Organic Electrochemistry in the USSR

Abstract

Organic electrochemistry (in the Russian scientific literature “electrochemistry of organic compounds”, “EKhOS”) describes the whole field. In addition to electroorganic chemistry (synthesis, organic reactivity, etc), it includes also mechanisms of electrode processes including kinetics of separate stages, electrode and pre-electrode effects, combined spectral and electrochemical techniques, etc., as applied to a variety of objects—from simple molecules to complex natural compounds. The article provides an overview of works in all of these areas performed in the EKhOS's centres of the former USSR: in Moscow, Kazan, Riga, Tula, Novocherkassk, etc. In the second part of the article the author shares over 30-years experience at the Moscow's All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Vitamins-from the first work with home-made polarograph, studying the mechanisms of reactions, to large-scale industrial electrosynthesis. Along with biographical material, author describes also the environment in which soviet scientists lived and worked in those years.