, 1953.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
P. A. KARPINSKY (1847-1936, Geologist)
Important Russian and Soviet geologist. President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1917–1936. In 1947 (on the centenary of his birth) the Academy of Sciences of the USSR created the Karpinsky Gold Medal, awarded for outstanding contributions in the field of geology.
F. N. CHERNYSHOV (1856-1914, Geologist, Paleontologist)
Great geologist Feodosy Nikolayevich Chernyshov studied under Karpinsky. The Leningrad Central Geological Research Museum was named “The Chernyshov Museum” in his honor.
P. A. KROPOTKIN (1842-1921, Geographer, Zoologist)
Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a zoologist and geographer of aristocratic background. He turned his back on the aristocracy and influenced by utopian socialism became a revolutionary.
Kropotkin’s politics:
Kropotkin advocated anarcho-communism. Kropotkin never overcame his aristocratic individualism and utopianism which are evident in all his work and writing. However, he wrote effective (albeit utopian) critiques of capitalism and tsarism. After the February Revolution Kropotkin got entangled in opportunism and was supportive of the Mensheviks and Kerensky’s provisional government. After the Great October Socialist Revolution Kropotkin was in contacts with various menshevik, monarchist, capitalist and other reactionary anti-communist elements conspiring against the Soviet government, but he never entered into an active fight against the Bolsheviks. This is characteristic of Kropotkin’s softness, wavering wishy-washy utopianism, indecisiveness. Kropotkin was confused and wavered, hung out with reactionary elements. He did not want to betray the revolution but also did not understand it.
Kropotkin as a scientist:
Kropotkin sympathized with darwinism but fought strongly against malthusian ideas and social-darwinism. He was correct to do this, but did not do it from a firmly materialist, sufficiently scientific standpoint, but from a standpoint unfortunately influenced by his overall utopianism.
All the progressive scientists were seeing the reactionary stagnant nature of tsarism, and so did Kropotkin. Kropotkin made some significant discoveries in geology:
“This hypothesis of drifting, i.e., floating, ice persisted in science until the sixties or seventies of last century when some scientists, including Kropotkin, Russian geographer and revolutionary, advanced the hypothesis of continental glaciation. At first this hypothesis appeared monstrous because it was hard to conceive that all of Europe, down to London and Berlin, had formerly been covered with ice. But gradually such facts as moraines, outwash plains, eskers, crag and tails, and roches moutonnees, which the hypothesis of drifting could not explain, compelled everybody to accept the hypothesis of glaciation.
Subsequent detailed observations all over Europe and North America fully confirmed it and from a hypothesis it became a theory. But for a long time yet, almost up to the time of the October Socialist Revolution, while recognizing the glaciation of all of Europe and North America, scientists denied glaciation of the north of Asia (Siberia), believing that its climate was too continental for it, i.e., poor in atmospheric precipitations. But already 70 years ago the same Kropotkin discovered signs of
glaciation in several places in Siberia and assumed that the north of Asia had also gone through an ice age. Only the observations accumulated little by little forced everybody to recognize that Siberia, too, had been under an ice sheet.” (V. Obruchev, Fundamentals Of Geology, p. 161)
F. Y. LEVINSON-LESSING (1861-1939, Geologist)
Feodor Yulievich Levinson-Lessing graduated from the physico-mathematical faculty of the University of St. Petersburg in 1883, was placed in charge of the geological collection in 1886, and was appointed privat-docent at St. Petersburg University in 1889. In 1892 he became professor, and the next year dean, of the physico-mathematical faculty of Yuryev University. Aside from his work on petrography he published also essays in other branches of geology, the result of scientific journeys throughout Russia. He was influenced by V. Dokuchaev.
Works of Levinson-Lessing:
Petrographisches lexikon. Repertorium der petrographischen termini und benennungen
Геологический очерк усадьбы Южно-Заозерск на Северном Урале
B. B. GOLITSYN (physicist, one of the founders of seismology)
Boris Borisovich Golitsyn was a prominent Russian physicist who invented the first electromagnetic seismograph in 1906. He was one of the founders of modern Seismology. In 1911 he was chosen to be the president of the International Seismology Association. Despite his aristocratic background (he was a part of the small-gentry, member of one of the noble families with the most members) he was held in high regard in the USSR due to his extraordinary scientific discoveries.
“The studies of earthquake waves registered by sensitive instruments, called seismographs, clearly show that there are shells of different composition in the interior of the earth. The very sensitive instruments invented by B. Golitsyn, Soviet academician, has made it possible to detect not only the waves that travel the shortest route but also those which run around the entire globe and those that are reflected from the borders of layers of the earth of different densities, for example, from the core of the earth.” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, pp. 275-276)
Y. V. SAMOILOV (1870-1925, mineralogist, geochemist, lithologist)
Yakov Vladimirovich Samoilov was a well-known Russian and Soviet minerologist. He studied under V. Vernadsky.
I. M. GUBKIN (1871-1939, Geologist)
Ivan Mikhailovich Gubkin was appointed to lead a government commission tasked to study the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly. The commission proved the relation between the anomaly and the nearby iron ore deposits. Gubkin joined the Communist Party in 1921. He was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1929, and served as its vice-president from 1936 to 1939. Gubkin’s book “The Study of Oil” (1932) developed theory on the origins of oil and the conditions necessary for the formation of oil deposits, and laid out the principles of oil geology. He led the studies of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly from 1920 to 1925, which eventual led to the discovery of huge iron deposits. Gubkin was the editor of the journal Problems of Soviet Geology. During the first and second Five-Year Plans, he was chairman of the “Production Committee” of the Academy of Sciences (1930–1936). In 1936 he became Vice President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
He was awarded the Lenin Prize (1931), Order of Lenin (1937), Order of the Red Banner (1939).
A. D. ARKHANGELSKY (1879-1940, Geologist)
Andrey Dmitriyevich Arkhangelsky was a professor at Moscow State University, corresponding Member of the Division of Physical-Mathematical Sciences since 1925, and Academician of the Division of Physical-Mathematical Sciences since 1929. He won the Lenin Prize in 1928.
L. A. KULIK (1883-1942, minerologist)
Leonid Alekseevich Kulik was a Russian and Soviet scientist, mineralogist, meteorite research enthusiast, one of the first researchers of the Tunguska phenomenon and the author of publications on meteoritics. V. I. Vernadsky was his scientific instructor at university.
In 1924 he graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Department of Leningrad State University in the specialty of mineralogy, where he began his studies back in 1912.
In 1927-1939, with the support of the USSR Academy of Sciences, he organized and led four more expeditions (in particular, in 1927, 1928, 1929–1930, and 1938–1939) to the site of the Tunguska meteorite fall. He discovered the radial nature of the continuous forest fall at the site of the fall, tried to find the remains of the meteorite, organized aerial photography of the fall site, and collected eyewitness accounts of the Tunguska phenomenon.
In 1939, after the organization of the Committee on Meteorites at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Leonid Kulik became its first scientific secretary.
During the Great Patriotic War he volunteered for the militia and was killed by German fascists in 1942.
A. F. FERSMAN (1883-1945, Geologist)
Alexander Evgenʹevich Fersman. Prominent Soviet Russian mineralogist, and together with his teacher V. Vernadsky founded modern geochemistry in the USSR. He was a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1919–1945).
He was awarded the Lenin Prize (1929), Stalin Prize (1942), Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London (1943), and Order of the Red Banner of Labour. His name was given to the Fersman Mineralogical Museum, the minerals fersmite and fersmanite, a crater on the Moon, the research vessel RV Geolog Fersman, and streets in multiple Russian cities, including Moscow, Monchegorsk, and Apatity. Since 1946, the Soviet, and then Russian Academy of Sciences was giving the Fersman Award for outstanding research in geochemistry and mineralogy.
Works:
GEOCHEMISTRY FOR EVERYONE
Russia’s treasure of diamonds and precious stones
Драгоценные и цветные камни России том 1 [“Precious stones of Russia vol. 1”]
Драгоценные и цветные камни России том 2 [“Precious stones of Russia vol. 2”]
Самоцветы России том 1 [“Gems of Russia vol. 1”]
M. M. PRIGOROVSKY (1881-1949, Geologist)
Mikhail Mikhailovich Prigorovsky headed the coal section of the Main Geological Directorate under the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council. He conducted research and presented scientific papers, for example at the 17th International Geological Congress in Moscow in July 1937.
D. S. BELYANKIN (1876-1953, Geologist)
Dmitry Stepanovich Belyankin was director of the Institute of Geological Sciences (1945-1947), director of the Mineralogical Museum (1947-1952) and the Kola Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1948-1952). Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1943), member of the London Geological Society (1946). He was the author of hundreds of scientific papers and collaborated with F. Y. Levinson-Lessing.
Belyankin received two Orders of Lenin (1945 and 1946), the Wollaston Medal (1946), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1951) and the A. P. Karpinsky gold medal (1949).
V. A. OBRUCHEV (1863-1956, Geologist)
Vladimir Afanasyevich Obruchev was Professor of the Tomsk Engineering Institute (1919–1921), Professor of the Taurida University in Simferopol (1918–1919), Professor of the Moscow Mining Academy (1921–1929); Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1929); Chairman of the Committee on Permafrost Studies (since 1930); Director of the Institute of Permafrost Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (since 1939); Secretary of the Department of Geological and Geographical Sciences of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1942–1946); Honorary president of the Soviet Geographical Society (since 1948).
He was awarded The Przhevalsky Prize, Two Chikhachov Prizes from the French Academy of Sciences (1898 and 1925), The Constantine Medal of the Russian Geographical Society (1900), The first ever Karpinsky Gold Medal (1947), The Lenin Prize (1926), Two Stalin Prizes (1941, 1950), Five Orders of Lenin Order of the Red Banner of Labour, and numerous medals. Hero of Socialist Labor (1945).
He discovered many new minerals, wrote numerous books on science and also entertaining science-fiction.
Works:
Fundamentals Of Geology by V. Obruchev
D. I. SHCHERBAKOV (1893-1966, geochemist)
Dmitry Ivanovich Shcherbakov was a Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences (1936), Professor (1946), Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1953). Lenin Prize Laureate (1965) , Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the Kirghiz SSR (1963). He was a long time friend and colleague of A. Fersman.
Dmitry Ivanovich’s father was a railway engineer, his mother privately taught Italian and singing. Dmitry graduated from the Petersburg Gymnasium in 1911 with a gold medal. During his school years, D. I. Shcherbakov read a lot. The works of the French writer J. Verne had a huge influence on him, got him interested in engineering and science.
After graduating from high school, D. I. Shcherbakov entered the metallurgical department of the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. Dmitry Ivanovich studied brilliantly, and probably could have become an excellent metallurgical engineer. But he was much more fascinated by the classes in the laboratory of Professor F. Yu. Levinson-Lessing , which he attended from 1913. He went on expeditions and wrote his first scientific work. In 1914 D. I. Shcherbakov, as a senior collector, took part in the Fergana radium expedition organized by Academician V. I. Vernadsky.
During WW1 he was recruited to find raw materials for the military. He became close to Professor A. E. Fersman, an acquaintance with whom subsequently grew into a long-term friendship. After the October Revolution he worked for the KEPS. Simultaneously with his studies, Shcherbakov worked for about two years as an assistant in geology to Professor V. A. Obruchev. Shcherbakov graduated university with a gold medal in 1921. He worked with KEPS until 1930 as a research fellow in the non-metallic minerals department. He also worked in the Leningrad university.
Throughout the 1920s Shcherbakov also carried out expeditions, especially in the field of radiogeochemistry. He was also sent on missions abroad by the USSR academy of sciences radium institute. In the 1930s he worked under Fersman at the Leningrad Geochemical institute (and its successor Institute of Geological Sciences) investigating rare metals.
His practical research, theoretical scientific works in this area, recommendations for the Main Directorate for the Extraction and Processing of Rare Metals (Glavredmet) of the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the USSR and organizational activities largely contributed to the development of the rare metal industry in the country. In 1936, based on his merits, Dmitry Ivanovich Shcherbakov was awarded the academic degree of Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences. His scientific report “Rare Elements of Central Asia” at the 17th session of the International Geological Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1937, had a great international resonance. Shcherbakov developed a model for predicting the locations of ore deposits.
From 1942 to 1943, D. I. Shcherbakov led the Caucasian Expedition of the IGN of the USSR Academy of Sciences, paying great attention to the search for strategic raw materials. During this period, he completed several works on military geography on behalf of the headquarters of the engineering troops of the Transcaucasian Front. Based on the passability maps he compiled, the front’s combat operations were developed. Dmitry Ivanovich’s personal contribution to the defeat of the Nazi troops in the North Caucasus was recognized with the Order of the Red Star and the medal “For the Defense of the Caucasus”.
Since 1943 atomic research in the USSR intensified and Shcherbakov was engaged in finding uranium. He discovered major deposits the same year. He formulated a number of ideas regarding the genesis of uranium in the earth’s crust, which later led to the creation of a stable raw material base for uranium. In 1946, D. I. Shcherbakov was awarded the academic title of professor, and on December 4 of the same year, at a meeting of the Higher Attestation Commission, Dmitry Ivanovich was elected a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of Geological and Geographical Sciences. In the 1950s, already being an academician-secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Dmitry Ivanovich coordinated all radiological work and research that was carried out in the country.
Shcherbakov also worked in popularizing science. He was, first of all, a practical geologist, but, nevertheless, he wrote about 300 scientific papers.
He received the following awards:
-Order of the Red Star (1945)
-Medal “For the Defense of the Caucasus” (1945)
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” (1945)
-Order of Lenin (1953)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1954)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1955)
-Honorary Doctorate of Science from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (1958)
-Order of Lenin (1963)
-A.P. Karpinsky gold medal (1963)
-Honored Scientist and Technologist of the Kirghiz SSR (1963)
-Lenin Prize (1965)
In honor of D. I. Shcherbakov, in 1954, a mineral from the group of silicates was named shcherbakovite. A ridge in the Orvin Mountains in Antarctica is named after D. I. Shcherbakov. An underwater mountain in the Indian Ocean southwest of Christmas Island is named after D. I. Shcherbakov. A karst cave-spring on the Ai-Petri massif of the Main Crimean Ridge is named after D. I. Shcherbakov. There are also streets and memorials named in his honor.
K. I. SATPAYEV (1899-1964, geologist)
Kanysh Imantaevich Satpayev, Soviet geologist , organizer of science and public figure, doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences (1942), professor (1950), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1946) and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946), first president of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR.
In the 1930s, he headed the geological exploration of minerals in the “Greater Dzhezkazgan”. Founder of the school of metallogeny in Kazakhstan, in the 1950s.
He received the following awards:
-4 Orders of Lenin (1940, 1945, 1957, 1963)
-Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree (1942)
-Stalin Prize 2nd degree (1942) for the scientific work “Ore deposits of the Dzhezkazgan region of the Kazakh SSR”
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” (1945)
-Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Tajik SSR (1951)
-Lenin Prize (1958)
-First honorary citizen of the city of Dzhezkazkan (1964)
-First honorary citizen of the city Satpayev (1977)
I. P. GERASIMOV (1905-1985, geographer)
Innokenty Petrovich Gerasimov was a Soviet geographer, professor at Moscow State University (1936-1950). Director Director of the Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (since 1951), Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953, corresponding member since 1946). CPSU(b) member since 1945.
The founder of a new scientific direction: constructive geography, focused on the transformation of nature and the rational use of natural resources in a socialist society.
I. P. Gerasimov received the following awards:
-Honored Scientist of the Kazakh SSR (1944)
-Order of the Red Star (1945)
-Order of Lenin (1953)
-N. M. Przhevalsky Medal (1960)
-V. V. Dokuchaev Gold Medal (1963) – for a set of works in the field of genesis, geography and cartography of soils
-Dimitrov Prize (1963)
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1965)
-Gold medal of VDNKh (1967)
-State Prize of the USSR (1972), for the creation of the National Atlas of Cuba
-Order of Lenin (1975)
-A. P. Vinogradov Prize (with A. A. Velichko) (1987) – for the atlas-monograph “Palaeogeography of Europe over the last hundred thousand years”
Gerasimov was also elected to the following foreign institutions:
-Full member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1962)
-Member of the Leopoldina Academy (GDR) (1964)
-Member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (1968)
-Member of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the GDR (1968)
M. I. BUDYKO (1920-2001, climatologist)
Mikhail Ivanovich Budyko was a Soviet geophysicist, climatologist, honorary member of the Russian Geographical Society and the American Meteorological Society. Director of the Main Geophysical Observatory named after A. I. Voeikov (1954-1972). Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1992). One of the most respected climatologists of the 20th century.
Winner of the Lenin Prize (1958) for work on the heat balance of the earth’s surface, which established the basis for the modern understanding of global warming. Winner of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, Winner of the Order of the Badge of Honor, Winner of the Order of the October Revolution.
MISC.
GEOLOGY IN THE U.S.S.R. by G. W. Tyrrell
CHEMISTRY
A. M. BUTLEROV (1828-1886) (chemist)
Alexander Butlerov invented a materialistic model of chemistry. He argued against the agnosticism and mechanism of Kekulé’s theories. Butlerov argued that chemical formulas express the real structure of bonds between atoms, thus he opposed agnosticism. He argued that chemical bonds are not merely linked, but also interact reciprocally, thus he opposed mechanistic metaphysics. (see also “Criticism by modern materialist chemists of the idealistic theory of resonance-mesomerism” by B. M. Kedrov)
Butlerov’s work was continued by V. V. Markovnikov (1838-1904) and Soviet chemists used their work as a basis.
“Butlerov Alexander Mikhailovich (1828-1886) – the great Russian chemist, the creator of the theory of the chemical structure of molecules (1861), which is the result of all the previous development of chemistry and the theoretical basis of modern research of all classes of chemical compounds, their laboratory and industrial syntheses.
In developing this theory, Butlerov spontaneously proceeded from materialistic positions. He recognized the objective reality of atoms and the unlimited possibility of knowing their properties. Butlerov noted that all the individual properties of a substance are in a mutual causal relationship. He pointed out that chemical theories are a generalization of empirical facts, and especially emphasized that mastering a theory that generalizes empirical acts is necessary to subordinate the forces of nature and direct them to the services of human society. In the struggle against the agnostic views of Charles Frederic Gerhardt and August Kekule, Butlerov theoretically and experimentally proved that the chemical nature of a complex molecule is determined by the nature and number of atoms, its components, their mutual arrangement and interaction.
The study of chemical transformations, Butlerov proved, makes it possible to establish the mutual arrangement of atoms inside molecules, the order of their combination and the nature of their interaction. Butlerov especially noted the importance of studying the mutual influence of atoms in a molecule, both connected directly and through other atoms. The doctrine of the mutual influence of atoms in a molecule is an organic part of Butlerov’s theory. Butlerov paid main attention to the theoretical and experimental study of the dependence of the chemical properties of a molecule on its chemical structure. Butlerov theoretically explained the phenomenon of isomerism.
He considered chemical phenomena as manifestations of the movement of matter. In this regard, Butlerov pointed out that a molecule, contrary to the ideas of many Western chemists, is not something static, and its atoms are in continuous motion. This was a spontaneously dialectical view of the chemical structure of a molecule, on the basis of which Butlerov, in 1877, for the first time in the history of chemistry, explained the phenomenon of tautomerism, that is, mutual reversible transformations of molecules of certain substances that occur without any external influence. (Before that, in 1862, he discovered the first case of the phenomenon of tautomerism, and in 1863 he explained the “mechanism” of this particular case.) Butlerov emphasized that each molecule has only one structure and cannot combine two structures at the same time, as subsequently, some chemists tried to mystically explain tautomerism.
Butlerov experimentally substantiated his theory with a large number of syntheses and developed it further. Butlerov’s theory opened up wide possibilities for chemical synthesis, especially organic, being a powerful instrument of scientific foresight in laboratory and industry. With its help, the chemical structure of numerous natural compounds was deciphered, millions of chemical compounds that do not occur in nature were synthesized in the laboratory and industry. Confirmed by many years of practice, Butlerov’s theory has been enriched in recent decades with data from modern physics, primarily electronic representations based on quantum mechanics, which make it possible to deepen scientific views on the nature of chemical bonds, on the chemical interaction between atoms inside a molecule, and also on the “mechanism” of chemical reactions.
Soviet chemists play a leading role in confirming and developing Butlerov’s theory; they rely on this theory in their struggle against the idealistic theory of resonance. Butlerov’s theory and syntheses dealt a final blow to the idealistic concept of “life force”, supposedly acting in a living organism and being the only cause that can cause the synthesis of organic compounds. In general philosophical questions not related to chemistry, Butlerov was an idealist, a propagandist of spiritualism. However, the propaganda of spiritualism, which had a harmful effect on some circles of the intelligentsia, did not affect his chemical views, which were of a spontaneous materialistic nature.
Butlerov fought for the organized training of young Russian scientific personnel, for the strengthening of Russian scientific schools, for the progressive organization of higher education, including higher education for women. He himself created a school of Russian chemists. He led the progressive, patriotic Russian professors in their struggle against the reactionary policy of the Tsarist government in relation to science, against subservience to foreign countries. Butlerov’s works: On the chemical structure of substances (1861), The modern meaning of the theory of chemical structure (1879), Chemical structure and theory of substitution (1885), etc. (see A. M. Butlerov, Selected works on organic chemistry, 1951).” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
Important Soviet chemists include Alexander Nesmeyanov (chemist).
D. I. MENDELEEV (1834-1907, one of the greatest chemists in history)
Dmitry Mendeleev lived before the Soviet Union, but in Soviet times he was lifted to legendary status and was recognized as the greatest Russian chemist of all time. Truly it wouldn’t be far-fetched to call Mendeleev the greatest chemist in world history. He is most well known for formulating the Periodic Law in chemistry, and creating the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, which is still used everywhere.
His discoveries gave additional proof of the correctness of the materialist conception and gave a shattering blow to metaphysics, as they demonstrated the unity of the material world. There are no absolutely separate, isolated and different elements, but all chemical elements consist of the same basic matter particles, only organized in different ways. Mendeleev’s discoveries provide strong proof of the law of transformation of quantity into quality, as adding or subtracting a given amount of atomic particles will give rise a to qualitatively different chemical element.
“Mendeleyev proved that various gaps occur in the series of related elements arranged according to atomic weights indicating that here new elements remain to be discovered. He described in advance the general chemical properties of one of these unknown elements, which he termed eka-aluminium, because it follows after aluminium in the series beginning with the latter, and he predicted its approximate specific and atomic weight as well as its atomic volume. A few years later, Lecoq de Boisbaudran actually discovered this element, and Mendeleyev’s predictions fitted with only very slight discrepancies. Eka-aluminium was realised in gallium… By means of the – unconscious – application of Hegel’s law of the transformation of quantity into quality, Mendeleyev achieved a scientific feat which it is not too bold to put on a par with that of Leverrier in calculating the orbit of the still unknown planet Neptune.” (Engels, Dialectics of Nature)
Despite being the greatest in his field Mendeleev was never elected to the Academy of Sciences in the Russian Empire, because the scientific establishment was dominated by elitist reactionaries. His merit was not sufficiently recognized by the Tsarist government. The Nobel Committee for Chemistry also refused Mendeleev’s nomination for several years in a row, because it was controlled by reactionaries who fought against Mendeleev’s discoveries. As a result he was never awarded the Nobel prize.
In the USSR the “D. I. Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology”, which had previously been named after Tsar Alexander II was renamed in Mendeleev’s honor.
Geochemistry for everyone by A. Fersman has a lot of information about Mendeleev.
“Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) – great Russian chemist, the creator of the periodic table of chemical elements. He did a lot for the development of industry in Russia, for the first time he put forward the idea of underground gasification of coal, which was later highly appreciated by Lenin. A revolutionary in science, Mendeleev fought for the connection of theory with practice, for the application of science to the needs of the industrial development of Russia. In philosophy Mendeleev considered himself a “realist.” Mendeleev’s “realism” is basically materialism combined with spontaneous dialectics. “… Nowadays, not a single fraction of matter is unthinkable without an original movement … movement has become a concept inextricably linked with the concept of matter …” (Mendeleev). Mendeleev fought against spiritualism and energetism.
On February 19, 1869, Mendeleev discovered the periodic law of chemical elements, which formed the basis of his periodic system.
This law states that the properties of simple bodies, as well as the shape and properties of compounds of elements, are periodically dependent on the magnitude of the atomic weights of the elements. Establishing a connection between the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of elements, between the chemistry of their atomic weight, Mendeleev developed the chemical atomistics of Lomonosov and actually applied to the chemical elements the law on the transition of quantitative changes to qualitative ones. Arranging the elements in ascending order of atomic weights, Mendeleev noticed that after a certain number of elements the properties are repeated. Therefore, Mendeleev placed similar elements one under the other. The system of Mendeleev reveals a universal lawful connection between all elements and their interdependence. There were empty spaces in the table of elements compiled by Mendeleev; they should have been filled with elements that were not yet open.
Mendeleev theoretically calculated the most important properties of the latter, deriving them as averages from the properties of neighboring elements. The elements predicted by Mendeleev were discovered by Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1875), Nilsson (1880), Whipclair (1886) and named gallium, scandium and germanium. Their properties almost exactly coincided with those predicted by Mendeleev: for example, the atomic weight of germanium is 72.6, and it was assumed equal to 72. Mendeleev, unconsciously applying the dialectical law on the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, accomplished a scientific feat.
Having proved in practice the reliability of human knowledge about the laws of the objective world, Mendeleev dealt a crushing blow to agnosticism; at the same time, the disclosure of the objective laws of chemical elements contributed to the expulsion of chance from chemistry. Without a periodic law, Mendeleev writes, the discovery of new elements “… was a matter of one observation … And that is why only blind chance and special insight and observation led to the discovery of new elements.
The law of periodicity opens a new path in this last relation … “. Mendeleev’s priority in the discovery of the periodic law was unreasonably disputed by a number of foreign chemists. Defending the role of Russian science in this great discovery, Mendeleev showed that all these chemists came forward later. For example, L. Meyer, who claimed this discovery, generally did not consider the periodic law to be an objective law of nature and did not risk making theoretical predictions and conclusions based on it; moreover, being a mechanist, L. Meyer considered only the external, purely quantitative side of the relationships between elements, ignoring their qualitative side, therefore, the very essence of the periodic law.
In the field of physics, Mendeleev discovered the “critical temperature,” which eliminated the former metaphysical gap between liquids and gases, and introduced amendments to the Boyle-Mariotte law, showing the relative nature of this law. These discoveries of Mendeleev were evaluated by Engels in his work “Anti-Dühring.”
In the 20th century. the development of views on the structure of matter, primarily the theory of the electronic structure of atoms, was based entirely on the periodic system of Mendeleev. If we renumber consecutively the elements located in the Mendeleev system, then the serial number of each element will be equal to the positive charge of the nucleus of its atom; chemical properties depend mainly on the grouping of electrons around the nucleus. With an increase in the nuclear charge by one and a corresponding increase in the number of electrons in the shell of an atom, the types of electronic groupings are repeated, causing periodicity in the change in the properties of atoms. Therefore, in the latest formulation, Mendeleev’s law states that the properties of elements are periodically dependent on the ordinal number or charge of the atomic nucleus. The mass of an atom is closely related to the charge of the nucleus; that’s why Mendeleev was able to discover his law, using atomic weights. Mendeleev’s system reflects not only connections, but also real processes of transformation of chemical elements and their compounds.
Nuclear reactions and radioactive decay of atoms are expressed as shifts (from place to place) in the Mendeleev system (“shift law”). The fission of the nuclei of heavy elements (uranium, etc.) also occurs in accordance with the periodic law of Mendeleev; this law is currently helping to master the ways of using atomic energy. Evolution, matter on stars and the distribution of chemical compounds in the process of the development of the Earth are expressed by the Mendeleev system. Mendeleev’s law, being, thus, the law of the development of matter in the field of inorganic nature, plays a huge role in substantiating the “ever-moving” (dialectical) and “realistic” (materialist) view of nature. Mendeleev is rightfully considered the founder of the modern doctrine of matter, atoms and elements. The main work of Mendeleev is “Fundamentals of Chemistry.”” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
V. F. LUGININ (1834-1911, chemist)
“Luginin, Vladimir Fedorovich. Born May 20 (June 1), 1834, in Moscow; died Oct. 13 (26), 1911, in Paris. Russian physical chemist.
Luginin graduated from the Mikhail Artillery Academy in St. Petersburg in 1858. During the Crimean War (1853-56) he took part in the assault on Silistria (now Silistra) and the defense of Sevastopol’. He participated in the democratic movement of the 1860’s, as well as the Cooperative Movement in Russia, and became a member of the Young Emigration. From 1862 to 1867 he studied chemistry in Heidelberg and Paris. He conducted research in his own laboratory in St. Petersburg in 1874-81 and then worked at the Academy of Medicine and Surgery.
From 1889 to 1905, Luginin taught at Moscow University (he became a professor in 1899), where he financed the establishment of the first thermochemical laboratory in Russia (it was later renamed in his honor). Luginin published a number of works on thermochemistry and proposed new methods of thermochemical measurement.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
N. D. ZELINSKY (1861-1953, chemist)
Nikolai Dmitrievich Zelinsky, a Soviet organic chemist, founder of a scientific school, one of the founders of heterogeneous catalysis in organic synthesis and petrochemistry. Best known as the creator of activated charcoal, the inventor of the first effective gas mask (1915), creator of domestic synthetic fuel from hydrocarbons. Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1926). Hero of Socialist Labor (1945). Laureate of three Stalin Prizes (1942, 1946, 1948). Corresponding Member (1924), Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929).
He was awarded the following awards:
-Four Orders of Lenin (1940, 1945, 1946, 1951)
-Two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1941, 1944)
-Prize named after V. I. Lenin from the Committee for Chemicalization of the National Economy of the USSR (1934)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1942) – for outstanding scientific works on organic chemistry, published in the collection of selected works of the author in 1941.
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (1946) – for the development of a new method for obtaining aromatic hydrocarbons
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1948) – for many years of research in the field of protein chemistry, the results of which are presented in the work “The current state of the issue of the cyclic nature of amino acid bonds in a protein molecule” (1947)
-A. M. Butlerov Prize of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society (1924)
L. A. CHUGAEV (1873-1922, chemist, biochemist)
Lev Aleksandrovich Chugaev was a prominent early Soviet chemist. He was awarded a posthumous Lenin Prize in 1927
A. N. KUZNETSOV (1877-1946, metallurgist, chemist)
Alexander Nazarovich Kuznetsov was a Soviet chemist, metallurgist, and one of the organizers of the aluminum industry in the USSR. Doctor of Technical Sciences (1935), Professor (1935).
Born in the village of Nizhnyaya Salda, Sverdlovsk Region. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute (1900); he worked there in the department of metallurgy (professor from 1919). At the same time, from 1902, he taught at the Polytechnic Institute. During the First World War, he developed gas masks. In 1915-1916 he developed (together with engineer E. I. Zhukovsky) a method for obtaining pure alumina from bauxite. From 1926, he was the director of the Mining and Metallurgical Laboratory. He initiated the creation (1931) of the Leningrad Research Institute of Light Metals (NIISAluminium), and in 1931-1934, he was the deputy director of NIIS for scientific affairs.
In 1938-1941 he developed a new explosive substance, SINAL-AK, which was widely used during the Great Patriotic War.
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (April 10, 1942) – for the invention of a new type of explosive
-Honored Scientist and Technologist of the RSFSR (1943)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor
A. V. RAKOVSKY (1879-1941, chemist)
Adam Vladislavovich Rakovsky was a Soviet physical chemist, specialist in the field of chemical thermodynamics, professor (1918), corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1933), doctor of chemical sciences (1935).
“Born Dec. 12 (24), 1879, in Mezhirech’e (Miedzyrzec), now in Warsaw Woje-wództwo, Polish People’s Republic; died June 7, 1941, in Moscow. Soviet physical chemist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1933). In Moscow University he was taught by N. D. Zelinsky and V. F. Luginin.
After graduating from Moscow University in 1903, Rakovskii worked at the central chemical laboratory of the Ministry of Finance. From 1919 to 1941 he worked at the Institute of Pure Chemical Reagents (now the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Chemical Reagents and Ultrapure Chemical Substances). At the same time, beginning in 1915, he taught at Moscow University, becoming a professor in 1920. Rakovskii’s main works are devoted to adsorption, alcoholometry, and studies on equilibrium in three- and four-component water-salt systems. Rakovskii also proposed methods of preparing many pure chemical reagents.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
“the further the more we have among our natural scientists the rejection of idealistic positions. We have a definite turn in this respect. This turn became especially evident after the defeat of the wreckers. We have a number of documents that characterize this turn. It suffices to refer to two documents: a letter from the mathematician Bogomolov and the chemist Rakovsky. The first writes in his letter: “Wishing to join in socialist construction, I dissociate myself from idealist positions.” We see that the old professor, having joined in socialist construction, renounces his former idealistic positions. Prof. Rakovsky also renounces his idealistic vacillations and fights for the mastery of Marxist theory.” (A. Maksimov, On the reflection of the class struggle in modern natural science)
ALEXANDROVICH IZMAILSKY (1885-1973, chemist)
Alexandrovich Izmailsky was a soviet scientist, organic chemist; doctor of chemical sciences (1938), professor (1920); Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1947). His main works are devoted to the chemistry of dyes and the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, he is the author of the textbook “Exercises in the course of organic chemistry.”
V. G. KHLOPIN (1890-1950, radiochemist)
Vitaly Grigorievich Khlopin was an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939), Hero of Socialist Labour (1949), and director of the Radium Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939-1950). One of the founders of Soviet radiochemistry and radium industry and one of the founders of the Radium Institute and leading participants in the atomic project, founder of the school of Soviet radiochemists.
I. Y. BASHILOV (1892-1953, chemical technologist, metallurgist)
Ivan Yakovlevich Bashilov was sentenced to five years in prison for counter-revolutionary activities in 1938 but after serving his term he became a distinguished scientist. He was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor (1945), medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” (1946), Stalin Prize of the second degree (1948) for the development and implementation of new methods of purification of valuable metals (together with N. D. Kuzhel and others).
A. P. VINOGRADOV (1895-1975, geochemist)
Alexander Pavlovich Vinogradov, Soviet geochemist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1953) and its vice-president since 1967. Organizer and director of the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry ( GEOKHI) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, founder and head of the first domestic department of geochemistry at Moscow State University. Twice Hero of Socialist Labor. Lenin Prize Laureate.
From 1919 he began studying at the Military Medical Academy and, simultaneously, at the Chemistry Department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Leningrad University; he graduated from the Academy in 1924; the University in 1925. From 1924 he worked in the Moscow laboratory of Academician N. D. Zelinsky; in 1925 he became a full-time employee of the Department of Physiological Chemistry of the Military Medical Academy. From 1926 he was a research associate of the USSR Academy of Sciences (in the Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces), where he finally transferred in 1930 at the invitation of Academician V. I. Vernadsky for further scientific work as a senior specialist and deputy director; he took part in the organization of the Biogeochemical Laboratory of the Academy.
In 1935 he was awarded the academic degree of Doctor of Chemical Sciences for his work on the study of the chemical elemental composition of marine organisms. In 1936 he went on a scientific mission abroad. In 1938 he worked as deputy director of the Biogeochemical Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences. On September 30, 1943, he was elected as a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of Chemical Sciences.
In 1945-1947 he worked as the director of the V. I. Vernadsky Laboratory of Geochemical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1947 he organized and headed the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry.
A. P. Vinogradov was one of the leading figures in the Soviet atomic project; in 1941, he proposed to I. V. Kurchatov to use the thermal diffusion method of isotope separation. In the late 1940s, as a leading Soviet specialist in analytical chemistry, who had won the Lenin Prize in 1934, he was recruited to work on the creation of atomic weapons and the atomic industry in the Soviet Union. He headed the work on analytical support for the production of high-purity fissile materials. Under his leadership, highly sensitive methods of chemical analytical research were developed.
In 1949 due to his contribution to the atomic program Vinogradov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the presentation of the Order of Lenin and the gold medal “Hammer and Sickle”. In the same year, A.P. Vinogradov was awarded the Stalin Prize, 1st degree (in 1951, he received the Stalin Prize for the second time).
In 1953, he founded and headed the first Department of Geochemistry in the USSR at the Geological Faculty of Moscow State University. On October 23, 1953, he was elected academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of Geological and Geographical Sciences (geochemistry, analytical chemistry).
Academician Vinogradov’s research extends from biogeochemistry to cosmochemistry. He studied changes in the chemical composition of organisms in connection with their evolution, especially the content of rare and trace elements (microelements) in organisms; he introduced the concept of “biogeochemical provinces” into science and described the biogeochemical endemics of plants and animals associated with them; in addition, he developed a biogeochemical method for searching for minerals.
Based on isotope studies, he showed that photosynthetic oxygen is formed from water, not from carbon dioxide. In the field of geochemistry, he put forward the idea of creating a physicochemical theory of geological processes. He studied the geochemistry of a number of elements, in particular rare elements in soils, and the composition of the rocks of the East European (Russian) platform ; he determined the average composition of the main rocks of the Earth. He proposed a hypothesis of a universal mechanism for the formation of planetary shells based on zonal melting of the silicate phase and developed a concept of the chemical evolution of the Earth.
He was the editor-in-chief of the Atlas of lithological and paleogeographic maps of the Russian platform (1960-61) and the 4-volume Atlas of lithological and paleogeographic maps of the USSR (1967-68) and a series of books on the analytical chemistry of individual elements.
Academician A. P. Vinogradov created a new direction in Soviet science – isotope geochemistry – fractionation in natural processes of isotopes of light elements (oxygen, sulfur, carbon, potassium and lead); he made an invaluable contribution to the study of ocean geochemistry. Together with his colleagues, he determined the absolute age of the Earth, shields: Baltic, Ukrainian, Aldan and others, as well as rocks of India, Africa and other regions; the composition of meteorites (various forms of carbon, gases and others) was studied.
In 1963-1967, he was Academician-Secretary of the Earth Sciences Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and simultaneously, from May 17, 1967, he was Vice President of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
He carried out instrumental determinations of the chemical composition of planetary bodies. Using data obtained from interplanetary space stations, he was the first to establish the presence of basaltic rocks on the surface of the Moon (Luna-10, 1966) and the first to determine the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Venus by direct measurements (Venera-4 , 1967).
Under the leadership of Academician Vinogradov, a study was carried out on samples of lunar soil delivered in 1970 to the territory of the USSR from the flat surface of the Sea of Abundance by the return vehicle of the Soviet automatic interplanetary station Luna-16 , soil from the Sea of Tranquility delivered by the spacecraft Apollo-11 , and samples from the continental region of the Moon delivered by the Luna-20 station in 1972.
For outstanding services in the organization of Soviet science and in connection with the 80th anniversary of his birth, Vice President of the USSR Academy of Sciences Alexander Pavlovich Vinogradov was awarded a second gold medal “Hammer and Sickle” with the presentation of the Order of Lenin (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 20 , 1975).
Since 1958 he has been a member of the International Pugwash Conference of Scientists — Defenders of Peace. He was elected as a member of several foreign academies of sciences; honorary member of the American and French Geological Societies; honorary president of the International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of the 3rd convocation.
He was one of the academicians of the USSR Academy of Sciences who signed a letter of scientists to the newspaper Pravda in 1973 condemning the “behavior of Academician A. D. Sakharov.”
He received the following awards:
-Lenin Prize (1934)
-2 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1945; 1946)
-Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1949; 1975)
-6 Orders of Lenin (1949; 1953; 1954; 1965; 1970; 1975)
-Stalin Prize 1st degree (1949)
-Stalin Prize 1st degree (1951) – for the scientific work “Geochemistry of rare and trace elements in the soil” (1950)
-Stalin Prize (1951)
-Lenin Prize (1962)
-Gold Medal of the USSR Academy of Sciences named after V. I. Vernadsky (1965)
-Lomonosov Grand Gold Medal of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1973)
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”
-Jubilee Medal “Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”
-Medal “In Memory of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow”
-Medal “In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”
N. D. KUZHEL (1906-1979, metallurgical engineer)
Nikolai Dmitrievich Kuzhel. After graduating from the Moscow Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold, he completed postgraduate studies at metallurgical plants in Norway. After returning to the USSR, he worked as the head of the Pilot Plant at the Mednogorsk Copper and Sulfur Combine, then at the Severonikel plant in Monchegorsk, and since 1941 at the Norilsk Combine. From May 1945 to 1955 – head of the Krasnoyarsk non-ferrous metal plant. He proposed a pyrometallurgical method for enrichment of raw materials with a low content of precious metals. During this period, the first platinum ingots were obtained, and the extraction of ruthenium began; mastered the method of melting palladium in a vacuum induction furnace and organized its production in ingots; a section for electric arc furnaces and a fractional electrolysis shop were created; the method of electrochemical production of rhodium was introduced.
He was awarded the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1948) for the development and implementation of new methods for the purification of valuable metals (together with I. Y. Bashilov and others)
G. D. DUBELIR (1874-1942)
“Dubelir, Grigorii Dmitrievich. Born Aug. 20 (Sept. 1), 1874, in St. Petersburg; died Sept. 10, 1942, in Iangiiul’, Tashkent Oblast. Soviet scientist in the area of road construction.
Dubelir graduated from the Institute of Transportation in St. Petersburg in 1898 and was a professor at the institute from 1916 to 1930, at the Leningrad Highway Institute from 1930 to 1940, and at the Moscow Highway Institute from 1941. His early works deal with electric transportation, city roads, and city planning, and his principal works are devoted to the planning and use of highways. The requirements imposed on road planning by the interaction of the vehicle and the road were first systematized and technical specifications for building highways and bridges were first compiled under Dubelir’s direction (1938). He worked out norms of calculating drainage from small basins for use in designing small bridges and culverts.
WORKS
Planirovka gorodov. St. Petersburg, 1910.
Gorodskie ulitsy i mostovye. Kiev, 1912.
Osnovy proektirovaniia avtomobil’nykh dorog, vols. 1-2. Moscow, 1938-39.
Ekspluatatsiia avtoguzhevykh dorog. Leningrad, 1934.
REFERENCE
G. D. Dubelir—vydaiushchiisia teoretik i praktik sovetskogo dorozhnogo stroitel’stva: Sb. st. Moscow, 1949.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
I. P. BARDIN (1883-1960, metallurgist)
Ivan Pavlovich Bardin was a Soviet metallurgist, academician (since 1932), vice-president of USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1942), Hero of Socialist Labor (1945), and winner of the Lenin (1958) and Stalin prizes (1942, 1949). His scientific interests were designing new powerful completely mechanized steel works; creating advanced typical metallurgical aggregates; intensifying metallurgical processes, especially by means of oxygen; elaborating and introducing the basic oxygen process; and assimilation and multi-purpose utilization of new kinds of metallurgical raw materials. From 1937 Bardin was a Delegate of the USSR Supreme Soviet of the 1st-5th convocations.
Bardin was given the following awards:
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1945) – for outstanding services in the design, construction and development of large metallurgical plants and scientific achievements in the field of metallurgy
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1942) – for the work “On the development of the national economy of the Urals in the conditions of war.”
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1949) – for the development of technology and the introduction into the metallurgical industry of the use of oxygen to intensify the open-hearth process
-Seven Orders of Lenin (1953) – for outstanding services in the field of science and in connection with the 70th anniversary of his birth
-Lenin Prize (1958) for the creation of the first industrial installations for continuous casting of steel
-medal of the French Research Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy (IRSID) (1965 – posthumously)
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
Academician I. P. Bardin, “Stalin and Soviet metallurgy” (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
A. M. KUZNETSNOV (?-?, cement specialists)
Alexey Matveevich Kuznetsov was a Soviet scientist in the field of cement production, winner of the third degree Stalin Prize (1950) for the creation and introduction into production of new types of cement.
From the beginning of the 1930s he worked at the Cement Research Institute (Moscow), and from 1948 at the Institute of Silicate Chemistry (Leningrad). In 1955-1956, he organized and taught cement production in China.
PHYSICS
A. I. Kitaigorodsky (physicist)
Grigory Aleksandrovich Gamburtsev (geophysicist, seismologist)
ANDREI CHOKHOV (?-1629, gun smith)
“Chokhov, Andrei (also Andrei Chekhov). Year of birth unknown; died between Jan. 23 and Dec. 8, 1629. Russian maker of cannons and bells.
For more than 60 years, Chokhov worked at the Cannon Yard (Pushechnyi Dvor) in Moscow, where he made many heavy artillery pieces. More than 20 of these were mentioned in historical documents, including the Tsar Cannon (1576). Chokhov usually gave a name to each cannon, for example, Lisitsa (Vixen, 1575), Volk (Wolf, 1576), Inrog (Unicorn, 1577), Lev (Lion, 1590), Aspid (Asp, 1590), and Tsar Akhilles (King Achilles, 1617). Chokhov’s cannons were outstanding examples of artillery engineering. They were decorated with high relief, ornate floral ornamentation, and inscriptions in keeping with their names. Some of the sturdy weapons were used in the Northern War (1700–21). Of the 12 Chokhov cannons that have survived, seven are in Leningrad, at the Military History Museum of the Artillery and Engineer and Signal Corps, and three are in the Moscow Kremlin. Two others, the Volk models produced in 1576 and 1578, are housed in Gripsholm Castle, near Stockholm; they were brought to Sweden during the Livonian War. Tsar Peter I ordered that Chokhov’s cannons be preserved as historical monuments.
Chokhov also made bells, including the Reut (Howler, 1621–22), which weighed 2,000 poods (about 32 tons), for the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great. He taught his craft to many pupils.
REFERENCES
Rubtsov, N. N. Istoriia liteinogo proizvodstva v SSSR, 2nd ed., part 1. Moscow, 1962.
Nemirovskii, E. L. “Novye materialy ob Andree Chokhove.” In Trudy In-ta istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, vol. 13. Moscow, 1956.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article by F. N. ZAGORSKII)
V. V. PETROV (1726-1834, physicist, electrical engineer)
“Russian scientists also excelled in the field of electricity. At the beginning of the last century, a Russian scientist, Vasily Petrov (1726-1834), discovered the electric arc. Paul Iablochkov (1847-1894) invented the arc lamp, known as the “Iablochkov Lamp”. (“Science in the USSR”, «Divulgação Marxista»)
I. I. POLZUNOV (1728-1766, engineer, inventor)
Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov was a Russian inventor. He created the first steam engine in Russia and the first two-cylinder engine in the world.
“Russian engineer and mechanic Ivan Polzunov (1728-1766) designed and built the world’s first steam engine, in 1763, anticipating James Watt.” (“Science in the USSR”, «Divulgação Marxista»)
I. P. KULIBIN (1735-1818, mechanic, inventor)
Ivan Petrovich Kulibin was a Russian self-taught mechanic and inventor. He was born in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a trader. From childhood, Kulibin displayed an interest in constructing mechanical tools. Soon, clock mechanisms became a special interest of his. His realizations as well as his prolific imagination inspired the work of many.
“Kulibin, Ivan Petrovich. Born Apr. 10 (21), 1735, in Nizhny Novgorod (present-day Gorky); died there June 30 (July 11), 1818. Russian inventor, self-taught.
Kulibin was the son of a petty merchant. From early child-hood he exhibited exceptional ability in building a variety of mechanical devices. In his early years his attention was drawn especially to the study of clockwork mechanisms. In 1764-67 he built an egg-shaped clock containing an extremely complex automatic mechanism. In 1769 he presented the clock to Catherine II, who appointed him head of the mechanical workshop at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. At the academy, Kulibin constructed a “planetary” pocket watch, equipped with an original compensation mechanism. In addition to the hours, minutes, and seconds, the watch indicated the months, days of the week, seasons, and phases of the moon. Kulibin also designed miniature clocks that fit into rings and tower clocks. He developed new methods of grinding glass for use in microscopes, telescopes, and other optical instruments.
In the 1770’s, Kulibin designed a single-arch wooden bridge to cross the Neva River with a 298 m span (the usual span being 50-60 m) and proposed using unique trusses with transverse latticework. In 1776 a special academic commission was selected to test the completed scale model (one-tenth the original size) of the bridge. Kulibin’s project was highly praised by L. Euler, D. Bernoulli, and the other members, but it was never built. In 1801, Kulibin began designing variants of a metal bridge. How-ever, even these interesting designs were rejected by the government, despite their complete technical validity. In all, Kulibin completed three designs for wooden bridges and three for metal.
In 1779, Kulibin constructed a remarkable spotlight that emitted a powerful light from a weak source. This invention found wide application in illuminating workshops, vessels, and light-houses. In 1791 he designed a self-propelled carriage equipped with a flywheel, brake, gear box, ball bearings and operated by a pedal drive. The same year he developed a design for prosthetic “mechanical legs” (this was used by a French entrepreneur after the war of 1812). In 1793, Kulibin constructed an elevator that operated by screw-type lift mechanisms. In 1794 he designed an optical telegraph for the long-distance transmission of pre-arranged signals.
Kulibin was dismissed from the academy in 1801. He returned to Nizhny Novgorod, where he developed a method of moving ships upstream. This culminated in 1804 in the construction of a ship that could make use of the stream itself to do so (he had begun designing this project in 1782). Tests proved the ship reliable and economical, yet this invention too was never used and the ship was eventually sold for scrap. During this period Kulibin also worked on the possibility of using a steam engine to drive cargo ships. He designed many other projects as well, including a device for boring and machining the inner surface of a cylinder, a machine for mining salt, a seeding machine, various milling machines, an original-design water wheel, and a piano-forte. Kulibin lived in extreme poverty during the later years of his life.
REFERENCES
Svin’in, P. Zhizn ’ russkogo mekhanika Kulibina i ego izobreteniia. St. Petersburg, 1819.
Pipunyrov, V. N. Ivan Petrovich Kulibin: Zhizn ’ i tvorchestvo. Moscow, 1955.
“Rukopisnye materialy I. P. Kulibina v Arkhive Akademii nauk SSSR: Nauchnoe opisanie s prilozheniem tekstov i chertezhei.” (AN SSSR: Trudy arkhiva, fasc. 11.) Moscow-Leningrad, 1953.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
A. G. STOLETOV (1839-1896, physicist)
Alexander Grigorievich Stoletov was a leading pre-revolutionary physicist. He taught A. K. Timiryazev, N. P. Kasterin and many other Soviet physicists. Stoletov made numerous discoveries such as the first law of the photoelectric effect. He founded the physical laboratory of Moscow University. The Tsarist Regime did not provide sufficient institutional possibilities for scientific work, so outside of his university activity Stoletov devoted much time to the Society of Lovers of Natural Science which united both academics and hobbyists. The Society was monitored by the tsarist regime, but was a private Society outside official academia.
Stoletov was recommended by other scientists as a member of the Scientific Academy, but the president of the Academy Grand Duke Konstantin, placed in control of science by the tsarist government, prevented Stoletov from being accepted into the Academy. His colleagues carried out demonstrations against this decision.
“Alexander Grigorievich Stoletov (1839-1896) – an outstanding Russian physicist, one of the founders of Russian physics and modern electrical engineering. He was the first to establish a number of the most important regularities of the photoelectric effect (the effect of light on electrical discharges in gases), developed a method for its study and built the world’s first photocell, which, with further improvement, found great application in modern technology. Stoletov established a special regularity of the discharge processes in gases (“Stoletov’s law”).
These studies by Stoletov prepared the way for the discoveries of the electron, radioactive phenomena, X-rays and led to the need to introduce the concept of a quantum of light into physics. Of particular importance were his studies of the dependence of the magnetic susceptibility on the magnitude of the magnetizing field, for which Stoletov developed an original method that is now widely used in electrical engineering. Stoletov found experimentally that the ratio of electromagnetic and electrostatic units in magnitude is close to the speed of light, which confirmed the correctness of the electromagnetic theory of Faraday and Maxwell and prepared the discovery of electromagnetic waves by Hertz. Stoletov took part in many international scientific congresses and exhibitions. At his suggestion, the first International Congress of Electricians (1881) took Ohm as the unit of current resistance.
Stoletov fought for a scientific, materialistic interpretation of natural phenomena. He was the first Russian physicist to speak out (in the article “Helmholtz and Modern Physics,” 1894) against the philosophy of Machism, describing it as decadent. Stoletov correctly criticizes Mach and Ostwald for their departure from materialism. From the standpoint of materialism, Stoletov also criticizes the German idealistic philosophy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Stoletov invariably adhered to the materialist theory of knowledge / In the first period of his activity, he strove, in his own words, “to reduce all physical phenomena to the basic principles of mechanics.” But under the influence of the latest discoveries of natural science, he gradually overcame the limitations of mechanistic materialism, moving along the path to dialectical materialism.
Under the banner of “mechanism,” he was essentially fighting for materialism in natural science. Stoletov’s worldview was formed under the influence of the works of the classics of Russian materialist philosophy. He was a brilliant popularizer of natural science for his advanced ideas. Stoletov was persecuted by the tsarist government. He was repeatedly accused of inciting student anti-government unrest like Timiryazev, Sechenov and other progressive people of his time, Stoletov opposed the tyranny of the Tsarist officials and government circles. The Tsarist government did not allow Stoletov to be elected an academician, not considering the fact that his scientific merits were recognized by all the greatest Russian and foreign scientists. Stoletov’s works were published – Collected Works, Vol. I-III (1939-1947).” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
N. A. UMOV (1846-1915, physicist, mathematician)
Nikolay Alekseevich Umov was a materialist researcher who made great discoveries such as the Umov-Poynting vector and Umov effect. He was a collaborator of P. N. Lebedev.
“Nikolai Umov, the physicist… trained the students to have clear materialist ideas…” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 74)
“Nikolai Alekseevich Umov (1846-1915) – an outstanding Russian physicist. He owns a number of major works on electrodynamics, terrestrial magnetism, theory of oscillations, optics. Continuing and developing the ideas of MV Lomonosov about the indestructibility and inconceivability of motion and matter, Umov was the first in science to develop a materialistic concept of the movement of energy. This plays an important role in modern physics and in particular in the theory of the electromagnetic field. Considering the transformation of energy as an objective process, Umov linked the concept of energy with the movement of material particles. In contrast to idealistic physicists who sought to refute the law of conservation of energy, Umov argued that this law is the basic vakona of natural science.
The discovery of the law of conservation of energy, he pointed out, dealt a crushing blow to the metaphysical theories of weightless liquids, caloric, etc. Umov criticized individual erroneous positions of R. Mayer about the unknowability of the mutual transformability of various forms of energy. Unlike a number of scientists, Umov did not ignore the qualitative uniqueness of the higher forms of movement, did not reduce them to a lower, mechanical form. He decisively opposed the idealistic theory of the “thermal death” of the world, arguing that the discoveries of radium, electrons, transmutability of elements, etc. “lead us to a restructuring of our usual concept of matter.” In contrast to the statements of “physical” idealists about the “collapse” of science, Umov argued that the discoveries of new physics are a huge step forward along the path of knowing the secrets of nature and using them for the benefit of mankind. Opposing idealists who denied the existence of objective reality, Umov wrote that “the sensation of materiality, materiality remains old, and novelty appears only in the field of understanding.” Umov rejected the assertions of the Machian physicists that man “creates” the laws of nature, that matter has disappeared and only equations remain.
As a patriot of his homeland, Umov resolutely fought for the priority of advanced Russian science. He highly raised the importance of the scientific merits of Lomonosov, Lobachevsky, Mendeleev, Stoletov, Sechenov, Pavlov, Timiryazev. Brought up on the ideas of revolutionary democrats, Umov was indignant at the mockery of the landlords over the peasants, the brutal punishments used in the army, the persecution of high school students. He boldly opposed the tyranny of the Tsarist authorities, in defense of revolutionary-minded students, whom the administration brutally persecuted and expelled from universities, condemned the Stolypin land reform. In 1911, in protest against the reactionary actions of the Tsarist minister Kasso, Umov left Moscow University. Selected works of Umov were published in 1950.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
P. N. YABLOCHKOV (1847-1894 electrical engineer)
Pavel NikolayevichYablochkov invented an early carbon arc lamp, but due to lack of customers in Russia he was forced to emigrate to France.
“Russian scientists also excelled in the field of electricity. At the beginning of the last century, a Russian scientist, Vasily Petrov (1726-1834), discovered the electric arc. Paul Iablochkov (1847-1894) invented the arc lamp, known as the “Iablochkov Lamp”. (“Science in the USSR”, «Divulgação Marxista»)
A. N. LODYGIN (1847-1923, electrical engineer)
Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin invented the light bulb before Thomas Edison. Due to persecution for his support of revolutionary socialism, he had to emigrate from Russia to the US in 1884.
P. N. LEBEDEV (1866-1912, physicist)
Pyotr Lebedev is one of the greatest Russian physicists of all time and was highly valued in the USSR, where his work was continued. Among his discoveries is that was the first to measure the pressure of light on solid bodies, and his discoveries related to inertia of energy preceded similar discoveries of Einstein. In 1934 the major physics research institution “Lebedev Physical Institute” was named after him.
“Piotr Lébediev (1866-1912), one of the world’s greatest physicists, discovered the pressure of light on solids and gases, a fact of paramount importance not only for the electromagnetic theory of light, but also for the general study of the universe. (astrophysics and cosmogony).” (“Science in the USSR”, «Divulgação Marxista»)
N. P. KASTERIN (1869-1947, physicist)
Nikolai Petrovich Kasterin was a Soviet physicist, colleague of A. K. Timiryazev and student of A. G. Stoletov. He published papers in support of the Michelson Experiment and objected to idealistic interpretations of Relativity Physics.
D. S. ROZHDESTVENSKY (1876-1940, physicist, pioneer of Soviet optics)
Dmitry Sergeevich Rozhdestvensky was a significant physicist, the founder and first director (1918-1932) of the State Optical Institute (GOI), one of the organizers of the optical industry in the USSR, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929).
P. P. LAZAREV (1878-1942, physicist)
Pyotr Petrovich Lazarev, Russian and Soviet physicist, biophysicist and geophysicist, teacher, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1917). Since 1918, he was the first editor-in-chief and publisher of the journal Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk.
He created a physicochemical theory of excitation (ionic theory of excitation), derived a unified law of irritation, studied the process of physiological adaptation of the sense organs (primarily vision, as well as hearing, taste and smell) to stimuli acting on them, derived a unified law of irritation, developed the problem of the applicability of the laws of thermodynamics to biological processes. He derived the laws of the action of electric current on nervous tissue. He gave a theoretical derivation of the basic laws of physiological excitation – the laws of Nernst and Pfluger.
He was the organizer and leader of a large-scale geophysical project to study the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly. Authored a number of works in the field of theoretical geophysics related to the study of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly. Organizer of experiments to determine the cause of ocean currents.
L. I. MANDELSTAM (1879-1944, physicist)
Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam was an important Soviet physicist, one of the founders of the Russian scientific school of radiophysics; Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929). He was awarded the V. I. Lenin Prize (1931), the D. I. Mendeleev Prize (1936), the Stalin Prize of the first degree (1942). For outstanding services in the field of science and the training of scientific personnel, L. I. Mandelstam was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1940) and the highest order in the USSR, the Order of Lenin (1944).
A. K. TIMIRYAZEV (1880-1955, physicist)
Arkady Klimentievich Timiryazev was a prominent communist physicist and son of the legendary biologist K. A. Timiryazev (see the section on biology). He was a firm critic of all kinds of idealism and servility towards the West. Arkady Timiryazev is known for strongly objecting to idealist interpretations of Relativity Physics.
“In addition to the alliance with consistent materialists who do not belong to the Communist Party, of no less and perhaps oven of more importance for the work which militant materialism should perform is an alliance with those modern natural scientists who incline towards materialism and are not afraid to defend and preach it as against the modish philosophical wanderings into idealism and scepticism which are prevalent in so-called educated society.
The article by A. Timiryazev on Einstein’s theory of relativity published in Pod Znamenem Marksizma No. 1-2 permits us to hope that the journal will succeed in effecting this second alliance too. Greater attention should be paid to it. It should be remembered that the sharp upheaval which modern natural science is undergoing very often gives rise to reactionary philosophical schools and minor schools. trends and minor trends. Unless, therefore, the problems raised by the recent revolution in natural science are followed, and unless natural scientists are enlisted in the work of a philosophical journal, militant materialism can be neither militant nor materialism. Timiryazev was obliged to observe in the first issue of the journal that the theory of Einstein, who, according to Timiryazev, is himself not making any active attack on the foundations of materialism, has already been seized upon by a vast number of bourgeois intellectuals of all countries; it should be noted that this applies not only to Einstein, but to a number, if not to the majority, of the great reformers of natural science since the end of the nineteenth century.” (Lenin, On the Significance of Militant Materialism)
In the 1920s Arkady Timiryazev made anti-dialectical mistakes and supported the so-called “mechanists” in the philosophical debates. Many of the mechanists claimed to actually support dialectics but they did not truly understand it. The debates culminated in “mechanism” being defeated by the “dialectical” school headed by Deborin, and the Deborin school being criticized for “menshevizing idealism”, scholasticism (being out of touch with real life practical work) and defeated by the Marxist-Leninist philosophers headed by M. B. Mitin.
A. F. IOFFE (1880-1960, physicist)
Abram Fedorovich Ioffe was a prominent Soviet physicist. He received the award Honored Worker of Science of the RSFSR (1933) and the Stalin Prize (1942), was an expert in electromagnetism and solid state physics, and was active in establishing physics institutions. He was correctly criticized for servility towards the west (or lacking vigilance in the struggle against western imperialism) after WWII. Physicists such as Arkady Timiryazev, criticized Ioffe for alleged idealism (whether the charge is accurate is hard to say) but Ioffe remained an important figure in Soviet physics.
E. E. FEDOROV (1880-1965-climatologist)
“Fedorov, Evgraf Evgrafovich. Born Nov. 8 (20), 1880, in St. Petersburg; died July 19, 1965, in Moscow. Soviet climatologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946). The son of E. S. Fedorov.
E. E. Fedorov graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1909. In 1910 he joined the staff of the Main Physical Observatory (since 1924, the Main Geophysical Observatory). He was on the staff of the Magnetic Meteorological Observatory in Pavlovsk from 1911 to 1932 and then carried out research at the Agrohy-drometeorological Institute. He was a member of the staff of the Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1933 to 1951.
Fedorov’s main works dealt with clouds and solar radiation. In the 1920’s he developed the principles of complex meteorology.
Fedorov was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, and various medals.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
N. A. KAPTSOV (1883-1966, physicist)
Nikolai Alexandrovich Kaptsov was a Soviet scientist in the field of physical phenomena in vacuum and gases, professor at Moscow State University. Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (1935).
Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1964). He was awarded the Orders of Lenin (1953), the Red Banner of Labor (1961), the “Badge of Honor” (1940), the medals “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War” (1946) and “In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow” (1948).
A. G. GOLDMAN (1884-1971, physicist)
Alexander Genrikhovich Goldman, Soviet physicist. Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (1935), Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1929). He was arrested in 1938 and exiled to Kazakhstan. In 1944-1952 he was a professor at the Pedagogical Institute in Vologda, in 1952-1956 in Balashov, and in Rostov-on-Don in 1956.
L. K. RAMZIN (1887–1948, thermal engineer)
Leonid Konstantinovich Ramzin was a Soviet thermal engineer, and the inventor of a type of flow-through boiler known as the straight-flow boiler, or Ramzin boiler.
In 1930 Ramzin was put on trial as an ideological leader of the anti-Soviet group known as The Industrial Party. Ramzin deeply regretted his actions and fully admitted his guilt, explaining that the Industrial Party was supported by a Russian emigre capitalist organization called the Russian Trade and Industrial Committee. This group worked together with British intelligence services, and supported a French-British plan of a new foreign invasion of the USSR led by escaped White Generals. Ramzin explained that engineers such as himself had become an out-of-touch privileged group, and when socialist construction was launched in 1928, they were firmly against it. This was facilitated by the fact that ideological and class struggle had become extremely fierce and society was polarized, the privileged engineers felt isolated from regular workers, who distrusted the engineers. Thus, the engineers were drawn into the plot of the White Guards and imperialists, who used them as their pawns. At the trial, Ramzin and several others were sentenced to death, but the sentence was reduced to 10 years in prison. (See The Industrial Party Affair and Wreckers on Trial)
Ramzin and his colleagues wanted to repair the damage they had caused the USSR, and wanted to do what ever they could in order to help society and become honest citizens. In prison they were given the opportunity to continue scientific research. They developed the ground-breaking new boiler and in 1936 they were amnestied. They were rewarded for their valuable productive work and it was considered they had become fully rehabilitated.
In 1943 Ramzin received a first degree Stalin Prize for his boiler design, and for continued successes in scientific work the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1946 and the Order of Lenin in 1948.
G. S. LANDSBERG (1890-1957, physicist)
Grigory Samuilovich Landsberg was a Soviet physicist, professor at Moscow State University, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Landsberg received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (1941) – for the development of a spectral analysis method for determining the composition of alloys and special steels
-two orders of Lenin (1945 and ?)
He signed the notorious anti-Michurinist “Letter of the 300” in 1955.
S. I. VAVILOV (1891-1951, physicist)
Sergey Vavilov was a leading Soviet physicist and founder of the Soviet school of physical optics. In 1934 together with Pavel Cherenkov he discovered the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect for which Cherenkov also received a Nobel prize.
Sergey Vavilov was a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1932, Head of the Lebedev Institute of Physics (since 1934), a chief editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia since 1948, a member of the Supreme Soviet from 1946 and a recipient of four Stalin Prizes (1943, 1946, 1951, 1952). He wrote on the lives and works of great thinkers, such as Lucretius, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Mikhail Lomonosov, Michael Faraday, and Pyotr Lebedev, among others.
In 1945 Sergei Vavilov became the President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, replacing the respected botanist V. L. Komarov who had just passed away.
Sergei Vavilov is not to be confused with his brother N. I. Vavilov, a eugenicist pseudo-scientist who was sentenced to prison for sabotage and espionage.
Lenin And Philosophical Problems Of Modern Physics by S. I. Vavilov
A. S. PREDVODITELEV (1891-1973, physicist)
Aleksandr Savvich Predvoditelev was a Soviet physicist, Corresponding member of the Academy of sciences of the USSR since 1939. He graduated from Moscow University in 1915 and was a professor there from 1935. From 1939 he was also head of a laboratory of the Institute of Power Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
“Predvoditelev’s major works were on molecular physics, hydrodynamics, and thermal physics. He studied the processes of combustion, the distribution of waves in liquid and gaseous mediums, and the physical properties of liquids. He was engaged in the development of the theory of heterogeneous combustion.” (Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979))
Predvoditelev collaborated on carbon combustion research and received a Stalin Prize in 1950 for his monograph The Combustion of Carbon published in 1949.
A. A. MAKSIMOV (1891-1976, philosopher of science, physicist, mathematician)
Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943). Member of the CPSU since 1918.
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Maksimov graduated from the physics and mathematics department of the University of Kazan in 1916. In 1922 he began to teach philosophy. Since 1929 he was a professor at the Institute of the Red Professors, Moscow State University, and the Communist Academy. From 1944 to 1949, Maksimov was a member of the philosophy department at Moscow State University. His major work has focused on problems of the history of science and philosophical issues of the natural sciences. Maksimov edited translations of the works of G. Hegel, E. Haeckel, R. Mayer, and M. Faraday. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.
A. Maksimov, Lenin and the crisis of natural science in the era of imperialism (1931) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
A. Maksimov, On the reflection of the class struggle in modern natural science (1932) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
A. Maksimov, Science is the enemy of chance (1951) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
D. V. SKOBELTSYN (1892-1990, physicist)
Soviet experimental physicist, specialist in the field of cosmic radiation and high energy physics . Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946).
He was awarded the following awards:
-Six Orders of Lenin (1949, 1953, 1962, 1969, 1972, 1975)
-Two orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1944, 1945)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1969)
-Lenin Prize (1982) – for the cycle of works “Investigations of primary cosmic radiation of super-high energy” (1947-1980)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1951) – together with N. A. Dobrotin and G. T. Zatsepin for the discovery (1949) and study of electron-nuclear showers and the nuclear-cascade process in cosmic rays, presented in a series of articles published in the journals Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR, Zhurnal eksperimental’noi i teoreticheskoi fiziki and “Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR” (1949-1950)
-S. I. Vavilov Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1952)
Skobeltsyn also worked as a Soviet representative in the UN (1946-48). He signed the Pravda letter of 1973 condemning A. D. Sakharov.
Y. I. FRENKEL (1894-1952, physicist)
Yakov Frenkel made very significant discoveries in condensed matter physics, superconductivity and kinetic theory of liquids.
Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929), doctor of physical and mathematical sciences (1934), received Stalin prize first degree for the monograph «Kinetic Theory of Liquids» (1947).
Frenkel was criticized in 1947 in Literaturnaya Gazeta for servility towards the West.
Frenkel was also criticized by A. A. Maksimov in 1948: “even now not all Soviet physicists have freed themselves from the remnants of bourgeois ideology is shown by the example of Ya. I. Frenkel, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In his recently published book on statistical physics, we find the propaganda of the views of A. Poincaré and the repetition of the anti-scientific chatter of bourgeois scientists [See Ya. I. Frenkel “Statistical Physics”, pp. 5, 548, 568, 753. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. 1948.] .
In addition to Ya. I. Frenkel, the distributor of “physical” idealism in the USSR is Professor M. A. Markov, whose “program” article was published in No. 2 of the journal Voprosy Philosophy in 1947.” (A. A. Maksimov. Marxist philosophical materialism and modern physics)
Kinetic Theory Of Liquids by Y. Frenkel
P. L. KAPITSA (1894-1984, physicist)
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was a significant Soviet physicist, particularly in the field of low-temperature physics. He was an old school bourgeois scientist from the tsarist era and was often criticized for ideological mistakes and not having any understanding of politics. Despite this, he was given every assistance in his scientific work, made scientific contributions and served his country and was appreciated as a result. He is by far the most skilled bourgeois-physicist in the USSR, and remained a rightist all his life. He collaborated with the Soviet government, wanted to help his country, and understood that the USSR had massively helped science. However, his total ignorance on philosophy and politics got him into fights very often.
“Not a single one of these professors, who are capable of making very valuable contributions in the special fields of chemistry, history or physics, can be trusted one iota when it comes to philosophy… The task of Marxists… is to be able to master and refashion the achievements of these [bourgeois scientists]… and to be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue our own line and to combat the whole line of the forces and classes hostile to us.” (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism)
Kapitsa was given the following awards:
Hero of Socialist Labour (1945)
Stalin Prize, 1 degree (1941)
Stalin Prize, 1 degree (1943)
Order of Lenin (1943)
Order of Lenin (1944)
Order of Lenin (1945)
Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1954)
He was also given a Nobel Prize in Physics (1978) and various medals.
Kapitsa signed the notorious anti-Michurinist “Letter of the 300” and together with Tamm is definitely among the few truly skilled scientists to have signed it. But given Kapitsa’s rightist views and his total ignorance of philosophy, we shouldn’t have expected anything else from him. Kapitsa had no expertise in biology, but predictably this did not prevent him from intervening in biology and signing the letter.
I. Y. TAMM (1895-1971, nuclear physicist)
Igor Tamm received a Nobel prize together with P. A. Cherenkov and Ilya Frank. He received a Stalin prize in 1954. Tamm was a leading researcher in the Soviet nuclear bomb project.
Despite being a very skilled physicist, Tamm was too ignorant of philosophy of science, and of Marxism-Leninism. In the period of ideological confusion and serious struggle by mendelist-pseudo scientists and right-deviationists against Michurinism, Tamm was fooled by colleagues into signing the notorious so-called “Letter of the 300”. He is perhaps the most skilled scientist to have signed the letter, which is a definite black mark of disgrace on his career.
A. N. FRUMKIN (1895-1976, electrochemist)
Alexander Naumovich Frumkin was a Soviet Russian electrochemist, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1932, founder of the Russian Journal of Electrochemistry Elektrokhimiya. The A. N. Frumkin Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences is named after him.
Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Department of Mathematical and Natural Sciences) since 1932. Foreign member of several academies of sciences and scientific societies of the world, laureate of the palladium medal of the American Electrochemical Society.
Head of the Department of Electrochemistry at Moscow State University (1933- 1976), director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry (1939-1949) and the Institute of Electrochemistry (now named after A. N. Frumkin, 1958-1976) of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize 1st degree (1941) – for scientific works on the study of electrochemical processes: “On the platinum electrode”, “Electrode potentials”, “Electrochemical methods for studying the surface of catalysts”, “On the maxima of the curves of the dependence of current on voltage”, published in 1936-1940
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1943) – for outstanding achievements in the field of physical chemistry and for the successful completion of special government assignments
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1949)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1965)
-3 Orders of Lenin (1945; 1965; 1975)
V. A. FOCK (1898-1974, physicist)
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock was a Stalin Prize winning Soviet physicist, who did foundational work on quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He developed his own model of quantum physics, asserting that both the wave and particle properties of the ‘wave-particle duality’ representive objective reality.
He earned numerous awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
-D. I. Mendeleev Prize – for work on the quantum theory of the structure of complex atoms (1936)
-N. I. Lobachevsky Prize – for works that expand the ideas of N. I. Lobachevsky (1937)
-medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” (1944)
-4 Orders of Lenin (1945, 1953, 1958, 1968)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree – for scientific work on the theory of radio wave propagation, culminating in the work “Diffraction of radio waves around the earth’s surface.” (1946)
-the first prize of the Leningrad University – for the book “The Theory of Space, Time and Gravity” (1956)
-Lenin Prize – for work on quantum field theory – “Fock space”, set out in the monograph “Works on quantum field theory” (1957)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1968)
-Helmholtz medal (1971)
He was elected a
-Foreign Member of the Norwegian Royal Society (1958)
-Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Denmark (1965)
-Honorary Doctorate from the University of Delhi, India (1966)
-Honorary doctor of the University of Michigan, USA (1967)
-Foreign member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (1967)
-Member of the International Academy of Quantum Theory of Molecules (1972)
-honorary doctorate from the University of Leipzig (1972)
“V. A. Fock, materialist and dialectical thought in quantum mechanics” from the magazine “Principles”, No. 15, May 1988 [in Spanish but you can read with auto-translate]
N. S. AKULOV (1900-1976, physicist)
Akulov Nikolai Sergeevich. A Stalin prize winning specialist in ferromagnetism.
S. E. KHAIKIN (1901-1968, physicist)
Semyon Emmanuilovich Khaikin was a Soviet physicist and radio astronomer, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences (1935), professor (1935). Founder of domestic experimental radio astronomy, discoverer of radio emission from the solar corona.
Born in Minsk to a Jewish family, S. E. Khaikin’s brother was the conductor B. E. Khaikin. Graduated from the Minsk private real school in 1918 and entered the Moscow Higher Technical School and the Higher Electrotechnical Courses. In 1919-1924 he served in the Red Army. In 1928 he graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. In 1930-1946 he worked at Moscow University (from 1935 as professor, in 1931-1933 as Deputy Director of the Institute of Physics of the University, in 1934-1937 as Dean of the Faculty of Physics, in 1937-1946 as Head of the Department of General Physics, Head of the Laboratory for the Development of Phase Radar and Radio Navigation).
During the Great Patriotic War, Khaikin headed a group of physicists at Moscow State University, which led the development of radar methods. These studies were started in October 1941. The group included P. E. Krasnushkin, I. A. Yakovlev, M. A. Leontovich, Y. P. Terletsky and V. V. Vladimirsky.
In 1945-1953 he worked at the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Head of the Radio Astronomy Sector in the Laboratory of Oscillations). In 1948-1949, he led the creation of the first Soviet radio astronomy station in the Crimea. In 1953 he created the Department of Radio Astronomy at the Pulkovo Observatory, which he headed until the end of his life.
Khaikin carried out a lot of scientific, organizational and pedagogical work: he lectured at the Physics Department of Moscow State University, at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, the Moscow Institute of Communications Engineers, was one of the initiators of school Olympiads. His sons Moisey Semenovich and Alexander Semyonovich also became physicists.
S. E. Khaikin was a pupil of the scientific school of Academicians L. I. Mandelstam and N. D. Papaleksi. He made a great contribution to the development of the theory of oscillations and theoretical radio engineering. Work in these areas is primarily related to issues of self-oscillations: the phenomenon of “capture” with small external influences, relaxation oscillations (for example, in systems with dry friction). In 1939, he discovered the effect of superheating a solid.
In 1947 he led an expedition to Brazil, where for the first time in the world observations of a total eclipse of the Sun were made in the radio range. In 1956, at the Pulkovo Observatory, on Khaikin’s initiative, a radio telescope with a variable profile antenna was built. With its help, a strong circular polarization of the radiation of the active regions of the Sun was discovered and studied, “radio spots” were studied in detail, the linear polarization of the thermal radio emission of the Moon in the centimeter range was discovered and studied, the “roughness” of the lunar surface was estimated, and the distribution of radio brightness across the disk of Venus was studied for the first time, studies of the structure of Jupiter’s powerful radiation belts were carried out, precision measurements of the coordinates of extragalactic radio sources were performed and it was found that more than 40% of bright sources in the centimeter range are of a quasi-stellar nature, the structure and polarization of complex extragalactic sources were studied in detail. Led the development of the RATAN-600 radio telescope project.
For 30 years S. E. Khaikin worked on a textbook called “Mechanics”, which went through three editions, as well as collections of problems in mechanics, translated into foreign languages. He was one of the main authors of the classic “Textbook of elementary physics” in 3 volumes, ed. acad. G. S. Landsberg.
S. E. Khaikin wrote the book “What are the forces of inertia” , which became a popular introduction to mechanics. Three decades later, due to the accumulation of material and with the beginning of the “space age”, it was necessary to republish this book. The new book was called “Forces of inertia and weightlessness”. In his works, Khaikin consistently adhered to a materialistic view of nature and the laws existing in it, which in no way depend on the will of man. So, he wrote: “If there were no man and his consciousness, then the laws of nature would exist, and those of our ideas that approximately reflect objective laws and which we call Newton’s laws would not exist.”
S. E. Khaikin received the following awards:
-Honorary radio operator of the USSR (1946)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1953)
-A. S. Popov Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1965)
I. V. KURCHATOV (1903-1960, physicist)
Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov is known as the “father of the Soviet nuclear bomb”. In the late 1950s, Kurchatov advocated against nuclear weapons tests. The Soviet Union advocated the banning of nuclear weapons, but since the Western imperialists did not agree, the Soviet Union had to develop its own nuclear weapon. The first atomic reactor in Europe (1946) and the first nuclear power plant in the world (1954) were created under his leadership. He became a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1943.
He was given following awards:
Three times Hero of Socialist Labor (1949, 1951, 1954)
Five Orders of Lenin
Two Orders of the Red Banner
Medals: “For Victory over Germany”, “For the defense of Sevastopol”
Stalin Prizes (1942, 1949, 1951, 1954)
The Lenin Prize (1957)
A. I. LEIPUNSKY (1903-1972, physicist)
Alexander Ilyich Leipunsky was a Soviet experimental physicist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Hero of Socialist Labor.
His brother O. L. Leipunsky (two times Stalin Prize Laureate), his sister D. I. Leipunskaya, and his wife A. F. Prikhotko were all significant physicists.
Born in the village of Dragli, Sokalsky district, Grodno province, in the family of a jewish employee of the military department of Grodno. From 1918 he worked as a messenger, worker, assistant foreman, graduated in absentia from the Rybinsk Mechanical College. In 1921 he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics of the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. In the spring of 1923, A. F. Joffe brought him along with six students to his laboratory at the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology. In October 1928 he was transferred to the Kharkov FTI, where from March 1930 he was deputy director, and from 1933 director. He also supervised the nuclear laboratory of the UFTI. In the spring of 1934, Leipunsky was sent to England, where until December 1935 he worked in the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University at Rutherford’s.
In 1937 he was arrested in the “UFTI case”, but was released due to lack of evidence. He was expelled from the party, but was reinstated in 1946.
Since 1939, A. I. Leipunsky was the head of research on the problem of “Studying the fission of uranium”, and since 1940 on the design of a cyclotron. He took part in the work of the Nuclear and Uranium Commissions of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1941-1944 he was director of the Institute of Physics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, where he dealt with defense tasks, in 1944 he created a department of nuclear physics there. In 1944-1949 he was director of the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, also head of the ITEP department of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, head of the department and dean of the engineering physics department of the Moscow Mechanical Institute (MMI). In 1946-1947 he was in charge of the sector of laboratory No. 3, which was headed by academician A. I. Alikhanov. In laboratory No. 3 at that time, a heavy-water reactor based on natural uranium was being created and a unique charged particle accelerator was being built (the development of a prototype accelerator with an energy of 10 MeV began at the suggestion of A. I. Leipunsky). In 1946-1949 he was deputy head of the 9th department of the NKVD, since 1949 he headed the department of the Obninsk Physics and Energy Institute.
Since 1950 he was scientific director of the program for the creation of nuclear reactors on fast neutrons. In Obninsk, he became the scientific director of the project for a reactor with a liquid metal coolant, which formed the basis of a fundamentally new propulsion system for the K-27 submarine. In Obninsk he created a school of nuclear physicists.
A. I. Leipunsky received the following awards and prizes:
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1963)
-Three Orders of Lenin (1949; 1953; 1963)
-Order of the October Revolution (1971)
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1944)
-Lenin Prize (1960)
-Honorary citizen of the city of Obninsk (1996)
A. I. ALIKHANOV (1904-1970, physicist)
Abram Isaakovich Alikhanov was a Soviet Armenian experimental physicist who specialized in particle and nuclear physics. One of the founders of nuclear physics in the USSR. One of the creators of the first Soviet atomic bomb. Founder of the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics. Corresponding Member (1939), Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943), Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1943). Hero of Socialist Labor, three times winner of the Stalin Prize, three times recipient of the Order of Lenin, recipient of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. His younger brother, Artem Alikhanian (1908-78), was also a noted physicist.
“The diversity of certain kinds of elementary particles steadily increases, of which the spectrum of varitrons, discovered by the brothers Alikhanov, is a particularly striking example” (S. I. Vavilov, Lenin And Philosophical Problems Of Modern Physics, p. 25)
D. D. IVANENKO (1904-1994, nuclear physicist)
Dmitri Ivanenko was awarded the Stalin prize in 1950 for his work.
B. A. VORONTSOV-VELYAMINOV (1904-1994, astronomer)
Boris Aleksandrovich Vorontsov-Velyaminov was a Soviet astronomer, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR (1947; after 1966, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR). Honored Scientist of the RSFSR.
He was awarded the F. A. Bredikhin Prize of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1963) and a medal for the discovery of new astronomical objects. On November 8, 1984, the asteroid (2916) Voronveliya, discovered on August 8, 1978 at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory by N. S. Chernykh, was named in his honor.
P. A. CHERENKOV (1904-1990, physicist)
Pavel Cherenkov was a Nobel prize winning Soviet physicist. Out of his collaborators Ilya Mikhailovich Frank and Igor Tamm also received a Nobel prize. Cherenkov received a Stalin prize in 1946 and 1952.
V. I. VEKSLER (1907-1966, physicist)
Vladimir Iosifovich Veksler was a Soviet experimental physicist and professor. The founder of accelerator technology in the USSR, the creator of the JINR synchrophasotron. Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946), Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1958), Academician-Secretary of the Nuclear Physics Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1963–1966).
He received the following awards:
-3 Orders of Lenin (1945; 1951; 1953)
-Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1959), Stalin Prize of the first degree (1951).
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1962)
-Atom for Peace Prize (1963).
S. D. GVOZDOVER (1907-1969, physicist)
Samson Davidovich Gvozdover was a Soviet physicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (1939), professor at the Physics Department of Moscow State University (1947).
Born in the family of an engineer, a graduate of the Munich Higher Technical School, David Lazarevich Gvozdover, and a housewife, Sarah Mironovna Gvozdover. In 1927 he graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University with a degree in radio-vacuum engineering under the guidance of Professor N. A. Kaptsov. After graduating from graduate school in 1931, he taught at the Faculty of Physics. The degree of Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences was awarded to Gvozdover in 1935 on the basis of a combination of scientific papers without defending a dissertation; He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1939 on the topic “The movement of electrons in a low-pressure discharge.” During the Great Patriotic War he was the chairman of the Central Local Committee of the Moscow University evacuated in Ashgabat.
In 1943 he returned to Moscow. In September 1946, he created and headed the country’s first Department of Radiophysics and Electronics at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, which included the departments of high frequencies, electronic optics and oscillography, electronic and ion devices, acoustics, radar, oscillations, radio wave propagation and the theoretical foundations of radio engineering. Since 1947, he was in charge of the department of microwave physics he created. In 1958, on the initiative of S. D. Gvozdover, the Problem Laboratory of Quantum Radiophysics was organized at Moscow State University, which he headed almost until the end of his life (1967). The laboratory launched the country’s first ruby and helium-neon lasers.
Among Gvozdover’s students are such well-known physicists as A. S. Gorshkov, S. A. Akhmanov, Yu. S. Konstantinov, V. M. Lopukhin and others.
S. D. Gvozdover was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.
D. I. BLOKHINTSEV (1907-1979, physicist)
Dmitry Ivanovich Blokhintsev was a Soviet physicist, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences (1934). Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958) and the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1939). Professor of Moscow State University (1936). Hero of Socialist Labor (1956). Laureate of the Lenin (1957), Stalin (1952) and State (1971) prizes.
One of the founders and director of Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (1947-1956) and The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (1956-1965). Member of the Bureau of the Nuclear Physics Division of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1971-1979). President of International Union of Theoretical and Applied Physics (1966-1969). Member of the Higher Attestation Commission under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Advisor to the Scientific Council under the UN Secretary General (since 1967).
Born in 1908 in Moscow in the family of an agronomist. As a child, he was carried away by aircraft and rocket science, independently mastered the basics of differential and integral calculus, got acquainted with the works of Hermann Oberth and Max Valier, and corresponded with K. E. Tsiolkovsky.
Blokhintsev graduated from the Moscow Industrial and Economic College. He studied at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University (1926-1930). In 1930-1933 he studied at graduate school supervised by I. Y. Tamm. In 1934 he defended his Ph.D. thesis on the quantum theory of solids; in 1935, based on the results of the defense, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. He worked as a professor of Moscow State University since 1935, and as head of the Department of Nuclear Theory since the 50s. He was the founder of the Department of Nuclear Physics at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. In 1935-1947 he also worked at the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (FIAN). He joined the CPSU(b) in 1943. Since 1947, he was the director of a research laboratory in Obninsk, on the basis of which the Institute of Physics and Energy was created under his leadership . He was the head of a secret military research laboratory and later helped found the Institute for Nuclear Research.
During the Great Patriotic War, Blokhintsev participated in research on military acoustics, which served as the basis for his monograph “Acoustics of an inhomogeneous and moving medium” (1946). The work of Blokhintsev (together with Yu. M. Sukharevsky ) on the detection of aircraft by the noise they create, in which the foundations of statistical hydroacoustics were laid and correlation methods for signal extraction in the presence of interference were developed.
Blokhintsev’s scientific works are devoted to solid state theory, semiconductor physics, optics, acoustics, quantum mechanics and quantum electronics, nuclear physics, nuclear reactor theory, quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, philosophical and methodological issues of physics.
He explained, on the basis of quantum theory, the phosphorescence of solids and the effect of rectifying an electric current at the interface of two semiconductors.
In 1944, based on the equations of gas-hydrodynamics, he built a theory of sound phenomena in moving and inhomogeneous media, having obtained acoustic equations of the most general form (“Blokhintsev’s equations”), on the basis of which he derived a number of acoustic laws, explained and calculated various acoustic phenomena in moving and inhomogeneous media (including turbulent ones), concerning, on the one hand, the mechanism of noise generation, and, on the other hand, the methods and means of its reception. He formulated the equations of geometric acoustics.
He performed one of the first works on nonlinear optics, in particular, developed the theory of the Stark effect in a strong alternating field and studied nonlinear effects.
At the turn of 1940-1950, he formulated his own interpretation of quantum mechanics, the so-called Blokhintsev interpretation, or ensemble interpretation.
A significant place in Blokhintsev’s scientific work is occupied by research on the theory and technical problems of nuclear chain reactions and nuclear reactors. He did much for the development of Soviet atomic science and technology. He supervised the design and construction of the first nuclear power plant, which went into operation in 1954 (Lenin Prize, 1957 ). Developed effective methods for calculating fast, intermediate and thermal neutron reactors. Together with A. I. Leipunsky, he supervised the development of the first fast neutron reactor in Europe with a liquid metal coolant. He put forward the idea (1955) and built pulsed fast neutron reactors IBR-1 (1960) and IBR-2 (1984).
While working as director of “Object B” of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in Obninsk, Blokhintsev, with the support of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, initiated work on the creation of a nuclear rocket engine for space flights.
From 1956, Blokhintsev’s scientific interests focused on elementary particle physics. In particular, here his research related to the structure of elementary particles, the limits of applicability of quantum electrodynamics, the interaction of high-energy particles, non-local field theory, problems related to the concept of space and time in the microcosm. Back in 1938, he carried out calculations that essentially predicted the Lamb shift. This most important discovery of D. I. Blokhintsev was not understood by his contemporaries. The work saw the light only in 1958 in the works of D. I. Blokhintsev, although its results were presented earlier in the review by Ya. A. Smorodinsky (1949).
He proposed ideas about fluctuations in the density of nuclear matter (1957), about quantum stochastic spaces, about the existence of several vacuums and a spontaneous transition between them, pointed out the existence of the so-called unitary limit, developed the theory of confinement of ultracold neutrons, etc.
D. I. Blokhintsev earned the following awards:
-Stalin Prize, first degree (1952)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1953)
-4 orders of Lenin (1945; 1954; 1951; 1956)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1956)
-Lenin Prize (1957)
-The State Prize of the USSR (1971)
-Order of the October Revolution (1975)
-Order of Cyril and Methodius, 1st class (Bulgaria)
-Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
-Honorary citizen of the city of Dubna
K. A. PETRZHAK (1907-1998, nuclear physicist)
Konstantin Antonovich Petrzhak was a Soviet physicist who together with Georgy Flerov discovered spontaneous fission. Petrzhak also contributed to the Soviet atomic bomb.
He was awarded the Stalin prize 2nd degree (jointly with Georgy Flyorov for discovery of spontaneous fission) in 1946, Council of Ministers Prize in 1950, Stalin Prize (for work on the soviet atomic project) in 1953 and Order of the Red Banner of Labour (for work on the soviet atomic project) in 1953.
A. A. VLASOV (1908-1975, theoretical physicist)
Anatoly Aleksandrovich Vlasov was a Soviet, theoretical physicist prominent in the fields of statistical mechanics, kinetics, and especially in plasma physics. Igor Tamm was his doctoral advisor.
I. M FRANK (1908-1990, nuclear physicist)
Ilya Mikhailovich Frank received a Nobel prize together with P. A. Cherenkov and Igor Tamm. He received a Stalin prize in 1946 and 1953. He led research into nuclear power. The USSR became the first country to create a nuclear power plant in 1954.
M. A. MARKOV (1908-1994, physicist)
Moisey Alexandrovich Markov was a Soviet physicist-theorist who mostly worked in the area of quantum mechanics, nuclear physics and particle physics. He is not a particularly important Soviet physicists, but is known mainly for having proposed the idea of underwater neutrino telescopes in 1960.
Markov graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow University in 1930. He worked at the Institute of Red Professors (1931-1933) and the Faculty of Physics of the Moscow State University (1933-1934). Since 1934 he worked for the Lebedev Physical Institute. In 1956-1962 he was the head of the Neutrino Physics Laboratory of the Institute for Nuclear Research. Markov was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences since 1953.
Despite his communist background, Markov made serious mistakes, was fooled by the Khrushchevite Revisionists and also signed the notorious anti-Michurinist “Letter of the 300” in 1955. Markov naturally had absolutely no grasp of biology, and no expertise on Michurinism. It is unclear why he signed, but it seems some colleagues convinced him. The letter did not seriously try to refute Michurinism on scientific grounds, but instead claimed Michurinism was dictatorial and harassing scientists. If they were fooled into believing this lie, scientists from fields distant from biology could’ve been convinced to sign the letter.
Markov was criticized by A. A. Maksimov in 1948: “even now not all Soviet physicists have freed themselves from the remnants of bourgeois ideology… In addition to Ya. I. Frenkel, the distributor of “physical” idealism in the USSR is Professor M. A. Markov, whose “program” article was published in No. 2 of the journal Voprosy Philosophy in 1947.” (A. A. Maksimov. Marxist philosophical materialism and modern physics)
O. I. LEIPUNSKY (1909-1990, physicist)
Ovsey Ilyich Leipunsky was a Soviet physicist, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR, winner of two Stalin Prizes (1949 and 1953). He was also awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and two Orders of the Badge of Honor. Brother of physicist and Hero of Socialist Labor Alexander Leipunsky and physicist Dora Leipunskaya.
N. N. BOGOLYUBOV (1909-1992, theoretical physicist)
Nikolai Nikolaevich Bogolyubov Russian and Ukrainian Soviet mathematician and theoretical physicist, Doctor of Mathematics (1930), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (since 1953, corresponding member since 1946) and the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (since 1948), founder of scientific schools in nonlinear mechanics and theoretical physics.
He was Professor at Kyiv University (1936), Professor at Moscow State Universty (1943-1992), Director of the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna (since 1956), Director of JINR (1965-1988), Director of MIAN (1983-1988), Head of the Department of Quantum Statistics and Field Theory of the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University (1966-1992).
Bogolyubov earned the following awards:
-2 Orders of the Badge of Honor (01.10.1944; 04.11.1944)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1947) – for scientific work in the field of statistical physics: On some statistical methods in the field of statistical physics.
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (1953) – calculation and theoretical work on the product RDS-6s and RDS-5.
-2 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1948; 1954)
-M. V. Lomonosov Prize (1957) – for the work “On a new method in the theory of superconductivity.”
-Lenin Prize (1958)
-Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1969; 1979)
-6 Orders of Lenin
-Order of the October Revolution (1984)
-USSR State Prize (1984)
-M. A. Lavrentiev Gold medal (1983) – for the work “On stochastic processes in dynamical systems.”
-Large M. V. Lomonosov gold medal (1984) – for outstanding achievements in the field of mathematics and theoretical physics.
-A. M. Lyapunov Gold Medal (1989) – for a series of works on stability problems, critical phenomena and phase transitions in the theory of systems of many interacting particles.
International awards and prizes
-Prize of the Academy of Sciences of Bologna (Italy, 1930)
-Heinemann Prize in Mathematical Physics from the American Physical Society (1966)
-Helmholtz Gold Medal (AN GDR, 1969)
-Order of Cyril and Methodius, 1st class (Bulgaria, 1969)
-Max Planck Medal (1973)
-US Franklin Medal (1974)
-Gold medal “For services to science and humanity” of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (1975)
-Order of Merit, II class (Poland, 1977)
-Karpinsky FRG Prize (1981)
-Dirac Medal from the International Center for Theoretical Physics (1992, posthumously)
Bogolyubov was also elected to numerous foreign academies and scientific institutions:
-Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1960)
-Foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1961)
-Foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1962)
-Foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (1966)
-Foreign Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences in Heidelberg (Germany, 1968)
-Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1969)
-Foreign member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1979)
-Foreign member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1980)
-Foreign member of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (1983)
-Foreign Member of the Indian National Academy of Sciences (INSA; 1983)
-Honorary Doctor of Science from Allahabad University (India, 1958)
-Honorary doctorate from the University of Berlin A. Humboldt (1960)
-Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Chicago (USA, 1967)
-Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Turin (Italy, 1969)
-Honorary Doctor of Science from Wrocław University (1970)
-Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Bucharest (Romania, 1971)
-Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Helsinki (Finland, 1973)
-Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Warsaw (1977)
E. K. FEDOROV (1910-1981, geophysicist)
Evgeny Konstantinovich Fedorov was a Soviet geophysicist and explorer, head of the Hydrometeorological Service of the USSR, statesman and public figure, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Lieutenant General of Engineering technical service. Hero of the Soviet Union (1938).
Fedorov was part of the “North Pole-1” expedition with I. D. Papanin, E. T. Krenkel and P. P. Shirshov.
Fedorov earned the following awards:
-Her of the Soviet Union and the Gold Star Medal (1938) (for his work in the “North Pole-1” expedition)
-six Orders of Lenin
-two Orders of the Patriotic War, 1st class (1944; 1945)
-Order of Kutuzov II degree (1945)
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (1946) – for research in the field of meteorology, the results of which are presented in the II volume of the works of the drifting station “North Pole” (1945)
-two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1955; 1964)
-USSR State Prize (1969) – for the development and implementation of a method and means of combating hail damage using anti-hail missiles and shells
-Order of the October Revolution (1975)
-medals (“For the defense of Moscow”, “For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War”, etc.)
A. A. SOKOLOV (1910-1986, nuclear physicist)
A. A. Sokolov was awarded the Stalin prize in 1950 for his work.
D. I. LEIPUNSKAYA (1912-1978, physicist)
Dora Ilyinichna Leipunskaya was a Soviet physicist, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, professor.
Leipunskaya participated in the atomic project of the USSR, was engaged in the separation of plutonium and the development of safety methods when working with it. She participated in the creation of a plutonium bomb, later was the head of the laboratory of neutron activation analysis at the Institute of Nuclear Geochemistry and Geophysics. There, engaged in exploration of mineral deposits, developed a new scientific and applied direction: the method of quantitative neutron activation analysis for mineral exploration. With her participation, a neutron breeder was developed, which is still used at the present time, as well as a method for using low-power nuclear reactors of the VVP type for neutron activation analysis.
She was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor in 1949, together with her brothers Alexander and Ovsei for their joint work in physics.
Y. P. TERLETSKY (1912-1993, physicist)
Yakov Petrovich Terletsky was a Soviet physicist, professor at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, laureate of the Lomonosov Prize (1944), Stalin (1951) and Lenin (1972) prizes for work in areas of magnetic induction.
Born in St. Petersburg in the family of teachers. In 1936 he graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, until 1963 he worked at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University at the Department of Theoretical Physics. In 1939 he defended his Ph.D. thesis on the topic “Hydrodynamic theory of Brownian motion” and became a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences.
In early 1942, after returning from evacuation to Kazan, Terletsky joined the group of physicists at Moscow State University , leading the development of radar methods, created in October 1941 and headed by Professor S. E. Khaikin. During the Great Patriotic War, Terletsky significantly developed the theory of the betatron, the most important device used to accelerate light particles.
In 1945 he defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Dynamic and statistical laws of physics” and became a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences.
At the same time, he became deputy head of department “C” of the NKVD of the USSR with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the same year he was sent to N. Bohr to discuss the status of work in the USSR on the creation of an atomic bomb.
In 1952-1956, simultaneously with his work at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, he headed the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Institute of Nuclear Problems of the Academy of Sciences in Dubna.
In 1963 he created the Department of Theoretical Physics and until the end of his life was the head of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Peoples’ Friendship University.
In 1971 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Scientific Society in Uppsala.
Terletsky generalized the theorem on the impossibility of a classical explanation of magnetism (the Bohr-Van-Leven-Terletsky theorem, 1939). Together with S. Gvozdover and L. Loshakov, he created the theory of the reflective klystron (1941). He proposed a successfully implemented method for obtaining superstrong magnetic fields by rapid explosive compression of a metal in a magnetic field. He proposed an inductive mechanism for explaining the acceleration of cosmic particles in the field of rapidly rotating magnetic stars (prediction of pulsars) (1945).
Terletsky predicted the existence of an ionic component in primary cosmic rays, which was soon discovered (1948). He put forward (independently of the Japanese physicist S. Tanaka) the hypothesis of the existence of superluminal particles – tachyons, based on the idea of the connection of the causality principle with the second law of thermodynamics and the possibility of its violation in fluctuations (1960).
He put forward (jointly with V. I. Zubov) the key idea of constructing a quasi-equilibrium theory of crystals based on non-symmetrized distribution functions, the fruitfulness of which for explaining strongly anharmonic effects was confirmed by practice (1968).
He put forward the idea of using string-like configurations as solutions to some nonlinear field equations for describing elementary particles and their excitations (1977).
Terletsky developed the thermodynamics of living systems as a theory of antidissipative processes (1988).
Y. P. Terletsky earned the following awards:
-Order of Lenin.
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
-Lomonosov Prize, 2nd degree (1948) – for the theory of induction accelerators.
-Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (1951) – for work on the theory of induction accelerators, published in the journals “Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR” and “Experimental and Theoretical Physics” in 1948-1949.
-Lenin Prize (1972) – for work in the field of magnetic cumulation.
-Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1973).
Terletsky was a firm Dialectical Materialist and wrote on philosophical issues of physics. He criticized subjective idealism in quantum physics and metaphysical theories of “heat death”, which claim that motion of matter is temporary:
“Problems of development of quantum theory” by Ya. P. Terletsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“On one of the books of academician L. D. Landau and his students” by Ya. P. Terletsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
P. E. KRASNUSHKIN (1913-1983, physicist)
Pyotr Evgenievich Krasnushkin was a Soviet physicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Oscillations of Moscow State University, a specialist in the field of radiophysics, the theory of oscillations.
In 1935 he graduated with honors from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, gained his doctorate in 1943. During the Great Patriotic War, Krasnushkin was a member of the group of physicists of Moscow State University under Prof. S. E. Khaikin, leading the development of radar methods. He was a professor of the Department of Oscillations of the Faculty of Physics in 1947-1951. In 1940-50, working at Special Design Bureau NII-88, and then at the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he created a theoretical basis for high-quality synchronization in the VLF range of radio waves (synchronization at distances of the order of 10 thousand km with an error of 10 μs).
His main interest was the study of the propagation of electromagnetic waves in waveguides and in the space around the Earth. He proposed the method of “normal waves”, which began to be used in acoustics, radiophysics, seismology. Using this method, he predicted waveguide channels in the troposphere, which were later discovered experimentally by US scientists, in particular, he theoretically established the possibility of propagation of VHF radio waves along a tropospheric waveguide in 1943. This issue was further developed in the works of Academician V. A. Fock.
P. E. Krasnushkin received the following awards:
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” (1946).
-Prize named after M. V. Lomonosov for the work “The method of normal waves as applied to waveguides” (1946).
G. N. FLYOROV (1913-1990, nuclear physicist)
Georgy Nikolayevich Flyorov was a Soviet nuclear physicist who is known for his discovery of spontaneous fission and his contribution towards the physics of thermal reactions. He is also known for his letter directed to Joseph Stalin, during WWII urging the development of the Soviet Atomic Bomb.
“In 1939 it was discovered that when uranium, the heaviest chemical element, was acted upon by neutrons of low energy, the atoms of uranium suffered a new, formerly unknown, type of disintegration in which the nucleus of the atom split up into two approximately equal halves. These halves are themselves unstable varieties of the atomic nuclei of familiar chemical elements found in the middle of Mendeleyev’s Periodic fable. One year later, in 1940, K. Petrzhak and G. Flerov, young Soviet physicists, discovered that this new type of disintegration or new type of radioactivity of uranium, also occurred in nature, but that it was encountered much more rarely than the usual disintegration of uranium.” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, p. 78
Flyorov was awarded the following awards: Hero of Socialist Labour (1949) Order of Lenin (1949), Stalin Prize, twice (1946, 1949), Honorary Citizen of Dubna. The element flerovium (atomic number 114) is named after him.
In the period of ideological confusion and serious struggle by mendelist-pseudo scientists and right-deviationists against Michurinism, Flyorov was fooled by colleagues into signing the notorious so-called “Letter of the 300”.
V. P. DZHELEPOV (1913-1999)
Venedikt Petrovich Dzhelepov was a Soviet physicist. He educated at Leningrad Industrial Institute in 1937. In 1939 working with I. V. Kurchatov on the first in Europe cyclotron in the Radium Institute. The joint researches with Kurchatov determined Dzhelepov’s further career.
In August 1943, Dzhelepov joined the group of the first staff members of Laboratory No. 2 which is now known as the Kurchatov Atomic Energy Institute for solving uranium problem. In 1948 Dzhelepov was tasked by Kurchatov to become deputy director of the new Laboratory being developed in Dubna (later became the Institute for Nuclear Problems within the USSR Academy of Sciences (he held this position in 1948-1956).
Later he was appointed the Director of Laboratory for Nuclear Problems at Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna (1956-1988). Since 1989 worked as its Honorary Director.
He received the following awards
-2 Stalin Prizes (1951 and 1953)
-Order of Lenin (1951)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labour (twice 1962 and 1974)
-Order of the October Revolution (1983)
-Kurchatov Gold Medal (1986)
-Order of Friendship (1996)
N. A. LUNIN (1915-1968, railway innovator)
Nikolay Aleksandrovich Lunin, innovator of railway transport. Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Stalin Prize. Member of the CPSU since 1943.
He received a train driver education in 1934. During the Great Patriotic War, Lunin’s innovations were widely used in transport and other industries. In 1943, he used his own savings to buy a 1,000-ton trainload of coal to help Stalingrad.
“Lunin, Nikolai Aleksandrovich. Born May 9 (22), 1915, in Riazhsk, present-day Riazan’ Oblast; died Oct. 3, 1968, in Moscow. Innovator of Soviet railroad transportation; Hero of Socialist Labor (1943). Member of the CPSU from 1941.
As a locomotive engineer at the roundhouse in Novosibirsk, Lunin was the initiator of socialist emulation in new methods of maintaining locomotives (increasing the amount of locomotive service repairs completed by the members of the locomotive brigade). The methods he proposed made it possible to cut down the repair time and the downtime in the roundhouse, to reduce the cost of repair, and to increase useful operating time. Lunin’s innovation was widely disseminated in the field of transportation and in many branches of industry. After graduating from the Institute of Railroad Engineering in 1950, Lunin was involved in the management of railway transportation.
Lunin was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the second convocation. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1942 and was awarded two Orders of Lenin. He was the author of the book How to Reduce the Amount of Industrial Repair: Our Maintenance Experience for Locomotives (1941).” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (April 10, 1942) – for the radical improvement of the method of operating a steam locomotive, ensuring a significant increase in the daily mileage and service life of the locomotive
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1943)
-two Orders of Lenin
-two badges of Honorary Railwayman
-Citizen of the 20th century of the Novosibirsk region (posthumous, 2000)
E. M. LIFSHITS (1915-1985, physicist)
Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshits was a Soviet physicist, graduate of Kharkov Polytechnic University (1934), Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (1934, UFTI), Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (1939, Leningrad State University), academician (1979, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1966). Laureate of the Lenin and Stalin Prizes.
E. M. Lifshits was born in Kharkov. His brother was the physicist Ilya Mikhailovich Lifshits. The Lifshitz brothers were born and raised in the family of a famous Kharkov oncologist, Professor Mikhail Ilyich Lifshitz, whose doctoral dissertation was opposed by Academician I. P. Pavlov.
E. M. Lifshits studied under L. D. Landau, which resulted in certain negative consequences, such as Lifshits accepting some of Landau’s idealistic notions. Since 1939, he worked at the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow (during the Great Patriotic War, he worked with all the staff of the IPP in Kazan). In 1947-1950 he worked at the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Faculty of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University.
E. M. Lifshits co-author of a fundamental course in theoretical physics together with L. D. Landau. Together with Landau, he built a theory of domains in ferromagnets and derived the equation of motion of the magnetic moment (Landau-Lifshitz equation, 1935). In the theory of phase transitions, he established a criterion that made it possible to give a complete classification of possible transitions of the second kind (Lifshitz’s criterion, 1941). Developed the theory of molecular forces acting between condensed bodies (1954). Constructed the theory of instabilities in the expanding Universe (1946). Together with I. M. Khalatnikov and V. A. Belinsky, he found a general cosmological solution of the Einstein equations with a singularity in time (1970–1972).
He devoted many years to the “Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics ” (ZhETF) as deputy editor-in-chief. For almost 30 years, until his death, he was the main editor of the magazine.
E. M. Lifshits earned the following awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (December 31, 1953)
-Academic Prize of M. V. Lomonosov (1958)
-L. D. Landau Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1974)
-Order of Friendship of Peoples (1975)
-Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London (1982)
Criticism of idealist mistakes of L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshits:
“Problems of development of quantum theory” by Ya. P. Terletsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
On the second law of thermodynamics, or how late-Soviet revisionism planted idealism in science (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“On one of the books of academician L. D. Landau and his students” by Ya. P. Terletsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
V. V. VLADIMIRSKY (1915-2008, physicist)
Vasily Vasilyevich Vladimirsky was a Soviet physicist; Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1962).
V. V. Vladimirsky is one of the authors of the discovery of the “phenomena of focusing a beam of charged particles in an alternating electric field uniform along the beam axis”. In 1945, he took part in the calculations, design and construction of the first experimental heavy water reactor in the USSR.
V. V. Vladimirsky received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize, 1st degree (1953) – for design and experimental work on the creation of an atomic boiler.
-two Orders of Lenin (1954, 1962)
-Lenin Prize (1970) – for the development and commissioning of the IHEP proton synchrotron for an energy of 70 GeV.
-the Red Banner of Labor (1973)
-the Orders of the Badge of Honor (1975)
-A. I. Alikhanov Prize
-V. I. Veksler Prize (2000) – for outstanding work on accelerator physics
-the Order of Honor (2001)
N. S. KRYLOV (1917-1947, physicist)
Nikolai Sergeevich Krylov was a Soviet theoretical physicist who studied the main issues of classical mechanics, statistical physics and quantum mechanics.
N. S. Krylov came from a family of physicists and jurists. His father, Sergey Borisovich Krylov (1888-1958), was a specialist in the field of state and international law , professor, Doctor of Law and Honored Scientist of the RSFSR, one of the Soviet signatories of the UN Charter and a member of the International Court of Justice. His mother, Eva Nikolaevna Okuneva (1886–1976), received a law degree at the Bestuzhev courses.
His brother was Boris Sergeevich Krylov (1923–2013), Doctor of Law, Professor of the Department of Constitutional Law of Foreign Countries and his sister, Elena Sergeevna Krylova (born 1919), is a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, researcher of the S. I. Vavilov luminescence laboratory of the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences until 1962, researcher of the Institute of Solid State Physics and Semiconductor Electronics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk until 1974, married Academician Anatoly Vasilyevich Rzhanov, a specialist in the field of semiconductor physics and organizer of the A. V. Rzhanov Institute of Semiconductor Physics.
In 1934 he entered the Faculty of Physics of the Leningrad State University, in 1937 he received a diploma with honors and became a graduate student at the Department of Theoretical Physics under the scientific guidance of V. A. Fok. In 1941, he defended his Ph.D. thesis on the topic “Stirring processes in phase space “, in which he used classical mechanics as the basis of statistical physics through the establishment of the mixing law in phase space and its connection with the ergodic hypothesis. In July 1941, Krylov became a researcher at the Physics Institute of the Leningrad State University. In 1939-1941 he served in the ranks of the Workers ‘and Peasants’ Red Army, during the Great Patriotic War he performed various tasks of defense significance without stopping his scientific activity: in the summer of 1942 he defended his doctoral dissertation “Processes of relaxation of statistical systems and the criterion of mechanical instability” in the Leningrad Physico-technical institute, which was then in Kazan after the evacuation from besieged Leningrad. Conducted scientific activities in institutions in Yelabuga, Yoshkar-Ola and Moscow, at the end of 1944 he returned to the Physics Institute of the Leningrad Order of Lenin State University as a senior researcher.
Nikolai Sergeevich was married to Lidia Valentinovna Dogel (born 1919), daughter of the founder of the national protozoological scientific school and the scientific school of ecological parasitology, Professor V. A. Dogel , a member of Correspondent of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and laureate of the Lenin Prize, who in 1946 graduated from the I. P. Pavlov 1st Leningrad Medical Institute, became a specialist in the field of neuromuscular pathology, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Nervous Diseases of the Leningrad Institute for the Improvement of Physicians.
Ya. P. Terletsky criticized certain mistakes of Fock and Krylov in his article “Problems of development of quantum theory”. (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
A. V. RZHANOV (1920-2000, physicist)
Anatoly Vasilievich Rzhanov was a Soviet scientist, specialist in the field of semiconductor microelectronics and semiconductor surface physics. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1962). Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1984).
With the outbreak of World War II in December 1941, as a graduate student, he volunteered for the Marine Corps. Having received a short leave to pass exams and defend a diploma, he graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute with honors (1941). Rzhanov fought on the Leningrad front. He commanded a detachment of reconnaissance marines, participated in combat operations, reconnaissance in force, and carried out raids behind enemy lines. In 1943, in the battles to break the blockade of Leningrad, he was seriously wounded.
At the end of 1943, having been demobilized from the army, he passed the entrance exams to the graduate school of the Lebedev Physical Institute. In 1948, he completed his postgraduate studies at the Lebedev Physical Institute, a participant in the first work in the USSR on the creation of a semiconductor transistor. He became a candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 1949.
In 1962, at the invitation of Academician M. A. Lavrentiev, Rzhanov moved with a group of FIAN employees to the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok , where he organized the Institute of Solid State Physics and Semiconductor Electronics. He was the director of the Institute in 1964-1990. He taught at the Novosibirsk State University, where he organized the Department of Semiconductor Physics (1963), which he headed for many years.
A. V. Rzhanov received the following awards:
-Order of the October Revolution
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor
-Order of Lenin (1980)
-Order of the Patriotic War 1st class (1985)
-Order of the Patriotic War 2nd class
-Medal of Honor
-Medal “For the Defense of Leningrad”
-Prize of the Council of Ministers of the USSR
-Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 4th class (1999)
M. I. BUDYKO (1920-2001)
Soviet climatologist and one of the founders of physical climatology. He pioneered studies on global climate and calculated temperature of Earth considering simple physical model of equilibrium in which the incoming solar radiation absorbed by the Earth’s system is balanced by the energy re-radiated to space as thermal energy.
Budyko’s groundbreaking book, Heat Balance of the Earth’s Surface published in 1956, transformed climatology from a qualitative into a quantitative physical science.
“Budyko, Mikhail Ivanovich. Born Jan. 20, 1920, in Gomel’. Soviet geophysicist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1964). Member of the CPSU since 1956.
Upon graduating from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute in 1942, Budyko worked at the A. I. Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory, becoming its director in 1954. His major works are in the fields of physical climatology, bioclimatology, and actinometry. Together with Academician A. A. Grigor’ev, he formulated the periodic law of geographical zonality. Budyko received the Lenin Prize in 1958 for his work on the heat balance of the earth’s surface. He has been awarded two orders and various medals.
WORKS
Isparenie v estestvennykh usloviiakh. Leningrad, 1948.
Atlas teplovogo balansa. Leningrad, 1955. (Editor.)
Teplovoi balans zemnoi poverkhnosti. Leningrad, 1956.
Klimat i zhyzn’. Leningrad, 1971.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
S. A. AKHMANOV (1929-1991, physicist)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Akhmanov was a Soviet physicist, one of the founders of nonlinear optics . Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor. He received the Lomonosov Prize (1964), the Lenin Prize (1970), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1980) and was nominated Honored Worker of Science of the RSFSR (1989).
V. I. ZUBOV (1930-2000, physicist)
Vladimir Ivanovich Zubov was a Soviet mathematician, mechanic, physicist and teacher, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Born in the city of Kashira, Moscow Region, where he graduated from an incomplete secondary school in 1945. In 1946 he came to Leningrad, graduated from high school and in 1949 entered the Leningrad State University. In 1953, a year ahead of schedule, he graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics of Leningrad University. In 1955 he defended his dissertation for the degree of candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, in 1960 a dissertation for the degree of doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, and became a professor in 1963.
Founder of the Faculty of Applied Mathematics – Control Processes of the Leningrad State University (opened on October 10, 1969), head of the Department of Control Theory of the Leningrad State University (1967-2000). In 1981 he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the department of mechanics and control processes.
V. I. Zubov received the following awards:
-The State Prize of the USSR for a series of works on the theory of automatic control (1968)
-Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation (1998)
The asteroid (10022) discovered in 1979 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Chernykh was named in honor of Vladimir Ivanovich Zubov on March 9, 2001.
RADIO ENGINEERING
A. S. POPOV (1859-1906, physicists, electrical engineer, inventor)
Alexander Stepanovich Popov lived in pre-revolutionary Russia, where his work received no support from the government. However, his work was continued to great effect by Soviet scientists. Popov is known as one of the inventors of a radio-telephone device, independently and contemporaneously with the Italian G. Marconi. In the USSR May 7 was made a holiday “Communications Workers’ Day” or colloquially ‘Radio Day’ in Popov’s honor.
“Alexander Stepanovich Popov (1859-1905), Russian scientist, inventor of the radio. Born into the family of a priest. Studied at the Perm Theological Seminary. Graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University (1882). From the beginning of the 1880s, he began the study of electromagnetic waves, culminating in the invention of radio in 1895 . From 1901 he headed the Department of Physics at the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute, in 1905 became the director of this institute.
In January 1896, in the Journal of the Russian Physicochemical Society, Popov published an article “A device for detecting and registering electrical oscillations,” in which he gave a diagram and a detailed description of the principle of operation of the world’s first radio receiver.” The successful practical operation of the device has proven its ability to capture electromagnetic vibrations in the atmosphere. On March 12/24, the scientist, on an experimental device, clearly demonstrated the transmission of signals without wires at a distance of 250 meters.
In June 1896, the Italian G. Marconi patented an invention in England that repeated the scheme of the device previously published in Popov’s publication. This fact prompted the Russian scientist to make special statements about his priority in the domestic and foreign press. Popov’s merits in the invention of the radio were recognized by being awarded a gold medal at the Paris Electrotechnical Congress in 1900.
By the summer of 1897, as a result of numerous experiments, the problem of increasing the transmission distance was solved, new devices were manufactured at the expense of the Ministry of the Navy and a communication range of up to 5 km was achieved. The experiments of radio communication, as having military significance, were not made public, but the phenomenon of radio waves reflection from objects (in particular, ships), noticed in the course of them, formed the basis of radar.
In 1898-99 Popov continued experimental work in the Baltic and Black Seas, during which he developed a device for receiving telegraph signals by ear. In 1900, radio communication was established for 50 km, after which the Ministry of the Navy introduced a wireless telegraph on the ships of the fleet.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
Alexander Popov (1949) A Soviet Film about Popov
American western-centric and anti-communist propaganda ridiculed the notion that a Russian could have invented the radio transmitter or telephone. However, the first functional electromagnetic telegraph was also invented by Russian Pavel Schilling.
A. A. PETROVSKY (1873-1942, radio engineer, physicist)
Alexey Alekseevich Petrovsky was a Soviet scientist in the field of radio engineering, geophysics, electrophysical methods of geological exploration. He was one of the founders of Soviet radio engineering, together with his student I. G. Freiman. Petrovsky was the student and colleague of inventor A. S. Popov. Petrovsky developed the theory and methodology of electrical prospecting. State Councillor, the first professor of radio engineering and the author of the first theoretical guide to radio engineering in Russia. Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR.
Petrovsky was a military officer in the Russian Empire. After the October Revolution Petrovsky moved to a teaching position in the United Naval Forces Classes (1918-1922), and also lectured at the Institute of Higher Commercial Knowledge (until 1930). In 1919 he headed the Petrograd (later Leningrad) branch of the Russian Society of Radio Engineers. In the summer of 1921, he took part in the experimental work that had begun in the Baltic Sea on the organization of radio communication between coastal stations and submarines in a submerged position.
On the initiative of Petrovsky and engineer I. G. Freiman, in November 1922, the first radio amateur circle in the USSR was organized in Petrograd, and in 1923 a radio section was organized at the Electrotechnical Institute.
From 1923 to 1925, he taught electrical engineering at the Higher Military Electrotechnical School of the Commanders of the Workers ‘and Peasants’ Red Army (RKKA) and the Military Engineering Academy. In April 1925, on the pages of the monthly magazine “Friend of Radio” Petrovsky, wrote an article on the 30th anniversary of the invention of the radio by A. Popov, and expressed the prophetic words: “May 7 will turn into a real holiday for radio operators!” Since 1945, the Radio Day holiday has been celebrated annually.
In 1924-1930 he was the head of a department at the Institute of Applied Geophysics ( Institute of Applied Geophysics named after Professor V. I. Bauman). He was engaged in the development of electrical methods for the exploration of mineral deposits. In 1928-1938 he taught at the Leningrad Mining Institute , and in 1934 he became the first head of the new department of geophysical methods of exploration, which trained geophysical engineers.
In 1932 he was appointed deputy director of the Geophysical Institute of the Ural branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (UFAN). In 1935 he defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and was awarded the title of professor.
In the position of deputy director, and then head of department in UFAN, he continued to work until 1942. In 1941 he was awarded the title ” Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR”. Over the entire period of his activity, he wrote more than 200 scientific papers on radio engineering, telecommunications, electrical prospecting for minerals and the history of radio.
A. A. CHERNYSHEV (1882-1940, electrical engineer, scientist)
Alexander Alekseevich Chernyshev was a soviet scientist, one of the inventors of the radar. He became a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1929 and full member in 1932. He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1930.
M. A. BONCH-BRUEVICH (1888-1940)
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bonch-Bruevich was a Soviet radio engineer and founder of the Russian radio tube industry. Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1931). Professor of the Moscow Higher Technical School (1922), Leningrad Institute of Communications Engineers (1932), Doctor of Technical Sciences, one of the founders and leaders of the Nizhny Novgorod radio laboratory. The laboratory was eventually awarded the Red Banner of Labor. Bonch-Bruevich made a significant contribution to the development of Soviet radiophysics, the development of new types of radio tubes, broadcasting and radio communications equipment. He wrote textbooks, scientific papers, as well as about 60 patents for inventions in the field of radio engineering.
M. A. Bonch-Bruevich had an active correspondence with Lenin. Lenin wrote to him on February 5, 1920:
“Mikhail Alexandrovich!.. I take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude and sympathy to you for the great work of radio inventions that you are doing. The newspaper without paper and “without distances” that you create will be a great thing. I promise to render you all possible assistance in this and similar works. With best wishes, V. Ulyanov (Lenin)”
I. G. FREIMAN (1890-1929, radio engineer and scientist)
Imant Georgievich Freiman together with A. A. Petrovsky was one of the founders of Soviet radio engineering and builder of powerful radio stations. He introduced the terms “radio engineering” and ” radio broadcasting ” into circulation. He designed and built a radio transmitter for the world’s first radio probe, was the first chairman of the communications and observation section of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Red Naval Forces. Freiman was a teacher, dean of the electro-physics faculty, head and professor of the country’s first radio engineering department at the Electrotechnical Institute and head of the radio communication department of the Naval Academy in Petrograd.
In 1918 he took an active part in the creation of the “Russian Society of Radio Engineers” (RORI) in Petrograd, thanks to which the Nizhny Novgorod radio laboratory was formed and a special magazine “Telephony and Telegraphy without Wires” began to be published. In March 1919 he joined the Workers ‘and Peasants’ Red Army. In May 1919, he was appointed as a radio receiver in the Mine Department of the Main Directorate of Shipbuilding, and in October 1921 he became a senior radio receiver. At the same time he worked on a thesis on the topic: “On the laws of the similarity of radio networks” and taught a course in radio engineering at ETI, was elected secretary of the publishing committee of the institute.
In 1919 he filed an application for the invention of a device for multiple telephony using cathode electron-beam switches, which subsequently outstripped the practical development of multichannel communication. In 1921 he defended his master’s thesis and was approved as a professor at ETI. In the same year he founded the first electrovacuum laborary together with professor of physics M. M. Glagolev. In 1922-1925 he worked as the dean of the electrophysical faculty of ETI. From 1922 to 1929 he was a member of the Radio Technical Council of the Trust of Low Current Plants and the Central Radio Laboratory, scientific consultant of the Scientific Test Station of the People’s Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs (in 1922-1928).
In September 1921, he made a report at the first All-Russian Congress of Amateurs of World Studies, in which he proposed to develop radio amateurism on a national scale. On the initiative of A. A. Petrovsky and Freiman, in November 1922, the first radio amateur circle was organized in Petrograd, and in 1923 a radio section was organized at ETI. Handbooks for radio amateurs were published under the editorship of Freiman.
In 1922, he became the organizer of the Department of Radio Communication at the Naval Academy and until 1929 was its head, at the same time during these years he taught a course in radio engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Military Engineering Academy , continued lecturing at the Second Polytechnic Institute. In the summer of 1923, he organized an internship for his students in Sevastopol. During the practice, the students of the Naval Academy, among others N. P. Suvorov and A. N. Grinenko-Ivanov established underwater communications on the submarines of the Black Sea Fleet.
He was appointed the first chairman of the communications and observation section of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Naval Forces of the Red Army in 1924-1927. He was the initiator and leader of the development of the first radio equipment of the fleet “Blockade-I”, on the basis of which the next two generations of naval radio systems were later created.
In 1924 he became the chairman of the publishing committee of ETI, in the same year his fundamental work “Course of radio engineering” was published (again in 1928), in a review of this book, the future academician Professor A. A. Chernyshev wrote: that this book was the world’s first textbook of radio engineering as an engineering science”. From 1925 to 1926 he worked as deputy director of ETI for educational work.
In 1928 I. Freiman developed and created a radio transmitter for the world’s first radio probe, which was launched after the death of a radio engineer.
V. N. KESSENIKH (1903-1970, radio physicist)
Vladimir Nikolaevich Kessenikh was active in developing radio technology and in physics research. He solved many problems related to communication technology, for example:
“in 1932, he found a solution to the problem of excitation of electromagnetic waves in a wire, which marked the beginning of a series of studies on the concentrated excitation of electromagnetic fields in the theory of antennas and transmission lines. He carried out fundamental research on the electrodynamics of radiating systems. He was the first to introduce the analytical task of a lumped source into antenna problems and found their correct solution. He received the formula for the input impedance of a thin antenna, which was included in textbooks and reference books under the name “Kessenich’s formula”. He laid the theoretical foundations for the study and creation of broadband antenna systems. Kessenich conducted the first computational and analytical study of the detection of cracks in the metal using eddy currents; in the laboratory of the Siberian Institute of Physics and Technology, a number of experimental flaw detection hand trucks were developed for checking railway rails.” (Wikipedia)
In the Great Patriotic War he received the Order of the Red Star in 1942.
M. A. SHKUD (1907-1988, radio-television engineer)
Moisei Abramovich Shkud, Soviet engineer, architect, construction organizer, specialist in radio communications and television and radio broadcasting. Order of the Red Banner recipient, Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1970) and the USSR State Prize (1983).
Moisei Abramovich Shkud was born in the northern Bessarabia. From 1922 he worked as an electrician in Vinnitsa. In 1931 he graduated from the electrical engineering department of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, specializing in radio engineering, from the end of 1928 he simultaneously worked on the installation, then operation of the Kiev radio station. Until 1933 he worked as an electrical engineer, then supervised the construction of radio stations in Odessa, Chernigov, Kiev, Alma-Ata, Lutsk. In 1940-1941, he supervised the design of a series of powerful radio stations for the western regions of the USSR.
In 1941-1942, at the front, after demobilization (by decree of the People’s Commissar of Defense), he was appointed chief engineer of the Radiobud trust and supervised the restoration of radio stations destroyed during military operations.
From the mid-1950s, as chief engineer of the State Union Design Institute (GSPI) of the USSR Ministry of Communications, he supervised the design of television centers , multi-program radio broadcasting stations, long-distance multi-channel radio relay lines, and space communications stations. In 1962, under the leadership of M. A. Shkuda (chief designer), the country’s first land-based mobile (cellular) communications system “Altai” was developed, operating on a radial-zone principle (the first zone of this mobile communications network was launched in 1965), and in 1972 , the trunking mobile communications system “Altai-3M” was developed.
In 1964-1967, as chief engineer, he supervised the construction of the Ostankino television tower (with B. A. Zlobin), and was one of the authors of its architectural design (with D. I. Burdin and L. I. Shchipakin). In 1970, for this work, as part of the group of leading designer N. I. Nikitin (1907-1973), he was awarded the Lenin Prize.
In the late 1970s, M. A. Shkud supervised the design of radio facilities for the Olympics-80 , including the Olympic TV and Radio Complex (USSR State Prize, 1983).
NAVAL ENGINEERING
A. N. KRYLOV (1863-1945, shipbuilding engineer, mathematician)
Outstanding Russian and Soviet mathematician, mechanic and shipbuilding engineer. Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1916), Russian Academy of Sciences (1917), and USSR Academy of Sciences (1925). Professor of the Naval Academy; General of the Navy (1916), General for Special Assignments to the Naval Minister of the Russian Empire (1911). Member of the St. Petersburg Mathematical Society. Honorary Member of Foreign Scientific and Engineering Societies. The founder of the modern Russian school of shipbuilding, later developed by P. F. Papkovich, V. L. Pozdyunin, Yu. A. Shimansky and others. The author of classic works on the theory of ship oscillations in waves, on ship structural mechanics, the theory of ship vibration and their unsinkability, on the theory of gyroscopes, external ballistics, mathematical analysis and mechanics as applied to shipbuilding, on the history of physical, mathematical and technical sciences, etc. Honored Scientist and Engineer of the RSFSR (1939). Hero of Socialist Labor (1943), laureate of the first degree Stalin Prize (1941). Recipient of three Orders of Lenin (1939), 1943, 1945)
“Krylov, Aleksei Nikolaevich. Born Aug. 3 (13), 1863, in the village of Visiaga, Simbirsk Province; died Oct. 26, 1945, in Leningrad. Soviet scientist in shipbuilding, mechanics, and mathematics; member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1916; corresponding member, 1914). Hero of Socialist Labor (1943).
After graduating from the Naval School in 1884, Krylov was assigned to the compass department of the Main Hydrographic Administration, where he conducted his first scientific work on compass deviation. He graduated from the shipbuilding subdepartment of the Naval Academy in 1890, and his subsequent work was mainly concerned with naval architecture. For almost 50 years, beginning in 1890, he taught at the Naval Academy and also at the St. Petersburg (Leningrad) Polytechnic Institute and other institutions of higher education. He wrote a number of scientific courses that were original scientific contributions of great practical importance. In 1900 he became the director of the Ship Model Testing Basin; from 1908 to 1910 he was chief shipbuilding inspector and the chairman of the Naval Technical Committee. From 1910 to 1917 he was a consultant for the Metallicheskii and Putilov works on all shipbuilding questions. Krylov took an active part in the design and construction of Russian battleships of the Sevastopol’ class and introduced into shipbuilding a number of innovations that were later applied to practical naval shipbuilding. In 1916 he became a director of the Central Physics Observatory and head of the Main Military Weather Bureau, and in 1917, director of the Physics Laboratory (later the Physics Institute) of the Academy of Sciences. In 1919 he was made president of the Naval Academy, and he took part in its reorganization and in developing its bylaws. From 1921 to 1927 he was abroad as a member of a committee for reestablishing scientific contacts and solving practical problems of the national economy associated with the strengthening of maritime and rail transportation. In 1927 he returned to teaching at the Naval Academy and became the director of the Institute of Physics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He also took an active part in solving fundamental engineering problems concerning naval and civil shipbuilding in the USSR.
Krylov’s works are devoted to naval architecture and the theory of magnetic and gyroscopic compasses, artillery, and mathematics. He developed rational methods and approaches, which have become classical, for computing the main characteristics of a ship, stability and buoyancy. He also developed a theory of pitching and methods for determining a ship’s behavior in the general case of motion at an angle to the direction of motion of the waves. Krylov’s work on the unsinkability of ships, particularly the unsinkability tables that he compiled, was of great practical importance. He was also the author of outstanding works on the structural mechanics of ships. He began work on dynamic problems in shipbuilding, formulated a theory of ship vibrations, and proposed an original method of design calculations for elastically supported beams that is of great importance not only for computation of the hulls of ships but also for the development of structural mechanics as a whole. From 1938 to 1940, Krylov published a series of works in which he presented a complete treatment of the deviation of the magnetic compass, studied problems in the theory of gyroscopic compasses, and developed a theory of the influence of pitching and rolling on compass readings (State Prize of the USSR, 1941).
Krylov’s work on the theory of shipbuilding made him known worldwide. His work in mathematics and mechanics is also of great value. He solved a number of problems concerning rational organization of numerical computations, substantiated a method for improving the convergence of trigonometric series, and proposed a method for solving the secular equation (1931). He built the first machine in Russia for integrating differential equations (1904) and developed a number of important naval and artillery instruments. Krylov conducted important research on the vibration of artillery barrels and on exterior ballistics. His studies on the heritage of such classic figures in science as I. Newton, L. Euler, and K. Gauss are of lasting value. He also wrote colorful articles describing the life and work of P. L. Chebyshev, G. Lagrange, and Newton. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin.
WORKS
Sobr. trudov, vols. 1–12. Moscow-Leningrad, 1936–56.
Izbr. trudy. Leningrad, 1958. (With bibliography.)
REFERENCES
Luchininov, S. T. A. N. Krylov: Vydaiushchiisia korablestroitel’, matematik i pedagog. Moscow, 1959.
Trudy In-ta istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki AN SSSR, vol. 15. Moscow, 1956. (Volume dedicated to Krylov.)
Khanovich, I. G. Akademik Aleksei Nikolaevich Krylov. Leningrad, 1967.
Shtraikh, S. Ia. Aleksei Nikolaevich Krylov: Ocherk zhizni i deiatel’nosti. Moscow, 1956.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article by A. A. PARKHOMENKO)
COMPUTER ENGINEERING
V. S. LUKYANOV (1902-1980, computer engineer)
Vladimir Sergeevich Lukyanov, Soviet scientist. He is the creator of the Lukyanov hydraulic integrator, an analog computer from 1936, the earliest, or one of the earliest computers in the world.
He received the Stalin Prize, third degree (1951) for the creation of hydraulic integrators for technical calculations and research, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945” and the Medal “In Memory of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow”.
M. N. BABUSHKIN (1924-2003, automation scientist)
“Babushkin, Mark Nikolaevich. Born Dec. 27, 1924, in the stanitsa (large cossack village) of Kachalinskaia, Ilovlia Raion, Volgograd Oblast. Soviet scientist in control problems. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1976). Member of the CPSU since 1947.
Babushkin graduated from the F. E. Dzerzhinskii Higher Naval School in 1947 and from the A. N. Krylov Naval Academy of Naval Architecture and Armaments in 1954. He was on the teaching staff at the academy from 1954 to 1972, becoming a professor in 1968. In 1973 he was appointed director of the Khabarovsk Scientific Research Integrated Institute of the Far East Scientific Center of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
Babushkin’s main works deal with the theory of multivariable control systems and integrated ship automation, as well as with the theory of analog computers.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
AVIATION ENGINEERING
N. A. TELESHOV (1828-1895, aviation engineer)
Nikolai Afanasievich Teleshov was a Russian engineer and designer of one of the first Jet Aircraft in the world. He was one of the pre-revolutionary inventors held in high regard in the USSR.
N. Y. ZHUKOVSKY (1847-1921, Engineer, a founding father of modern aero- and hydrodynamics)
Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky was a Soviet Russian scientist, mathematician and engineer, and a founding father of modern aero- and hydrodynamics. Whereas contemporary scientists scoffed at the idea of human flight, Zhukovsky was the first to undertake the study of airflow. He is often called the Father of Russian Aviation. The Soviet State Zhukovsky Prize was established in 1920 ‘for the best works in mathematics’.
Zhukovsky’s ideas could not be implemented in the Russian Empire but they were developed in the USSR. His theories were further developed for example by his students S. Chaplygin, L. I. Sedov and V. V. Shuleikin.
“At a time when air transport was only a dream, 11 years before the historic flight of the Wright brothers, the prominent Russian scientist and mathematician Nikolai Zukhovsky (1847-1921), theoretically demonstrated the possibility of building machines heavier than man. air, which would not only be stable, but could even perform the loop and other stunts. In his aerodynamic investigations, he laid the foundations of aerodynamic lift.” (“Science in the USSR”, «Divulgação Marxista»)
“Zhukovskii, Nikolai Egorovich. Born Jan. 5 (17), 1847, in the village of Orekhovo, present-day Vladimir Oblast; died Mar. 17, 1921, in Moscow. Russian scientist in the field of mechanics; founder of modern hydrodynamics and aerodynamics. Son of a railroad engineer. Graduated from the department of physics and mathematics of Moscow University in 1868, specializing in applied mathematics. In 1870 he became a physics teacher at the Second Moscow Women’s Gymnasium. In 1872, Zhukovskii became a lecturer in mathematics and in 1874 an assistant professor in the sub-department of analytical mechanics of the Moscow Higher Technical School. In 1876 he defended his master’s thesis, Kinematics of Liquids. Zhukovskii received the degree of doctor of applied mathematics in 1882 for his work On the Stability of Motion. In 1885 he began to teach theoretical mechanics at Moscow University. He worked at Moscow University and the Moscow Higher Technical School until his death.
In 1894, Zhukovskii was elected corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1900 he was presented as a candidate for election to full membership in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences but withdrew his candidacy, since he did not want to give up teaching at Moscow University and the Moscow Higher Technical School (election would have meant a move to St. Petersburg). In 1905 he was elected president of the Moscow Mathematical Society.
In 1902, Zhukovskii directed the construction of a wind tunnel for the Mechanics Laboratory of Moscow University; it was one of the first wind tunnels to be built in Europe. The first institute of aerodynamics in Europe was organized under his leadership in 1904 in the village of Kuchino, near Moscow. During the same year Zhukovskii organized the Aeronautics Section of the Society for the Advancement of Natural Sciences, Anthropology, and Ethnology. In 1910, Zhukovskii took an active part in the organization of an aerodynamics laboratory at the Moscow Higher Technical School. In 1910-12 he gave a series of lectures at the Moscow Higher Technical School entitled “The Theoretical Foundations of Aviation,” which contained a systematic presentation of the work done by Zhukovskii and by his student, S. A. Chaplygin, as well as experimental studies conducted in the aerodynamics laboratories of Moscow University and the Moscow Higher Technical School and in laboratories abroad. In 1913, Zhukovskii began to give lectures for air force pilots at the Moscow Higher Technical School, where a bureau for design and testing of aircraft was organized. Methods for aerodynamic calculations and for structural design of aircraft were developed at the bureau under Zhukovskii’s direction. During World War I (1914-18), Zhukovskii developed the theory of bombing, studied problems in the ballistics of artillery projectiles, and gave courses in ballistics, aviation, and special problems in hydromechanics; he also worked on various problems of theoretical mechanics.
After the October Revolution Zhukovskii, together with a group of scientists under his direction, immediately devoted himself to the task of creating a Soviet air force. In December 1918, at Zhukovskii’s suggestion, the Soviet government established the Central Aerodynamic and Hydrodynamic Institute, which was directed by Zhukovskii. The theoretical courses for air force pilots established by Zhukovskii were reorganized as the Moscow Aviation Technicum, which in turn served as the basis for the development of the Engineering Institute of the Red Air Force (since 1922 the N. E. Zhukovskii Air Force Engineering Academy).
Zhukovskii created a unified engineering discipline, experimental and theoretical aerodynamics, whose development was closely associated with progress in aircraft construction. His earliest research on the theory of flight was conducted in 1890. His papers On the Soaring of Birds (1891), in which the mechanism of soaring with concurrent ascent was studied and the possible evolutions in soaring (including the “normal loop”) were examined, and On the Optimum Angle of Inclination of an Airplane (1897) were the basis of aerodynamic calculations for aircraft design. In the articles “On the Theory of Flight” (1890), “On Alate Propellers” (1898), and “On the Payload Lifted by a Helicopter” (1904) he dealt with problems of propeller thrust. In the works On the Fall in Air of Light, Elongated Bodies Rotating About Their Longitudinal Axes (1906) and On Bound Vortices (1907), Zhukovskii stated the principle of generation of the lift of an aircraft wing, which he discovered in 1904, and formulated a theorem that makes possible the determination of the magnitude of the lifting force. Zhukovskii’s theorem, which establishes the link between circulation and the lift of an airfoil, is the basis of aerodynamics. A hypothesis about the escape of the slipstream from the trailing edge, which yielded a method for the determination of circulation and confirmed the fundamental significance of Zhukovskii’s theorem for aviation, was proposed in the group of works by Zhukovskii On the Contours of Airfoils in Airplanes (1910) and Geometric Research on Kutta’s Flow (1911-12), as well as in a number of works by S. A. Chaplygin. These works evolved a mathematical model for solving problems of flow over an airfoil and presented a method for designing theoretical Zhukovskii wing profiles. From 1912 to 1918, Zhukovskii published four articles under the common title Vortex Theory of a Propeller, in which, based on the airfoil theory he had developed, he determined the laws of velocity distribution on propeller blades, which were the theoretical foundation of propeller design.
In his works An Elementary Treatment of Aircraft Dynamics (1913-16), Aerodynamic Design of Aircraft (1917), Study of the Stability of Aircraft Designs (1918), On the Question of Structural Strength of Aircraft (1918), and Elementary Theory of Aircraft Stability (1920), Zhukovskii created the foundation for aerodynamic design of aircraft and for calculations of the dynamic longitudinal stability and structural strength of airplanes.
Zhukovskii was the author of numerous original research works on mechanics of rigid bodies, astronomy, mathematics, hydrodynamics and hydraulics, applied mechanics, and machine control theory. His work is characterized by the combination of in-depth theoretical research with an engineering approach to the solution of technical problems. He also was the author of theoretical mechanics textbooks that have become classics and are used in universities and technical institutions of higher learning.
To celebrate 50 years of Zhukovskii’s scientific work and his services as the “father of Russian aviation,” a decree was promulgated by the Council of People’s Commissars and signed by V. I. Lenin in 1920 establishing the N. E. Zhukovskii Prize for the best works in mathematics and mechanics and providing for the publication of Zhukovskii’s works and for the award of a number of privileges to Zhukovskii himself. In January 1947, on the 100th anniversary of Zhukovskii’s birth, the Council of Ministers of the USSR established two annual N. E. Zhukovskii prizes and N. E. Zhukovskii scholarships for senior students at Moscow University, the Moscow Aviation Institute, and the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School. Memorials have been erected in Moscow and in the city of Zhukovskii in Moscow Oblast. A Zhukovskii memorial museum has been established in Moscow, and a museum in Zhukovskii’s native region has been renovated.
WORKS
Poln. sobr. soch., vols. 1–9. Moscow-Leningrad, 1935–37.
Poln. sobr. soch., Lektsii, fascs. 1–7. Moscow-Leningrad, 1938–39.
Sobr. soch., vols. 1–7. Moscow-Leningrad, 1948–50.
Teoreticheskaia mekhanika, 2nd ed. Moscow-Leningrad, 1952.
REFERENCES
Keldysh, M. V. “Nauchnoe nasledstvo N. E. Zhukovskogo.” Tekhnika vozdnshnogo flota, 1947, no. 1 (226).
Leibenzon, L. S. N. E. Zhukovskii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947.
Golubev, V. V.N. E. Zhukovskii. Moscow, 1947.
Khristianovich, S. A. Nauchnoe nasledie N. E. Zhukovskoeo Moscow, 1951.
Kosmodem’ianskii, A. A. N. E. Zhukovskii. Moscow, 1969.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
Zhukovsky (1950) A Soviet Film about Zhukovsky.
K. TSIOLKOVSKY (1857-1935, physicist, aeronautics and rocketry theorist)
Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) is the grandfather of Soviet rocketry and aeronautics and one of the inventors of rocketry and the airplane. He began his work during the Tsarist regime but continued it with government support in the Soviet Union.
“The capitalist system was the grave of popular talent. In those times only a few individuals climbed to any height in art and science… Another genius was the grandfather of Russian aviation, K. Tsiolkovsky. He designed an airplane thirteen years before the first airplane rose into the sky. He invented the metal dirigible airship several years before the first dirigible was built in Germany. But in tsarist Russia the value of these inventions was not appreciated. Only in the Land of Soviets were Tsiolkovsky’s discoveries put to use.” (A Short History of the USSR, ed. A. V. Shestakov, p. 242)
His work was the inspiration for the leaders of the Soviet space program Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko.
“Haven’t Jules Verne’s fantasies, which still fascinate us, been transformed into reality of today ! We find an even greater scope of fantastic thought in our remarkable Russian scientist K. Tsiolkovsky and though only some thirty years have elapsed since his daring predictions, much of what he wrote then has already come true. We must, therefore, never fear scientific fantasy nor take it as something already existing; we must fight for it because fantasy is one of the methods of scientific work. It was not without reason that Lenin said that fantasy was a quality of the. highest value” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, p. 386)
S. A. CHAPLYGIN (1869-1942, Engineer, physicist)
Sergey Alexeyevich Chaplygin was a Russian and Soviet physicist, mathematician, and mechanical engineer. He is known for mathematical formulas such as Chaplygin’s equation and for a hypothetical substance in cosmology called Chaplygin gas, named after him.
He graduated in 1890 from Moscow University, and later became a professor. He taught mechanical engineering at Moscow Higher Courses for Women in 1901, and of applied mathematics at Moscow School of Technology, 1903. He was appointed Director of the courses in 1905. Leonid I. Sedov was one of his students.
Chaplygin’s theories were greatly inspired by N. Y. Zhukovsky, who founded the Central Institute of Aerodynamics. His early research consisted of hydromechanics. His “Collected Works” in four volumes were published in 1948.
Honours and awards:
-Zhukovsky Prize (1925)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labour, twice (1927 and ?)
-Two Orders of Lenin (1933 and 1941)
-Hero of Socialist Labour (1941)
-Chaplygin was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences (the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1925-1991) in 1924.
The lunar crater Chaplygin and town Chaplygin are named in his honour.
S. I. UTOCHKIN (1876-1916, aviation pioneer)
“Utochkin, Sergei Isaevich. Born June 30 (July 12), 1876, in Odessa; died Dec. 31, 1915 (Jan. 13, 1916), in Petrograd. One of the first Russian aviators; popularizer of aviation in Russia.
The son of a merchant, Utochkin competed successfully in many sports, including swimming, fencing, wrestling, and boxing. In 1907 he made a solo flight in a balloon over Odessa; he then toured Egypt and made eight flights over the Sahara. He also tested gliders. In Odessa on Mar. 15, 1910, within a week after M. N. Efimov’s flights, Utochkin made his first flight in a Farman-4 airplane. In August 1910 he became a test pilot at the Duks plant in Moscow. Utochkin constructed a biplane of the same type as the Farman and used it to make dozens of flights over Odessa and the Black Sea in December 1910. In 1910 and 1911 he became the first to give demonstration flights in many cities in Russia and abroad. Utochkin’s flights were observed by such future distinguished aircraft designers and aviators as V. la. Klimov in Moscow, N. N. Polikarpov in Orel, A. A. Mikulin in Kiev, P. O. Sukhoi in Gomel’, P. N. Nesterov in Tbilisi, and S. P. Korolev in Nezhin.
Utochkin was buried in Nikol’skoe Cemetery at the Aleksandro-Nevskaia Laura.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
V. V. SHULEIKIN (1895-1979, Engineer, mathematician)
Vasily Vladimirovich Shuleikin was a Soviet scientist, mathematician and engineer. He made significant contributions to understanding of nonlinear wave phenomena, ocean acoustics and marine physics. His work on sea ice flows is considered foundational. He became a corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1929 onwards, and an academician from 1946.
He received the following awards:
-Order of Lenin
-Stalin Prize
-Order of the October Revolution
-Order of the Red Banner of Labour
-Medal “In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow”
-Medal “For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945”
-Order of the Red Star
S. P. KOROLEV (1906-1966, rocket and space system designer)
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was a Soviet scientist, designer of rocket and space systems, chairman of the Council of Chief Designers of the USSR (1946-1966), Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958).
Sergei Korolev is one of the main creators of Soviet rocket and space technology, and a key figure in human space exploration, the founder of practical astronautics. Under his leadership, the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth and the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin was organized and carried out. Twice Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Lenin Prize. Member of the CPSU since July 1953.
Sergei Korolev was born in Zhytomyr, his father was a teacher and his mother from a merchant family. In 1911 Korolev saw Sergey Isaevich Utochkin, one of the first Russian pilots, a popularizer of aeronautics and aviation, which had a significant impact on him. The Korolev family was ruined by WWI and they moved to a small apartment in Kiev.
In 1915, Korolev entered first grade of the gymnasium in Odessa, but the school was soon closed. He spent four months in a unified labor school and later was taught at home. Even in his school years, Sergei was interested in the then new aviation technology and showed exceptional abilities for it. In 1922-1924 he studied at a construction vocational school, studying in many circles and at various courses. He also participated in aviation public life and joined the the Society of Aviation and Aeronautics of Ukraine and Crimea in 1923.
Korolev studied aviation technology in various institutes, the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, Moscow Higher Technical School etc. and also graduated as a pilot. Getting a job under A. N. Tupolev, Korolev designed and built aircraft. He became familiar with the works of K. Tsiolkovsky and started thinking about launching space rockets.
Korolev joined the Jet Propulsion Study Group (GIRD). In April 1932, it became essentially a state research and design laboratory for the development of rocket aircraft, in which the first Soviet liquid ballistic missiles were created and launched. On August 17, 1933, the first successful launch of the GIRD rocket was carried out. Korolev designed rockets for the state throughout the 30s. In 1938 he was accused of Trotskyist sabotage, arrested, and sentenced. His sentence was first shortened to 8 years, and he was transferred to work in a design bureau. He was released in 1944 before the end of his sentence and his criminal record wiped out.
Korolev worked at the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering, designing and researching very significant rockets and ships throughout the 40s and 50s. He joined the Communist Party and was a leading designer in the Soviet Space Program since the early 50s.
Korolev received the following awards:
-Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1956; 1961).
-Three Orders of Lenin.
-Order of the Badge of Honor.
-The Lenin Prize.
-Medal “For Labor Valor”
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
-Medal “In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow”
-Honorary citizen of the cities of Korolev , Kaluga and Baikonur.
L. I. SEDOV (1907-1999, Engineer, physicist)
Leonid Ivanovich Sedov was a leading Soviet expert on hydro- and aerodynamics and applied mechanics.
In 1930 Sedov graduated from the Moscow State University, where he had been a student of Sergey Chaplygin, with the degree of Doctor of Physics and Mathematical Sciences. He later became a professor at the university.
During World War II, he devised the so-called Sedov Similarity Solution for a blast wave. He was the first chairman of the USSR Space Exploration program. He was president of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) from 1959 to 1961.
Sedov earned the following awards:
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1943)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945; 1961)
-S. A. Chaplygin Prize (1947) [24]
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (1952) – for the monographs “Plane Problems of Hydrodynamics and Aerodynamics” (1950) and “Methods of Similarity and Dimension in Mechanics” (1951)
-Lomonosov Prize (1954)
-six Orders of Lenin (1954; 1963; 1967; 1975; 1980; ?)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1967)
-Commander of the Legion of Honor (France, 1971)
-VDNKh Gold Medal (1973, 1984)
-A. M. Lyapunov Gold Medal (1974)
-Yuri Gagarin Medal (1984)
-Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree (1998)
-A. N. Krylov Prize (1998) – for the work “Simultaneous modeling of viscous and wave resistance of a ship in an experimental pool”
He was elected Honored Professor of Moscow State University in 1994.
ASTRONOMY
Soviet astronomy defended the theory of cosmic evolution, that planets, stars and galaxies were not supernaturally created in their current form but evolved from other forms and such evolution is still going on. Soviet astronomy defended the position that life is not unique to planet Earth but instead any planet with suitable conditions can produce life, and the Earth is not the only such planet. Important Soviet astronomers include:
Boris Kukarkin (astronomer)
Gavriil Adrianovich Tikhov (astrobiologist, “the father of astrobotany”)
Norair Sisakyan (biochemist, one of the founders of astrobiology)
A. N. SAVICH (1811-1883, astronomical pioneer)
“Savich, Aleksei Nikolaevich. Born Mar. 18, 1811, in Belovodsk, in what is now Sumy Oblast; died Aug. 15, 1883, in Tula Province. Russian astronomer. Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1862).
Savich graduated from Moscow University in 1829. From 1833 to 1839 he worked at the Dorpat Observatory under the direction of V. Ia. Struve. In the period 1839–80 he was a professor at St. Petersburg University. His principal works dealt with the determination of the orbits of comets, planets, and satellites, refraction, and barometric leveling. From 1836 to 1838, Savich conducted a leveling of the land between the Black and Caspian seas. Together with P. M. Smyslov and R. E. Lents, he was the first in Russia to make a determination of the force of gravity using reversible pendulums along an arc of the meridian (1865–68). Savich was the author of a major course on astronomy (1874–84), as well as other educational works.
REFERENCE
Novokshanova-Sokolovskaia, Z. K. Kartograficheskie i geodezicheskie raboty ν Rossii ν XlX-nachaleXX v. Moscow, 1967.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
S. P. VON GLASENAPP (1848-1937, astronomical pioneer)
Sergei Pavlovich von Glasenapp, Russian and Soviet astronomer, Corresponding Member (1928), Honorary Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929). Hero of Labor (1932).
Von Glasenapp came from a family of impoverished nobles, actually his father was a railway engineer whose business had gone bankrupt.
He first studied at the Tver Gymnasium (six grades), and in the 1865/1866 school year, at the 7th St. Petersburg Gymnasium. He entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of St. Petersburg University, which he graduated from in 1870. During his studies, he was most interested in astronomy, which was taught by Professor A. N. Savich. He was successful in studying mathematics, which was taught by P. L. Chebyshev. For his essay on “On arithmetic continued fractions,” Glazenap received a gold medal.
He was retained at the university to prepare for a professorship and began working in 1870 as a supernumerary astronomer at the Pulkovo Observatory, where he did much calculation under the direction of Dellen and Wagner until 1878. In 1874, he received a master’s degree in astronomy for his work on observing eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites.
From the beginning of 1877, he began teaching at St. Petersburg University as a privat-docent. He defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1885 he was approved as an extraordinary professor, and from 1889 as an ordinary professor. In 1887-1888, he was the dean of the physics and mathematics faculty of St. Petersburg University. He taught at the university until 1924.
In 1879-1887 he taught a general course in astronomy and cosmography at the Bestuzhev Higher Women’s Courses. In 1881 he headed the astronomical observatory created on his initiative at the University of St. Petersburg. He was a member of the St. Petersburg Mathematical Society. In 1892 he created the first mountain astronomical observatory in Russia in the village of Abas-Tuman.
His main scientific works are devoted to the study of binary and variable stars, the study of the motion of Jupiter’s satellites, and the refraction of light in the Earth’s atmosphere. In 1889, the Paris Academy of Sciences awarded S. P. von Glasenapp a gold medal for his original method of determining the orbits of binary stars.
In 1873 he developed a method for determining time based on the corresponding altitudes of the Sun using a solar ring. In December 1874 he took part in an expedition to observe the transit of Venus across the disk of the Sun in Eastern Siberia. He also led other expeditions.
S. P. Glazenap became one of the organizers of the Russian Astronomical Society; he was its chairman in 1893-1905 and in 1925-1929. He was an enthusiast for the development of amateur astronomy as well.
S. P. Glazenap was also known in his time as a gardener. He is credited with discovering a pest called the rowan moth. He devoted much effort to beekeeping (which he took up on the advice of A. M. Butlerov ). He was one of the main organizers of the “Russian Beekeeping Society” (1891) and its first chairman. The scientist’s work was recognized in 1901 at the World Exhibition in Paris with a gold medal “For the Culture of Apples and Beekeeping”. He published dozens of articles on beekeeping; his work was recognized at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 with a gold medal “For the Culture of Apples and Beekeeping”. In 1926, his book “Little Apiary” was published.
He was nominated as a Hero of Labor in 1932 and a Honored Scientist of the RSFSR.
N. D. PAPLEKSI (1880-1947, astronomer)
Nikolai Dmitrievich Papaleksi was a Soviet physicist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939), founder of Soviet radio astronomy. Winner of the D. I. Mendeleev Prize (1936, together with L. I. Mandelstam), Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1942) and recipient of the Order of Lenin (1945).
V. G. FESENKOV (1889-1972, astronomer)
Vasily Grigorievich Fesenkov, Soviet astronomer, astrophysicist, professor (1933), academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1935) and the Kazakh SSR Academy of Sciences (1946), Honored Scientist of the Kazakh SSR (1947).
He developed a criterion for the tidal stability of celestial bodies, which explains many features of the structure of the Solar System , the formation and evolution of galactic objects.
He received the following awards:
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” (1945)
-Order of Lenin (1945)
-Honored Scientist of the Kazakh SSR (1947)
-Medal “In Memory of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow” (1947)
-Order of Lenin (1953)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1959)
-Order of Lenin (1969)
V. T. TER-OGANESOV (1890-1962, astronomer)
Vartan Tigranovich Ter-Oganesov, astronomer, science organizer, one of the founders of the professional association of astronomers of the USSR the All-Union Astronomical and Geodetic Society (VAGO). Professor of MGRI, full member of the Russian Astronomical Society, deputy chairman of the Astronomical Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Born on October 10, 1890 in Tiflis. Ter-Oganesov became interested in astronomy while still in high school, and from the age of ten he corresponded with the chairman of the Russian Astronomical Society, S. P. von Glazenapp. After graduating from high school, he entered the physics and mathematics department of St. Petersburg University. At the age of 18, he became a member of the Russian Astronomical Society, and in 1913-14, he published two articles on two-stellar orbits in the Izvestiya of the Russian Astronomical Society. He graduated from the university in 1916.
After the October Revolution V. T. Ter-Oganesov joined the State Commission on Education, the main goal of which was to form a strategy for the reform of education and the organization of scientific research, where he briefly headed the so-called Scientific Department of the People’s Commissariat of Education – a division created to oversee the work of Russian scientific organizations. In 1918, he joined the Bolshevik party. From 1919, he taught at the Moscow Mining Academy, and taught a course in geometry at the Department of Mathematics of the Geological Prospecting Faculty.
In 1931, the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR formed an organizational bureau headed by astronomer V. T. Ter-Oganesov to create a unified astronomical society of the RSFSR. In 1932 the All-Union Astronomical and Geodetic Society (VAGO) was created. The famous Soviet astronomer, Professor A. A. Mikhailov was elected as chairman, and V. T. Ter-Oganesov and A. S. Chebotarev were elected deputy chairmen. He worked in this post until 1937. V. T. Ter-Oganezov headed the Moscow Amateur Astronomical Society (MOLA) between 1931-37.
In 1938, V. T. Ter-Oganesov received a candidate of science degree and the title of professor. He worked as the head of the mathematics department at the Ordzhonikidze Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute since the 50s until his death.
OTTO SCHMIDT (1891-1956, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, polar explorer)
Otto Schmidt was a Soviet scientist and polar explorer. Information about his polar expeditions and career is in the section “EXPLORERS” while this section only deals with astronomy.
The first scientific hypothesis about the origin of our galaxy was created by Kant and Laplace. Later bourgeois scientists attempted to develop this hypothesis. Schmidt and other Soviet scientists pointed out the errors of these bourgeois scientists and made important developments to the hypothesis. However, Schmidt’s theories still contain a number of shortcomings which were criticized at the Soviet First Conference On Cosmogony. Schmidt contributed greatly to a scientific theory of cosmogony.
“The first scientific cosmogonic hypothesis based on facts established by science was proposed in the eighteenth century by Kant and Laplace. These scientists believed the Sun and all the planets revolving around it to have formed by condensation of one primary incandescent nebula which rotated even before the origin of the Sun…
The Kant-Laplace hypothesis was long thought appropriately to explain the formation of the Earth, but the rapid development of astronomy, geophysics and geology in the nineteenth century made it possible to reveal several errors in this hypothesis, and new explanations appeared. For example, the scientist Chamberlain thought that the little Earth, formed in the manner proposed by Kant and Laplace, gradually grew larger by the addition of meteorites… Jeans believed the Solar System to have formed as a result of the passage of another star very close to the Sun… For a number of years this hypothesis was thought very adequate, but was then disproved because the passage of one star so close to another that it may cause the supposed ejections of material is a very rare phenomenon and unlikely to explain the formation of the planets revolving around the Sun. Several serious errors were discovered in this hypothesis chiefly by Soviet scientists.
More than 10 years ago Academician O. Schmidt put forward a new hypothesis of the formation of our Earth and the other planets revolving around the Sun. He assumed that moving in the Galaxy through the dust and gases which form the interstellar matter the Sun attracted part of them and came out surrounded by a cloud of this substance. According to the law of gravity this cloud revolved around the Sun, the particles composing the cloud moving in it in all directions, colliding with each other, sometimes breaking up, but more frequently uniting, the smaller particles joining the larger ones; the planets were thus gradually formed in the cloud. The part of the cloud closer to the Sun was heated more intensely, and the nearest planets Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars are therefore small and consist of dense matter, rock and metal, and little gaseous remains, whereas Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the more distant planets, are of enormous size and consist of gaseous and volatile substances. The bodies that failed to join the solid inner planets form comets and asteroids.
Schmidt originally thought that the meteorites forming part of the primary cloud had played an important part in the making of the planets; later he relinquished this idea and believed the gas-dust mass to have been the initial material for the creation of the planets.
Schmidt’s hypothesis successfully explains a great deal in the formation of the planets, but it is not devoid of serious short-comings, as was pointed out at the very first conference on problems of cosmogony. The hypothesis considers the formation of the planets of the Solar System, but leaves out the Sun; it offers a good explanation of the origin of the terrestrial type planets, but the large planets with their physical properties do not fit into it. Schmidt did not study the evolution of the Sun or the problem of the origin and evolution of the stars and did not utilize the rich material of modern astrophysics. All this shows that Schmidt’s hypothesis is as yet unable to explain the formation of all the heavenly bodies and is inadequate in its present form.
Most of the Soviet scientists studying problems of astronomy and geophysics believe that the Earth and the other planets of the Solar System were formed not of substance brought from without, but of the gaseous or gas-dust matter existing within the limits of this system.
Schmidt’s and several other hypotheses assume that the Earth and other planets of this type formed of the gas-dust substance were originally cold. Subsequently, the substance was divided according to its specific gravity by means of gravitational differentiation and the globe was stratified into geospheres of different densities as a result of the rise of the lighter particles to the outer shells of the Earth…
The discovery of deep-focus earthquakes originating at a depth of more than 600 kilometres has persuaded some geologists that the outer shell of the Earth consists of solid substance to a depth of at least 800 kilometres. This structure of the earth’s crust conforms to the assumption of the origin of a “cold” Earth from cosmic dust better than to the hypothesis of a fiery-liquid Earth.
According to Schmidt’s hypothesis the originally “cold” Earth had in its composition radioactive elements which by disintegrating served as the source of energy, and the Earth gradually melted, only the outer shell of the Earth — the crust — remaining hard. On the other hand, as A. Vinogradov points out, if we take the meteorites to be fragments of planets (this is now believed firmly established) we must also admit that these planets went through the stage of complete melting. Thus, the Earth, whose internal geospheres have, according to modern assumptions, a structure analogous to that of different types of meteorites, must, as a whole, have gone through the stages of a molten body in which the processes of liquid differentiation, liquation and stratification occurred. In Vinogradov’s opinion the Earth began to cool from the inside and long retained a molten shell.
If we summarize the discussions of Schmidt’s hypothesis at the First Cosmogonic Conference we shall see that the problem of the origin of the Earth and planets, the problem of whether the energy produced by the decay of radioactive elements is alone enough to heat and melt the globe, and the problems of the further differentiation of the Earth’s substances and the process of the Earth’s cooling have as yet been inadequately elaborated and that astronomers, geophysicists and geologists have come to no agreement.” (V. Obruchev, Fundamentals Of Geology, pp. 259-262)
G. A. SHAIN (1892-1956, astronomer)
Grigory Abramovich Shain, Soviet astronomer, teacher, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939). Winner of the Stalin Prize, first degree (1950) and recipient of two Orders of Lenin.
He was nominated to the following foreign academies:
-Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of London.
-Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen.
-Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A minor planet ( 1648 Shajna), discovered by P. F. Shajn on September 5, 1935 at the Simeiz Observatory, is named after G. A. Shain. The lunar crater Shain is named in his honor. The 2.6-meter reflecting telescope, created on his initiative and installed in the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in 1961, bears his name.
P. F. SHAJN (1894-1956, Astronomer)
Pelageya Fedorovna Shajn, was a Russian astronomer in the Soviet Union, and the first woman credited with the discovery of a minor planet, at the Simeiz Observatory in 1928. Pelageya also discovered numerous variable stars and co-discovered the periodic, Jupiter-family comet 61P/Shajn–Schaldach.
In 1948 she discovered a new minor planet and named it Otto Schmidt after the famous Soviet geologist and explorer.
D. D. MAKSUTOV (1896-1964, astronomical innovator)
Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov, Soviet scientist, optician, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946). Inventor of the meniscus optical system that bears his name, which is currently widely used in telescope construction. Laureate of two Stalin Prizes.
-Stalin Prize, 3rd degree (1941) – for the creation of astronomical and optical instruments
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1943)
-two Orders of Lenin (1945; 1953)
-Stalin Prize, 1st degree (1946) – for the creation of new types of anaberration optical systems that significantly improve the quality of optical instruments
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
-Grand Prix medal at the World Exhibition in Brussels (1958)
-Grand Gold Medal of the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements (1962)
V. A. AMBARTSUMYAN (1908-1996, atrophysicist)
Viktor Amazapovich Ambartsumyan was a Soviet Armenian Astrophysicist, one of the founders of theoretical astrophysics, founder of the theoretical astrophysics of the USSR. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953, corresponding member since 1939). Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1943) and its president (1947-1993), president of the International Astronomical Union (1961-1964), twice winner of the Stalin Prize (1946, 1950).
“In the USSR, the only scientific direction of cosmogonic thought has been created, based on the analysis and broad generalization of observational data. Thus, for example, it has been established that stars are emitted from the pre-stellar stage simultaneously in whole groups (Ambartsumyan) and that the formation of stars took place even in distant epochs and continues up to the present time; that the stars that have arisen undergo a slow decay, they throw their own matter back into space, thereby continuously reducing the speed of their rotation and being in interaction with the surrounding interstellar medium; that the formation of planetary systems, which are very numerous in the universe, is inextricably linked with the origin of the stars themselves and represents a certain natural process.” (“Cosmogony”, in the Short Philosophical Dictionary, 1954)
Ambartsumyan received the following awards:
-Honored Worker of Science of the Armenian SSR (1941)
-Two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1944, 1953)
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (1946) – for the creation of a new theory of light scattering in turbid media, set forth in the works: “A new method for calculating the scattering of light in a turbid medium”, “On the scattering of light by the atmospheres of planets”, “On the question of diffuse reflection of light by a turbid medium » (1942-1944)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1950) – for the discovery and study of a new type of stellar systems (“stellar associations”), set out in a series of articles published in the journals: “Messages of the Byurakan Observatory”, “Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR” and “Astronomical Journal” (1949)
-Five orders of Lenin (1945, 1958, 1968, 1975, 1978)
-Jules Janssen Prize of the French Astronomical Society (1956)
-Medal “For Labor Valour” (1960)
-Catherine Bruce Medal of the Pacific Astronomical Society (1960)
-Honorary Citizen of Gyumri (1964)
-Honored Scientist of the Georgian SSR (1968)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1968, 1978)
-Order “Cyril and Methodius” 1st class (Bulgarian people’s republic, 1969)
-S. I. Vavilov Gold Medal (1970)
-Gold medal of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (1970)
-Large Gold Medal named after M.V. Lomonosov of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1971)
-Helmholtz Medal of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (1971)
-Commander of the Order of Merit for the Republic of Poland (1973)
-Kotenius Medal of the German “Leopold” Academy of Naturalists (1974)
-Order of the Banner (Hungarian people’s republic, 1975)
-Order of the October Revolution (1983)
-Honorary Citizen of Yerevan (1983)
-State Prize of the Armenian SSR (1988)
-Order of Honor (1988)
-National Hero of Armenia (1994)
-State Prize of the Russian Federation (1995) – for the cycle of works “Construction of the dynamics of stellar systems”
Ambartsumyan was invited the become a member also of the following scientific organizations:
-Austrian Academy of Sciences,
-Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences,
-Belgian Academy of Sciences,
-Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,
-Academy of Sciences of the GDR,
-Georgian Academy of Sciences,
-Danish Academy of Sciences,
-Italian Academy of Sciences,
-Royal Society of London,
-Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands,
-US National Academy of Sciences (1959),
-Academy of Sciences of France,
-Swedish Academy of Sciences,
-American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
-Indian National Academy of Sciences,
-New York Academy of Sciences,
-German Academy of Naturalists “Leopold”
-British Royal Astronomical Society,
-Royal Canadian Astronomical Society,
-American Astronomical Society,
-Cambridge Philosophical Society,
-University of Liege (honorary doctorate),
-Australian National University,
-University of La Plata,
-University of Paris,
-Prague University,
-N. Copernicus University of Toruń.
V. A. KRAT (1911-1983, astronomer)
Vladimir Alekseevich Krat, Soviet astronomer, member of the CPSU, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1972. He received to Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and two Orders of the Badge of Honor.
His main scientific works relate to solar physics, variable stars and cosmogony. He was the initiator and active participant in the work on the creation of stratospheric astronomy in the USSR.
As early as 1935, he proposed a hypothesis about the limited nature of the Metagalaxy and the existence of other cosmic systems outside of it. According to this hypothesis, the expansion of the Metagalaxy was preceded by its compression caused by the formation of condensations. He carried out a number of studies on the equilibrium figures of the components of close binary stars (1937). Based on observations of eclipsing variables, he studied the darkening towards the edge of the disks of stars and proposed a method for determining the darkening coefficient based on an analysis of the light curve. He developed a detailed classification of eclipsing variables (1944). He developed the concept of the chromosphere as a formation consisting of hot and cold filaments – prominences (1958). He established that chromospheric faculae observed in the H and K lines of calcium are located in the lower chromosphere and are limited in height inclusions of hotter gas in a gas layer with a kinetic temperature no higher than 5000 K (1960, 1963). Based on data from the solar eclipse of 1945, he established that the energy distributions in the continuous spectrum of the corona and in the spectrum of the center of the solar disk are identical.
A minor planet (3036 Krat) was named after him, discovered by G. N. Neuimin on October 11 , 1937, at the Simeiz Observatory.
B. K. IONNISIANI (1911-1985, astronomical engineer)
Bagrat Konstantinovich Ioannisiani, Soviet designer of astronomical instruments. Doctor of Technical Sciences.
He was the chief designer of the BTA, the largest telescope in the world at the time (now the largest in Eurasia), which was commissioned in 1975 at the Special Astrophysical Observatory. A minor planet (2450 Ioannisiani) is named after Ioannisiani.
He received the following awards:
-Lenin Prize Laureate (1957)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1977).
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1945)
-three Orders of Lenin (1961, 1972, 1977).
K. P. FLORENSKY (1915-1982, planetologist)
Kirill Pavlovich Florensky was a Soviet geochemist and planetologist, the second son of the philosopher Pavel Florensky, and the uncle of the geochemist and petrographer Pavel Florensky Jr. He holds a PhD in geological and mineralogical sciences (1958). He was a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), and vice-president of the IAU Commission 17 “Moon” (1973–1979).
He studied at the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute, which he entered in 1932. After graduating, he worked in the Biogeochemical Laboratory under the supervision of V. I. Vernadsky. After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War , K. P. Florensky worked under the supervision of Academician A. E. Fersman in the Defense Commission “Science for War” of the Department of Geological and Geographical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In December 1941, he created a cheap camouflage paint. Before that, chrome paints were used for painting in a protective green color. German pilots had glasses with a spectral light filter for chrome, thanks to which everything painted with chrome paint stood out brightly in the terrain. K. P. Florensky proposed divalent iron as a coloring agent, which gives a green color to plants. Through glasses with a spectral filter, military objects painted with such paint turned out to be indistinguishable against the background of natural objects. In the winter of 1941-1942, he studied the properties of white camouflage paints using a portable photometer he made.
He served in the military between 1942-1946. He ended the war as the commander of the topographic and computing platoon of the artillery reconnaissance division.
In the 1950s, he became interested in the problem of the Tunguska meteorite. He conducted field research in the area of the Tunguska catastrophe three times (1953, 1958 and 1961) . Based on the results of his research, in 1959 he put forward a hypothesis that the Tunguska event was a collision of the Earth with a comet, during which unstable chemical compounds entering the comet’s head, upon contact with atmospheric oxygen, could react, producing an explosion. In 1961, he was appointed head of the Tunguska meteorite expedition of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which collected important information from the fall site. In particular, it was established that the area where the forest was felled by the explosion has the shape of a “butterfly”. This helped to accurately determine the direction of flight of the exploded celestial body.
K. P. Florensky is considered one of the founders of comparative planetology. He headed the laboratory of comparative planetology at the Space Research Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1967-1974), which was transferred in 1975 to the V. I. Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences (GEOKHI). He participated in space exploration of the Moon , Mars and Venus.
K. P. Florensky’s laboratory was responsible for selecting sites for landing automatic stations on the Moon and planets that were both of scientific interest for geological research and had safe engineering terrain that would allow for a confident landing on the surface. In particular, the flights of the stations Luna-16 , Luna-20 , and Luna-24 were supported, delivering soil samples to Earth from three regions of the Moon with different geological structures. Using the mobile vehicles Lunokhod-1 and Lunokhod-2 , geological studies were conducted on flat terrain in the Sea of Rains and the Sea of Serenity , as well as in hilly terrain on the outskirts of the lunar continent to the south of the Lemonnier crater.
Using gas analyzers designed by K. P. Florensky, installed on the automatic station “Venera-4”, direct determinations of the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Venus were made for the first time (1967). K. P. Florensky and his colleagues in 1982 measured for the first time the amount of oxygen directly near the hot surface of Venus.
Based on the results of studying the geological structure of the surface of Mars using space images obtained in 1974 by the automatic stations “Mars-4” and “Mars-5”, K. P. Florensky and his colleagues were the first to establish the presence of material resembling lake deposits inside large Martian craters. Subsequently, during a more detailed survey, this was confirmed and now such areas are considered the most promising for searching for traces of life on Mars and are being explored using rovers.
He received the following awards:
-Medal “For the Defense of Stalingrad” (1942)
-Medal “For Courage” (1944) – for participation in the artillery preparation during the breakthrough of the German defense in the Nikopol-Krivoy Rog offensive operation)
-Order of the Red Star (1944) – for rapid and accurate topographic referencing of targets for artillery during the Lublin-Brest Operation)
-Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class (1945) – for the prompt detection of enemy targets, ensuring their suppression during an artillery offensive and a breakthrough of the enemy’s defenses in the Warsaw-Poznan Offensive Operation.
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1970) – for the successful completion of a special assignment from the USSR Government (participation in the creation and launch of the automatic space station Luna-16 , which delivered a sample of lunar soil)
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1981)
-Medal “For Labor Valor”
-Medal “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”
-Medal “For the Capture of Berlin”
-Medal “For the Liberation of Warsaw”
-Medal “Veteran of Labor”
-5 jubilee medals (for the 100th anniversary of Lenin, for the 20th and 30th anniversaries of Victory, for the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Armed Forces)
The crater Florensky on the far side of the Moon was named by the International Astronomical Union in 1985 in honor of K. P. Florensky.
On September 1, 1993, asteroid 3518 Florena, discovered in 1977 by Soviet astronomer N. S. Chernykh, was named in honor of Pavel Florensky and his son Kirill.
In 1999, the International Mineralogical Association registered a new mineral, florenskyite , FeTiP, the first natural phosphide of a lithophile chemical element. This mineral, previously unknown on Earth, was discovered in the Kaidun meteorite by K. P. Florensky’s student, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences A. V. Ivanov.
The Runcorn-Florensky Medal was established by the European Geosciences Union in recognition of the scientific achievements of two outstanding European planetologists: S. K. Runcorn (Great Britain) and K. P. Florensky. This medal is awarded to scientists for exceptional contributions to planetology.
MATHEMATICS
T. F. OSIPOVSKY (1765-1832, mathematician)
“Osipovsky Timofey Fedorovich (1765-1832) – Russian materialist thinker, professor of mathematics at Kharkov University (since 1803) and rector of the university (1813-1820). An active fighter against reactionary politics and against Arakcheev’s measures enforced at the university by famous mystics (the minister of spiritual affairs and public education, the president of the Bible society, the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Prince. A. N. Golitsyn and the trustee of the Kharkov educational district E. Ya. Karneev). Osipovsky outlined his materialistic views in connection with the sharp criticism of the idealistic philosophy of Kant in the speech On space and time and the discourse On the dynamic system of Kant, pronounced in the ceremonial meetings of Kharkov University in 1807 and 1813. Osipovsky recognized the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness. “It is easy to judge,” he said, “that things and what such a concept in us cannot give birth to, what is not in them, and does not belong to them; for if they can give birth to any concept in us, then it must be necessary that something belonging to them corresponds to this concept in us from them; otherwise it might happen that nothing produces anything.” The laws of natural phenomena, according to Osipovsky, must be deduced not from themselves, but from the consideration of these phenomena “at different times, in different forms, in different attitudes to other phenomena.” Osipovsky passionately exposed Kantian fabrications, arguing that. these are pure chimeras, “inside only our head, involuntarily, but incoherently occurring, and having nothing to do with things, and therefore incapable of any application to them.”
In contrast to Kant, who deprived space and time of objectivity and tore off their departure from things, Osipovsky did not think of the existence of space and time outside matter, as well as the existence of the latter outside space and time. He said that “space and time are the conditions for the existence of things, in nature itself and in themselves, and not existing in our only way of feeling.” According to Osipovsky, time should not be considered “as something existing in nature by itself, but as a necessary product of the successive existence of things.” The concept of space “is produced according to the impressions emanating from it through our external senses to our internal senses.” Osipovsky sharply opposed the Kantian concept of a priori, pre-experienced origin of geometric truths. The truth of geometry, according to Osipovsky, is objective. The truths offered in geometry, he said, “agree with what is really seen in things.”
The reactionaries succeeded in 1820 to remove Osipovsky from the post of rector and the duties of a professor, but they could not blot out the trail of the ideas he was spreading. Osipovsky’s bold speeches against idealistic philosophy and his open struggle against obscurantists from Osipovsky’s voice found a response in the hearts of the progressive people of that time, brought up students in the spirit of materialism. It is no coincidence that in his denunciation Dudrovich pointed out that Osipovsky’s way of thinking “is the reason that almost none of the students at Kharkov University. part of mathematics of students, of which he is the head … does not attend either the knowledge of God and Christian teaching, or lectures on the part of philosophy.” Kharkov University owed Osipovsky a high scientific level of teaching mathematics there. Osipovsky owned the best three-volume course in mathematics of his time. During his fruitful teaching career, he trained a number of students, among whom was the famous Russian mathematician Academician M.V. Ostrogradsky.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
N. I. LOBACHEVSKY (1792-1856, geometer)
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is the main inventor of hyperbolic non-euclidian geometry, which is also called Lobachevskian geometry. The Lobachevsky Prize was created in 1927 by the USSR Academy of Sciences.
“Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (1792-1856) – great Russian mathematician, the creator of non-Euclidean geometry, the exponent of materialistic views on mathematics and its foundations. In 1811, after completing his university course, Lobachevsky received the title of Master of Mathematics. At the age of twenty-three he was already a professor. Kazan University, of which he was 19 years old, Lobachevsky devoted his whole life. He was a conductor of advanced ideas in teaching youth. Lobachevsky is a prominent figure in university education. Lobachevsky’s merits in the field of public education in Russia are enormous, but he earned an immortal name with the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. He not only pointed out the possibility of creating a geometry different from the usual geometry of Euclid, he was the first in the world to build a logically flawless system of such a new geometry.
For more than two millennia, the geometric representations of people have been based on the teachings expressed in the 3rd century. BC. in Euclid’s Elements.
According to this doctrine, all elementary geometry is based on a group of axioms – its starting points. Even in ancient times, mathematicians noticed that the axiom of parallel lines (called the eleventh axiom or the fifth postulate of Euclid) is not as obvious as other axioms. This axiom says: through a point lying outside a given straight line, only one straight line parallel to it passes in the same plane with it. Many scientists have tried to deduce this axiom from others, but to no avail. Lobachevsky expressed the bold idea that it is generally impossible to deduce this axiom from others – it is independent of them. In doing so, he proceeded from the desire to connect the basic provisions of geometry with the properties of the material bodies of nature. Accepting the assumption, that at least two parallel lines can be drawn to a given straight line through a given point in their common plane, he received, although a peculiar, but completely new harmonious geometric system, which does not contain any internal contradictions. This system is called Lobachevsky geometry.
The fact that in Lobachevsky’s geometry the sum of the angles of a triangle is not 180°, as in Euclidean, but always less, that through a point several parallel lines can be drawn to a given straight line that does not contain this point, was so unusual at that time that it seemed paradoxical. However, the novelty and uncommonness of the discovery, breaking centuries-old scientific traditions, did not frighten Lobachevsky. He boldly expressed his views orally in 1826, and published them in 1829 and in the following years, having won the indisputable priority of the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. Lobachevsky’s deep ideas were not understood by his contemporaries. It took about half a century for his ideas to enter mathematics as an integral part of it and to become a turning point in the field of mathematics in the next era. During the life of Lobachevsky, only the Russian professor of Kazan P. I. Kotelnikov publicly appreciated his immortal discovery, who in 1842 in his speech “On prejudices against mathematics” said that Lobachevsky’s great work will sooner or later find its connoisseurs. Already some 10 years after the death of Lobachevsky, it was proved that the positions of Lobachevsky’s planimetry are realized on some curved surfaces (the so-called pseudo spherical).
Lobachevsky’s assumption that Euclid’s geometry is by no means the only one in the space around us was justified. It even turned out that Lobachevsky’s geometry is not the only non-Euclidean geometry, if we do not limit ourselves only to considering a rigid body in infinite space. Thus, as a result of Lobachevsky’s discovery, it turned out that Euclid’s geometry is only one of the possible geometries, correct as long as we operate within the limits of our usual extensions. Non-Euclidean geometry has found numerous applications in other branches of mathematics; it plays an important role in modern physics; the theory of relativity would not have been possible without non-Euclidean geometry.
Lobachevsky’s worldview was materialistic. In his mathematical works and in the teaching of mathematics, he was constantly concerned with elucidating the real nature of the concepts underlying science. Lobachevsky firmly and consistently carried out the idea that “the first data will undoubtedly always be those concepts that we acquire in nature through our senses,” that “the first concepts from which any science begins … are acquired by the senses; congenital – should not be believed. “ This sensationalism of Lobachevsky has a pronounced materialistic character. For Lobachevsky, the external world is objective, and our ideas about it are the result of the impact of the real world on human consciousness through sensations, feelings. That is why “all concepts, whatever they may be, acquired from nature, can be taken as the basis of the mathematical sciences.”
Lobachevsky’s views on the relationship between theory and practice have a pronounced materialistic orientation. Experience and practice serve as the criterion of truth for him. Lobachevsky believed that the logical consistency of geometry was still insufficient to recognize it as true. He demanded a practical confirmation of its correspondence with the real relation of physical space. Having shaken the “inviolability” of the foundations of Euclidean geometry, Lobachevsky dealt a heavy blow to the philosophy of Kant, who in this “inviolability” tried to find support for his philosophy and considered the truths of geometry not as a result of the experience of mankind, but as innate (a priori) forms of human consciousness.
Lobachevsky constantly emphasized the futility of attempts to derive all mathematics from mere constructions of reason. “… All mathematical principles,” he said, “which they think to produce from the mind itself, regardless of the things of the world, will remain useless for mathematics …” Lobachevsky fought just as passionately against formalism in mathematics, emasculating from mathematics and its concepts their real content and seeing in mathematical signs and operations on them is only a simple play of symbols. This struggle of Lobachevsky has not lost its relevance to this day, when formalism is flourishing in Western science.
Lobachevsky was a great patriot of his homeland. He demanded from the student who came to the university, first of all, that he be a citizen who “by his high knowledge constitutes the honor and glory of his Motherland.” The progressive significance of Lobachevsky’s great ideas lies in the fact that his discovery expanded the boundaries of geometry and led it onto the path of new development. The materialistic nature of Lobachevsky’s initial attitudes, his desire to clarify the materialistic content of mathematical concepts, to reveal the connections between geometry and the properties of the real world make him one of the brightest thinkers of the 19th century.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
P. L. CHEBYSHEV (1821-1894, mathematician)
Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev is often called the founding father of Russian mathematics. He was held in high regard in the USSR.
N. N. GERNET (1877-1943, mathematician, teacher)
Nadezhda Nikolaevna Gernet was a Russian and Soviet mathematician and teacher, a student of D. Hilbert. The second female mathematician with a doctorate in Russia (the first was S. V. Kovalevskaya). She came from a family of revolutionaries.
I. V. VINOGRADOV (1891-1983, mathematician)
“Our Soviet mathematician, Academician Vinogradov, found a brilliant solution for Goldbach’s problem, on which the greatest mathematicians all over the world had been working for nearly 200 years.” (A History of the USSR, ed. A. M. Pankratova (1948) vol. 3, p. 380)
Vinogradov developed the so-called ‘Vinogradov method’ in mathematics. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941.
“With the help of this method, Vinogradov tackled questions such as the ternary Goldbach problem in 1937 (using Vinogradov’s theorem), and the zero-free region for the Riemann zeta function. His own use of it was inimitable; in terms of later techniques, it is recognised as a prototype of the large sieve method in its application of bilinear forms, and also as an exploitation of combinatorial structure. In some cases his results resisted improvement for decades. He also used this technique on the Dirichlet divisor problem, allowing him to estimate the number of integer points under an arbitrary curve. This was an improvement on the work of Georgy Voronoy. In 1918 Vinogradov proved the Pólya–Vinogradov inequality for character sums.” (wikipedia)
Works of Vinogradov:
The Method Of Trigonometric Sums In The Theory Of Numbers
Proceedings of the International Conference on Number Theory (Moscow, September 14-18, 1971)
V. A. STEKLOV (1864-1926, physicist, mathematician)
Vladimir Andreevich Steklov. Prominent early Soviet mathematician.
D. A. GRAVE (1863-1939, mathematician)
Dmitry Aleksandrovich Grave was an important Soviet mathematician, elected to the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1919 and to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1929.
PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY
A. P. WALTHER (1817-1889, physiologist) and V. A. BASOV (1812-1879, physiologist)
“In briefly touching upon the development of physiology in Russia, we have to state that among the important achievements of science in the first half of the 19th century were the investigations carried out by Walther and Basov. In 1842, Walther (1817-1889), a pupil of N. Pirogov, showed that a cross-cut of the “sympathetic nerve threads admixed to the sciatic nerve of a frog” (i.e., of the sympathetic nerve fibres) caused a dilation of the vessels of the web. In the same year Basov (1812-1879) elaborated a method of penetrating the stomach of an absolutely healthy animal by applying a stomach fistula and, for the first time in the history of physiology, demonstrated the feasibility of a protracted, chronic experiment. However, Walther and Basov did not appreciate the importance of their discoveries and did not develop them. Claude Bernard was the man who elaborated the theory of innervation of blood vessels. But it was Pavlov who turned the method of investigating physiological processes in normal, healthy animals into an instrument which revolutionized the entire development of physiology.” (Bykov, Text-book of physiology, 1958, p. 20)
I. M. SECHENOV (1829-1905) (Physiologist, Pioneer of psychology, Darwinist)
Ivan Mikhaylovich Sechenov propagated Darwinism and applied it in his work on physiology. Ivan Pavlov referred to him as the “Father of Russian physiology and scientific psychology”.
“Eminent biologists… [like] V. M. Sechenov… defended and developed Darwinism with all the passion of true scientists.” (Lysenko, The Situation in the Science of Biology,1948)
The Selected Works of I. M. Sechenov contain a detailed biographical essay by M. Shaternikov about Sechenov’s life and work.
Sechenov, Avtobiograficheskie zapiski
I. P. Pavlov wrote: “Sechenov’s teaching of the reflexes of the brain is, in my opinion, a sublime achievement of Russian science. The application of the reflex principle to explain the activity of the higher nervous centres is a proof that causality can be applied to the study of the highest forms of organic nature. For this reason the name of Sechenov will forever remain dear to the Russian scientific world.” (Quoted in p. XXV Selected Works of Sechenov)
“particularly, the discovery by Sechenov in 1862 of the phenomena of inhibition in the central nervous system, gave rise to the study of the factors which determine the nature of inhibition and its role in reflex activity.” (Bykov, Text-book of physiology, 1958, p. 20)
“The works of Sechenov marked a new stage in Russian physiology. Sechenov was born in 1829 in the former Simbirsk Gubernia. In 1850, after a short period of service in the army as an officer in the engineering corps, he entered the medical faculty of Moscow University. There, under the guidance of Glebov and Orlovsky, he learned the principles of experimental and theoretical physiology. Not only the medical faculty, but the university as a whole, with its intense activity, together with Granovsky’s lectures on history and the ideological atmosphere created by the philosophical works of the revolutionary-democrat A. Herzen, played an outstanding role in forming Sechenov’s world outlook. His materialistic views, which underlay all his creative work, took shape already in his student days at the university.
In 1856, after his graduation, Sechenov went abroad on a scientific mission. There he worked in the laboratories of Ludwig, Helmholtz and Claude Bernard. Upon his return to Russia, he headed the chair of physiology of the Medico-Surgical Academy (later renamed the Military Medical Academy) in Petersburg.
In 1862, Sechenov discovered the phenomenon of inhibition in the central-nervous system, and in 1863, he published his brilliant work Reflexes of the Brain, in which he gave a consistently materialistic interpretation of mental phenomena. This book made him a political suspect in the eyes of the tsarist government, and only the fear of attracting still greater attention to this work compelled the government of Alexander II to give up the idea of taking legal action against Sechenov. Subsequently, Sechenov worked at the Odessa, Petersburg and Moscow universities. He died in Moscow on November 15, 1905.
Sechenov has gone down in the history of science as a great scientist and thinker; he was the first to subject the most intricate domain of nature—the phenomena of consciousness—to a natural-scientific analysis.
Sechenov had many pupils, some of whom became prominent scientists. For example, N. Spiro discovered the so-called reciprocal inhibition in antagonistic centres (the fame of the English researcher Sherrington is due to a large extent to his thorough elaboration of this problem). V. Pashutin (1845-1901), another of Sechenov’s pupils, founded the Russian school of pathology (pathological physiology) and, jointly with A. Likhachov, was the first to work out precise methods of directly measuring the total heat produced in the human organism. The outstanding pharmacologist N. Kravkov was also a pupil of Sechenov, as was the prominent physiologist B. Verigo, who investigated the peculiarities of the action of a.continuous current on the tissues and showed that the taking up and release of oxygen by haemoglobin play an important role in the carriage of carbon dioxide by the blood.” (Bykov, Text-book of physiology, 1958, pp. 21-22)
“Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (1829-1905) – great Russian scientist, materialist thinker, founder of Russian physiology. Sechenov’s advanced materialistic views in the field of philosophy and natural science, closely related to his progressive social and political convictions, were formed under the direct influence of the revolutionary liberation movement in Russia in the 1840s and 1860s. and the acute ideological struggle that was taking place in the country at that time. Sechenov was the successor of the democratic and materialist traditions in Russian science, laid down by M.V. Lomonosov and A.N. Radishchev. The name of Sechenov is associated with the birth of Russian physiology, the development of which he directed along a new, independent path.
K.A.Timiryazev and I.P. Pavlov rightly called Sechenov the father of Russian physiology.
Sechenov was the first in the history of physiology to begin an experimental study of the activity of the brain, aiming to reveal the physiological mechanisms of the so-called “mental,” mental activity, which before HIM was considered unknowable. Contrary to idealistic, anti-scientific statements about the allegedly unknowable nature of mental phenomena, Sechenov irrefutably proved that the phenomena of consciousness, will, etc. – the so-called spiritual activity of a person is completely cognizable and its laws can be explained and studied with the help of a strictly scientific objective method. how bodily activity has been studied so far.
For the first time in the history of physiological science, Sechenov began to consider the activity of the human brain as reflex, while before him, only those types of vital activity of the organism that were associated with the spinal cord were considered reflex. This consideration of the activity of the brain radically changed the idea of the nature of human mental activity and allowed Sechenov to irrefutably prove that the human psyche is a product of the material organ of mental activity – the brain, which functions due to the influences of the external world on the senses. Resolutely rejecting idealistic statements about the special nature of human mental activity, Sechenov boldly asserted that there is nothing in consciousness that is not in reality, that the so-called “free will” itself is only the result of those external conditions in which a person lives and acts and which, reflected in his brain, cause certain actions.
Sechenov wrote that the assertion of the idealists that the reason for any human action lies allegedly in the person himself, in his “inner world,” his consciousness, and not in the concrete conditions of life and activity that exist outside him and are independent of him, is “the greatest False.” “The original reason for every act lies always in external sensory excitement, because without it, no thought is possible.” With this, Sechenov dealt a crushing blow to the reactionary idealist views about the “immortality of the soul,” “free will,” etc., which dominated science at that time and is still widely advocated by reactionary idealist philosophy.
Sechenov’s works in the field of brain physiology played a huge role in the scientific work of I.P. Pavlov, who considered Sechenov his teacher and ideological inspirer, tirelessly emphasized the close successive connection between menads with his doctrine of conditioned reflexes and Sechenov’s doctrine of the reflex nature of the activity of the brain. Sechenov’s works in the field of physiology are a valuable contribution to the materialistic theory of the development of living nature. They played an essential role in preparing the ideological and theoretical ground for the triumph of Michurin biological science.
Through all of Sechenov’s scientific research, the idea of evolution, the progressive development of living nature, runs like a red thread. Investigating the problem of thinking, Sechenov repeatedly said that the solution to this problem will be successful only if the process of thinking is considered historically, in its origin and development. Through his works, Sechenov contributed a lot of value to the understanding of the essence of thinking, its connection with language, speech, and human activity.
In his research, Sechenov proceeded from a firm conviction in the objective existence of the external world, independent of man. “The basis of all reasoning was put by me,” Sechenov wrote, “the immutable conviction inherent in every person in the existence of the external world..” In the theory of knowledge, Sechenov also unswervingly adhered to the materialist line. Sechenov considered the objective material world existing outside of consciousness to be completely cognizable. Sechenov argued and experimentally proved that the objects of the external world and the impressions of them in the mind of a person are similar to each other.
The cognizability of the world and the reliability of our knowledge about it are confirmed, Sechenov wrote, “by the tremendous successes of natural science, thanks to which man conquers more and more of his power of the forces of nature,” as well as “brilliant applications in practice, that is, the successes of technology.” Sechenov sharply criticized idealism in the question of the knowability of the world and especially the idealistic doctrine of Kant, which asserted the dependence of the object of cognition on the cognizing subject, on a priori, supposedly innate to man, forms of reason that he introduces into the object under study. Experience, practice Sechenov considered the basis of the theory of knowledge, the criterion of the truth of any positive knowledge.
Sechenov’s materialism is not devoid of shortcomings. So, correctly rejecting the idealistic interpretation of the issue of free will, proving the dependence of a person’s will on objective, external causes, Sechenov did not reveal its conditionality by social, social relations in which a person lives and acts. The same deficiency is inherent in his understanding of the essence of thinking, of human consciousness.
Sechenov was the foremost scientist of his time. According to K. A. Timiryazev, he was one of the most colorful figures in the social movement of the 1860s. Being in direct communication and friendship with the leader of Russian revolutionary democracy N.G. Chernyshevsky, Sechenov adopted his worldview. In turn, Chernyshevsky highly appreciated Sechenov’s scientific achievements and relied on them in his philosophical generalizations. The works of I. M. Sechenov on physiology were one of the natural scientific foundations of Chernyshevsky’s philosophical materialism. As we know, the remarkable image of Sechenov was reflected by Chernyshevsky in his novel “What is to be done?” represented by Kirsanov.
Sechenov brilliantly exposed the idealism and mysticism of the enemy of the revolutionary democrats, Kavelin, whom Lenin called one of the most disgusting types of liberal rudeness. As a passionate patriot of his country and a fighter for advanced national science, Sechenov incurred “disgrace” and persecution from the Tsarist autocracy, which considered him “politically unreliable.”
Without separating the interests of science from the interests of his people, Sechenov, already at an advanced age, read lectures with great enthusiasm to Moscow workers at the Prechistenskiye workers’ courses. But the Tsarist authorities soon banned Sechenov from giving lectures to workers. Sechenov welcomed the revolution of 1905 “And now …” he said to K. A. Timiryazev, “we have to work, work, work.” This, – writes K. A. Timiryazev, – were the last words that I happened to hear from him – that was the testament of a mighty generation, descending from the scene, to the future.”
The main works of Sechenov: “Reflexes of the Brain,” “Impressions and Reality,” “Who and How to Develop Psychology?,” “Elements of Thought.”” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
V. A. WAGNER (1849-1934, zoologist, psychologist)
Vladimir Alexandrovich Wagner was a Soviet zoologist and zoopsychologist, psychologist, doctor of zoology, professor, founder of Russian comparative psychology.
Vladimir Wagner was born in 1849. He graduated from the Faculty of Law (1874) and Faculty of Physics and Mathematics (1882) of Moscow University. He worked at the Sevastopol Biological Station in Naples, Villafranca, and at other foreign stations. He achieved his doctorate in 1899, demonstrating in his doctor’s thesis that consciousness arises materialistically. Wagner was a professor Leningrad University until 1931.
Wagner argued that the instinctive and rational forms of animal behavior go back to reflexes, but cannot be reduced to them. He criticized both “monism from above” (anthropomorphism in comparative psychology) and “monism from below” (according to which the psyche of all living beings is determined by automatisms).
“mental reflection, which, as is known, arises at a certain stage in the development of living matter and plays, as studies of prominent Russian zoopsychologists – Wagner, Severtsov and others – showed an important role in the adaptation of the animal to the environment.” (M. G. Yaroshevsky, U.S. Bourgeois Psychologists in the Struggle for the Elimination of Consciousness)
M. SHATERNIKOV (1870-1939, Physiologist)
Mikhail Nikolaevich Shaternikov was a significant physiologist. He worked in Sechenov’s laboratory. Sechenov was awarded the title of Honored Scientist of the RSFSR in 1935.
“Sechenov’s associates included M. Shaternikov (1870-1939), who studied general metabolism, and A. Samoilov (1867-1930), the prominent investigator of electrical phenomena in living tissues who first advanced the hypothesis of a chemical mechanism governing the transmission of excitation from the nerve to the skeletal muscle and from one neuron to another in the central nervous system.” (Bykov, Text-book of physiology, 1958, pp. 21-22)
N. Y. WEDENSKY (1852-1922, physiologist)
Nikolai Yevgenyevich Wedensky (1852-1922) was one of Sechenov’s pupils at Petersburg University; after Sechenov and Pavlov, he must with all justification be ranked among the leading Russian physiologists. In his remarkable experimental researches, Wedensky, who had participated in the revolutionary movement in his youth, advanced the important concept — of the inner unity of the externally opposite phenomena of excitation and inhibition. A. Ukhtomsky (1876-1942) carried on Wedensky’s researches and profoundly developed his ideas.” (Bykov, Text-book of physiology, 1958, pp. 21-22)
“Among the physiologists who worked in Petersburg beginning with the sixties and seventies of the 19th century were I. Cyon who, together with K. Ludwig, proved the existence in the aortic arch of specialized sensitive formations—receptors stimulated by the rise of arterial blood pressure, F. Ovsyannikov (1827-1906) to whom science owes the study of the vasomotor centre and of a number of researches into the fine structure of the nervous system, and I. Tarkhanov (1846-1908), who is known for his discovery of the skin galvanic reflex.
A prominent place in the development of Russian physiology belongs to Kazan University, where N. Kovalevsky (1842-1891) and his successor, N. Mislavsky (1854-1929) used to work. Kovalevsky discovered that arterial blood pressure rises as a result of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the organism. Mislavsky ascertained the exact location of the respiratory centre in the medulla oblongata and jointly with V. Bekhterev established that the stimulation of the cerebral cortex influences respiration and blood circulation.
Important physiological investigations relating to various branches of physiology were made by Professor V. Danilevsky of Kharkov (1852-1939), V. Chagovets of Kiev, and A. Kulyabko of Tomsk.” (Bykov, Text-book of physiology, 1958, p. 22)
N. Y. KUZNETSOV (1873-1948, physiologist)
Nikolai Yakovlevich Kuznetsov was a Soviet entomologist and physiologist, lepidopterologist and zoogeographer, professor at Leningrad State University, author of the isolationist theory of the depletion of the Lepidoptera fauna of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus and Crimea, one from the authors of Fundamentals of Insect Physiology (1948-1953), described a number of taxa of butterflies new to science.
He studied under N. E. Wedensky. Since 1927 he worked as a professor at the Institute of Applied Zoology and Phytopathology, and since 1931 as a professor at Leningrad State University. In 1933 he was elected vice-president of the All-Union Entomological Society. In 1934 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Biological Sciences for the totality of works. From 1934-1937 he was a professor at the Leningrad Agricultural Institute.
Kuznetsov received the following awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945)
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
-He was also a member of the London Entomological Society
A. A. UKHTOMSKY (1875-1942, physiologist)
Aleksey Alekseevich Ukhtomsky was a Soviet physiologist , academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1935).
Born into a noble family, early in his career he studied theology and continued to hold eclectic religious views.
Since 1920 he was the head of the laboratory of the Natural Science Institute. In 1922, after the death of his teacher, N. E. Wedensky, he took over the Department of Human and Animal Physiology of Petrograd University. Since 1935, he was the director of the Institute of Physiology of the Leningrad State University, founded by him, and since 1937, the head of the electrophysiological laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was the head of the biological department of the Leningrad University, in 1931-1938 the president of the Leningrad Society of Naturalists. In addition to the university, he taught physiology at the Lesgaft Institute, at the psycho-neurological institute and at the workers’ faculty of Leningrad University. In 1932 he was awarded the Lenin Prize . In 1933 he was elected a corresponding member and in 1935 a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
N. I. KRASNOGORSKY (1882-1961, physiologist)
Nikolai Ivanovich Krasnogorsky was a Soviet pediatrician, a prominent specialist in the study of the physiology of higher nervous activity, academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1945), Honored Scientist of the RSFSR, laureate of the Stalin Prize and the I. P. Pavlov Prize. One of the founders of the Soviet school of pediatricians, an active supporter of the theory of nervism and the physiological trend in pediatrics.
He received the following awards:
-I. P. Pavlov Prize (1942)
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1944)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1952) for research on GNI in children, completed with the articles “Phase changes in the activity of the cerebral hemispheres in children” and “Some results of the application and development of I. P. Pavlov’s teaching on higher nervous activity in a pediatric clinic” (1951)
-The order of Lenin
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
-Medal “In memory of the 250th anniversary of Leningrad”
I. P. PAVLOV (1849-1936, physiologist, psychologist)
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was one of the founders of modern psychology, focusing particularly on classical conditioning. His study of physiology was also further developed for disease prevention and other medical purposes by Soviet scientists, for example Alexander Speransky (pathologist), Nikolay Nikolayevich Anichkov (pathologist) and Anatoliy Ivanov-Smolensky (Psychiatrist, pathophysiologist).
“Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) – a great Russian physiologist and thinker, an ardent patriot of the Motherland. Pavlov’s scientific activity for more than sixty years was marked by a number of remarkable discoveries in the field of physiology of blood circulation, digestion, trophic functions of the nervous system, the opening of a new chapter in the science of brain physiology. Successor of the progressive traditions of Russian materialist philosophy and natural science of the 19th century, especially the teachings of Sechenov, whom he called the father of Russian physiology, Pavlov made a real revolution in natural science, creating the doctrine of the higher nervous activity of animals and humans. With his teaching, Pavlov dealt a crushing blow to idealist psychology and laid the foundation for the construction of a genuinely different, materialistic psychology. Investigating the essence of “mental salivation,” he established an extremely important fact. Along with the release of saliva in response to irritation of the oral cavity with food, it is possible to achieve the release of saliva in an animal to any stimulus of the outside world – light, sound, skin irritation, if this stimulus is reinforced by subsequent feeding of the animal. Accordingly, Pavlov called reflexes of the first kind unconditioned, reflexes of the second kind – conditioned.
Experiments have shown that conditioned reflexes, both positive and negative, are formed on the basis of unconditioned reflexes, ensuring the best adaptability of the animal to constantly changing environmental conditions. The objective method of developing conditioned reflexes, as well as their destruction, allowed Pavlov and his students to find out the basic laws of higher nervous activity in animals. Pavlov showed that the formation and destruction of temporary connections, that is, conditioned reflexes, in the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres of animals, as well as the analytical and synthetic activity of the nervous system, enable the animal to navigate a complex reality.
External, as well as internal irritations coming from internal organs, muscles, bones, ligamentous apparatus, signal the animal about favorable or unfavorable conditions for him in a biological sense, thereby causing objectively expedient actions on his part. The cerebral cortex is that wonderful device where all these signals are projected and responses are generated. According to Pavlov’s teachings, in addition to the first signaling system (reaction to the direct impact of the external world) in humans, a second signaling system, speech, has developed, which has made significant changes in the higher nervous activity of a person. Pavlov’s doctrine of the second signaling system is important for all theory of knowledge. It reveals the physiological basis of specific human thinking.
Due to the action of various stimuli that are objectively positive or negative for the animal, excitation or inhibition of certain areas occurs in the cerebral cortex. Each of these processes spreads throughout the entire cortex, and then concentrates in its original areas. The interaction of the processes of excitation and inhibition determines the normal functioning of the brain. Pavlov explained the essence of sleep in higher animals, proving that sleep is nothing more than complete inhibition of the cerebral cortex. At the same time, Pavlov explained the mechanism of hypnosis and revealed the essence of dreams.
The last years of his life Pavlov devoted to the elucidation of diseases of the nervous system, creating the doctrine of experimental neuroses in animals. Pavlov made a great and valuable contribution to the clinic of nervous and mental diseases of a person. Of great scientific importance are the scientific classification of the types of the nervous system of animals created by Pavlov, as well as the work begun by him to study the evolution of the nervous system of animals and the inheritance of conditioned reflexes.
Pavlov’s scientific heritage, developed in numerous laboratories by his students and followers, fertilizes a number of important areas of practice. The significance of Pavlov’s teachings for many other sciences, and especially for medicine, is unusually great. Pavlov’s doctrine of higher nervous activity is one of the natural scientific foundations of all modern psychology.
It gave a strictly scientific basis for the materialist theory of reflection. With his doctrine of higher nervous activity, Pavlov proved that without the influence of the external world on the sensory organs of animals, on their brains, no mental activity is possible, that the psyche of animals is a reflection of the external objective world. Pavlov’s doctrine is imbued with the idea of development, change, it destroys metaphysical ideas about the laws of mental activity. Pavlov considers the reflex activity of animals dialectically, as a continuous replacement of some reflexes by others, as a struggle of opposite processes – excitation and inhibition, manipulation and concentration, etc. nature.
Pavlov’s works reached extraordinary proportions and flourished during the 1920s due to Lenin’s active patronage of the scientist (even though Pavlov was personally not a communist). Pavlov highly appreciated the concern of the Soviet government for the development of science in Russia. In his speeches, in a letter – the will of the youth – he called for giving all his strength and knowledge for the good of the Motherland. He was a true patriot and was proud of the great successes of his Motherland. A scientific session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1950), devoted to the problems of the physiological doctrine of Academician I.P. Pavlov, noted further successes in the development of Pavlov’s doctrine.
However, what has been done in this direction, the session pointed out, is far from “the tasks set for the students and followers of the great scientist, and the conditions created for this purpose by the Soviet state and the party.” On the part of a number of opponents of Pavlov’s teachings, the development of his ideas and their introduction into medicine, biology and other fields of science met with fierce resistance (Stern and his “schoolboy,” academician Beritashvili, etc.). Academician L.A. Orbeli and the troupe of his students knocked researchers off the correct Pavlovian positions and proceeded in a number of questions from the idealist theory of psycho-physical parallelism, etc. The session criticized these and other attempts to distort the ideas of the great scientist. It outlined the ways for the further development of Pavlov’s teaching.
Pavlov’s works were published in the Collected Works, vol. I-VI, ed. Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1951-1952). Also published were “Pavlov’s Wednesdays,” vol. I-III, 1949, containing the minutes and transcripts of Ivan Pavlov’s conversations with his students.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
Academician Ivan Pavlov (1949) A nice Soviet film about Pavlov’s life and work.
Selected works of Pavlov
Pavlov, Lectures on conditioned reflexes
Pavlov, Psychopathology and Psychiatry
Pavlov And His School on The Theory Of Conditioned Reflexes
There is an article on Pavlov in In The World Of Soviet Science by Oleg Pisarzhevsky
“On the dialectical-materialistic nature of the teachings of I. P. Pavlov” (1949) by E. A. Asratyan (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
S. V. KRAVKOV (1893-1951, Founder of Physiological and Psychological Optics)
Sergei Vasilievich Kravkov was a Soviet psychologist and psychophysiologist, Doctor of Biological Sciences (1935), Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1946), Honored Scientist RSFSR (1947).
A. A. SMIRNOV (1894-1980, psychologist)
Anatoly Alexandrovich Smirnov was a Soviet psychologist, statesman and politician, doctor of pedagogical sciences (1951), professor (1949), full member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR (1947), academician of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (1968). Member of the CPSU.
Smirnov was born in 1894 in the city of Ruza. He graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University and fought in the world war. Since 1919 he carried out economic, social and political work. During his career e worked in a variety of scientific positions, as professor of the Department of Psychology of the Faculty of Philosophy of Lomonosov Moscow State University, as director (1945-1973) of the Research Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology of the APS of the USSR), as the chief editor of the journal “Questions of Psychology” (1955-1958, 1966-1980) etc.
A. A. Smirnov earned the following awards:
-The Order of Lenin
-The Order of the October Revolution
-2 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor
-Order of the Badge of Honor
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR
K. M. BYKOV (1886-1959, pavlovian physiologist)
Bykov was a leading pavlovian physiology in the USSR together with Anatoliy Ivanov-Smolensky.
Text-book of physiology
The cerebral cortex and the internal organs
Studien über periodische Veränderungen physiologischer Funktionen des Organismus [Studies of periodic changes in the physiological functions of the organism] (in German)
I. P. RAZENKOV (1888-1954, physiologist)
Ivan Petrovich Razenkov was a Soviet physiologist, doctor of medical sciences, academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1944). Chairman of the All-Union Society of Physiologists (1929-1954), editor and member of the editorial board of the journals Archive of Biological Sciences, Journal of Experimental Medicine. Laureate of the Stalin Prize.
Razenkov received the following awards:
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1940)
-First degree Stalin Prize (1947) for work in the field of digestion and nutrition, summarized in the monographs “The quality of nutrition and body functions” (1945) and “Digestion at heights” (1946)
-I. P. Pavlov Gold medal (1952)
-2 Orders of Lenin
G. N. SOROKHTIN 1894-1972, Neurophysiologist)
Georgy Nikolaevich Sorokhtin was a Soviet neurophysiologist, teacher, doctor of medical sciences (1940), professor (1944), head of the department of physiology of Petrozavodsk State University (1961-1971). One of the organizers of the physiological school in Karelia. Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1961).
A. G. IVANOV-SMOLENSKY (1895-1982, physiologist)
Anatoly Georgievich Ivanov-Smolensky was a Soviet psychiatrist, pathophysiologist, doctor of medical sciences, full member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, laureate of the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1950). A leading Pavlovian physiologist together with K. M. Bykov.
B. M. TEPLOV (1896-1965, psychologist)
A leading Pavlovian psychologist in the USSR, Academician of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR (1945), recipient of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, Medal for the Defence of Moscow, K. D. Ushinsky medal winner, Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1957).
Psychology [textbook] by Teplov (1953)
Two articles on Teplov in German [auto-translate works pretty well]:
“B. M. Teplow: Character Traits of Soviet Man” and “B.Teplow: Character traits of the Soviet man“
E. A. ASRATYAN (1903-1981, neurophysiologist)
Ezras Asratovich Asratyan was a Soviet neurophysiologist, student of I. P. Pavlov, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1947). Member of the CPSU since 1929. I. P. Pavlov Prize winner (1951), Laureate of the Order of Lenin (1954 and 1973).
After the “Pavlovian session” (1950), he became director (1950-1952) of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, until he was replaced by A. G. Ivanov-Smolensky in 1953. He strongly criticized reactionaries such as Anokhin and Beritashvili.
However, he exposed himself as an opportunist by signing the infamous “letter of the 300” in 1955.
E. S. AIRAPETYANTS (1906-1975, physiologist)
Ervan Shamirovich Airapetyants was a Soviet physiologist, specialist in the field of higher nervous activity, Doctor of Biological Sciences, professor, Honored Scientist of the RSFSR, head of the Department of Physiology of Higher Nervous Activity, Leningrad State University. He was a student of K. M. Bykov and A. A. Ukhtomsky. The developer of the problems of the relationship of the cerebral cortex with internal organs. Laureate of the Pavlov Prize.
In 1928, Airapetyants graduated from the biological department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. He served in the Turkestan Rifle Division as a military investigator. During the Great Patriotic War he was in the ranks of the Red Army, working in an evacuation hospital. In 1943 he was appointed head of the laboratory of the Sanitary Medical Institute and in the same year (from May to demobilization in August 1944) he became a teacher at the Military Medical Academy in Kirov.
In 1949 he received the Pavlov Prize for the study of higher nervous activity and physiology.
In 1950-1954, he served as deputy director for the scientific part of the I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, both at that time and after, in charge of the laboratory of physiology.
From 1956 until the end of his life he headed the Department of Physiology of the Functions of the Nervous System.
A number of studies conducted by Airapetyants and co-workers were devoted to the problem of the plasticity of the nervous system and, as one of its specific expressions, to the problem of compensation.
E. S. Arapetyans wrote more than 200 scientific papers, including monographs and brochures, textbooks and articles, reviews and numerous scientific reports.
E. S. Airapetyans received the following awards:
-Order of the Patriotic War II degree
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor
-Medal “For Labor Valor”
-Pavlov Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
-Medal “For the Defense of Leningrad”
-Medal “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
PEDAGOGY
G. S. SKOROVODA (1722-1794, philosopher, educator)
“Skovoroda Grigory Savvich (1722-1794) – an outstanding Ukrainian philosopher, humanist, democrat and educator, who expressed the protest of the peasant masses against serfdom. After graduating from the Kiev Theological Academy, he was a poetics teacher at the Pereyaslavl Theological Seminary, then at the Kharkov Collegium. For progressive views, he was persecuted. The hostile attitude of the clergy and the ruling classes forced him to give up teaching.
In order to spread his views among the people, he chose the lifestyle of an itinerant philosopher. One of the first in the history of Russian and Ukrainian social thought, Skovoroda, raised the struggle against official religion and dead church scholasticism. He turned to man and his mind, to nature. His philosophical views are contradictory. The main question of philosophy he solved idealistically, recognizing the primary spiritual principle. At the same time, there was a strong materialistic tendency in his worldview. Following Mikhail Lomonosov, he came to the conclusion that matter is eternal in time and infinite in space.
He believed that law prevails in nature. His fluctuations between materialism and idealism took the form of a dualistic theory of three worlds and two natures. He argued that the whole world consists of a macrocosm (nature), a microcosm (man) and a world of symbols (the Bible). Each of them has two natures: an external material and an internal spiritual. Nature consists of many worlds, it is not created by anyone, cannot be destroyed, has no beginning or end, for the end of one is the beginning of another. This is the materialistic tendency of Skovoroda’s philosophy. Skovoroda believed that the world is cognizable, but in order to cognize the macrocosm, one must first know oneself, since the laws of the macro- and microcosm are the same. The other side of his epistemology is ethics: truth is complete in unity with virtue outside of it it is empty and turns into idle curiosity; knowledge and science should serve the people.
Skovoroda considered the Bible as a means of cognition of the spiritual principle, as a third, symbolic world. He singled out in it the external material side and internal divine content: the Bible for him is both God and the serpent. Here Skovoroda’s contradictory attitude towards religion and the Bible is reflected. He vigorously criticized the official religion (its orthodoxy, dogmatism and scholasticism, as ridiculous lies and the fables of the shameless, harmful and lying Bible), thereby rising to the level of militant anti-clericalism. At the same time, he clothed his preaching of enlightenment and ethics in a religious form. He wanted to create a religion of love, virtue and truth. God for him is nature, man, truth, virtue, etc. Skovoroda criticized the church, hated the white and black clergy.
Skovoroda fought for the interests of the oppressed common people, he angrily criticized the rich for money-grubbing, for their parasitism. In money-grubbing, he saw the source of all social disasters: litigation, robbery, flattery, buying and selling, extortion, wars, the fall of states and republics. The people are in chains, politically oppressed, deprived of rights, in ignorance, Skovoroda said. He called to wake the people up. Skovoroda saw salvation in self-knowledge: having cognized the evil inclination, people must free themselves from it and build a new society based on reason, truth and virtue. He dreamed of seeing the mountainous Rus as a mountainous Republic. Skovoroda passionately loved his homeland and people. With all intransigence, he spoke out against anti-patriots and cosmopolitans. He ardently defended the unity of Ukraine with Russia, the friendship of these two fraternal peoples.
Skovoroda was realistic and strong in criticizing the rich, landowners, officials, official religion and clergy, but he was weak and utopian in addressing issues of social development. His worldview evolved towards materialism and towards a more acute formulation of social problems. But he did not come to a materialistic solution to the fundamental question of philosophy; in public views, although he went beyond the enlightenment of the 18th century, he did not reach revolutionary positions. His views reflected the weakness and narrowness of the peasant anti-serf movement. Philosophical and literary works of Skovoroda: The initial door to Christian good behavior (1766), Dialogue about the ancient world (1772), Friendly conversation about the spiritual world, Alphabet of the world (1775), The struggle of the Archangel Michael with Satan (1783) and others.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
K. D. USHINSKY (1823-1871, pedagogue)
Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinsky was a Russian pre-revolutionary teacher and writer, credited as the founder of scientific pedagogy in Russia. The K. D. Ushinsky medal was founded in 1945 in the USSR to honor his achievements.
N. K. KRUPSKAYA (1869-1939, pedagogue)
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya was an important Bolshevik revolutionary, leading Soviet pedagogue and Lenin’s wife.
“Krupskaia, Nadezhda Konstantinovna. (N. K. Ul’ianova). Born Feb. 14 (26 ), 1869, in St. Petersburg; died Feb. 27, 1939, in Moscow. Participant in the revolutionary movement, Soviet governmental and party figure, one of the founders of the Soviet system of public education, doctor of pedagogical sciences (1936), and honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1931). Member of the Communist Party from 1898.
The daughter of an officer with democratic sympathies, Krupskaia joined Marxist student groups in 1890, while attending the Advanced Courses for Women in St. Petersburg. From 1891 to 1896 she taught at an evening and weekend school outside the Neva Gate (Nevskaia Zastava) and spread revolutionary propaganda among the workers. In 1894 she met V. I. Lenin. In 1895 she helped organize and worked in the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. Arrested in August 1896, she was sentenced in 1898 to three years of exile in Ufa Province, which was changed at her request to exile in the village of Shushenskoe, Eniseisk Province, where Lenin was in exile; there, Krupskaia became his wife.
While completing her term of exile in Ufa in 1900, she conducted classes in a workers’ group and trained future correspondents for the newspaper Iskra. In 1901, after her release, she joined Lenin in Munich, where she became secretary of the editorial board of the newspaper Iskra and later of the newspaper Vpered (from December 1904). She was also secretary of the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP from May 1905.
Krupskaia returned to Russia with Lenin in November 1905, serving as secretary of the party Central Committee, first in St. Petersburg and, from late 1906, in Kokkola, Finland.
At the end of 1907, Lenin and Krupskaia again emigrated. In Geneva, she worked as editorial secretary of the newspaper Proletarii and subsequently of the newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat. In 1911 she was an instructor at the party school in Longjumeau. In Kraków in 1912 she helped Lenin maintain his ties with Pravda and with the Bolshevik group in the Fourth State Duma.
In late 1913 and early 1914, Krupskaia helped organize the legal Bolshevik journal Rabotnitsa. She was a delegate to the Second, Third, and Fourth Congresses of the RSDLP and participated in party conferences, including the Sixth, or Prague, Conference, and important party meetings held prior to 1917, among them the Convocation of Twenty-two Bolsheviks. On April 3 (16), 1917, she returned to Russia with Lenin. She was a delegate to the Seventh April Conference and the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) and helped found socialist youth associations. She played an active part in the October Revolution of 1917. Through Krupskaia, Lenin sent letters of instructions to the Central Committee, the party’s St. Petersburg committee, and the Military Revolutionary Committee. She was a member of the Vyborg district committee of the RSDLP (B) and worked in the committee during the October armed uprising. According to M. N. Pokrovskii, before the October Revolution, Krupskaia, as Lenin’s closest associate, “did just what good deputies do nowadays—she freed Lenin from all routine work, conserving his time for such important works as What Is To Be Done?” (Vospominaniia o N. K. Krupskoi, 1966, p. 16).
[NOTE: Pokrovskii was a revisionist, mechanical materialist and a renegade. This article is from the 1979 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, written during the Khrushchevite revisionist period, which is why it cites a renegade like Pokrovskii]
After the establishment of Soviet power, Krupskaia became a member of the collegium of Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Education) of the RSFSR. Together with A. V. Lunacharskii and M. N. Pokrovskii, she prepared the first directives on public education and was one of the organizers of political education. In 1918, Krupskaia was elected a member of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences. In 1919 she traveled down the Volga on the steamboat Krasnaia Zvezda (Red Star) as a participant in the propaganda campaign through Volga regions recently liberated from the White Guards. She became the chairman of the Central Committee for Political Education under Narkompros in November 1920, and in 1921 she became chairman of the scientific methodology section of the State Academic Council of Narkompros. Krupskaia taught at the Academy of Communist Upbringing. She organized a number of volunteer societies, including Down With Illiteracy and The Children’s Friend and was chairman of the Society of Marxist Educators. In 1929 she became deputy people’s commissar of education of the RSFSR.
Krupskaia made a major contribution toward solving important problems of Marxist pedagogy relating to the aims and tasks of communist education, the relationship between the school and socialist construction, vocational and poly technical education, the content of education, developmental pedagogy, the principles of the organizational forms of the children’s communist movement, and the inculcation of group spirit. Krupskaia ascribed great importance to combating child neglect, to the work of children’s homes, and to preschool education. She edited many journals, including Narodnoe Prosveshchenie (Public Education), Narodnyi UchiteV (People’s Teacher), Na Putiakh k Novoi Shkole (On the Road to the New School), O Nashikh Detiakh (About Our Children), Pomoshch ’ Samoobrazovaniiu (Aid to Self-education), Krasnyi Bibliotekar* (The Red Librarian), Shkola Vzroslykh (School for Adults), and IzbaChitarnia (The Cottage Reading Room).
Krupskaia was a delegate to the Seventh through Seventeenth Party Congresses. In 1924 she became a member of the Central Control Commission and in 1927 a member of the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik). She was a permanent member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and a deputy and a member of the Presidium of the first convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. She attended all but the third congress of the All-Union Lenin Communist Youth League. An active member of the international communist movement, she was a delegate to the Second, Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Congresses of the Comintern. She was a prominent publicist and orator, addressing many party, Komsomol, and trade union congresses and conferences and meetings of workers, peasants, and teachers. Krupskaia wrote many works about Lenin and the party and on questions of public education and communist upbringing. Her memoirs of Lenin are an invaluable historical source for Lenin’s life and work and important events in the history of the Communist Party.
Krupskaia was awarded the Order of Lenin and the order of the Red Banner of Labor. She is buried in Red Square near the Kremlin wall.
WORKS
Vospominaniia o Lenine. Moscow, 1957.
O Lenine: Sbornik stat’ei, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1965.
Lenin i partiia. Moscow, 1963.
Pedagogicheskie soch. , vols. 1–11. Moscow, 1957–63.
REFERENCES
Krzhizhanovskii, G. M. Drug i pomoshchnik Lenina: Izbrannoe. Moscow, 1957.
Zelikson-Bobrovskaia, Ts. S. “N. K. Krupskaia.” In the collection Slavnye bol’shevichkl Moscow, 1958.
Riadom s Leninym: Vospominaniia o N. K. Krupskoi: K 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia. Moscow, 1969.
N. K. Krupskaia: Bibliografiia trudov i titeratury o zhizni i deiatel’nosti. Moscow, 1969.
Pedagogicheskie vzgliady i deiatel’nost’ N. K. Krupskoi. [Moscow, 1969.]” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
See also the KRUPSKAYA section in the theory page
LINGUISTICS
A. A. POTEBNIA (1835-1891, Linguist)
Aleksandr Potebnia was an important progressive materialist linguist in pre-Revolutionary Russia.
“Potebnia, Aleksandr Afanas’evich. Born Sept. 10 (22), 1835, in the village of Gavrilovka, Romny District, Poltava Province; died Nov. 29 (Dec. 11), 1891, in Kharkov. Ukrainian and Russian Slavic philologist and Slavicist. Corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1877). Brother of the revolutionary A. A. Potebnia.
Potebnia graduated from the University of Kharkov in 1856. He defended his master’s dissertation, On Certain Symbols in Slavic Folk Poetry, in 1860. In 1875 he became a professor at the University of Kharkov.
Potebnia, who shared the views of the mythological school, did work in the theory of literature, folklore, and ethnology. He also studied general linguistics, phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics. He made major contributions in Slavic dialectology and comparative-historical grammar. On the theoretical level, he chiefly studied the origin of language and the interrelationships between language and thought and between language and nations. His philosophical views were influenced by the ideas of A. I. Herzen, N. G. Chernyshevskii, V. G. Belinskii, N. A. Dobroliubov, and I. M. Sechenov. He was also influenced by W. von Humboldt and H. Steinthal.
According to Potebnia, the thought-speech act is a creative individual mental act. In the process of speech, however, the social element that is language—or more correctly, its sound aspect—acting as “objectified thought” is also involved. This gives rise to a certain duality in Potebnia’s linguistic position: on the one hand, he holds that the word exists as the individual usage of the word, thus denying polysemy and the reality of the word as a unit of a word form; on the other hand, he shows great interest in the process of the historical development of concrete language, thus departing from Steinthal and others. In tracing the development of concrete language, Potebnia drew various conclusions about historical changes in the nature of the linguistic thinking of a given people and humanity in general.
Of particular interest are Potebnia’s “linguistic poetics” and his views on poetic language, the nature of poetry, and the nature of art in general. His main thesis defines art as cognition and the work of thought, analogous to scientific cognition; his theory thus proves to be rationalistic. In the poetic word and in the poetic work as a whole, Potebnia distinguishes three components: outer form (sound), meaning (semantics), and inner form (image). For example, in the word podsnezhnik (“snowdrop”) there is both the direct meaning and the notion of a flower growing under the snow (pod snegom). The poetic aspect of a word and a work of literature lies in its capacity for imagery. The inner form represents the means of comprehending something new not by way of scientific abstraction but by the correlation of new impressions with a preexisting image.
Potebnia’s ideas were further developed by D. N. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, D. I. Kudriavskii, A. V. Dobiash, V. Jagić, A. M. Peshkovskii, and A. A. Shakhmatov. His works have influenced the development of modern philology, especially linguistics. His major contributions are in the field of syntax.
Potebnia’s Thought and Language (1862) analyzed the link between language and thinking. His doctoral dissertation, From Notes on Russian Grammar (vols. 1–2, 1874; vol. 3, 1899; vol. 4, 1941), mainly treats syntactic problems, such as the analysis of the concepts of word, grammatical form, and grammatical category. Another of his major works is From Notes on the Theory of Literature (1905).
Potebnia actively participated in the creation of Ukrainian culture, the development of which he saw closely related to the history of Russian culture. He wrote a number of works on the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian folklore. The A. A. Potebnia Linguistics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Kiev is named in his honor.
REFERENCES
Vol’ter, E. A. A. A. Potebnia, 1835–1891: Bibliograficheskie materialy dlia biografii A. A. Potebni. St. Petersburg, 1892.
Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, D. N. A. A. Potebnia kak iazykoved-myslitel’. Kiev, 1893.
Khartsiev, V. “Osnovy poetiki A. A. Potebni: Po lektsiiam A. A. Potebni.” In the collection Voprosy teorii i psikhologii tvorchestva, vol. 2, fasc. 2. St. Petersburg, 1910.
Belyi, A. “Mysl’ i iazyk: Filosofiia iazyka A. A. Potebni.” Logos, 1910, book 2.
Vinogradov, V. V. “Russkaia nauka o russkom literaturnom iazyke.” Uch. zap. MGU, 1946, issue 106.
Vinogradov, A. A. Iz istorii izucheniia russkogo sintaksisa: Ot Lomonosova do Potebni i Fortunatova. Moscow, 1958.
Bulakhovskii, L. A. “Potebnia-lingvist.” Uch. zap. MGU, 1946, issue 107.
Bulakhovskii, L. A. Al. Af. Potebnia: K 60-letiiu so dnia smerti. Kiev, 1952.
O. O. Potebnia: Iubileinyi zbirnyk do 125-richchia z dnia narozhdennia. Kiev, 1962. (Full bibliography.)
O. O. Potebnia i deiaki pytannia suchasnoi slavistyky. Kharkov, 1962.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article written by A. A. LEONT’EV and R. M. TSEITLIN)
D. N. KUDRYAVSKY (1867-1920, Linguist)
Dmitry Nikolaevich Kudryavsky was a Russian linguist and and Indologist. He belonged to Lenin’s St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. According to A. Chikobava, Stalin studied Kudryasky’s works.
G. A. GAPANTSYAN (1887-1957, Linguist)
Grigory Ayvazovich Gapantsyan was a Soviet historian, linguist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR. He graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1913. In 1930 he became a professor, earned a doctorate in philology in 1942 and became an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR in 1943. He was given the Honored Scientist of the Armenian SSR award.
Gapantsyan was an active critic of the idealist theories of N. Ya. Marr. (See Stalin’s criticism of Marrism in “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”)
L. A. BULAKHOVSKY (1888-1961, Linguist)
Leonid Arsenievich Bulakhovsky was a Soviet Ukrainian linguist, professor at Perm (1917-1921 ), Kharkov and Kiev universities (1944-1947), Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1939), Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946), Director of the A. A. Potebni Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1944-1961). Expert on Russian and Ukrainian languages and Slavic accentology.
Bulakhovsky was an active critic of the idealist theories of N. Ya. Marr. (See Stalin’s criticism of Marrism in “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”)
He was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1944 and 1948) and the Order of Lenin.
V. M. ZHIRMUNSKY (1891-1971, Linguist and literary historian)
Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky was a Russian Soviet literary historian and linguist. He was an expert on German and Yiddish but also studied other languages, such as Kazakh and Kyrgyz.
In April 1948 Zhirmunsky self-criticized for “comparativism” and “Veselovskyism”.
He earned the following awards:
-Order of Lenin (1954)
-Two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1945 and 1961)
-Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the Uzbek SSR
V. V. VINOGRADOV (1895-1969, Linguist)
Viktor Vladimirovich Vinogradov was a leading Soviet linguist and philologist.
He made his mark as a scholar of Russian literature with a series of works examining the style and language of Russian classical writers, including Alexander Pushkin (1935, 1941), Nikolai Gogol (1936), Mikhail Lermontov (1941), and Anna Akhmatova (a family friend, 1925)*.
[*See Zhdanov’s criticism of Akhmatova (text version) (audio version)]
He was implicated in the pan-slavic nationalist case known as the “Slavists case” and was exiled to the town of Vyatka in Kirov oblast in 1934 for two years.
As a leading linguist and an anti-Marrist (See Stalin’s criticism of Marrism in “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”), Vinogradov was appointed Director of the Linguistics Institute (1950). He was elected into the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union and was awarded the Stalin Prize (1951).
ARNOLD CHIKOBAVA (1898-1985, Linguist)
Arnold Chikobava was a Soviet Georgian linguist and philologist best known for his contributions to Caucasian studies. He graduated from Tbilisi State University in 1922, later serving as a docent (1926-33) and professor (1933-85). He headed the Department of Caucasian Studies at Tbilisi State University (1933-60), and the Department of Ibero-Caucasian languages at the Institute of Linguistics in Tbilisi (1936-85). The institute, briefly directed by Chikobava from 1950 and 1952, now bears his name. In 1941, he became one of the founding members of the Georgian Academy of Sciences and was elected to its Presidium in 1950.
Chikobava was one of the most active critics of the idealist theories of N. Ya. Marr. (See Stalin’s criticism of Marrism in “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”)
He received the following awards:
Order of the Red Banner (1944)
Order of the Badge of Honor (1945)
Order of Lenin (1951, 1966, 1978)
HISTORY
R. Yu. VIPPER (1859-1954, historian)
Robert Yuryevich (Georgievich) Vipper, Russian, Latvian and Soviet historian, full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from September 27, 1943 in the Department of History and Philosophy. Recipient of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1944) and the Order of Lenin (1945). Father of art historian B. R. Vipper.
E. V. TARLE (1875-1955, historian)
Famous Soviet historian. Recipient of three orders of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1945 and ?), three Stalin Prizes (1942, 1943, 1946), Medal “In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow” and Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”.
“Tarle, Evgenii Viktorovich. Born Oct. 27 (Nov. 8), 1875, in Kiev; died Jan. 5, 1955, in Moscow. Soviet historian. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1927).
In 1896, Tarle graduated from the faculty of history and philology at the University of Kiev, where he was a student of I. V. Luchitskii. From 1903 to 1917 he was a privatdocent at the University of St. Petersburg. He was a professor at the University of Iur’ev from 1913 to 1918. Beginning in 1917 he was a professor at the University of Petrograd, and later at Leningrad State University and Moscow State University.
In the year preceding the Revolution of 1905–07, Tarle wrote works on such historical figures as Royer-Collard, G. Canning, C. Parnell, L. Gambetta, and Lord Rosebery. His master’s dissertation, which he defended in 1901 in Kiev, was an analysis of T. More’s Utopia. Under the influence of the Revolution of 1905–07, Tarle was the first historian of the Russian school to focus on the history of the working class. In 1911 he defended his doctoral dissertation, The Working Class in France During the Revolutionary Epoch (vols. 1–2,1909–11).
Tarle’s fundamental works The Continental Blockade (1913) and The Economic Life of the Kingdom of Italy During the Reign of Napoleon I (1916) were the first to draw on the numerous documents in the Paris, London, and Hague archives. Tarle demonstrated that the continental blockade had not justified the hopes that Napoleon had placed in it.
The October Revolution of 1917, whose significance Tarle did not at first understand, marked the beginning of the most important period of his work. His book Europe in the Age of Imperialism (1927) was based on extensive source materials. In spite of its questionable and even erroneous theories, the work was the first attempt to interpret the background and events of World War I (1914–18) from a historical viewpoint. Of great scholarly significance were Tarle’s works on the revolutionary struggle of the French working class, including The Working Class in France During the Early Period of Machine Production: From the End of the Empire to the Workers’ Uprising in Lyon (1928) and Germinal and Prairial (1937). Beginning in the 1930’s, Tarle again wrote works on historical figures, including Napoleon (1936) and Talleyrand (1939). He also collaborated on the collective works The French Bourgeois Revolution of 1789–1794 and The History of Diplomacy, and on textbooks for higher educational institutions.
On the eve of the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) and during the war, Tarle wrote important patriotic works on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and on Nakhimov, Ushakov, and Kutuzov; he also completed his study The Crimean War (vols. 1–2, 1941–43). Tarle’s major scholarly achievements were combined with important publicist and propagandist works, such as lectures and articles for the press. Tarle received the State Prize of the USSR in 1942, 1943, and 1946. He was awarded three orders of Lenin and two other orders.
WORKS
Soch., vols. 1–12. Moscow, 1957–62.
REFERENCES
E. V. Tarle. Moscow-Leningrad, 1949.
Iz istorii obshchestvennykh dvizhenii i mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii: Sb. st. vpamiat’ akad. E. V. Tarle. Moscow, 1957.
Chapkevich, E. I. “Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ E. V. Tarle v dorevoliut-sionnyi period.” In the collection Nekotorye problemy klassovoi bor’by v period kapitalizma. Moscow, 1966.
Chapkevich, E. I. “O zhizni i deiatel’nosti E. V. Tarle v sovetskii period.” In the collection Nekotorye voprosy istorii SSSR. Moscow, 1967.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopeida, 1979, article by A. Z. MANFRED)
Bonaparte by E. Tarle
E. M. YAROSLAVSKY (1878-1943)
Leading Soviet historian, theoretician, revolutionary. Chairman of the Society of Old Bolsheviks, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939), Member of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b). Yaroslavsky was also well known as the leading figure behind the League of Militant Godless. Recipient of the Order of Lenin (1938), winner of the Stalin Prize of the first degree (1943).
“Iaroslavskii, Emel’ian Mikhailovich (real name, Minei Izrailevich Gubel’man). Born Feb. 19 (Mar. 3), 1878, in Chita; died Dec. 4, 1943, in Moscow. Figure in the Communist Party, historian, and journalist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). Member of the Communist Party from 1898.
The son of penal settlers, Iaroslavskii began his revolutionary activity in Social Democratic circles in Chita. In 1898 he organized the first Social Democratic circle of workers on the Trans-baikal Railroad. In 1901 he went abroad and served as a correspondent for Iskra. In 1902 he became a member of the Chita committee of the RSDLP, and in 1903 he was an underground member of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP.
Iaroslavskii took part in the Revolution of 1905–07. He was a delegate to the First Conference of the RSDLP, held in Tammerfors; a member of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP; a member of the Moscow military organization of the Bolsheviks; and a delegate to the Fourth Party Congress. He engaged in party work in Ekaterinoslav and in St. Petersburg, where he edited the newspaper Kazarma, and he served as a delegate to the First Conference of the Military and Combat Organizations of the RSDLP and to the Fifth Party Congress. Iaroslavskii was arrested in 1907 and sentenced to hard labor at Gornyi Zerentui, one of the Nerchinsk hard labor camps; subsequently he became a penal settler in Eastern Siberia.
After the February Revolution of 1917, Iaroslavskii became a member of the Yakut Committee of Public Safety, and in May he was named chairman of the Yakut soviet. In July he joined the Moscow military organization of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP(B). He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). During the October Days of 1917, Iaroslavskii was initially a member of the Moscow Party Center for Directing the Uprising and a member of the Moscow military-revolutionary committee; later he was commissar of the Kremlin and the Moscow Military District. Iaroslavskii was an editor of the Moscow newspapers Sotsial-demokrat and Derevenskaia pravda.
In 1918, Iaroslavskii sided with the Left Communists on the question of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. From 1919 to 1922 he was chairman of the Perm’ provincial committee and a member of the Siberian Regional Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(B). In 1921 he became a secretary of the party’s Central Committee. He was an elder of the Society of Exiles and Political Prisoners, and in 1931 he became chairman of the All-Union Society of Old Bolsheviks. He served on the editorial board of Pravda and of the journals Bolshevik, Istorikmarksist, and Bezbozhnik; he edited Istoricheskii zhurnal. Iaroslavskii was head of the subdepartment of the history of the ACP(B) at the Higher Party School Under the Central Committee of the ACP-(B); he was also head of a lecture group of the Central Committee.
Iaroslavskii was a delegate to the Eighth through Eighteenth Party Congresses. He was elected a candidate member of the party’s Central Committee at the Eighth and Ninth Congresses and p. member at the Tenth, Eleventh, and Eighteenth Congresses. At the Twelfth through Sixteenth Congresses he was named a member of the Central Control Commission; he served as a member of the commission’s Presidium in 1923 and 1924, as a member of the Secretariat from 1923 to 1926, and as secretary of the Party Collegium from 1924 to 1934. At the Seventeenth Party Congress he was elected a member of the Commission of Party Control of the Central Committee of the ACP(B).
Iaroslavskii was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and in 1943 received the State Prize of the USSR. Iaroslavskii is buried in Red Square by the wall of the Kremlin.
WORKS
Ocherkipo istorii VKP(b), 3rd ed., part 1. Moscow, 1937.
Anarkhizm v Rossii. [Moscow] 1939.
Biografía V. I. Lenina. Moscow-Leningrad, 1942.
O religii. Moscow, 1958.
Bibliia dlia veruiushchikh i neveruiushchikh. Moscow, 1965.
REFERENCES
Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed. (See Index Volume, part 2, p. 490.)
Agalakov, V. T. Em. laroslavskii v Sibiri. [Irkutsk] 1964.
Grigor’ev, B. G., and V. F. Kut’ev. Boets i letopisets revoliutsii. Moscow, 1960.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article by N. M. IUROVA)
History of anarchism in Russia by E. Yaroslavsky
A. V. SHESTAKOV (1877-1941, historian)
Andrey Vasilievich Shestakov was a Soviet historian, a specialist in the agrarian history of Russia. Professor (1935), Doctor of Historical Sciences (1937), Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (1939).
Short History of the USSR by A. V. Shestakov (ed.)
V. P. VOLGIN (1879-1962, historian)
Vyacheslav Petrovich Volgin was a Soviet historian, public figure. Specialist in the history of socialist and communist ideas of the pre-Marxian period. Full member (1930), and vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1942-1953). Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947-1951).
Recipient of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1949), Three times Order of Lenin Laureate (1945; 1954; 1959), Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1961).
“Dialectical materialism and Historical Science” by V. P. Volgin
S. I. ARKHANGELSKY (1882-1958, historian)
Sergei Ivanovich Arkhangelsky was a Soviet historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor at the Gorky Pedagogical Institute, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and 1st Dean of the History Department at Gorky State University.
He was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. R. Yu. Vipper was his scientific director.
V. A. BYSTRYANSKY (1886-1940, historian)
Vadim Aleksandrovich Bystryansky, Russian revolutionary and publicist; Soviet historian and publicist. Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor; member of Istpart (Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the RCP(b)).
He was a delegate to the 8th (1919), 15th (1927) and 16th (1930) party congresses.
N. M. DRUZHININ (1886-1986, historian)
Nikolay Mikhailovich Druzhinin, Soviet historian and specialist in the socio-economic and political history of Russia in the 19th century. Doctor of Historical Sciences (1944), Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1953).
He received the following awards:
-two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1945; 1971)
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (1947)
-three Orders of Lenin (1954; 1966; 1975)
-Order of the Badge of Honor (1967)
-USSR State Prize (1978) – for the monograph “The Russian Village at the Turning Point. 1861-1880”.
-Order of the October Revolution (1981)
-Lenin Prize (1980)
-Order of Friendship of Peoples (1986)
B. R. VIPPER (1888-1967, art historian)
Boris Robertovich Vipper was a Russian, Latvian, Soviet art historian, theorist, teacher, and museum figure, one of the founders of the Soviet school of historians of Western European art. Professor (1918, 1931), Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1959), Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1962). Recipient of the Latvian Cross of Recognition. Son of historian R. Y. Vipper.
I. I. MINTS (1896-1991, historian)
Isaak Izrailevich Mints was an important Soviet historian, specialist in modern history. Doctor of Historical Sciences (1936), Professor, Corresponding Member (1939), and Full Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of History and Philosophy (1946).
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize , 1st degree (1943) – for the scientific work “History of the Civil War in the USSR”, Vol. 2, published in 1942
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1944) – for outstanding services in the training of specialists for the national economy and cultural development
-Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (1945)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1946)
-Stalin Prize, 1st degree (1946) – for the scientific work “History of Diplomacy”, vols. II-III (1945) (with co-authors)
-3 Orders of Lenin (1966; 1976; 1986)
-Order of the October Revolution (1971)
-Lenin Prize (1974) – for the scientific work “History of the Great October” vols. 1-3 (1967-1973)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1976)
“Mints, Isaak Izrailevich. Born Jan. 22 (Feb. 3), 1896, in the village of Krinichki, in present-day Dnepropetrovsk Oblast. Soviet historian. Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1946; corresponding member since 1936. Member of the CPSU since 1917. Son of an office worker.
Mints carried out political work in the Red Army during the Civil War of 1918–20. In 1926 he graduated from the Institute of Red Professors in Moscow. He headed subdepartments of history of the USSR at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History and at Moscow State University (1932–49), and at the Higher Party School under the CPSU Central Committee (1937–49). Mints was a professor at the Academy of Social Sciences (1947–50) and head of the department of history of the USSR at the Lenin Moscow Institute of Pedagogy (1950–72).
Mints has been a senior research associate at the Institute of the History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1954. He has been chairman since 1962 of the scientific council for overall study of the history of the Great October Revolution under the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His major works have been devoted to the study of the history of the CPSU, the October Revolution, the Civil War of 1918–20, the history of Soviet society, and international relations.
Mints was among the authors of The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1959), and a member of the main editorial board of multivolume history of the CPSU. He was a recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1943 and 1946) for his part in preparation of The History of the Civil War in the USSR and The History of Diplomacy. He won the Lenin Prize in 1974 for his work on The History of the Great October (vols. 1–3, 1967–73). Mints has also been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, three other orders, and a number of medals.
WORKS
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia i progress chelovechestva. Moscow, 1967.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
Mints, Anglijskaya Intervenciya I Severnaya Kontrrevoljuciya
October 1917 In Russia by Isaac Mints (1940)
The Red Army by Isaac Mints (1943)
A. M. PANKRATOVA (1897-1957, historian)
Anna Mikhailovna Pankratova was a Soviet historian, party and public figure. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953, corresponding member since 1939), Academy of Sciences of the BSSR (1940), Academician of the Academy of Education of the RSFSR (1944). Corresponding member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin and the Academy of the Romanian People’s Republic, honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Member of the RCP(b) since 1919, member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1952-1957).
Anna Pankratova earned the following awards:
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1943)
-Honored Scientist of the Kazakh SSR (1943)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree (1946) – for the scientific work “History of Diplomacy” vols. II—III (1945; with co-authors)
-The order of Lenin
-two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
-Medal “In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow”
A History of the USSR by A. M. Pankratova (ed.) (part 1), (part 2), (part 3)
N. N. VORONIN (1904-1976, archeologist)
Nikolai Nikolaevich Voronin was a Soviet architect and archaeologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences (1945), specialist in ancient Russian architecture. Laureate of the Stalin (1952) and Lenin (1965) prizes.
N. N. Voronin received the following awards:
-2 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1945; 1954)
-Stalin Prize of the second degree (1952) – for the 2-volume scientific work “History of the Culture of Ancient Russia” (1951)
-Lenin Prize (1965) – for scientific work in 2 volumes “Architecture of North-Eastern Russia of the XII-XV centuries”
-Honorary citizen of the city of Vladimir (1974)
Z. M. BUNIYATOV (1923-1997, historian)
Ziya Musayevich Buniyatov was a Soviet and Azerbaijani scientist, influential historian, orientalist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Hero of the Soviet Union.
He received the following awards:
-Order of Lenin
-Order of the Red Banner
-Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree
-Order of the Red Star
-Order of the October Revolution
-Order of Alexander Nevsky (USSR)
-Order of Bohdan Khmelnitsky (USSR)
-Honorary citizen of Astara
-Honorary Citizen of Goychay
-Honorary Citizen of Urgench
-Honorary Citizen of the Pankow District
-Silver medal of the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements (1983, for achievements in the development of science).
-Medal “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”
-“Waffenbruderschaft” Medal (GDR)
-Arthur Becker Medal
-Medal “For Courage” (USSR)
-Medal “For the Defense of the Caucasus”
-Medal “For the Capture of Berlin”
-Order of Independence (Azerbaijan) (December 18, 1998, posthumously) – for great services in the development of Azerbaijani science
L. R. KYZLASOV (1924-2007, archaeologist, ethnographer)
Leonid Romanovich Kyzlasov was a Soviet and Russian archaeologist, orientalist, and specialist in the history and ethnography of Siberia, Central and Middle Asia. Doctor of Historical Sciences (1967), Professor (1969), and Honored Professor of Moscow State University. Lecturer at the History Department of Moscow State University (since 1952). Member of the Finno-Ugric Society (Helsinki, 1983) and the German Archaeological Institute (Berlin, 1984). Father of archaeologist I. L. Kyzlasov and art historian I. L. Kyzlasova.
-Lomonosov Prize of Moscow State University, 1st degree (1982)
-A participant and disabled veteran of the Great Patriotic War, L. R. Kyzlasov was awarded: the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degree, the medal “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War”, ten medals of the Soviet Army, the medal “Veteran of Labor” (1984) and two honorary badges.
-Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1985)
-Laureate of the Lomonosov Prize, 1st degree (1982)
-Honored Scientist of the Tuvan ASSR (1991)
-Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Khakassia named after. N. F. Katanova (No. 1, 1993)
-Honored Scientist of the Republic of Khakassia (1994)
-Distinguished Professor of Moscow State University (2003)
JURISPRUDENCE
P. A. KRASIKOV (1870-1939, jurist)
Pyotr Ananyevich Krasikov, Russian revolutionary and Soviet jurist. Krasikov worked in the Russian marxist movement and knew Lenin already before the founding of the RSDLP.
He served in many functions in the Soviet state, being deputy Comissar of Justice (1918), prosecutor of the Supreme Court of the USSR (1924-1933), Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR (1933).
He was a delegate to many party congresses, a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of several convocations. He took part in the development of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918 and the USSR of 1924 and 1936.
M. N. GERNET (1874-1953, jurist)
Mikhail Nikolaevich Gernet, Russian and Soviet legal scholar, criminologist and specialist in criminal-executive law, Doctor of Law, professor, Honored Scientist of the RSFSR, Stalin Prize laureate, laureate of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. The elder brother of the famous mathematics teacher Nadezhda Nikolaevna Gernet.
A. Y. VYSHINSKY (1883-1954)
Soviet jurist, communist revolutionary, close collaborator of Stalin, important Soviet diplomat.
“Vyshinskii, Andrei Ianuar’evich. Born Nov. 28 (Dec. 10), 1883, in Odessa; died Nov. 22, 1954, in New York, USA. Soviet statesman, jurist, and diplomat. Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). Member of the Menshevik Party from 1903; member of the RCP (Bolshevik) from 1920.
After graduating from the law department of the University of Kiev in 1913, Vyshinskii engaged in literary work and teaching. He was rector of Moscow State University from 1925 to 1928, and he was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR during 1928-31. From 1931 he worked in judicial bodies, and he served as procurator of the USSR from 1935 to 1939. During 1939-44, Vyshinskii was deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, and in 1940-49 he was deputy minister of foreign affairs of the USSR. He served as minister of foreign affairs of the USSR from 1949 to March 1953, and he was deputy minister of foreign affairs. Vyshinskii was the permanent representative of the USSR at the UN during 1953-54. At the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses of the ACP (Bolshevik) he was elected to the Central Committee. A deputy to the Supreme Soviet at its first through fourth convocations, Vyshinskii was awarded seven orders as well as medals.
Vyshinskii was the author of works on problems of state and law, including A Course in Criminal Procedure (1927. with V. Undrevich), The Administration of Justice in tht. USSR (1939), The Theory of Court Evidence in Soviet Law (1941), and Problems in the Theory of the State and Law (1949).” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979) [The rest of this article from the revisionist era of the USSR also attacks Vyshinsky from a revisionist standpoint, and I’m not going to quote that]
Vyshinsky received the following awards:
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1933)
-six Orders of Lenin (1937, 1943, 1945, 1947, 1953, ?)
-Medal ” For the Defense of Moscow ” (1944)
-Medal ” For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 ” (1945)
-Medal ” In Memory of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow ” (1947)
-Stalin Prize, 1st degree, for the monograph “The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law” (1947)
The Law Of The Soviet State by A. Vyshinsky (1938)
V. P. ANTONOV-SARATOVSKY (1884-1965, jurist)
Vladimir Pavlovich Antonov-Saratovsky, revolutionary, Soviet jurist and politician. He joined the RSDLP in 1902 and joined the Bolshevik faction upon its founding. He was awarded the Order of Lenin (1955).
MEDICAL SCIENCE
D. S. SAMOILOVICH (1744-1805, physician, epidemiologist)
Danilo Samoilovich Samoilovich was a Russian military physician and the founder of Russian epidemiology. He made ground-breaking discoveries during his work to contain epidemics of the bubonic plague. He was held in very high regard in the USSR, considered a great scientist and a hero of his people.
During the 1771 Moscow plague outbreak he was helped by famous pediatrician Pyotr Ivanovich Pogoretsky and Kasyan Osipovich Yagelsky in fighting the plague.
“From 1761 to 1770, Samoilovich was a student and physician’s assistant at the St. Petersburg Admiralty Hospital. In 1771 he was a staff physician at the military hospital in Moscow. He received his doctor of medicine degree in 1784. From that year Samoilovich participated in the struggle against plague, and in 1793 he became physician in charge of quarantines in southern Russia. From 1800 he was an inspector for the Black Sea Medical Board. He generalized the experience gained in the struggle to control plague, which he regarded as a special nosologic form. Samoilovich was the first Russian scientist to give a clinical description of plague, and he came to the conclusion that after recovering from the disease, the patient was no longer susceptible to it. He demonstrated the contagiousness of the disease and substantiated the necessity for anti-plague inoculations. Samoilovich developed a congruous system of antiepidemic measures, including reporting each incidence of the disease, isolating the patient, carrying out disinfection, involving the populace in the control of epidemics, and setting up quarantines. Samoilovich was a member of 12 foreign academies of science.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979))
Samoilovich was a pioneer ahead of his time. The tsarist regime did not value his work sufficiently and his work had to be rediscovered by other pioneers: “the work on anti-plague inoculations that Danilo Samoilovich had begun, had been discontinued when he died, and was forgotten.” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 24)
“Life Triumphs” by A. Sharov contains a vivid description of the work of Samoilovich.
P. I. POGORETSKY (1734-1780, pediatrician)
Pyotr Ivanovich Pogoretsky, comrade of D. S. Samoilovich, was one of the founders of pediatrics in Russia. He graduated from the University of Leiden (Kingdom of Holland), became Doctor of Medicine in (1765). He wrote the first Russian manual on childhood diseases, published in Latin in 1768.
N. I. PIROGOV (1810-1881, surgeon)
Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov was a Russian scientist, medical doctor, pedagogue, public figure, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1847), one of the most widely recognized Russian physicians. He was held in high regard in the USSR. He is considered to be the founder of field surgery, he was the first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a field operation (1847) and one of the first surgeons in Europe to use ether as an anaesthetic. He is credited with invention of various kinds of surgical operations and developing his own technique of using plaster casts to treat fractured bones.
“Pirogov” (1947) a Soviet film about the life of the great surgeon.
G. N. MINKH (1836-1896, pathologist)
Grigory Nikolaevich Minkh carried out important research related to the bubonic plague and other contagious diseases. He did not receive support from the tsarist government and his work was not adequately respected. However he served his people, made an important contribution to science, and was correctly appreciated in the USSR.
“When Grigory Minkh had collected a host of irrefutable facts throwing light on the laws of the spread of epidemics, he prepared for the press a serious work on plague, a handbook scientifically correct and passionately human for all those who would continue his work Unfortunately he was unable to publish his book; he had insufficient money to cover the cost of printing. But after his death, his family stinted themselves for many long years, denying themselves every comfort in order to buy paper and pay for the work of the compositors. Finally they achieved their goal and the brilliant scientist’s book made its appearance and rendered a great service.” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 30)
“Life Triumphs” by A. Sharov contains a vivid description of the life and work of Minkh.
V. K. VYSOKOVICH (1854-1912, pathologist, bacteriologist, epidemiologist)
Vladimir Konstantinovich Vysokovich was an important epidemiologist, co-worker of I. I. Mechnikov and N. F. Gamaleya.
Life Triumphs by A. Sharov contains a vivid description of the work of Vysokovich.
V. I. RAZUMOVSKY (1857-1935, surgeon, doctor of medicine)
Vasily Ivanovich Razumovsky was a surgeon and scientist, author of about 150 scientific papers. He was awarded the Title of Hero of Labor (1923 ) and Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1934).
VLADIMIR KHAVKIN (1860-1930, bacteriologist, epidemiologist)
Vladimir Aaronovich Khavkin developed the first effective vaccines against cholera and plague. He studied under E. Mechnikov.
“Upon graduation from Novorossiia University in Odessa in 1884, Khavkin worked at the Odessa Zoological Museum. In 1888 he became assistant professor at the University of Geneva; he held a similar position at the Pasteur Institute in Paris from 1889 to 1893. From 1893 to 1915 he worked in India, serving as a bacteriologist for the government from 1893 to 1904. Khavkin helped organize the Plague Research Laboratory in Bombay, and served as its director from 1896 to 1904. The laboratory, which was reorganized and renamed the Haffkine Institute in 1925, became a center for the study of bubonic plague and cholera in Southeast Asia.
Khavkin’s principal works dealt with cholera and plague. He revealed the infectious nature of cholera and was the first to develop effective vaccines against cholera (1892) and plague (1896). He tested the vaccines on himself to prove their safety. Khavkin was directly involved in the vaccination of the Indian population during the cholera epidemic of 1893–95 and the plague epidemic of 1896–1902. On the 60th anniversary of Khavkin’s anti-plague laboratory, the Indian president R. Prasad remarked that “we in India are greatly indebted to Doctor Khavkin. He helped India rid itself of its principal epidemics—plague and cholera.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979))
“Life Triumphs” by A. Sharov contains a vivid description of the work of Khavkin.
I. A. DEMINSKY (1864-1912 medical doctor, epidemiologist)
Ippolit Aleksandrovich Deminsky was a brave pioneering bacteriologist. He specialized in combating plague. He traveled to epidemic zones, treated people and researched plague spreading animals. Deminsky supported D. K. Zabolotny’s theory that between outbreaks plague survived among animals. Deminsky came to conflict with the tsarist government, because the government refused to spend adequate funds on medical care and prevention of epidemics. In those years plague was mainly combated and researched by self-sacrificing heroes such as Deminsky, who received no significant support from the government and risked their own lives to help mankind. Deminsky died as a result of contracting pneumonic plague during his work. This was largely because the tsarist government neglected to provide anti-plague medical workers with protective equipment in sufficient quantities and in a timely manner.
Life Triumphs by A. Sharov contains a vivid depiction of the work of Deminsky.
E. M. KRASILNIKOVA
Elena Merkuryevna Krasilnikova was a co-worker of I. A. Deminsky.
Life Triumphs by A. Sharov contains a vivid depiction of the work of Krasilnikova.
V. I. TURCHINOVICH-VYZHNIKEVICH (1865-1904, veterinary scientist, bacteriologist)
Vladislav Ivanovich Turchinovich-Vyzhnikevich was a brave pioneering bacteriologist who specialized in combating plague. He died after having contracted pneumatic plague during his research.
Life Triumphs by A. Sharov contains a vivid depiction of the work of Turchinovich-Vyzhnikevich.
D. K. ZABOLOTNY (1866-1929, bacteriologist, epidemiologist)
Daniil Kirillovich Zabolotny was an important early Soviet epidemiologist. In 1920, he created the world’s first department of epidemiology in Odessa. He became Academician of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1922), Academician of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences (1928), Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929) and was the President of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1928-1929).
He led expeditions to Asia to fight plague there, to discover its sources, how it reproduced and survived outside human hosts. In 1922 he discovered the zoonoses of the plague, i.e. he discovered that it was transmitted by and survived in various wild animal species, and only occasionally passed to humans, causing an outbreak.
“Zabolotny and other scientists after him put forward the supposition that steppe rodents are the carriers of plague from one epidemic to another. If only the officials in the government offices of the Russian Empire and other countries had listened to a brilliant Russian scientist, subsequent epidemics might have been averted and large numbers of lives saved. But the work had to be done almost single-handed.” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 67)
“Sometime in the future when communism is victorious over the whole world, scientists will strive to achieve what is at present a dream: they will study and destroy all the centres of dangerous microbes to be found on our planet. This will not come about all at once. Gradually one disease after another, together with the natural disease-carriers, will vanish for all time even from the memory of mankind. Daniel Zabolotny was one of the initiators of this splendid trend in science. Almost nothing was known of the paths along which plague was spread, before Zabolotny made his investigations.” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 56)
He also saw the terrible results of colonialist imperialism and condemned it in his notes:
“Famine is the most terrible scourge affecting this vast country. The English have inundated India with cotton fabrics and in Dacca, the ancient centre of Indian weaving, only 20,000 remain of the original 150,000 inhabitants; the rest either died of famine or fled. In 1741 five million people, being one-third of the population, died of famine in the single Indian province of Bengal. In 1874 there was famine in Bombay, Madras and Hyderabad. Between 1874 and the middle of the nineties more than 20 million Indians died of famine.” (quoted in A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 35)
A socialist student studying with him at the Novorossiya University in Odessa named Makar Saulyak “supplied Zabolotny with thick volumes of Sovremennik [Magazine founded by Pushkin, where Chernyshevsky often published articles] for 1856 and other years, books by Belinsky and Pisarev and research papers by Darwin and Chernyshevsky…” (Ibid., p. 69) These gradually introduced Zabolotny to democratic revolutionary and socialist thinkers, and to materialist philosophy. There were also materialist teachers at the university, who struggled against clericalism and for democracy.
“Only a short time previously Sechenov and Mechnikov had been lecturing there. The university still cherished the traditions of the great Russian natural scientists. Nikolai Umov, the physicist, and Alexander Kovalevsky, the famous embryologist, read lectures there. These professors trained the students to have clear materialist ideas, taught them to seek in the external world for the causes of internal changes, as Sechenov had done when he proved that the external world determines the character of the higher nervous activity of animals and man, as Mechnikov and Pasteur had done when they explained the role of the external world in the origin and spread of diseases.” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, pp. 74-75)
Darwin’s theories also became a very important factor in Zabolotny’s life-work. Zabolotny was expelled from the university for revolutionary activities and imprisoned. However, in prison his health became worse and the authorities were afraid his death would cause disturbances, so they released him. After his release “friends of Mechnikov, Bardakh and Gamaleya gave Zabolotny a friendly welcome to the Mechnikov laboratory.” (Ibid. p. 78) where he carried out research. Later he embarked on his many expeditions.
Western reactionary scientists opposed Zabolotny and denied his theory that the plague survives among animals and is transmitted from animals to humans. Instead they insisted that plague is only spread by contact with infected persons or their belongings. Zabolotny also came into fierce conflict with supporters of Malthus who considered epidemics a necessary population control mechanism.
“Life Triumphs” by A. Sharov contains a vivid description of the work of Zabolotny.
N. F. GAMALEYA (1859-1949, bacteriologist)
Nikolay Fyodorovich Gamaleya was a pioneer of microbiology and vaccine research, one of the greatest Soviet microbiologists.
After graduating from Odessa’s Novorossiysky University in 1880 and the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy in 1883 he traveled to France in 1886 to work in Louis Pasteur‘s laboratory (Pasteur is the main developer of the germ theory of disease). Gamaleya defended Pasteur’s research against reactionary dogmatists in the scientific community. Pasteur’s opponents sabotaged and delayed his research, ordering him not to treat rabies patients until further tests had been done. Pasteur’s opponents falsely claimed his rabies vaccines were dangerous and caused disease. Gamaleya knew that any delays were lethal and patients were dying all the time, as rabies was considered incurable and practically always fatal. He proved that Pasteur’s opponents were sabotaging vaccine tests intentionally by a campaign of lies and due to their incompetent unhygienic methods. He tested the vaccine on himself and showed it to be safe.
After his return to Russia he joined I. I. Mechnikov in organizing an Odessa bacteriological station for rabies vaccination studies and research on combating cattle plague and cholera, diagnosing sputum for tuberculosis, and preparing anthrax vaccines. He improved upon the work of Pasteur. The Odessa Bacteriological Institute became Russia’s first-ever bacteriological observation station. Despite lack of resources the scientists were able to succeed in figuring out the conditions under which the rabies vaccination was most effective. Gamaleya’s proposal for using killed bacilli in anti-cholera vaccines was later successfully applied on a wide scale as well. Similar stations were soon founded in Kiev (1886), Yekaterinoslav (1897), and Chernigov (1897).
After defending his dissertation in 1892, Gamaleya served as director of the Odessa Bacteriological Institute in 1896-1908. Researching anthrax in 1898, Gamaleya was the discoverer of the bacteria-destroying antibodies known as bacteriolysins.
Gamaleya initiated a public health campaign of exterminating rats to fight the plague in Odessa and southern Russia and pointed to the louse as the carrier of typhus. In 1910-1913, Gamaleya edited the journal Hygiene and Sanitation.
Gamaleya organized the supply and distribution of smallpox vaccines for the Red Army and made strides toward the eventual eradication of smallpox in the USSR.
The author of more than 300 academic publications on bacteriology, Gamaleya was a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. He also served as head of the All-Union Society of Microbiologists, Epidemiologists and Infectionists.
Gamaleya received two Lenin Orders, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, the Stalin Prize in 1943 and other awards.
Life Triumphs by A. Sharov contains a vivid description of the work of Gamaleya.
N. P. GUNDOBIN (1860-1908, pediatrician)
“Gundobin, Nikolai Petrovich. Born Nov. 15 (27), 1860, in Shuia; died Sept. 15 (28), 1908, in St. Petersburg. Russian pediatrician.
Gundobin graduated in 1885 from the medical department of Moscow University. In 1897 he became a professor in the subdepartment of childhood diseases of the Academy of Military Medicine in St. Petersburg. His principal work dealt with the age-related features of the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the child. Gundobin was chairman of the school section of the Society for the Protection of Public Health and one of the organizers (1904, with N. A. Russkikh) of the Union to Combat Infant Mortality.
WORKS
Vospitanie i lechente rebenka do semiletnego vozrasta, 3rd ed, Moscow, 1913.
Osobennosti detskogo vozrasta. St. Petersburg, 1906.
REFERENCE
Vail’, V. S. Odin iz osnovopolozhnikov nauchnoi pediatrii, N. P. Gundobin. Stalinabad, 1957.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
“Among the measures to combat child mortality at the beginning of the 20th century [In the Russian Empire], pediatricians called for improved economic conditions, increased doctors’ numbers, the protection of the health of women who combined motherhood with professional work, the opening of new children’s hospitals and child care units. They stressed the need for recognition by the whole of society that children’s mortality was a national disaster, and undermined not only economic well-being, but also threatened the further development of Russia. N. P. Gundobin, D. A. Sokolov and G. N. Speransky argued that the care of children should be conducted with the cooperation of the state, local governments and private charity.” (“Nikolai Semashko – social activist and health care organizer” by O. A. Trefilova)
G. N. SPERANSKY (1873-1969, pediatrician)
Georgy Nestorovich Speransky was a Soviet pediatrician, active participant in the creation of a system for the protection of motherhood and childhood, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1943), academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1944).
“Among the measures to combat child mortality at the beginning of the 20th century [in the Russian Empire], pediatricians called for improved economic conditions, increased doctors’ numbers, the protection of the health of women who combined motherhood with professional work, the opening of new children’s hospitals and child care units. They stressed the need for recognition by the whole of society that children’s mortality was a national disaster, and undermined not only economic well-being, but also threatened the further development of Russia. N. P. Gundobin, D. A. Sokolov and G. N. Speransky argued that the care of children should be conducted with the cooperation of the state, local governments and private charity.” (“Nikolai Semashko – social activist and health care organizer” by O. A. Trefilova)
Speransky was given the following awards:
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1957)
-4 orders of Lenin (1942; 1947; 1951; 1957)
-2 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1945; 1963)
-Lenin Prize (1970, posthumously)
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1934)
-Honorary Member of the Czechoslovak Medical Society. J. Purkyne (1959).
-Honorary Member of the Scientific Societies of Pediatricians of the People’s Republic of Belarus and the People’s Republic of Poland
M. F. TSYTOVICH (1869-1936, ear and nose specialist, medical doctor)
Mitrofan Feofanovich Tsytovich, Russian and Soviet otolaryngologist, doctor of medicine, professor.
N. A. SEMASHKO (1874-1949, medical doctor, medical organizer)
Dr. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashko was a communist revolutionary and scientist, People’s Commissar of Public Health in 1918-1930. He was one of the organizers of the health system in the Soviet Union (often called the Semashko system), an academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1944) and of the Russian SFSR (1945).
“In 1917, Semashko had already set the government the task of saving millions of children’s lives. Together with A. M. Kollontai, V. M. Bonch-Bruevich and V. L. Lebedeva, Semashko did much to fulfill this task. In December 1917, the board of the People’s Commissariat of State Charity decided to establish the Department of Mothers’ and Children’s Protection, which began to operate from January 1, 1918, led by Lebedeva.
Prominent pediatricians G. N. Speransky, A. A. Kisel, A. A. Koltypin, V I. Molchanov and S. I. Fedynsky actively participated in his work. In difficult conditions of havoc they developed new forms of preventive and curative care… In 1921, under the direction of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Commission for Improving the Lives of Children was established with auditing and facilitating functions. Semashko actively participated in the work.” (“Nikolai Semashko – social activist and health care organizer” by O. A. Trefilova)
This article discusses the scientific and organizing work of Nikolai Semashko, but it also goes into great detail about the creation of the Soviet health system and maternal and childcare system. Strongly recommended reading:
“Nikolai Semashko – social activist and health care organizer” by O. A. Trefilova
E. I. MARTSINOVSKY (1874-1934, pathologist)
Evgeny Ivanovich Martsinovsky was a Soviet parasitologist and infectious disease specialist; Doctor of Medicine (1909), Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1934). Laid the scientific foundations for the fight against malaria in the USSR.
Born in 1874 in Mstislavl. He studied at the Smolensk Gymnasium. In October 1899 he graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University. Then for 25 years he worked in the 4th Gradskaya hospital, first as a bacteriologist, and since 1902 as a dissector and junior intern at the infectious department of the hospital. At the same time, in 1900-1904, he was a supernumerary laboratory assistant at the Pathological and Anatomical Institute; in 1908-1909 – an assistant in the department of bacteriology of the medical faculty of the Moscow Higher Women’s Courses (MVZhK). He also read bacteriology at a private dental school.
Since February 1910 he was privatdozent of the Department of General Pathology of the Medical Faculty of Moscow University; lectured the course “Pathogenic Protozoa and their role in human pathology”. In 1911 he left the university in protest against the policy of the Minister of Education L. A. Kasso. In WWI he was engaged in 1914-1917 organizing medical teams to combat infectious diseases at the front, being on the Caucasian front, he studied tropical diseases, pappatachi fever, dengue, Maltese fever, etc. After the October Revolution in 1917-1919 was the director of the Central Bacteriological Institute in Moscow. In 1920 he organized the Tropical Institute of the People’s Commissariat of Health, the director of which he was until the end of his life; Since 1934, the institute has been named after him.
Since 1932, the chairman of the scientific council of the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR and the International Malaria Commission of the League of Nations. He was a deputy of the Moscow Council of several convocations.
His main works concern the problems of parasitology, epidemiology, and the study of parasitic diseases. In 1904, together with S. Bogrov, he established the nature of the causative agent of cutaneous leishmaniasis. Many of his works were devoted to the clinic and epidemiology of malaria. Participated in the creation of a wide network of malaria stations in the USSR. Organizer and participant of many expeditions to fight malaria and other diseases.
A. I. ABRIKOSOV (1875-1955, pathologist)
Aleksey Ivanovich Abrikosov was a Soviet pathologist and a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (since 1939) and the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences (since 1944).
Abrokosov published works on the subject of the pathological morphology of tuberculosis and tumors, including the neuroectodermal tumor. This was described by Abrikosov as “myoblastomyoma.” Based upon his work, this type of tumor was named “Abrikosov’s tumor”. He was the author of a multi-volume handbook in special pathology for which he received the Stalin Prize.
He was awarded the following awards:
Stalin Prize, first class (1942)
Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1945)
Hero of Socialist Labour (1945)
Three Orders of Lenin (1940, 1945, 1953)
I. S. TSITOVICH (1876-1955, medical doctor)
Ivan Sergeevich Tsitovich, Russian and Soviet physiologist and pharmacologist, doctor of medicine, professor. Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1940). Winner of the I. P. Pavlov Prize (1947) for work in the field of developmental physiology.
A. N. SYSIN (1879-1956, medical doctor)
Alexey Nikolaevich Sysin, professor of hygiene, honored scientist, participant in the revolutionary democratic movement, one of the organizers of the sanitary and epidemiological service, academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner of Labor recipient. He received the Medal “In Memory of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow” and Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”.
K. I. SKRYABIN (1879-1972, Helminthologist)
Konstantin Ivanovich Skryabin was a Soviet biologist, founder of Russian helminthological science. Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1939, academician of USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, Hero of Socialist Labor (1958), winner of Stalin Prize and Lenin Prize. He was a founder of the helminthology school, and an author of landmark books on helminths in Soviet Union. He was a Head of the Department of the Moscow Veterinary Institute (1920-1925) and (1933-1941), and at the same time Head of Helminthology Division of the Central Tropical Institute (1921-1941).
Born in 1878 in St. Petersburg, he graduated from the Yuriev Veterinary Institute in 1905. From 1907 to 1911 he worked as a veterinarian in Central Asia in the city of Aulie-Ata (now Taraz ), and then until 1917 in St. Petersburg. In 1917-1920 he worked as a professor at the Don Veterinary Institute (Novocherkassk).
In 1920 he moved to Moscow, where from 1920 to 1931 he worked at the State Institute of Experimental Veterinary Medicine. In 1931, the department was transformed into the All-Union Institute of Helminthology (now the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Helminthology), of which Skryabin was director until 1957.
In 1920 he founded the Department of Parasitology – and from the same time (until 1964) headed it – at the Moscow Veterinary Institute (now the Moscow State Academy of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology), and also in 1921-1949 – the helminthological department of the Tropical Institute (now the Institute medical parasitology and tropical medicine named after E. I. Martsinovsky).
On January 29, 1939, K. I. Skryabin was elected Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences to the Department of Mathematical and Natural Sciences with a degree in Helminthology, General Veterinary Medicine. Full member of VASKhNIL (1935) and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1944).
In 1940, Skryabin headed the All-Union (now All-Russian) Society of Helminthologists organized on his initiative. In 1942 he became director of the Laboratory of Helminthology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (now the Institute of Parasitology of the Russian Academy of Sciences), and in 1956-1961 he was vice -president of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
K. I. Skryabin was a member of a number of foreign academies and scientific societies: a full member of the Helminthological Society of the USA (1928), a member of the Royal Zoological Society of London (1928), an honorary member of the American Society of Parasitologists (1930), a member of the Veterinary Academy of France (1946), a member German Academy of Naturalists “Leopoldina” (1956), honorary member of the Polish Parasitological Society(1956), honorary member of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of Poland (1957), honorary member of the Society of Tropical Medicine of Belgium (1958), honorary member of the Helminthological and Corresponding Member of the Zoological Societies of India (1958), foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1958), foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1959), corresponding member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (1959), honorary doctor of sciences of the University of Berlin. Humboldt (1960), honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1960), full member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1960), honorary doctor of the Budapest Veterinary University (1962), member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Services (1965), honorary doctor of science of the Higher School of Agriculture and Forestry farms in Brno (1965).
Deputy of the USSR Supreme Council of 2-3 convocations (1946-1954).
K. I. Skryabin earned the following awards and prizes:
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1927)
-Honored Scientist of the Kirghiz SSR (1945)
-Honored Scientist of the Uzbek SSR (1968)
-Lenin Prize (1957) – for scientific work in 12 volumes “Trematodes of animals and humans” (1947-1956)
-Stalin Prize of the first degree ( 1941 ) – for scientific work on veterinary and medical helminthology: “Helminthiasis in cattle and its young” (1937), “Fundamentals of General Helminthology” (1940).
-Stalin Prize of the first degree ( 1950 ) – for the 3-volume scientific work “Trematodes of animals and humans” (1947-1949)
-I. I. Mechnikov Gold Medal (1949) – for a set of outstanding research and work in the field of helminthology.
-Hero of Socialist Labor (12/06/1958)
-six Orders of Lenin (1936, 1949, 1953, 1953, 1958, 1968)
-three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1945, 1945, 1951)
-Order of the Red Star (1946)
-Order of Georgy Dimitrov (Bulgaria)
-Order “Cyril and Methodius” I degree (Bulgaria)
V. P. LEBEDEVA (1881-1968, medical scientist, specialist on mothers and children)
Lebedeva, Vera Pavlovna was a revolutionary, member of the Bolshevik party since 1907, the first organizer and leader of the protection of motherhood and infancy in the USSR. Doctor of Medical Sciences (1935). She was awarded 3 Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and medals.
“In 1917, [Nikolai] Semashko had already set the government the task of saving millions of children’s lives. Together with A. M. Kollontai, V. M. Bonch-Bruevich and V. L. Lebedeva, Semashko did much to fulfill this task. In December 1917, the board of the People’s Commissariat of State Charity decided to establish the Department of Mothers’ and Children’s Protection, which began to operate from January 1, 1918, led by Lebedeva.” (“Nikolai Semashko – social activist and health care organizer” by O. A. Trefilova)
A. M. Kollontai wrote about the work of V. P. Lebedeva in “The Labour of Women in the Evolution of the Economy“
A. A. BOGOMOLETS (1881-1946, pathophysiologist)
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bogomolets was a Soviet scientist who mainly researched cancer and aging. His parents were revolutionaries and Aleksandr was born at the infirmary of women’s prison. The opponent during his doctoral defense was I. P. Pavlov, who valued Bogomolets highly. In his early career Bogomolets worked at the so-called “Plague Fort”, a pioneering anti-disease station where legendary Russian and Soviet immunologists spent their early careers. He joyfully greeted the October Revolution and carried out medical and research work for the Red Army.
A. A. Bogomolets is the founder of the Russian and Ukrainian schools of pathophysiology, endocrinology and gerontology. In 1936 he developed the Anti-reticular Cytotoxic Serum, which helped treat certain illnesses and was hoped to prolong life. Bogomolets organized the first ever scientific conference on aging and longevity in Kiev in 1938. He made significant discoveries in cancer treatment and created the doctrine of the interaction between the tumor and the body.
He was awarded the following awards:
-First Degree Stalin Prize (1941) – for the scientific work “Guide to pathological physiology” in three volumes (1935-1937)
-Hero of Socialist Labor (1944) for outstanding achievements in science, for the creation of valuable drugs for the treatment of wounds and bone fractures.
-Two orders of Lenin (1940; 1944)
-Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (1945)
-Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1944)
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”
“Extensive work was carried out in war surgery, under the guidance of academician Nicolai Burdienko, chief surgeon of the Red Army. Academician Aleksandr Bogomolets, President of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, achieved remarkable results: ACS serum (Anti-Reticular Cytotoxic Serum), of immense value in the treatment of wounds and bone fractures.” (“Science in the USSR”, «Divulgação Marxista»)
V. A. DOGIEL (1882-1955, zoologist, parasitologist, protozoologist)
Valentin Alexandrovich Dogiel (sometimes “Dogel”). Professor at the St. Petersburg (Later Leningrad State University) since 1913, and head of the Leningrad Laboratory of Protozoology at the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1944. In 1923 he founded the Laboratory of Parasitology at the Fisheries Research Institute VNIORKh in Leningrad.
Dogiel contributed significantly in the field of taxonomy of parasites and protozoa in general. He also worked on more general questions of comparative anatomy and zoology. He was appointed a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1939, and a foreign member of the Linnean Society of London in 1944. He was a co-worker of Y. N. Pavlovsky.
He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1945 and the Order of Lenin in 1953.
Y. N. PAVLOVSKY (1884-1965, zoologist, entomologist, parasitologist)
Yevgeny Nikanorovich Pavlovsky was an important parasitologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939), the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944), honorary member of the Tajik Academy of Sciences (1951), and a lieutenant-general of the Red Army Medical Service in World War II.
In 1908, Yevgeny Pavlovsky graduated from the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy. He became a professor at his alma mater in 1921. In 1933–1944, he worked at the All-union Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad and simultaneously at the Tajik branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1937–1951). Yevgeny Pavlovsky held the post of the director of the Zoology Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1942–1962. In 1946, he was appointed head of the Department of Parasitology & Medical Zoology at the Institute of Epidemiology & Microbiology of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences. He was the president of the Soviet Geographical Society in 1952–1964. Under Pavlovsky’s direction, they organized numerous complex expeditions to the Central Asia, Transcaucasus, Crimea, Russian Far East and other regions of the Soviet Union to study endemic parasitic and transmissible diseases (tick-borne relapsing fever, tick-borne encephalitis, Pappataci fever, leishmaniasis etc.).
Yevgeny Pavlovsky introduced the concept of natural nidality of human diseases, defined by the idea that microscale disease foci are determined by the entire ecosystem. This concept laid the foundation for the elaboration of a number of preventive measures and promoted the development of the environmental trend in parasitology (together with the works of parasitologist Valentin Dogiel). Yevgeny Pavlovsky researched host organism as a habitat for parasites (parasitocenosis), numerous matters of regional and landscape parasitology, life cycles of a number of parasites, pathogenesis of helminth infection. Pavlovsky and his fellow scientists researched the fauna of flying blood-sucking insects (gnat) and methods of controlling them and venomous animals and characteristics of their venom.
Pavlovsky’s principal works are dedicated to the matters of parasitology. He authored several textbooks and manuals on parasitology. Pavlovsky was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th convocations. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941 and 1950) and the Mechnikov Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1949), and gold medal of the Soviet Geographical Society (1954). Yevgeny Pavlovsky was awarded five Orders of Lenin, four other orders, and numerous medals.
“If the causative organisms of the disease passed only from one human being to another, then having killed the last person in their path in a particular locality, the microbes themselves should then cease to exist. But for millions of years bacteria had been adapting themselves to the changing environmental conditions. The microbes of many most dangerous diseases make the complicated journey not in space, not from one country to another, but on one and the same restricted territory, passing from one species of animal to another. This path of infection, when the virus does not go beyond the bounds of wild nature, can be called its “minor cycle.”
People who have penetrated the depths of the Far Eastern taiga suffered from taiga encephalitis—an inflammation of the brain which is dangerous to life Years of heroic labour were spent before Yevgeny Pavlovsky and other Soviet scientists deciphered the “minor cycle” of the movement of encephalitis, discovered its natural haunts and proved that the tick which lives in the taiga introduces the virus of this disease into the blood when it bites a human being. The infection existed before, but it would now be visible and would pass along the “major cycle” which includes mankind.
During the years of the first five-year plan, when building began on the desert shores of Vakhsh in Central Asia, doctors observed the appearance of a serious disease which was a special variety of Leishmaniasis. Soviet scientists succeeded in establishing that the jackal is one of the links in the movement in nature of the Leishmania.
In this way scientists are investigating the limits of the spread of one or other microbe. In taiga, forests, steppes, deserts, mountains, swamps, wherever human beings live or will live, this work Is in progress. Scientists are discovering the invisible, well-concealed haunts of the enemy, They are laying bare the repositories, the reservoirs of the disease-creating microbe in order to protect mankind from it…
Soviet doctors are abolishing malaria by draining swamps and using aeroplanes to spray chemical substances on malaria-infested localities and so destroy mosquitoes. In all the main centres of malaria throughout the entire territory of our country, this exhausting disease, which afflicted millions of people, is almost entirely wiped out. As they master the depths of the taiga, scientists are destroying the haunts of the tick which carries the virus of taiga encephalitis. They find and destroy the natural bases, the secret natural haunts of the microbes which are the sources of infection.” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, pp. 55-56)
“Evgeny Nikanorovich Pavlovsky elaborated his theory that diseases have their natural centres” (A. Sharov, Ibid. p. 196)
A. Y. KUZNETSOV (1892-1964, sanitary doctor)
Alexander Yakovlevich Kuznetsov, Soviet sanitary doctor, Chief Sanitary Inspector of the USSR (1940), Deputy People’s Commissar of Health of the USSR (1943), Major General of the Medical Service (1943).
Born in the village of Perniki in Vladimir region. In 1916 he graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University. He participated in the First World War and served as a doctor in the sanitary and hygienic detachment of the army corps. From 1918 he served in the Red Army as a brigade doctor. He took part in battles on the Eastern Front and in the liquidation of Baron Ungern’s detachment. He participated in battles during the conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway.
After the Civil War, he was a divisional, then corps doctor, head of the Sanitary Directorate of the Siberian Military District, head of the Sanitary Department of the Volga Military District. He became a major organizer of military medicine, and carried out extensive sanitary and anti-epidemic work in the Red Army.
In 1940 he was appointed Chief Sanitary Inspector of the USSR, and in 1943 he was appointed Deputy People’s Commissar of Health of the USSR. During the war years, he coordinated the work of the sanitary and anti-epidemic service bodies in the USSR People’s Commissariat of Health. By the beginning of 1941, there were 1,760 specialized sanitary and preventive institutions (SES) in the USSR, 521 of which were located in rural areas. Their creation was a great merit of Kuznetsov.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the country became more complicated and with the active participation of Kuznetsov, the government decree “On measures to prevent epidemic diseases in the country and the Red Army” was adopted. This contributed to the solution of the main task of the main task – preventing mass epidemics on the territory of the USSR.
By the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR of March 31, 1943, Kuznetsov was awarded the title of “Major General of the Medical Service”.
From 1945 to 1946, he worked as the head of the health department of the Soviet military administration in Germany, while remaining the Chief State Sanitary Inspector of the USSR People’s Commissariat of Health. In 1947, he was appointed head of the sanitary service and head of the medical department at the K. E. Voroshilov Military Academy.
He retired due to illness in 1953.
He received the following awards:
-Two Orders of Lenin
-Two Orders of the Red Banner
-Order of the Red Star
-Awarded six medals
M. A. LEBEDEVA (1894–1957, bacteriologist)
Maria Alekseyevna Lebedeva was a brave pioneering bacteriologist and revolutionary. She specialized in combating plague, and was a co-worker of D. K. Zabolotny.
She was imprisoned for revolutionary activity by the tsarist regime. She continued her scientific work after serving her sentence.
“Geneva, the taiga, revolutionary work, prison, work in an epidemic—this was the perfectly straight road taken by a woman who lived to bring the future nearer.” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 124)
Life Triumphs by A. Sharov contains a vivid depiction of the work of Lebedeva.
M. P. POKROVSKAYA (1901-1980, bacteriologist)
Magdalena Petrovna Pokrovskaya. She is known as the creator of the world’s first effective anti-plague vaccine (1934). In reality, an earlier vaccine had already been created by Soviet scientist Vladimir Khavkin. However, Pokrovskaya’s vaccine was far superior.
In 1934-1952 she worked at the Stavropol anti-plague station, headed the laboratory of microbiology. With the reorganization of the station into the Scientific Research Anti-Plague Institute of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia in 1952-1953, she held the position of Deputy Director for Research.
The anti-plague vaccine she developed used a living strain of plague bacteria which had been bred to be non-dangerous (avirulent). As a result it was able to provide particularly strong immunizing effect. The earlier vaccine developed by Khavkin had used dead plague bacteria. In order to accelerate the vaccine program, Pokrovskaya tested the vaccine on herself. She took this step because she was convinced the vaccine was effective, and because she was afraid Fascist Japan and Nazi Germany were going to invade the USSR and could have developed plague based bacteriological weapons. It turns out she was correct, as Japanese “Unit 731” really had developed such weapons.
Pokrovskaya was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of the Red Star, and the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War.”
Life Triumphs by A. Sharov contains a vivid depiction of the work of Pokrovskaya.
G. Y. KHVOLES (1902-1969, physician)
Grigory Yakovlevich Khvoles was a Soviet scientist, physician, doctor of medical sciences (1940), professor, one of the founders of the theory of the blood-brain barrier.
Born in 1902 in Odessa to a Jewish family. After graduating from Moscow State University, he worked for several years as a military doctor (he was drafted into the Red Army in 1924), then as a surgeon in one of the hospitals in Moscow. In 1938 he headed the Department of Normal Physiology of the Ivanovo Medical Institute. In 1940 he defended his doctoral dissertation, and later summarized the results of research in the monograph “The state of the secretory and motor functions of the digestive tract with the direct effect of potassium and calcium on the vegetative centers” (Moscow, 1946). 1950s founded the department of normal physiology at the newly opened Karaganda Medical Institute and headed it in 1950-1959.
Khvoles was given the Order of the Red Star and the Medal “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”.
A. L. BERLIN (1903-1939, microbiologist)
Abram Lvovich Berlin was a Soviet microbiologist.
N. N. ZHUKOV-VEREZHNIKOV (1908-1981, Michurinist immunologist)
Nikolai Nikolaevich Zhukov-Verezhnikov, Soviet microbiologist and immunologist. Academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1948); its vice-president (1949-1953). Stalin Prize laureate.
Graduated from the Medical Faculty of the 2nd Moscow University (1930). In 1932-1948 he worked in various research institutions in Saratov and Rostov-on-Don. In 1948 he organized and headed the laboratory of experimental immunobiology at the Institute of Experimental Biology of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. From 1948 to 1950 he was the director of the institute. He created a live anti-plague vaccine (1944).
He did a lot of work in commissions for the disclosure of war crimes. In 1949, as the Chief Forensic Expert, he spoke at the Khabarovsk trial of Japanese war criminals. In 1952 he became Deputy Minister of the USSR Ministry of Health. From 1955 to 1981 he held the position of Head of the Department of Immunobiology at the Institute of Experimental Biology of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences.
Zhukov-Vereznhnikov hared the scientific views of T. D. Lysenko. He was one of the speakers at the “Pavlov session” (1950).
His main scientific works are devoted to the problems of general and experimental immunology and microbiology. He studied plague and cholera and proposed methods for preventing these diseases. In 1944 he created a live anti-plague vaccine. Developed a method for treating pneumonic plague. He put forward the theory of species-forming variability of bacteria. He developed the principle of obtaining vaccines against influenza.
“Zhukov-Yerezhnikov and Khvorostukhina together created a new live vaccine “ZhV,” which possessed a wonderful power of producing immunity” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 228)
He received the following awards:
-Stalin Prize, Second Degree (1950) – for the development of a method for the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases
-Honored Scientist of the RSFSR
-two Orders of Lenin
-Order of the October Revolution
-two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor
-Medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945”
-Medal “In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”
V. P. DEMIKHOV (1916-1998 medical scientist, founder of transplantology)
Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov, was a Soviet and Russian biologist and experimental scientist, one of the founders of transplantology. Doctor of Biological Sciences. Recipient of the Order of the Patriotic War, Medal “For Military Merit”, USSR State Prize, the Order of Merit for the Fatherland (of the Russian Federation)
In 1934, Vladimir Demikhov entered the Moscow State University, the physiological department of the biological faculty, and began his scientific work very early. In 1937, as a third-year student, he designed and made the world’s first artificial heart with his own hands and implanted it in a dog. The dog lived for two hours.
In 1940, Demikhov graduated from the university and wrote his first scientific paper. The war that began interrupted his scientific research. In 1941-1945, Demikhov served in the active army, serving as a senior laboratory assistant in a pathological anatomy laboratory.
Immediately after the war, Vladimir Petrovich came to the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Surgery.
In 1946, Demikhov was the first in the world to successfully transplant a second heart into a dog, and soon he was able to completely replace the heart-lung complex, which became a world sensation. Two years later, he began experiments on liver transplantation, and a few years later, for the first time in the world, he replaced a dog’s heart with a donor heart. This proved the feasibility of performing such an operation on a human.
In 1955, Demikhov transferred to work at the I. M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Institute where he worked until 1960. He transferred to working at the Sklifosovsky Institute of Emergency Care. In 1963 he earned his doctorate.
The laboratory under Demikhov’s direction worked until 1986. Methods of transplanting the head, liver, adrenal glands with kidneys, esophagus, and limbs were developed. The results of these experiments were published in scientific journals.
Demikhov’s works have received international recognition. He was awarded the title of Honorary Doctor of Medicine by the University of Leipzig, Honorary Member of the Royal Scientific Society in Uppsala (Sweden) , as well as the University of Hanover, and the American Mayo Clinic. He is the holder of honorary diplomas from scientific organizations around the world. He was a laureate of the “departmental” prize named after N. N. Burdenko, awarded by the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR.
For the first time in the world, he performed the following operations (in an experiment):
1937 – the world’s first artificial heart ;
1946 – the world’s first heterotopic heart transplant into the chest cavity;
1946 – the world’s first heart-lung transplant ;
1947 – the world’s first isolated lung transplant ;
1948 – the world’s first liver transplant ;
1951 – the world’s first orthotopic heart transplant without the use of artificial circulation ;
1952 – the world’s first mammary-coronary bypass surgery (1988 – USSR State Prize );
1954 – transplantation of a second head to a dog (in total, he created 20 two-headed dogs).
In 1960, Demikhov’s book “Transplantation of Vital Organs in Experiment” was published, which became the world’s first monograph on transplantology. In 1962, the book was republished in New York, Berlin, Madrid and for a long time was the only monograph in the field of organ and tissue transplantation. Christian Barnard, who performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant in 1967, visited Demikhov’s laboratory in 1960 and called him one of the fathers of transplantology.
MISC.
“Soviet scientists Yoff and Tiflov made a close study of the fleas which live as parasites on steppe rodents, and they have explained the importance of certain species of fleas in the spread of plague.
Tumansky and Polyak were the first to prove that it was possible for plague microbes to be preserved for a long time in the organism of fleas, during the period separating one outbreak of epizootic disease from another…
Stupnitsky, Tinker and many others completed the chain of investigations. It appeared that the microbes fully preserve their strength; they, together with the blood of the plague-stricken suslik, could only have entered the belly of the insect when the summer epizootic disease was at its height and long before the rodents’ winter hibernation.” (A. Sharov, Life Triumphs, p. 206)
EXPLORERS
G. I. NEVELSKOI (1813-1876, Far East explorer)
“Nevel’skoi, Gennadii Ivanovich. Born Nov. 23 (Dec. 5), 1813, in Drakino, Kostroma Oblast; died Apr. 17 (29), 1876, in St. Petersburg. Russian explorer of the Far East; admiral (1874). Son of a naval officer.
Nevel’skoi graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1832 and from officers’ classes in 1836. In 1848–49, as commanding officer of the transport ship Baikal, he voyaged from Kronstadt to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii and explored and compiled a description of the northern portion of Sakhalin Island, Sakhalin Gulf, and the mouth of the Amur River; he proved that Sakhalin was an island rather than a peninsula and determined the navigability of the Amur for oceangoing vessels. In 1850–55 he led the Amur expedition, which surveyed the lower reaches of the Amur River, Sakhalin Island, and the Tatar Strait. In the summer of 1850 he raised the Russian flag over Nikolaevsk, which he founded as an outpost (now the city of Nikolaevsk-na-Amure); in 1853 he raised the flag in Imperatora Nikolaia Gulf (now Sovetskaia Gavan’) and in the southern part of Sakhalin. A strait (the narrowest part of the Tatar Strait), a gulf, a mountain, and a city on Sakhalin were named after Nevel’skoi. Monuments in his honor have been erected in Vladivostok, Nikolaevsk-na-Amure, Khabarovsk, and Soligalich.
Nevel’skoi’s activities met opposition from the administration in St. Petersburg. In 1856, Nevel’skoi was relieved of his duties and recalled to St. Petersburg, where he was appointed a member of the Scientific Department of the Naval Technical Committee.
WORKS
Podvigi russkikh morskikh ofitserov na krainem vostoke Rossii, 1849–55. Khabarovsk, 1969.
REFERENCES
Alekseev, A. I. Spodvizhniki G. I. Nevel’skogo. Iuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 1967.
Alekseev, A. I. Delo vsei zhizni. Khabarovsk, 1972.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979,
article by A. I. ALEKSEEV)
P. N. RYBNIKOV (1831-1885, ethnographer)
“Rybnikov, Pavel Nikolaevich. Born Nov. 24 (Dec. 6), 1831, in Moscow; died Nov. 17 (29), 1885, in Kalish, present-day Kalisz, now part of Poland. Russian folklorist and ethnographer.
After graduating from Moscow University in 1858, Rybni-kov began recording the songs he found in Old Believer settlements in Chernigov Province. Arrested on suspicion of spreading revolutionary propaganda, he was exiled in 1859 to Petrozavodsk, where he worked for the provincial government. During service-related trips to Kizhi, Pudoga, Kenozero, Kar-gopol’, and other places, he recorded the byliny (folk epics), stories, songs, and ballads that he heard from the peasants. These materials, published in four volumes over the period 1861–67 as Songs Collected by P. N. Rybnikov, opened the way for extensive research in ethnography. The collection is among the best of its kind because of the importance of its content; it is also distinguished by its accuracy. Rybnikov also benefited scholarship and folk culture by discovering such remarkable tellers of byliny as T. G. Riabinin, A. P. Sorokin, and I. P. Sivtsev-Poromskii. Rybnikov provided a description of the epic traditions of northern Russia in his Notes of a Collector (1864).
WORKS
Pesni, sobrannye P. N. Rybnikovym, 2nd ed., vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1909–10. (Introduction by A. E. Gruzinskii.)
REFERENCES
Bazanov, V. “P. N. Rybnikov v Karelii.” In his book Narodnaia slovesnost’ Karelii. Petrozavodsk, 1947.
Razumova, A. P. Iz istorii russkoi fol’kloristiki. Moscow-Leningrad, 1954.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, article by V. P. ANIKIN)
N. M. PRZHEVALSKY (1839-1888, geographer, explorer of Central and East Asia)
Nikolay Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky was a Russian geographer and renowned explorer of Central and East Asia. He traveled through regions then unknown to the West and discovered many previously unknown species. His contribution to science and his people was recognized in the USSR.
“Przhevalsky” a nice Soviet film about his career.
MIKLUKHO-MAKLAI (1846-1888, legendary explorer, ethnologist, anthropologist, biologist)
Nicholas Miklukho-Maklai (sometimes “Miklouho-Maclay”) was a legendary traveler and explorer who became famous as one of the earliest scientists to settle among and study indigenous people of New Guinea who had never seen a European.
He was a brave fighter for democracy and freedom. He sought to defend indigenous people from colonial exploitation. During his research he became convinced that racism was not scientific:
“His conclusion – that all races possessed identical intellectual potential – led him to campaign against slavery and for the rights of indigenous people.” (The Guardian, The dashing Russian adventurer who fought to save indigenous lives, June 21, 2020)
“Miklukho-Maklai” a nice Soviet film about his career.
THE OSOAVIKHIM-1 MISSION (FEDOSENKO, USYSKIN, VASENKO)
“The ideas that the higher layers of the atmosphere… are inaccessible have also… receded into the past: Fedoseyenko, Vasenko and Usyskin, Soviet stratonauts, have made the first successful attempts at mastering the altitudes at the peril of their lives.” (A. Fersman, Geochemistry for everyone, pp. 267-268)
Osoaviakhim-1 was a ground-breaking mission to launch a manned stratospheric balloon. The balloon reached the altitude of 22,000 meters (72,000 feet) successfully and began to descend. The flight lasted 7 hours. However, as the balloon descended to 12,000 meters, it experienced loss of buoyancy and crashed as a result, killing the crew.
The crew consisted of the following persons:
Pavel Fedorovich Fedoseenko (1898-1934) military pilot, aeronaut, commander of the crew. Was previously awarded the Order of the Red Banner and other honors.
Ilya Davydovich Usyskin (1910-1934) physicist.
Andrei Bogdanovich Vasenko (1899-1934) aerological engineer and designer.
All three crew members were posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin. Postage stamps were issued in their honor and their ashes were buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. They have become immortalized as fearless heroes of science.
M. S. BABUSHKIN (1893-1938, artic pilot)
“Babushkin, Mikhail Sergeevich. Born 1893; died May 18, 1938. Soviet arctic pilot. Hero of the Soviet Union (June 27, 1937). Member of the CPSU from 1935. Born in the village of Bordino, Moscow Province, near the settlement of Losinoostrovskii (between 1939 and 1960 the city of Babushkin, now part of Moscow).
Babushkin was drafted into the army in 1914 and graduated from the Gatchina Military Aviation School. In 1915 he attained the rank of pilot and remained at the school as an instructor. In 1917 he became an ensign. In 1920 he participated in the Civil War as a member of a partisan detachment. Demobilized in 1923, he entered the civil air force and served in the arctic. In 1928 he took part in search operations for the Nobile expedition. In 1933 he participated in the expedition of the icebreaker Cheliuskin, and in 1935 he was part of the high latitude expedition of the icebreaker Sadko. In 1937, Babushkin was second pilot of the flagship in the flight to the north pole which planted the floating station Severnyi Polius-1. During 1937–38 he took part in the search for the missing plane of S. A. Levanevskii. He was awarded the Order of Lenin. Babushkin was deputy to the first convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He died in a plane crash.” (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
IVAN PAPANIN (1894-1986, Polar explorer)
Ivan Dmitrievich Papanin was a Soviet polar explorer, scientist, Counter Admiral, and twice Hero of the Soviet Union, who was awarded nine Orders of Lenin.
In 1931 he took part in the expedition of the icebreaker Malygin to Franz Josef Land. In 1932-1933 he was the head of a polar expedition on Tikhaya Bay on Franz Josef Land. In 1934-1935 he was in command of a polar station on Cape Chelyuskin. In 1937-1938 he was in charge of the famous expedition North Pole-1. Four researchers, Ivan Papanin, Ernst Krenkel, Yevgeny Fyodorov and Petr Shirshov, landed on the drifting ice-floes in an airplane flown by Mikhail Vodopyanov. For 234 days, Papanin’s team carried out a wide range of scientific observations in the near-polar zone, until taken back by the two icebreakers Murman and Taimyr. It was the first expedition of its kind in the world. All members of the expedition received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, which was extremely rare before World War II. In 1939-1946 Papanin was the successor to Otto Schmidt as head of the Glavsevmorput’ (Glavniy Severniy Morskoy Put’) – an establishment that oversaw all commercial operations on the Northern Sea Route. In 1940 he received a second Hero of the Soviet Union title for organizing the expedition that saved the icebreaker Sedov. During World War II he was the representative of the State Defence Committee (Gosudarstvennij Komitet Oborony) responsible for all transportation by the Northern Sea Route. In 1941-1952 he was a member of the Central Revision Commission of the Communist Party. In 1948-1951 he was the deputy director of Institute for Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences and from 1951 the Head of the Academy’s Department of Maritime Expeditions.
OTTO SCHMIDT (1891-1956, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, polar explorer)
Otto Yulyevich Shmidt was a Soviet scientist, Hero of the USSR (27 June 1937), and member of the Communist Party. He made important contributions especially to geology, but also to mathematics and astronomy. However, he is probably most famous for his leadership of the Polar Expedition North Pole-1.
He worked at Narkompros (People’s Commissariat for Education), the State Scientific Board at the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, and the Communist Academy. He was Chair of the Foreign Literature Committee from October 1921. He was also employed as the director of the State Publishing House (Gosizdat) from 1921 to 1924, and chief editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia from 1924 to 1941. From 1923 he was a professor at the Second Moscow State University and later at the Moscow State University, and from 1930 to 1932, Schmidt was the head of the Arctic Institute.
From 1932 to 1939, he was appointed head of Glavsevmorput’ (Glavnoe upravlenie Severnogo Morskogo Puti) – an establishment that oversaw all commercial operations on the Northern Sea Route. From 1939 to 1942, Schmidt became a vice-president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, where he organized the Institute of Theoretical Geophysics (he was its director until 1949). Otto Schmidt was a founder of the Moscow Algebra School, which he directed for many years.
In the mid-1940s, Schmidt suggested a new cosmogonical hypothesis on the formation of the Earth and other planets of the Solar System, which he continued to develop together with a group of Soviet scientists until his death.
Schmidt was an explorer of the Arctic. In 1929 and 1930, he led expeditions on the steam icebreaker Georgy Sedov, establishing the first scientific research station on the Franz Josef Land, exploring the northwestern parts of the Kara Sea and western coasts of Severnaya Zemlya, and discovering a few islands. In 1932, Schmidt’s expedition on the steam icebreaker Sibiryakov with Captain Vladimir Voronin made a non-stop voyage from Arkhangelsk to the Pacific Ocean without wintering for the first time in history. From 1933 to 1934, Schmidt led the voyage of the steamship Cheliuskin, also with Captain Vladimir Voronin, along the Northern Sea Route. In 1937, he supervised an airborne expedition that established a drift-ice station “North Pole-1”. In 1938, he was in charge of evacuating its personnel from the ice.
Otto Schmidt was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the first convocation (1938-1946).
E. M. ABALAKOV (1907-1948, mountaineer)
Evgeny Mikhailovich Abalakov was a Soviet sculptor and mountaineer, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR in mountaineering (1934).
He made the first ascent of Stalin Peak (Pamir, 1933), and was the only one of the numerous members of the Pamir-Tajik expedition to reach the summit of 7,495 meters. He climbed at least 50 peaks, conducted scientific research, studied and mapped the mountain ranges and glaciers of the Pamir and Tien Shan.
In 1932 he graduated from the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov , was a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR, created a number of paintings and sculptures, among which the most famous is the sculptural group “Mountaineer and Mountaineer”.
At the very beginning of the war, he volunteered for the army. Until the summer of 1942, he fought near Moscow as part of the OMSBON . From August 1942, together with other climbers, he took part in the defense of the Caucasus. He taught at the school of military mountaineering and alpine skiing of the Transcaucasian Front and made ascents. In 1944, he led the ascent of military units to Kazbek, and then, with mountaineering officers Mikhail Anufrikov and Valentin Kolomensky, he made a difficult first ascent, a traverse of five peaks of Dzhuguturlyuchat. 1945 – winter ascent to the Ushba saddle, the purpose of which was to search for the group of Alyosha Dzhaparidze, who died there in October. 1946 – leader of the first ascents of the six-thousanders of the southwestern Pamirs: Patkhor Peak (6080 m) along the western ridge and Marx Peak (6723 m). In 1947 he was the leader of the first ascent of the peak of the 30th Anniversary of the Soviet State (6447 m, NE Pamir). For a number of years he was a member of the presidium of the All-Union Section (Federation) of Mountaineering of the USSR, gave reports and published in the press. He was a member of the Geographical Society of the USSR, was a member of its presidium.
He received the Medal “For the Defense of the Caucasus” and the Medal “For the Defense of Moscow”.
PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE
B. M. KEDROV (1903-1985, philosopher of science)
B. M. Kedrov, “Criticism by modern materialist chemists of the idealistic theory of resonance-mesomerism” (From the book Evolution of the Concept of the Element in Chemistry)
M. B. MITIN (1901-1987, philosopher, philosopher of science)
Mitin was a Marxist-Leninist philosopher. He studied philosophy at the Institute of Red Professors in 1925-1929, became a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1919. From 1944 to 1950 he served on the editorial board of the journal Bolshevik. In 1939 he was elected to the Central Committee and as the director of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CPSU Central Committee.
Mitin together with P. F. Yudin spearheaded the campaign against Deborin’s menshevizing idealism in the 1930s and consistently defended and developed Dialectical Materialism throughout his career.
Works of Mitin on marxist theory
P. F. YUDIN (1899-1968, philosopher, philosopher of science)
Pavel Fyodorovich Yudin was a Marxist-Leninist philosopher. Born in to a family of poor Russian peasants, Yudin worked as a lathe operator in a railway workshop in 1917-19. He joined the Russian Communist Party (b) in 1918, served in the Red Army 1919-21, and graduated from the Stalin University in 1924, after which he began a post graduate course at the Institute of Red Professors.collectivisation of agriculture. Together with M. B. Mitin, he spearheaded the attack on Menshevizing Idealism.
In 1940-42 Yudin and Mitin wrote a 3 volume history of philosophy, and received a Stalin Prize for the first 2 volumes. However, the 3rd volume was severely criticized for its lack of criticism of the reactionary aspects of Hegel’s views.
Since its creation in 1947, Yudin worked as the editor-in-chief of the Cominform journal “For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy!”.
Since 1950 Yudin worked in China to help in publication of the works of Mao Zedong. He was the Soviet ambassador to China in 1953-59. Yudin blamed the Sino-Soviet split on Khrushchev and sympathized with Mao Zedong.
Yudin spent his later career distant from political power, working at the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1960-68, Yudin. He wrote the 1967 A Dictionary of Philosophy with M. M. Rosenthal.
Works of Yudin on marxist theory
OTHERS:
Other articles about Soviet natural and social science:
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
On the Crisis of Fundamental Science (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
On the partisanship of science (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Dialectical materialism and science (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
E. Kolman, “Combat issues of natural science and technology in the reconstruction period” (1931) [Kolman became a renegade in the 60s] (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
BIOLOGY
V. A. Kovda, “A program of great construction and transformation of nature” (1952) [About Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature] (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
On the “persecution” of genetics and cybernetics in the Stalinist USSR (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Sellers of Death [about modern capitalist food industry] (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
The teachings of Charles Darwin against the bourgeoisie (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
E. A. Asratyan, “On the dialectical-materialistic nature of the teachings of I. P. Pavlov” (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
To the 160th anniversary of I.V. Michurin. The great biologist is a dialectical materialist (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
N. M. Sisakyan, “Biological metabolism is a qualitative feature of living” (1954) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
About genetics (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
D. M. Troshin, “Criticism of the philosophical foundations of Weismannism-Morganism” (1951) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
V. D. Kivenko, “On the dialectical-materialistic foundations of Michurin’s biology” (1951) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
B. F. Porshnev, “Materialism and idealism in matters of the formation of man” (1955) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
I. I. Novinsky, “On the unity of the organism and the environment” (1952) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“Origin and development of life on earth” From Fundamentals of Michurin biology (1950) by T. V. Vinogradova, M. P. Vinogradov, S. I. Galperin, P. V. Makarov, F. D. Skazkin, Z. A. Chizhevskaya (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“The history of the development of flora and fauna”. From Fundamentals of Michurin biology (1950) by T. V. Vinogradova, M. P. Vinogradov, S. I. Galperin, P. V. Makarov, F. D. Skazkin, Z. A. Chizhevskaya (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
A. S. Tatarintsev, “Some questions of the teachings of I. V. Michurin on the laws of living nature” (1955) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
The development of living nature (in German, but auto-translate works pretty well)
CYBERNETICS
“Who does cybernetics serve?” (1953) by “Materialist” (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Once again about cybernetics. “Blue devil and yellow devil” (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
PSYCHOLOGY
I. S. Mansurov, “Against subjectivism in psychology” (1957) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
M. G. Yaroshevsky, “US Bourgeois Psychologists in the Struggle for the Elimination of Consciousness” (1948) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
E. A. Bagramov, “On the “Psychological” Variety of American Racism” (1955) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Harry K. Wells, “Sigmund Freud and his teachings” (1956) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
PHILOSOPHY
G. A. Brutyan, “Irrationalism and sophistry are the weapons of the imperialists” (1952) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“Jesuit Father as Critic of Dialectical Materialism (About G. Wetter’s book “Dialectical Materialism. Its History and Its System in the Soviet Union”. Vienna, 1952)” (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Y. K. Melville, “Pragmatism is the philosophy of imperialist reaction” (1950) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
M. I. Petrosyan, “Marxism and humanism” (1955) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
M. G. Yaroshevsky, “Semantic Idealism – The Philosophy of Imperialist Reaction” (1951) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“Formal logic and dialectical logic” (1951) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
V. I. Stempkovskaya, “On Flexibility and Definiteness of Concepts” (1952) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
P. Fedoseev, “Bourgeois and proletarian atheism” (1940) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
S. B. Morochnik, “Possibility and Reality – Categories of Materialist Dialectics” (1954) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
O. I. Sayapina, “Bourgeois sociology: instead of progress – theories of barbarism and savagery” (1949) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Yu. P. Frantsev, “The degradation of modern bourgeois sociology” (1953)
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY AND ENGINEERING
Why do physicists need to read V. I. Lenin? (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
M. E. Omelyanovsky, “The struggle of materialism against idealism in modern physics” (1951) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
E. Kolman, “Where subjectivism leads physicists” (1953) [the author later became a renegade] (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
V. G. Fesenkov, “How stars are formed” (1952) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
On the “end of the world” and bourgeois astronomy (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Lost leadership of our aviation (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Automation and socialism. Part 1, Part 2 (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
PEDAGOGY
On the question of the class struggle in Soviet pedagogy. About pedology. (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Lev Vygotsky and the “antipedology campaign” in Soviet education (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
JURISPRUDENCE
I. S. Kon, “On the role of political and legal views in the development of society” (1952) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
MISC.
A Visit to Soviet Science by Stefan Heym
In The World Of Soviet Science by Oleg Pisarzhevsky
“Against subjectivism in Natural Sciences” by Yuri Zhdanov [in Spanish but you can read with auto-translate]
Istoriia Akademii nauk SSSR [History of the USSR Academy of Sciences] (in Russian)
История черной металлургии в СССР [History of ferrous metallurgy in the USSR] Volume 1, by S. G. Strumilin (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
«Наука и жизнь» . [“Science and life”] no. 5 (1953) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
Contents:
Kachalov – Basic economic law of socialism
The successes of Soviet science:
V. Venikov – Simulation of electrical systems.
V. Dogel – In the world of protozoa.
V. Orekhovich – Conversion of proteins into organisms
L. Masevich – The origin of Stars…
M. Nikolskaya – Insects against insects.
N. I. Nikitin – Lumber Chemistry.
A. Fedorov – In the new China by the paths of Michurin.
L. Solsviev – Increasing the fat content of milk.
Development of I.P. Pavlov’s ideas:
P. Frolov – Hygiene of mental labor…
Science and production:
V. A. Kolesov – 10 norms per shift!
Science and technology news:
S. Samoilov – Gas generator diesel locomotive
V. Zheleznov – Ftivazid
P. Kholopov – Catalog of Professor Kharadze
I. V. Yakushkin, M. Edelstein – Pre-harvest beet feeding
Our homeland:
G. Ushakov – On untouched land
Criticism and bibliography:
N. Shcherbinovsky – Creators of soil science
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF REACTIONARY SCIENCE:
MENDELISM-MORGANISM-WEISMANNISM
August Weismann (1834-1914) was a reactionary biologist who invented the so-called “germ-plasm theory”. According to this reactionary theory, heredity is only contained in small particles called the germ-plasm. According to Weismann, the germ-plasm is indestructible, unchangeable and totally separate from the rest of the organism. By this he meant that the heredity of the organism cannot be influenced in any way by its living conditions. The organism inherits the eternal germ-plasm from its parent, and passes it to its own offspring. The living body is only a temporary vessel for the immortal germ-plasm. The germ-plasm basically reincarnates into different bodies. The germ-plasm can never change, it can only grow and divide. Weismann explained hereditary change by claiming that elements of the germ-plasm mix during sexual procreation, although they can never truly change and new heredity can never be added. The existing hereditary elements have existed since the beginning of time. By this Weismann practically denied the possibility of evolution and development from lower to higher organisms. Through fallacious experiments Weismann focused on trying to debunk the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which he failed to do.
The idealist-mystical notion of the eternal germ-plasm which is isolated from the body of the organism is known as weismannism.
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was an Austrian augustinian monk. Mendel is considered the founder of modern reactionary bourgeois genetics. Living at a monastery he carried out a number of experiments with peas. He developed the idea that heredity consists of “hereditary factors” (now called ‘genes’). He held similar views to weismannism and believed hereditary factors are not influenced by material conditions. Mendel was interested in mathematics, and his main focus was trying to impose statistical laws on biology. He believed that hereditary traits mix during sexual procreation according to mathematical ratios (most famous is his 3:1 ratio). Mendel also developed a number of other views, now often called “Mendel’s laws” such as the idea that traits are passed down separately from each other and that there is no relation between one hereditary trait and another, that there is no blending of hereditary traits etc. It is now recognized that these are not laws, and apply only to a limited extent and only in certain cases.
Mendel’s ratios only apply to certain plants, and as T. D. Lysenko said, they are only a statistical reality, an average, but not something which applies to every individual organism. The phenomena of dominance discovered by Mendel is a real fact but Mendel understood it metaphysically as something absolute. In reality traits can be dominant or recessive depending on the circumstance, and dominance can change.
Mendel’s discoveries did not have any scientific importance during his life and he was ignored, although he was able to present his findings to scientific bodies. He rejected his own findings in his second paper, because he realized his findings only applied to peas (to the degree that they apply at all) and he wasn’t able to replicate them. Mendel’s follower R. A. Fischer also concluded that Mendel had fabricated the data in the paper which showed all his “discoveries”.
Mendel is usually associated with the theory of the “gene” although Mendel didn’t use the term himself. The theory that heredity is contained only in small particles called “genes” which are located in chromosomes, which are mixed during sexual procreation is called mendelism. Mendelism is idealist because it does not recognize heredity as a property of the entire organism in relation its environment, because it sees the genes as something isolated from the rest of the organism and impervious to change and impervious to effects of the material conditions.
According to the chromosome theory of reactionary biologists Sutton and Boveri, the genes, and thus all heredity, are located only in the chromosomes. Soviet science debunked this long ago, and even modern bourgeois science admits that this is not true. The chromosome theory still remains a core principle of mendelism. However, after the theory was debunked and after DNA was discovered, mendelism has begun claiming that genes consist of DNA, and are located where ever DNA exists. This only demonstrates that while DNA actually exists, genes are not real physical things, but merely a theoretical concept.
Mendelism originally opposed Darwinian evolution. Leading mendelists such as Wilhelm Johannsen (1857-1927) denied Darwinian evolution because it was incompatible with mendelism. Darwin also advocated the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, while mendelism denies it. Modern mendelism upholds the so-called “modern synthesis” which attempts to combine darwinism with mendelism. They achieved this by distorting darwinism into neo-darwinism. The term “modern synthesis” was coined by reactionary imperialist geneticist Julian Huxley.
Mendelists quickly adopted the pseudo-science known as “eugenics”, which is closely associated with racism and fascism. Developers of the “modern synthesis” Julian Huxley, Theodosius Dobzhansky and their supporters were leaders of the eugenics movement. Eugenics or “population hygiene” is the idea that “inferior people” such as the poor, the disabled or the non-whites, should be killed, aborted, sterilized etc. and thus removed from the “gene pool”. Eugenics is the continuation of “race science”, sterilization of natives and other similar colonialist and fascist policies.
Mendelist Cyril Dean Darlington (1903-1981) also contributed to the “neo-darwinian synthesis”. Darlington who was often criticized in the USSR, supported eugenics and racism:
“English biologist, geneticist and eugenicist, who discovered the mechanics of chromosomal crossover, its role in inheritance… contributed to modern evolutionary synthesis… In 1972 he, along with 50 other prominent scientists signed “Resolution on Scientific Freedom Regarding Human Behavior and Heredity” in which a genetic approach to understanding the behaviour of man was strongly defended. He staunchly defended his colleague in the fight against Lysenkoism, John Baker, who published the controversial book “Race” in 1974. Races are, according to Baker (and Darlington), breeding populations with demarcations drawn at whatever level of detail is required for the problem at hand. Asked by a reporter for the Sunday times whether or not he was a racist, Darlington replied: “Well, I’m regarded as one by everyone except the Jews, who are racist, and who utterly agree with my views.”” (wikipedia)
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) carried out mutation experiments with fruit-flies. His work was important for creating the neo-darwinian view of evolution, which is incompatible with the teaching of Darwin but is compatible with mendelism. In the view of Morgan, evolution happens because of mutations which are purely random. He fallaciously claimed there were no governing principles or biological laws behind mutations, because he could not discover any. His theory denies the possibility of discovering the laws behind evolution and also denies the possibility of guiding development of organisms. His theory proclaims man’s powerlessness before nature, and promised absolutely no practical utility.
Morgan also admitted that his mutation experiments using radiation, were not able to produce any beneficial mutations, but only harmful mutations. As a result he questioned whether evolution towards more advanced organisms was possible.
The notion that evolution is entirely random and its laws are unknowable is called morganism. It provides mendelism-weismannism with a way to excuse any changes caused by material conditions and any inherited acquired characteristics, as nothing but “random mutations”. Morganism is unfalsifiable and thus unscientific even by bourgeois standards.
From the Short Philosophical Dictionary:
“Eugenics (from the Greek for good and birth) is a bourgeois pseudoscience that propagates the most reactionary ideas about the biological and mental inequality of people and human races, allegedly due to the difference in their immutable hereditary nature. Biological inequality, according to the false doctrine of eugenicists, is the main and main cause of the socio-economic inequality of people.
Eugenics was created to deceive the working masses and mask the true socio-economic causes of the social inequality of people under capitalism. Serving the class interests of the bourgeoisie, eugenicists argue that poverty and poverty of the working masses are due not to the fact that the masses are cruelly exploited by the capitalists and that the products of their labor are appropriated by the bourgeoisie, but to the fact that they allegedly consist of “biologically inferior” and “mentally ungifted” people. The bourgeois classes represent, from the point of view of the eugenicists, “the biologically selective color of the nation.” In the most frank and impudent form, this vile “theory” was expressed by the founder of the pseudoscience of eugenics, the English biologist and obscurantist Galjun, who claimed that “the mind of the nation is its upper classes.”
Eugenics was based on the idealistic theory of Weismannism-Mendelism-Morganism about eternal and unchanging heredity, about the “immortal germ plasm” that exists independently of any external and internal influences of the material environment and is transmitted from generation to generation. Proceeding from this anti-scientific position, eugenicists argue that the mental and physical development of people does not depend on the social conditions of their existence, but is entirely determined by their heredity. On the same basis, eugenicists develop their crazy fascist theories about “higher” and “lower” races, about the race of “masters” and the race of “slaves”, about the superiority of whites over black and colored peoples, the superiority of the Aryan and Anglo-Saxon races over all other races and similar reactionary nonsense.
Eugenics became widespread under Hitler’s fascism in Germany, and is now being especially actively promoted by the ideologues of American-British imperialism. Eugenists recommend pastoral methods of “ennobling” the human race. The arsenal of these means includes forced sterilization of “inferior” elements, artificial insemination of women, etc. At the VIII International Congress of Genetics in Stockholm in 1948, Seymour made a report on the need to use artificial insemination as a “way to improve” the human breed. All these fanaticisms are not only promoted in theory, but also find their application in practice.
A number of states in America currently have laws on forced sterilization of “socially inferior” elements. The ideologues of American imperialism are strenuously propagating the “ideas” of the superiority of the American race, which should dominate the whole world. The American racist Hanington spreads the “theory” that only the American “superman” needs to reproduce; in this regard, the eugenicist Leon Whitney proposes to eliminate 10 million Americans from reproduction by sterilization, who are not supposedly “purebred” representatives of the American race. In the 1920s, some scientists who bowed to the West tried to spread eugenics in our country too, but received a resolute rebuff.
Marxism long ago exposed as unscientific and reactionary all attempts to biologize social phenomena that have their own specific patterns of development. Man, his spiritual and physical development, entirely depends on the social conditions in which he lives. The destruction of capitalism also means the destruction of the social inequality of people. Socialism creates all the prerequisites for the all-round development of man. Advanced, Michurinist biology completely exposed the teachings of Weismannism-Morganism about the nature of heredity as unscientific and thereby undermined the theoretical basis of eugenics.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
“Social Darwinism is a reactionary trend in bourgeois sociology, based on the pseudoscientific application of Darwin’s doctrine of the struggle for existence and natural selection in the world of animals and plants to explain the laws of social development and relations between people. Considering this law as a universal law of nature, the social Darwinists (Lange, Ammon, Kidd, Voltman, Weismann, etc.) argued that it retains its effect in human society, where supposedly only the “strong” and “adapted” individuals survive in the struggle for existence, the weak die.
The bourgeois-class background of these reactionary ideas lies in the desire to justify the social injustices of capitalism, the ugliness of its social life, to obscure the class consciousness of the working masses, to divert them from the path of the class struggle against capitalism, for socialism.
At one time, this essence of social Darwinism was frankly expressed by the bourgeois positivist sociologist Spencer(see), who wrote that socialism, seeking to eliminate the struggle for existence in the human world, should cause a general intellectual and physical decline. The ideas of social Darwinism began to spread widely in the era of imperialism and were used as a means of combating Marxism. Thus, a major predator of German imperialism, Krupp established at the beginning of the 20th century. large cash prizes for the best works that popularize the ideas of social Darwinism among workers. The vulgar ideas of social Darwinism were also spread by all kinds of renegades of Marxism.
One of the most rabid representatives of social Darwinism in German social democracy, L. Voltmann, propagated the idea that the history of human culture and society, just as it happens in nature, develops on the basis of the biological principles of adaptation, heredity and improvement in the struggle for existence. The works of the renegade of socialism K. Kautsky (see) also promoted the anti-scientific ideas of social Darwinism. At present, social Darwinism is widely spread in the countries of American-English imperialism, especially in the USA, where a number of reactionary biologists and sociologists (Morgan, East, Jennings, Conklin, etc.) used the ideas of social Darwinism and Malthusianism to justify racial discrimination against blacks, imperialist wars and crises.
The ideologists of imperialism, based on the Malthusian theory of overpopulation, recommend destroying a number of “inferior” peoples. Thus, the modern ideologists of American imperialism (W. Vogt, R. Cook, and others) propagate the delusional ideas that the threat to humanity is the excessively high birth rate in the USSR, in the countries of people’s democracy and other countries, which can only be stopped by a war using atomic , bacteriological weapons and other means of mass destruction. The founders of Marxism-Leninism resolutely exposed the reactionary and anti-scientific character of social Darwinism. The anti-scientific essence of social Darwinism is that it mechanically transfers biological laws to the realm of social phenomena.
The development of society, as Marxism-Leninism proved, is subject to its own special laws, which cannot be reduced to the laws of nature. Therefore, the explanation of social phenomena by means of biological or physical concepts is a reactionary and anti-scientific undertaking; “… no study of social phenomena, no elucidation of the method of the social sciences,” wrote Lenin, “can be given with the help of these concepts. There is nothing easier than sticking an “energetic” or “biological-sociological” label on phenomena like crises, revolutions, class struggle, etc., but there is nothing more fruitless, scholastic, deader than this occupation.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
“Mendelism is a false, metaphysical doctrine of heredity, created by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel in the 60s of the last century and accepted by modern bourgeois science of heredity. According to this theory, there are laws of heredity that are the same for all organisms, from peas to humans. Hereditary properties (factors) do not depend on changes in the organism and the conditions of its life; they pass unchanged from ancestors to descendants in a free, independent combination, forming a random mosaic of properties. According to Mendelism, individual traits of ancestors reappear in descendants unchanged, and the distribution of parental traits into offspring is the same for all living beings, regardless of the difference and complexity of their organization.
For every offspring with a paternal hereditary trait, there is one with a maternal and two intermediate types. The latter contain both paternal and maternal “factors”, and thus, according to Mendel, “splitting of signs” occurs in a ratio of 1:2:1. Mendelism followed the formal path of counting traits in offspring, and not the path of studying the process, causes and conditions for the development of these traits. Therefore, on the basis of Mendelism it is impossible to control heredity. The assertion by Mendelism of the identity and immutability of the “factor” in parents and offspring denies development, is metaphysical. The numerical ratio of traits in the offspring assumed by Mendelism, supposedly the same for all living beings, does not correspond to reality, since the degree of diversity of offspring is not the same for different parental forms under different conditions of their development.
Knowledge of the laws of development of the organism allows more and more control over the formation and development of traits in the offspring. Destroying criticism of Mendelism as a false doctrine of heredity was given in their writings by K. A. Timiryazev, I. V. Michurin and T. D. Lysenko. Timiryazev gave a crushing rebuff to the group of Mendelians (Betson, Keeble, and others), who tried to reject Darwin’s materialistic theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection and replace it with the reactionary teachings of Mendel. On this occasion, Timiryazev wrote: “Obviously, the cause of this unscientific phenomenon should be sought in circumstances of an unscientific order. The sources of this craze, before which the future historian of science will stop in perplexity, must be sought in another phenomenon that goes not only in parallel, but also, undoubtedly, in connection with it. This phenomenon is an intensification of the clerical reaction against Darwinism.”
Michurin, in an article published in 1915 “On the inapplicability of Mendel’s laws to hybridization,” brilliantly proved, on the basis of his experiments, the inapplicability of Mendel’s notorious “pea” laws to the analysis of the phenomena of heredity in fruit and berry plants. The experiments of Academician Lysenko on various varieties of wheat showed that with an appropriate selection of crossed forms and under conditions of education corresponding to the nature of the hybrids, it is possible to achieve complete uniformity of the offspring. Lysenko in his work Agrobiology (1948) cites a large number of experimental data that completely refute Mendelism and its false laws.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
“Weismannism-Morganism is a reactionary anti-Darwinist trend in biological science, named after the biologists Weismann (1834-1914) and Morgan (1866-1945), masking its idealistic and metaphysical essence with the false sign of neo-Darwinism. Weismannism-Morganism arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. as a bourgeois ideological reaction to the materialist theory of the development of organic forms of matter. Posing as followers of Darwin, the Weisman-Morganists tried in every possible way to distort the main thing in Darwinism – its materialistic theory of the development of organisms, the doctrine of natural selection, the variability of organisms and their hereditary qualities under the influence of the external environment, the theory of the inheritance of acquired changes.
Weismannism-Morganism is based on a perverted interpretation of the heredity of organisms, adopted from the metaphysical, anti-scientific theory of Mendel. Despite the diverse terminological arsenal in the interpretation of heredity (genes, determinants, gene pool, mutations, etc.), all Weismann-Morganists agree that heredity is a special substance in organisms that is located in the chromosomes of germ cells. Weismann-Morganists consider the hereditary substance to be eternal, not changing.
According to them, regardless of the external environment in which organisms live, it never arises anew, but is transmitted from generation to generation without any qualitative changes. In this case, the hereditary substance is unknowable. The organism, from the point of view of this theory, consists of two unrelated parts – an immortal and unchanging hereditary substance and a mortal body. The body of an organism is only a nutrient medium – a case for hereditary substances. All signs and properties of the organism depend on the hereditary substance. Whatever changes the organism experiences, they cannot be of significance for the future generation, since these changes do not affect the immortal and unchanging hereditary substance. New qualities acquired by organisms are not inherited.
The Weismann-Morganists try to explain the diversity of organisms and species by the recombination of unchanged genes, mutations of the hereditary substance, etc. However. no explanations of the Morganists-Weismannists can hide the fact that their views on the immortal and unchanging hereditary substance and the mortal body are nothing but a modified theological doctrine of the immortal and non-corporeal soul and mortal body, as a kind of vitalism.
The metaphysical views of the Weismann-Morganists on the immutability of species and organisms manifest themselves in various forms. Hugo de Vries and Morgan believed that species do not change for millennia, and from time to time, for unknown reasons, shocks and explosions occur, as a result of which ready-made new species immediately appear. The Morganists come up with the so-called “mutation reserve”, which is allegedly constantly being used up. As soon as this “reserve of mutation” dries up, evolution allegedly stops. On this basis, the Morganists preach the hypothesis of the fading evolution of species and wildlife in general. According to this theory, it turns out that, having used up the “mutation reserve”, living matter must inevitably come to its end. Such theories vividly demonstrate the idealistic and metaphysical nature of the Weismann-Morganist pseudoscience.
The falsity of the Weismann-Morganist concept is obvious. You can not consider a plant or animal outside the conditions in which they live. A change in the conditions of existence, such as the exchange of substances between organisms and the external environment, inevitably leads to a change in the heredity of organisms. Michurin biology considers the process of development of the organic world as a process of not only quantitative, but also qualitative change, in which new organic forms arise. Heredity, according to the definition of T. D. Lysenko, is, as it were, a concentrate of external conditions mastered by organisms in a number of previous generations. Michurin’s theory is fundamentally opposed to Weismannism-Morganism.
The philosophical basis of Weismannism-Morganism are Kantianism, Machism, pragmatism and other idealistic schools. All the main categories and provisions of idealist philosophy—the denial of objective regularities in the development of matter and the absolutization of accidents, the replacement of real reality by mathematical fictions, the Kantian division of things into phenomena and noumena, the recognition of the unknowability of the essence of things, etc.—are used by the Weismannists-Morganists in order to distort the biological Sciences. As one of the links in the bourgeois ideological reaction, Weismannism-Morganism serves the goals of the exploiting classes.
Eugenics, bourgeois pseudoscience, designed to justify capitalism, grew out of it. Weismannism-Morganism was used by the fascist racists and is now being used by the ideologues of imperialism. Some biologists in the USSR were subject to the influence of Weismannism-Morganism (Filipchenko, Serebrovsky, Schmalhausen, Dubinin, Zhebrak, and others). Starting from the principles of dialectical materialism and relying on the practice of socialist agriculture, Michurin biology exposed the complete theoretical and practical inconsistency of Weismannism-Morganism and armed agricultural practitioners with a clear understanding of the objective laws of plant and animal life. Michurininist biology at the session of VASKhNIL in July-August 1948 inflicted a complete defeat on the reactionary theory of Weismannism-Morganism.” (Pavel Yudin and Mark Rosenthal, Short Philosophical Dictionary, 5th ed., 1954)
VIRCHOWISM
Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow (1821-1902) was a physician who invented the doctrine that life can exist only in the form of cells, and that cells can only emerge from other cells. Virchow did not invent the cell-theory, but instead he distorted it. Virchow’s theory is unscientific because it makes it necessary to believe the first cell somehow emerged complete and fully formed. That would be a miracle which presupposes divine creation.
Soviet scientists Olga Lepeshinskaya, Alexander Oparin and their collaborators demonstrated that life began with forms much simpler than a fully formed cell. Even modern bourgeois science doubts Virchowism and it is widely understood that life began with self-replicating proteins. However, Virchowism is still the mainstream consensus among the bourgeois academia.
As a reactionary idealist Virchow denied the materialist theory of Darwinian evolution and called Darwin an ignoramus. He also did not accept the materialist germ-theory of disease developed by Louis Pasteur.
SOVIET REACTIONARY MENDELIST GENETICISTS. ANTI-MICHURINISTS. ANTI-LYSENKOISTS.
N. K. KOLTSOV (1872-1940)
Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov was a reactionary scientist, supporter of mendelism in the USSR. Koltsov supported the fascist pseudo-science of eugenics and was active in the Russian Eugenic Society until it was closed down. Koltsov was arrested and held under arrest in 1920-1921 because of his involvement in the anti-Bolshevik Tactical Center which united reactionary intellectuals to overthrow the government.
I. I. SCHMALHAUSEN (1884-1963)
Ivan Ivanovich Schmalhausen was a leading reactionary mendelist geneticist in the USSR. He advocated neo-darwinism and helped the eugenicists J. Huxley and T. Dobzhansky develop the so-called neo-darwinian “modern synthesis”. His work was translated into english by Dobzhansky. Schmalhausen was removed from his position in the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Department of Darwinism of Moscow University in 1948 because of his reactionary views. After the death of Stalin Schmalhausen was a leading figure in the anti-michurinist movement.
N. I. VAVILOV (1887-1943)
Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was a prominent reactionary mendelist geneticist in the USSR. He supported eugenicist pseudo-science and was connected to international eugenicists such as Hermann Joseph Muller. He was also connected to the Right-Opposition. N. I. Vavilov was sentenced to prison in 1940 for sabotage in agriculture and espionage on behalf of Britain. He died in a Leningrad prison in 1943 due to hardships of WWII. His brother was the successful physicist and communist S. I. Vavilov.
P. M. ZHUKOVSKY (1888-1975)
Pyotr Mikhailovich Zhukovsky was a reactionary mendelist geneticist. He was a follower of N. I. Vavilov and involved in the anti-michurinist movement after the death of Stalin.
N. P. DUBININ (1907-1998)
Nikolai Petrovich Dubinin was a leading reactionary mendelist geneticist in the USSR. After the death of Stalin he was a leader of the anti-michurinist movement. During the revisionist period he was promoted and became the head of the Laboratory of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1956.
NIKOLAY TIMOFEEV-RESSOVSKY (1900-1981)
A Soviet mendelist who defected to Germany and worked for the Third Reich. After the defeat of Nazism in 1945 he returned to the USSR and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was supported by other mendelists and continued to promote reactionary views after his release.
N. I. SHAPIRO (1906-1987)
Reactionary Soviet mendelist-weismannist. Biophysicist and radiobiologist.
M. M. ZAVADOVSKY (1891-1957)
Famous Soviet mendelist. He is the one who challenged Lysenko at the 1948 VASHNIL session and said he would complain to the party, to which Lysenko replied that the party was behind him, and got a standing ovation.
A. R. ZHEBRAK (1901-1965)
Reactionary mendelist geneticist. He was a follower of N. I. Vavilov and involved in the anti-michurinist movement after the death of Stalin.
V. P. EFROIMSON (1908-1989, mendelist)
Vladimir Pavlovich Efroimson was a prominent reactionary mendelist geneticist in the USSR. He arrested in 1949 for propaganda against the Soviet army and, according to reactionary writer S. E. Schnoll (“Geniuses and Villains of Russian Science”, chapter on the Pavlovian session), as a socially dangerous element. Efroimson also collaborated with Solzhenitsyn, who cites him as a witness in The Gulag Archipelago.
P. G. SVETLOV (1892-1974)
“on August 23, 1948, by order of the Ministry of Higher Education, the dean of the biological faculty of the university M. E. Lobashev, professors Yu. I. Polyansky and P. G. Svetlov were dismissed…
At the beginning of 1950, Professor B. Tokin from Leningrad, the future Hero of Socialist Labor, Honored Scientist, addressed a letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, where he reported that the secretary of the Jewish Masonic lodge, Professor V. Ya. Alexandrov “put together” a group of the Zionist type at VIEM, which included the director of the institute, D. N. Nasonov, professors P. G. Svetlov, A. A. Brown, A. D. Brown and other scientists…
In another denunciation to the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Professor T.V . Vinogradova said: “All the main representatives of Morganism gathered at the scientific meetings of the institute – Yu. Polyansky, Kheisin, Brown, Strelkov, Kanaev, Olenov, Graevsky, Svetlov, Nasonov and others. Their works were [deceptively and falsely] recognized as “Michurinist”, although not a single Michurinist participated in the discussion”…
Times changed, the “Khrushev thaw” came, and in 1956 P. G. Svetlov headed the newly restored VIEM embryology laboratory” (Web article “Pavel Grigoryevich Svetlov (1892-1976) – embryologist, zoologist, professor, corresponding member USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, Graduate of the Tsarskoselsky Nikolaev Gymnasium 1910”, by Kirill Finkelstein)
D. N. NASONOV (1895-1957)
Nasonov was a respected scientist who even earned a second degree Stalin Prize in 1943 for the scientific work “The reaction of living matter to external influences” (1941), but he was exposed as a morganist and zionist and signed the infamous ‘letter of the 300’ in 1955. He was rewarded by the khrushchevite revisionists for his reactionary views.
REACTIONARY PHYSIOLOGISTS
L. A. ORBELI (1882-1958) received harsh criticism for distorting Pavlov’s theories in support of reactionary mendelism.
P. K. ANOKHIN (1882-1958) attempted to replace Pavlov’s theories with reactionary mechanistic cybernetic theories. Anokhin pretended to support Michurinism (probably so he could steal Orbeli’s position) but showed his true colors when he himself was criticized as a reactionary soon after Orbeli. He signed the notorious anti-Michurinist “Letter of the 300” in 1955.
PETR KUPALOV (1888-1964) was heavily criticized for his distortions of Pavlov’s theory.
A. D. SPERANSKY (1888-1961) was heavily criticized for his distortions of Pavlov’s theory.
Students of L. A. Orbeli, A. G. GINETSINSKY (1895-1962) and G. V. GERSHUNI (1905-1992) (who also signed the “Letter of the 300”), were heavily criticized for distortions of Pavlov’s theory.
REACTIONARY PSYCHOLOGISTS
A. B. ZALKIND (1888-1936)
Aron Borissovich Zalkind was a Soviet reactionary psychologist, paedologist and psychoanalyst. He was behind many of the paedological distortions condemned in 1936 and a supporter of idealist freudism.
ANTI-WILLIAMSISTS. REACTIONARIES IN SOIL-SCIENCE.
N. M. TULAIKOV was arrested for sabotage in the late 1930s.
D. N. PRYANISHNIKOV spent his whole career attacking the progressive Williams-system. He was debunked both in the 1930s and again in 1948.
REACTIONARY PEDAGOGUES
B. E. RAIKOV (1880-1966)
Boris Evgen’evich Raikov was a soviet pedagogue and historian of science who was harshly criticized at a meeting of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences on September 4, 1948, for his promotion of mendelism-morganism and distorting darwinism. He was also criticized for his cosmopolite position on the history of science. Revisionists later rehabilitated him and the 1979 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia falsely portrays him in a positive light without mentioning the criticisms.
REACTIONARIES IN MEDICINE
Mendelists in medicine were Leonid Bliakher, Aleksandr Gurvich and Sergei Davidenkov who also attempted to distort pavlovism.
REACTIONARY HISTORIANS
M. N. POKROVSKY (1868-1932)
Mikhail Nikolayevich Pokrovsky was a revisionist historian, closely aligned with Bogdanov and Bukharin. He advocated crude ultra-deterministic mechanistic views, and minimized the role of consciousness in history.
CYBERNETICS
“Cybernetics: a reactionary pseudoscience that appeared in the U.S.A. after World War II”
(Soviet Short Philosophical Dictionary, 1954)
Cybernetics is a reactionary mechanistic and idealist worldview developed mainly by N. Wiener, which denies dialectical materialism. It claims that humans are basically the same as machines. In the 1960s and 70s the term “cybernetics” began to be used for computer science and automation in general, but this is a mistaken usage of the term.
A detailed critique and historical overview of Cybernetics: Cybernetics in the USSR: A Marxist-Leninist Perspective
A. I. BERG (1893-1979, electrical engineer, saboteur, revisionist)
Axel Ivanovich Berg was a Soviet physicist and electrical engineer who at one time held certain responsible positions. He was an Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1946 and member of the CPSU since 1944.
Berg was arrested in 1937 for sabotage and held in custody for 3 years. He was released in 1940 due to insufficient evidence. In the revisionist period he was one of the founders of cybernetics in the USSR.
E. KOLMAN (1892-1979)
Cybernetics was promoted in the USSR by Ernest Kolman who Benjamin Peters in his article “Normalizing Soviet Cybernetics” characterizes as “a failed mathematician” (p. 159).
Kolman was described as a “true stalinist” but in reality he was only a careerist. His commitment to marxism had always been self-serving and disingenuous. He was hardly someone defending the integrity of marxism from bourgeois pseudoscience and “had spent time in a Stalinist labor camp after World War II for straying from the party line in his interpretation of Marxism.” (p. 160).
Later Kolman defected to Sweden where he openly rejected Leninism entirely and strongly criticized Marx and Engels.
NIKOLAI KOBOZEV
Like Sakharov and Timofeev-Ressovsky, Nikolai Kobozev was a reactionary collaborator of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Like the other two, he was also an idealist falsifier of science:
“By 1948, quite independently of Norbert Wiener and without the least knowledge of his works, Kobozev had single-handedly elaborated—albeit by a different method and using a different terminology—what became known as cybernetics … he reformulated cybernetic theory in terms of thermodynamics, and in the course of his exposition, he offered a thermodynamic justification for the existence of God.” (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The invisible allies, p. 29)
REACTIONARY LINGUISTICS AND “MARRISM”
N. YA. MARR (1865-1934, renegade linguist)
Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr was a leading renegade linguist in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. He advocated ultra-leftist, idealist and anti-Marxist theories and presented himself as the developer of a new Marxist science of linguistics. Marr’s theories were supported by the anti-Marxist revisionist historian Pokrovskii. Marr was strongly criticized by Stalin in “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”.
V. B. APTEKAR (1899-1937, renegade linguist)
Valerian Borisovich Aptekar was a Soviet renegade linguist, supporter of the idealist theories of N. Ya. Marr and a Trotskyist saboteur. He was sentenced to death for treason in 1937.
IVAN MESHCHANINOV (1883-1967, renegade linguist)
Ivan Meshchaninov was the leading follower of N. Ya. Marr. His idealist theories and bureaucratic practices were strongly criticized by Stalin in “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”.
B. A. SEREBRENNIKOV (1915-1989, renegade linguist)
Boris Aleksandrovich Serebrennikov was a Soviet renegade linguist. He was a complete opportunist who jumped on the anti-Marr bandwagon, writing works such as “Comparative historical method and criticism of the so-called four-element analysis N. Ya. Marr” in Questions of linguistics in the light of the works of I. V. Stalin, ed. V. V. Vinogradova, but during ‘destalinization’ also wrote works such as “On the Elimination of the Consequences of Stalin’s Personality Cult in Linguistics”.
OTHERS:
PHYSICIST A. I. BACHINSKY (1877-1944) AND CHEMIST V. V. SHARVIN (1870-1930)
“Russian natural scientists, like the Machian physicist A. Bachinsky or the chemist V. Sharvin, referred to Mach and Ostwald, or even to Berkeley, as spokesmen for supposedly the latest philosophical trends in world natural science. Appealing to the most vulgar variety of idealism, our domestic Machists and their echoes among natural scientists showed themselves to be typical cosmopolitans: they opposed the materialist traditions among Russian naturalists, represented by Stoletov, Timiryazev and others, against the traditions of materialistic philosophical thought of revolutionary democrats, against the philosophy of Leninism.” (A. A. Maksimov. Marxist philosophical materialism and modern physics)
P. A. MOLCHANOV (1893-1941, meteorologist, traitor)
Pavel Alexandrovich Molchanov was a Soviet meteorologist who held certain responsible posts such as the head of the Department of Air Navigation at the Leningrad Institute of Civil Air Fleet Engineers, until he was arrested for treason in 1941 and shot.
L. D. LANDAU (1908-1968, physicist)
Lev Davidovich Landau was a soviet physicist and quantum physicist. He held important positions and made contributions to science. However, he also made numerous idealistic mistakes in science and philosophy of science. From 1937 until 1962, Landau was allowed to be the head of the Theoretical Division at the Institute for Physical Problems.
He was held in prison for interrogation in 1938-1939 because he spread counter-revolutionary leaflets which equated Marxism and Nazism.
Criticism of idealist mistakes of L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshits:
“Problems of development of quantum theory” by Ya. P. Terletsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
On the second law of thermodynamics, or how late-Soviet revisionism planted idealism in science (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
“On one of the books of academician L. D. Landau and his students” by Ya. P. Terletsky (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
On the issue of “cold fusion” [criticism of L. D. Landau and his group] (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
On the issue of “cold fusion” (continued) (in Russian, but auto-translate works pretty well)
A. D. SAKHAROV (1921-1989)
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a physicist and counter-revolutionary from the USSR. He was involved in nuclear physics. The USSR was the most advanced country in that field. Since he worked under a team led by brilliant physicists such as Igor Tamm and Igor Kurchatov who won the Stalin Prize for their achivements, Sakharov was also awarded one in 1953. He kept his reactionary views secret while working on nuclear physics and succeeded in leeching off the success of his colleagues. Secretly and later publically Sakharov supported capitalism and imperialism, and after Stalin’s death began campaigning against progressive sciences such as michurinism. He was later stripped of all his awards.
When he was carrying out scientific work he was not given any awards by the West and generally his work was entirely overshadowed by his more capable colleagues, but later he was given a Nobel Prize for being an anti-Soviet dissident.
ML-Theory 