Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

37. See Stetsovsky, Yurii, Istoriya sovetskikh repressii [History of Soviet Repressions] (Moscow: Znak-SP, 1997), vol. 1, pp. 485–486 (in Russian).

38. Kostyrchenko, Gennadi, Out of the Red Shadows: Anti-Semitism in Stalin’s Russia (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), pp. 258–276.

39. At least four prominent Academicians were members of this council (Alibek, Ken, with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It [New York: Random House, 1999], p. 158).

40. After I finished writing this book, a new source was published: Yesakov, V. D., ed., Akademiya Nauk v resheniyakh Politburo TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b), 1922–1952 [The Academy of Sciences in Resolutions of the Central Committee of the Russian/All-Union Communist (Bolshevik) Party, 1922–1952] (Moscow: Rosspan, 2000) (in Russian). It contains numerous additional documents showing the complete control over academy life in the 1930s–1950s by the Politburo and Stalin himself.

41. Loren R. Graham, What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 133–134.

1. A note from Vladimir Grum-Grzhimailo dated July 18, 1928, Academy of Sciences Archive, F. 518, Op. 2, D. 14, L. 47–48, cited (pp. 178–179) in Perchenok, F. F., “Akademiya Nauk na ‘velikom perelome’” [The Academy of Sciences at the “great rupture”], in Okhotin, Nikita, and Arsenii Roginsky, eds., Zven’ya: Historical Almanac [The Links] (Moscow: Progress; Phoenix: Atheneum, 1991), vol. 1, pp. 163–238 (in Russian).

2. Tolz, Russian Academicians , p. 37.

3. A copy of the letter from the Academy of Sciences Archive in St. Petersburg, cited (pp. 93–95) in Samoilov, V. O., and Yu. A. Vinogradov, “I. P. Pavlov: ‘Ne odin zhe ya tak dumayu… ’” [I. P. Pavlov: “Am I alone in thinking this way?…”], in Glinka, M. S., ed., Sovremennye mysli, ili proroki v svoem otechestve [Well-Timed Thoughts, or Prophets in Their Own Fatherland] (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1989), pp. 92–101 (in Russian); another translation is in Tolz, Russian Academicians, p. 37.

4. Perchenok, “Akademiya Nauk,” p. 190.

5. A copy of Molotov’s letter to Academician Pavlov from the Academy of Sciences Archive in St. Petersburg, cited (pp. 95–96) in Samoilov and Vinogradov, “I. P. Pavlov: ‘Ne odin zhe ya tak dumayu…’”

6. See Sobolev, V. S., “Utochnim fakty” [Let’s correct the facts], Vestnik Akademii Nauk 8 (1990): 146–147 (in Russian); Fainstein, M. Sh., “Ob’edinenie dvukh akademii” [The merger of two academies], Vestnik Instituta Istorii Estestvoznaniya i Tekhniki 2 (1999): 40–55 (in Russian). For general information on the early history of the St. Petersburg Academy, see, for instance, Vucinich, Alexander, Science in Russian Culture: A History to 1860 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963); a short version is in Vucinich, Alexander, Empire of Knowledge: The Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1917–1970) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 6–71.

7. Romanovsky, S. I., “Pervyi demokraticheski izbrannyi prezident akademii nauk” [The first democratically elected president of the Academy of Sciences], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 66 (12) (1996): 1095–1110 (in Russian).

8. Ibid., p. 1097.

9. The whole list of names is given in Tolz, Russian Academicians, pp. 188–189.

10. Ibid., p. 17.

11. See the biography of Pavlov, for instance, in Vucinich, Alexander, Science in Russian Culture, 1867–1917 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), pp. 298–327; and a detailed description of Pavlov’s studies, in Babkin, Boris P., Pavlov: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).

12. Babkin, Pavlov, p. 214.

13. See, for instance, Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture, 1867–1917, pp. 115 and 285; Salensky, W., “Recherches sur le développement du sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus) ,” Archives de Biologie 2 (1881): 233–341.

14. Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture, 1867–1917, pp. 282–283.

15. Ipatieff, Vladimir N., The Life of a Chemist, trans. Haensel and Lusher (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1946).

16. Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture, 1867–1917, pp. 358–361.

17. Ibid., pp. 341–343.

18. Ipatieff, The Life of a Chemist, pp. 566–567.

19. Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture, 1867–1917, pp. 96–97.

20. Ibid., pp. 416–421.

21. Bailes, Kendall E., Technology and Society Under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 41; Bailes, Kendall E., Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolutions: V. I. Vernadsky and His Scientific School, 1863–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Tolz, Russian Academicians, pp. 153–168.

22. Ipatieff, The Life of a Chemist, pp. 220 and 234.

23. Kozlov, B. I., and B. V. Levshin, “V kontse ‘Serebryanogo veka’” [At the end of the “Silver Age”], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 68 (7) (1998): 579–595 (in Russian).

24. Arskaya, L. P., “Dvenadtsatyi prezident akademii nauk” [The twelfth president of the Academy of Sciences], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 64 (1) (1994): 56–68 (in Russian).

25. Sobolev, “Utochnim daty,” p. 147.

26. Koltsov, Anatolii V., Sozdanie i deyatel’nost’ Komissii po izucheniyu estectvennykh proizvoditel’nykh sil Rossii, 1915–1930 gg. [The Creation and Activity of the Commission for the Study of Natural-Productive Forces of Russia, 1915–1930] (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1999), p. 41 (in Russian).

27. Kozlov and Levshin, “V kontse,” p. 579.

28. Cited in ibid., p. 582.

29. Soloviev, Yu. G., “Nepremennyi sekretar’—voploshchenie blagorodstva” [The permanent secretary as personified decency], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 64 (7) (1994): 637–649 (in Russian); Alpatov, V. M, and M. A. Sidorov, “Dirizher akademicheskogo orkestra” [A conductor of the academy orchestra], V estnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 67 (2) (1997): 164–173 (in Russian).

30. A medical Professor replaced Oldenburg as minister (Kozlov and Levshin, “V kontse,” p. 583). Later, in 1919, Oldenburg was arrested and detained by the CheKa for two weeks (Alpatov and Sidorov, “Dirizher akademicheskogo orkestra,” p. 168).

31. According to the calendar used in Russia before 1918, the date of the Bolshevik Revolution was October 25, 1917.

32. For details, see Aksenov, Gennadii P., Vernadsky (Moscow: Soratnik, 1994), pp. 227–235 (in Russian).

33. See, for instance, Gerson, Lennard D., The Secret Police in Lenin’s Russia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976), pp. 15–25; Leggett, George, The CHEKA: Lenin’s Political Police (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 1–4.

34. Bailes, Science and Russian Culture, pp. 146–148; more details are given in Aksenov, Vernadsky, pp. 239–260.

35. Vernadsky, V. I., “Iz dnevnikov 1921 goda” [Excerpts from the 1921 diary], in Okhotin and Roginsky, Zven’ya , vol. 1, pp. 475–487.

36. Ipatieff, The Life of a Chemist, p. 271.

37. See p. 289 in Bailes, Kendall E., “Natural Scientists and the Soviet System,” in Koenker, Rosenberg, and Suny, Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War , pp. 267–295.