Trechos de Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life In Science (2014), de Daniel P. Todes.
The Pavlovs were summering at Sillamiagi when Nicholas II stepped onto the balcony of the Winter Palace on July 20, 1914, to address several hundred thousand of his subjects who had gathered in Palace Square to hear his response to the German declaration of war. In the very spot where a deadly fusillade from the tsar's army had sparked the 1905 revolution - and where, not six months earlier, a quarter million workers had angrily demonstrated to mark the ninth anniversary of that Bloody Sunday - the crowd now knelt as one and sang "God Save the Tsar." A rousing cheer greeted his pledge "not to make peace as long as a single enemy remains on Russia's soil."
- - -
Pavlov's patriotism, too, was much aroused. He devoted his first lecture of the 1914-1915 academic year to an enthusiastic endorsement of Russia's war aims, and assured his coworkers that "if not for my age, I would abandon everything and volunteer for the army." With his sons Vladimir and Vsevolod at the front, he followed the war news avidly. "Every Russian defeat or victory touched him to the depths of his soul," recalled Jasper Ten-Kate, a member of Pavlov's much-diminished lab group during the war years. "So great was his interest in the front that his coworkers competed to provide him with sensational news acquired through personal contacts." Pavlov rewarded them with passionate reactions, "cursing the Germans or the Russians depending on the circumstances". Declining an invitation to speak at Moscow's private Shaniavskii University in September 1914, he explained: "Now my mood is so unstable since everything is overshadowed by the war that scientific interests and scientific thinking barely remain." Two months later, he mused to physiologist Alexander Samoilov: "There is the result of all those international contacts for you. How and when will we again meet with our scientific comrades? What a mystery of human life, of human culture! This occupies me now rather more than conditional reflexes." In April 1915, he still felt too preoccupied with the war to deliver a public lecture about science: "God grant that the terrible cloud hanging over the world will pass and that we will be able to return to our usual peaceful activities. But now I do not have and cannot summon the necessary inspiration for either work or presentations."
He peppered his lectures with comments about the war, pouncing on one student whose late arrival to class reminded him of the cursed Russian trait that had exacted such a price at the Battle of Tannenberg: "Sir, you have now acted like General Rennenkampf, who arrived late to relieve General Samsonov, whose army, due to this tardiness, was captured. Sit down and don't repeat this." This precipitated a ten-minute peroration on national types: "The Slavs, particularly the Russians, should learn from the Germans about punctuality and precision... If one could add German precision to the Russian's boldness and cleverness, then we would far outpace all nations and states."
- - -
Enthusiasm and unity on the home front had long since disappeared, replaced by food lines, despair, finger-pointing, and accusations of treason. Secret police reports warned that inflation and material privation were stoking dangerous sentiments among workers and peasants.
- - -
On a clear winter day, a gloomy Pavlov strolled with his collaborator Iurii Frolov past the Winter Palace. The newspapers were full of lurid details about the killing of Rasputin and rumors of intrigues and treachery. As they passed the tsar's residence, Pavlov spoke rapidly and emotionally: "They lost the war ... The tsar lost the war ... What now will become of Russia?"
Pavlov resumed his working routine by the fall of 1915, although most of his coworkers had been called to the front, and those who remained were usually available only for short periods of time. During the war years, research concentrated on the dynamics of inhibition and differentiation, the relationship of inhibition to sleep, and the stages by which CRs [conditional reflexes] developed.
- - -
Pavlov's patriotic reaction to the war and concern for the development of Russian physiology led him to join physiologists Nikolai Vvedenskii, Vartan Vartanov, and Aleksei Likhachev in March 1916 to found the I. M. Sechenov Society of Russian Physiologists. Their goal was to unite specialists and address scientific issues through annual meetings, the publication of a journal, prizes for Russian contributions to experimental biology, and support for various scientific institutions.
- - -
That revolution arrived on February 23, 1917, as mass discontent exploded in a final wave of strikes and demonstrations.
Throughout this empire-shaking drama, Pavlov doggedly continued his research and teaching. On the morning of one lecture at the Military-Medical Academy, his chief assistant, Georgii Fol'bort, was unable to prepare the demonstration because he was pinned down in his apartment - near the foot of Nevskii Prospekt, a stone's throw from the Winter Palace - by street fighting. He arrived late to the lecture and received a predictably fierce public scolding. His explanation cut no ice with the chief. Turning scornfully to the students in the auditorium, Pavlov remarked: "There's a Russian assistant for you: a few fools are shooting at one another and he considers this an excuse to be late for work!"
- - -
Pavlov had always thought that a second revolution would be the death of Russia, and its occurrence left him extremely pessimistic. To Petrova's expressions of enthusiasm about the prospects for a democratic Russia, he responded mournfully, "I foresee much grief and suffering ahead." He had just escaped his sickbed, "limping, much thinner, and pale". Trudging slowly down the street, he seemed to Petrova "so lifeless, so aged". Vera accompanied him on a short recuperative trip to the Crimea, but, preoccupied with events in the capital, he hurried home. In a note to Petrova on April 1, he congratulated her on her appointment as lecturer at the Women's Medical Institute and empathized with her moodiness of late: "Mood swings are most natural now. We are enduring such an extraordinary time that I can't imagine anybody who is not being tossed from side to side." He confessed himself occasionally depressed.
- - -
He [Pavlov] had never been a committed monarchist or an admirer of the tsarist regime. Now tsarism was gone, and he set about playing an active part in the civic life of the new Russia - exploiting in particular the new possibilities for Russian science.
- - -
[...] articulating his [Pavlov] hopes for the future of "our revolution":
"The great French Revolution was responsible also for a great sin - the execution of Lavoisier and the declaration, in response to his request for a reprieve while he completed some important chemical experiments, that 'the republic has no need for scientists and their experiments'. But the past century has produced a decisive revolution in attitude within human minds, and now one needn't fear that a democracy will forget the eternally reigning role of science in human life."
- - -
Amid tragedy and privation, Pavlov struggled to continue his research, but shortages of heat, provisions, dogs, and assistants soon brought it to a virtual halt. His labs were unheated, all but a few coworkers were at the front, and his dogs were starving.
- - -
Pavlov reacted to the Bolshevik seizure of power with grief and horror. "He talked constantly about the death of our homeland," Petrova recalled, "regarded the Bolsheviks with hostility and distrust, and openly expressed his dissatisfaction with their various measures." These sentiments were shared by the great majority of his colleagues. On November 21, Pavlov attended a meeting of the Academy of Sciences that adopted a resolution denouncing the Bolsheviks and urging the upcoming Constituent Assembly to save Russia's honor:
"A great misfortune has befallen Russia; under the yoke of the tyrants who have seized power, the Russian people is losing consciousness of its character and dignity; it is selling its soul and, at the price of a shameful and unreliable separate peace, is prepared to betray its allies and put itself in the hands of its enemies. [...] Russia did not deserve such shame."
- - -
A list of 179 eminent Petrograd scholars who had died during the hungry years [between 1918 and 1920] also included the head curator of the Hermitage and three of Pavlov's colleagues at the Military-Medical Academy.
Pavlov had just begun his sixty-ninth year when the Bolsheviks seized power, confiscating his Nobel Prize money and even the gold medals awarded to him and his sons by St. Petersburg University and the Academy of Sciences.
- - -
In the heat of the civil war, the Bolsheviks had basically dealt with the great majority of scientists as former members of the tsarist elite and White sympathizers. The Pavlovs had been repeatedly rousted by local authorities familiar with their White sympathies, and the Bolshevik leadership had apparently even suggested that they leave the country. But now, in 1920, with victory over the Whites imminent, Lenin pondered the challenges of "socialist construction" and considered Pavlov a national treasure. Scientific and technological progress was central to the Bolshevik vision of socialism (and to common notions of national power), so, at least until a replacement generation of "Red specialists" could be prepared, the ruling party needed to nurture the "bourgeois specialists" it had inherited from the tsarist regime - to save them from starvation, discourage (or simply prevent) them from emigrating, and facilitate their research.
Pavlov began in August 1920 to address various requests to the Petrograd City Soviet: decent meat for his dogs, funds for a special supply of electricity and gas to his lab, firewood for the IEM [Institute of Experimental Medicine], and paper for its journal. All were quickly granted.
- - -
Pavlov's patriotism, too, was much aroused. He devoted his first lecture of the 1914-1915 academic year to an enthusiastic endorsement of Russia's war aims, and assured his coworkers that "if not for my age, I would abandon everything and volunteer for the army." With his sons Vladimir and Vsevolod at the front, he followed the war news avidly. "Every Russian defeat or victory touched him to the depths of his soul," recalled Jasper Ten-Kate, a member of Pavlov's much-diminished lab group during the war years. "So great was his interest in the front that his coworkers competed to provide him with sensational news acquired through personal contacts." Pavlov rewarded them with passionate reactions, "cursing the Germans or the Russians depending on the circumstances". Declining an invitation to speak at Moscow's private Shaniavskii University in September 1914, he explained: "Now my mood is so unstable since everything is overshadowed by the war that scientific interests and scientific thinking barely remain." Two months later, he mused to physiologist Alexander Samoilov: "There is the result of all those international contacts for you. How and when will we again meet with our scientific comrades? What a mystery of human life, of human culture! This occupies me now rather more than conditional reflexes." In April 1915, he still felt too preoccupied with the war to deliver a public lecture about science: "God grant that the terrible cloud hanging over the world will pass and that we will be able to return to our usual peaceful activities. But now I do not have and cannot summon the necessary inspiration for either work or presentations."
He peppered his lectures with comments about the war, pouncing on one student whose late arrival to class reminded him of the cursed Russian trait that had exacted such a price at the Battle of Tannenberg: "Sir, you have now acted like General Rennenkampf, who arrived late to relieve General Samsonov, whose army, due to this tardiness, was captured. Sit down and don't repeat this." This precipitated a ten-minute peroration on national types: "The Slavs, particularly the Russians, should learn from the Germans about punctuality and precision... If one could add German precision to the Russian's boldness and cleverness, then we would far outpace all nations and states."
- - -
Enthusiasm and unity on the home front had long since disappeared, replaced by food lines, despair, finger-pointing, and accusations of treason. Secret police reports warned that inflation and material privation were stoking dangerous sentiments among workers and peasants.
- - -
On a clear winter day, a gloomy Pavlov strolled with his collaborator Iurii Frolov past the Winter Palace. The newspapers were full of lurid details about the killing of Rasputin and rumors of intrigues and treachery. As they passed the tsar's residence, Pavlov spoke rapidly and emotionally: "They lost the war ... The tsar lost the war ... What now will become of Russia?"
Pavlov resumed his working routine by the fall of 1915, although most of his coworkers had been called to the front, and those who remained were usually available only for short periods of time. During the war years, research concentrated on the dynamics of inhibition and differentiation, the relationship of inhibition to sleep, and the stages by which CRs [conditional reflexes] developed.
- - -
Pavlov's patriotic reaction to the war and concern for the development of Russian physiology led him to join physiologists Nikolai Vvedenskii, Vartan Vartanov, and Aleksei Likhachev in March 1916 to found the I. M. Sechenov Society of Russian Physiologists. Their goal was to unite specialists and address scientific issues through annual meetings, the publication of a journal, prizes for Russian contributions to experimental biology, and support for various scientific institutions.
- - -
That revolution arrived on February 23, 1917, as mass discontent exploded in a final wave of strikes and demonstrations.
Throughout this empire-shaking drama, Pavlov doggedly continued his research and teaching. On the morning of one lecture at the Military-Medical Academy, his chief assistant, Georgii Fol'bort, was unable to prepare the demonstration because he was pinned down in his apartment - near the foot of Nevskii Prospekt, a stone's throw from the Winter Palace - by street fighting. He arrived late to the lecture and received a predictably fierce public scolding. His explanation cut no ice with the chief. Turning scornfully to the students in the auditorium, Pavlov remarked: "There's a Russian assistant for you: a few fools are shooting at one another and he considers this an excuse to be late for work!"
- - -
Pavlov had always thought that a second revolution would be the death of Russia, and its occurrence left him extremely pessimistic. To Petrova's expressions of enthusiasm about the prospects for a democratic Russia, he responded mournfully, "I foresee much grief and suffering ahead." He had just escaped his sickbed, "limping, much thinner, and pale". Trudging slowly down the street, he seemed to Petrova "so lifeless, so aged". Vera accompanied him on a short recuperative trip to the Crimea, but, preoccupied with events in the capital, he hurried home. In a note to Petrova on April 1, he congratulated her on her appointment as lecturer at the Women's Medical Institute and empathized with her moodiness of late: "Mood swings are most natural now. We are enduring such an extraordinary time that I can't imagine anybody who is not being tossed from side to side." He confessed himself occasionally depressed.
- - -
He [Pavlov] had never been a committed monarchist or an admirer of the tsarist regime. Now tsarism was gone, and he set about playing an active part in the civic life of the new Russia - exploiting in particular the new possibilities for Russian science.
- - -
[...] articulating his [Pavlov] hopes for the future of "our revolution":
"The great French Revolution was responsible also for a great sin - the execution of Lavoisier and the declaration, in response to his request for a reprieve while he completed some important chemical experiments, that 'the republic has no need for scientists and their experiments'. But the past century has produced a decisive revolution in attitude within human minds, and now one needn't fear that a democracy will forget the eternally reigning role of science in human life."
- - -
Amid tragedy and privation, Pavlov struggled to continue his research, but shortages of heat, provisions, dogs, and assistants soon brought it to a virtual halt. His labs were unheated, all but a few coworkers were at the front, and his dogs were starving.
- - -
Pavlov reacted to the Bolshevik seizure of power with grief and horror. "He talked constantly about the death of our homeland," Petrova recalled, "regarded the Bolsheviks with hostility and distrust, and openly expressed his dissatisfaction with their various measures." These sentiments were shared by the great majority of his colleagues. On November 21, Pavlov attended a meeting of the Academy of Sciences that adopted a resolution denouncing the Bolsheviks and urging the upcoming Constituent Assembly to save Russia's honor:
"A great misfortune has befallen Russia; under the yoke of the tyrants who have seized power, the Russian people is losing consciousness of its character and dignity; it is selling its soul and, at the price of a shameful and unreliable separate peace, is prepared to betray its allies and put itself in the hands of its enemies. [...] Russia did not deserve such shame."
- - -
A list of 179 eminent Petrograd scholars who had died during the hungry years [between 1918 and 1920] also included the head curator of the Hermitage and three of Pavlov's colleagues at the Military-Medical Academy.
Pavlov had just begun his sixty-ninth year when the Bolsheviks seized power, confiscating his Nobel Prize money and even the gold medals awarded to him and his sons by St. Petersburg University and the Academy of Sciences.
- - -
In the heat of the civil war, the Bolsheviks had basically dealt with the great majority of scientists as former members of the tsarist elite and White sympathizers. The Pavlovs had been repeatedly rousted by local authorities familiar with their White sympathies, and the Bolshevik leadership had apparently even suggested that they leave the country. But now, in 1920, with victory over the Whites imminent, Lenin pondered the challenges of "socialist construction" and considered Pavlov a national treasure. Scientific and technological progress was central to the Bolshevik vision of socialism (and to common notions of national power), so, at least until a replacement generation of "Red specialists" could be prepared, the ruling party needed to nurture the "bourgeois specialists" it had inherited from the tsarist regime - to save them from starvation, discourage (or simply prevent) them from emigrating, and facilitate their research.
Pavlov began in August 1920 to address various requests to the Petrograd City Soviet: decent meat for his dogs, funds for a special supply of electricity and gas to his lab, firewood for the IEM [Institute of Experimental Medicine], and paper for its journal. All were quickly granted.
