Soviet Science Research Articles

Ivan Potekhin and the First International Congress of Africanists in 1962

The article is devoted to the role of I. I. Potekhin (1903—1964), a Soviet scientist, one of the founders of the Soviet African Studies, in the organization of the First International Congress of Africanists, held in Ghana on December 11—18, 1962. On the basis of archival documents, the painful process of preparation headed by I. I. Potekhin the Soviet delegation to participate in the congress. This example clearly demonstrates the sluggishness of the Soviet bureaucracy, which was unable to respond to the challenges of the time, to capture really relevant, and not imaginary, social, political and scientific trends. As a result, the Soviet delegation turned out to be very modest in number, contrary to initial expectations. The opportunity to go to Africa was not given to those who needed it. Nevertheless, for Soviet scientists who nevertheless went to Ghana, participation in the congress turned out to be successful and useful. The article showed that, despite the commitment to dogmatic Soviet Marxism, I. I. Potekhin managed to build quite successful business relations with both Western and African colleagues, which undoubtedly had a positive effect on the process of organizing the First Congress of Africanists. Although the congress was not without sharp disputes and discussions, its work, on the whole, took place in a friendly atmosphere. Potekhin’s stubborn desire to develop African studies outside the Western world fit into the decolonization discourse and was clearly ahead of its time. It is concluded that the congress in Ghana has become an important milestone in the development and institutionalization of world African studies.

Africa in World History: Interpretations of Soviet Historiography

In Soviet historical science from the very beginning of its formation in the 1920’s, Western pro-colonial historiography's claims that Africa is a continent without a history have been heavily criticized. Back in the late 1920’s USSR, a program was developed for the study of the history of Black Africa from the ancient history and onwards. It was an absolutely innovative program for world African studies, for the first time making the history of African peoples, and not the white man in Africa, the subject of study in the context of world history. Soviet Africanists have priority in the study of such problems of African history as the colonial exploitation of the African peoples and their struggle against colonialism. They drew attention to the study of the pre-colonial history of the peoples of the continent in all its diversity. Despite the fact that Soviet scientists were practically deprived of the opportunity to work in foreign archives of both the West and Africa itself, and even, even briefly, visit the Black Continent, they managed to collect extensive material on the history of the peoples of the continent, comprehend it, open a number of new areas of historical research and go beyond the official Marxist-Leninist understanding of history in the country. Soviet historical African studies did not represent a single array. We can talk about the research of the Leningrad school, which is characterized by complex historical and ethnological research, and the school of Davidson with its opposition to ideological dominants and the search for new topics and directions, as well as sources for their research.

«…It was done by Soviet scientists»: Representations of scientific social practices in Soviet magazines for children (the 1980s)

The author explores the texts of Soviet periodicals for children and sets the task to reveal how science is represented in relation to state policy, as well as defining the semiotic resources that convey grown-ups’ social practices to children’s audience. Methodologically, the study builds on content analysis and discourse analysis of the publications drawn from the magazines “Pioneer” and “Kostyor”. It has been found that publications on science occupied an important place in the magazines, sections on science were regular, and most of them had exact and natural sciences as their subject. Specific features of representations have been discovered, including references to experts’ opinions, channeling of agonality, emotions and ideologies. The validity of scientific information provided was guaranteed by the expert status of the author or commentator: their professionalism and public recognition. The texts contained argumentation tactics that were typical of academic communication, and thus, grown-ups’ social practices were transferred to children’s magazines. The author claims that the rational sphere of science was discursively constructed as a source of emotional experience, specifically — the feeling of wonder. The factual component was complemented by the emotional modus and actualized through the lexical markers of wonder, evaluative elements and stylistic devices. The journals were used as an instrument of dialogue between the state and a younger generation, and the representations of scientific social practices contained markers of ideology. The author claims that convergence of scientific, media and political discourses is taking place in the process of representation of scientific practices. The resulting representations build axiological attitudes of a younger generation, maintain ideological guidelines, and determine a scientific and ideological worldview.

Советские исследователи о шаманской болезни и «шаманском безумии»

The purpose of this article is to review various opinions of Soviet scientists about mental health of shamans. The task of this paper is to analyse a wide range of Soviet sources on shamanism, identify their attitude to “shamanic madness” and possible reasons for its formation, and compare positions of different authors on the subject. The following methods were used: comparative, causal analysis, historicism, and typological methods. In modern Russia, there is a preconceived opinion about the sharply negative attitude to religion in the Soviet era. In the USSR, there was indeed active antireligious propaganda, but it is an exaggeration to say that it represents the entire complex layer of relations between representatives of different faiths and Soviet institutions. Soviet science was based on the aspiration for objective knowledge of the world. This also applied to the primitive beliefs that existed at that time in the Northern and Eastern regions of the country, in particular shamanism. This article deals with the issue of shamanic initiatory sickness and shamanic activities based on communication with spirits. On this issue, there was a lively debate – whether these diseases are the result of psychological abnormalities or have a different origin. The article provides a wide range of sources about shamanism and the personality of the shaman, from the works of exiled revolutionaries to professional researchers done in the 80s. The main theories about the reasons for the shaman's ritual behaviour are briefly presented. The dependence of scientists' representation of the shamans during the development of Soviet state and science is shown.

The Productive Society of Russia of the 1950s-1980s: facets and boundaries (on the question of determining the object of research)

In the article, from a historiographical perspective, the authors analyze the multidirectional trends of the transformation of Soviet society. The authors propose a new historical definition for the analyzed part – the production society. In this area of the economy in the 1950s - 1980s, more than 2/3 of the working population of the RSFSR were employed. This category included classes employed in the country's material production sectors in the 1950s - 1980s. The text summarizes the approaches of Soviet and post-Soviet historiography and social sciences to the understanding of layers and groups of industrial society, the author's interpretation of socio-class gradation is proposed. In particular, with regard to the Soviet period, attention is drawn to the approaches proposed by the statistical authorities, which took into account workers as «engaged mainly in physical labor» and «engaged mainly in mental labor». In Soviet science since the mid-twentieth century, a fairly significant number of publications have appeared devoted to the analysis of individual professional groups of engineering, industrial workers, agricultural and other specialties. The main approach when considering these professional groups was a combination of production-qualification and social characteristics. In general, the structuring of industrial society undertaken in the Soviet period within the framework of the generally accepted class gradation at that time revealed serious difficulties in identifying social groups. The authors of the article propose to rank the Soviet industrial society not by two main classes, but to divide it into five main social classes, determined by place in property relations, volume-legal characteristics, socio-psychological characteristics.

"Научная работа жива научным общением учёных", или зачем советские учёные ездили за границу в 1920-1930-е гг.? (проблемы и перспективы изучения)

The article deals with the problems and prospects of studying the international academic mobility of Russian scientists in the 1920s-1930s.The authors focus on the problem of the correlation between the national and the international in the development of Soviet science in the interwar period. In relation to the Soviet situation, the problem of the national and the international was further aggravated by internal rifts into Marxist / materialistically oriented science and the “old bourgeois”. Two competing models of science were broadcast to the international scientific community, which makes it possible to speak of the existence of two models of academic internationalism. The closure of the national disciplinary boundaries of communities, according to modern researchers, refers to the beginning of the Second World War. The autarchy of Soviet science is explained in line with the mobilization theory, according to which isolationism is the result of the efforts of the state, which used the intellectual resource of scientists for its own purposes. Note that this statement is true not only for Soviet science, it is also applicable to the scientific history of a number of other European countries. At the same time, state borders and political differences were not always insurmountable.

КОГНИТИВНАЯ КАРТИНА МИРА В ИДЕОЛОГИЧЕСКОМ РАКУРСЕ СТАТЕЙ ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКОГО СЛОВАРЯ (на материале первого издания энциклопедии «Русский язык»)

The authors analyze the conceptual apparatus of the first edition of the encyclopedia “The Russian language” in cognitive aspect. The aim of the work is to reveal the role of ideology in the formation of the official portrait of linguistic science in the 1970s and to determine its influence on presentation and description of scientific terms. The study uses the method of contextual analysis, logical-semantic, historical-linguistic, cognitive modeling methods. The most important articles-ideologems from the point of view of the cognitive world view are considered: “History of the Russian literary language”, “Culture of language”, “Journalistic style”, “Russian language”, “Language and society”, etc. They allow to recreate the metacultural connections of a specific historical time and to identify ways of forming an ideologized context. The study showed that the transformation of the cognitive world view in Soviet science can be carried out without nominatively expressed references to ideological attitudes. And, conversely, not every reference to ideological formulas distorts the scientific model of reality. The results obtained can be used in the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries of terminological units and sociolinguistic dictionaries, in studying cognitive problems of modern scientific discourse. The authors come to the conclusion that the articles of the encyclopedic dictionary form a specific model of ideas about the Russian language, based on the evaluativeness of linguistic facts, the opposition of ideas and the deliberate distortion of reality in the direction of manipulation of concepts.

От философии культуры – к философии истории

Yu.M. Lotman’s creative path from philologist to philosopher was difficult and risky. The scientist resolutely moved away from the mossy traditions of Soviet vulgar sociological literary criticism and began to master modern methods of text analysis developed by structuralism and semiotics. Since structuralism and semi­otics were banned in Soviet science as products of bourgeois ideology, Lotman and his colleagues at the Tartu-Moscow School called the subject of their re­search “secondary modeling systems”, to which they referred not only literary texts, but also texts of art, texts of behavior, city, history, etc. Thus, a culturologi­cal turn took place in the methodology of Lotman and his associates, which was expressed in the fact that the philosophy of culture became the theoretical basis of structural analysis, and the philosophy of history became the historical and cultural approach. With his works in the field of humanities, Lotman showed that the key to understanding and predicting history is culture, and for building a phi­losophy of history is the philosophy of culture. Lotman actually acted as a pro­found theorist and philosopher of culture on a par with such domestic thinkers as A.F. Losev, M.M. Bakhtin, or foreign ones like O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, K. Levi-Strauss, R. Barth or U. Eco.

Formation of Soviet-French Scientific Cooperation in the Field of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry in the 1960s (Based on the Materials of the V. A. Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

The article analyzes the development of scientific links between the Soviet and French molecular biologists and biochemists in the 1960s. The author explores the Soviet-French cooperation in the context of the international political situation and overall state of the Academy of Sciences’ international communications in this period. The article cites a large volume of sources that are introduced for scientific use for the first time. Drawing on the example of the Institute of Radiation and Physicochemical Biology – Institute of Molecular Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the forms of the Soviet researchers’ interactions with their French colleagues are looked into. The plans for cooperation, the results of joint work, and the shortfalls that hindered the international links are analyzed. It is concluded that the difficulties in the development of Soviet-French cooperation were common for both the Soviet science in general and its international communications.

В.М. ХВОСТОВ И МОСКОВСКИЙ ИНСТИТУТ СОЦИАЛЬНОЙ ПСИХОЛОГИИ (1917-1922)

The article analyzes the little-studied documents on the history of the Moscow Institute of Social Psychology, founded on the initiative of Veniamin Mikhailovich Khvostov (1868–1920), a professor of Moscow University, a neo-Kantian philosopher, a doctor of Roman law, a sociologist; the paper also discusses his role in the development of sociology, the most important direction in the field of social sciences. The article was written on the basis of the documents that were retained by his collaborators Leonty Alekseevich Byzov (1886–1942) and his wife, Natalia Nikolaevna Fadeeva-Byzova (1892–1985). Currently, the records are kept in the Archives of the European University in St. Petersburg. After having ostentatiously left Moscow University in 1911 (the “Kasso Case”), just like many of his colleagues had done, he taught at Moscow Women’s Higher Courses and at Shanyavsky Moscow People’s University. In May 1917, during the rule of the Provisional Government, V.M.Khvostov managed to create the Moscow Institute of Social Psychology as part of the future Institute of Sociology, the main task of which was to carry out research on social processes and gradually turn sociology into an independent scientific discipline. The Institute existed for five years only (1917–1922), and the last two years – without V.M. Khvostov, who passed away at the beginning of 1920. V.M. Khvostov realized that without sociology, the science of social processes, the sprouts of which had just begun to appear in Russia, not only the social sciences, but the entire scientific community of the early twentieth century would lose out. He hoped that with the coming to power of the Provisional Government, the social life in all its manifestations would become an important phenomenon, including scientific research, free from ideological dogmas. Instead in October 1917, the country plunged into a different reality – the revolution and the victory of the Bolsheviks who gradually destroyed all illusions about the freedom of scientific choice. And nevertheless, the Institute continued to carry out a tremendous amount of research concerning the socio-psychological processes and phenomena in public life. The scope of that work could be perceived through many hours of meetings, questionnaires and survey forms, abstracts and reports, scientific disputes, practical work with the representatives of various social groups. However, gradually, the conditions imposed by the Soviet government turned out to become such a powerful irritant for V.M. Khvostov that the dream of forming sociology as an independent scientific discipline appeared to be unrealizable. And yet, the documents on the activities of the Moscow Institute of Social Psychology are of great historical and scientific value, their study and publication can contribute to the adding of the new pages in the history of Russian and Soviet science at the beginning of the 20th century.

АНТРОПОЛОГИЧЕСКОЕ ИЗМЕРЕНИЕ ПОЗДНЕСОВЕТСКОЙ ЭКОНОМИКИ: ДИРЕКТОР, ПЛАНОВИК, РАБОТНИК В ЭТНОГРАФИЧЕСКИХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯХ 1950−1980-Х ГОДОВ

The anthropological understanding of the Soviet economy began during its existence, drawing from various sci-ences, including ethnography. The relationship between Soviet ethnography and economic anthropology remains a topic of debate, as there was no consensus on this issue within Soviet science itself. Ethnographic science, for ideo-logical and methodological reasons, did not associate itself with Western anthropology. There was a conscious dis-tancing of ethnography from academic economics, which made it difficult to form economic anthropology in the modern sense. At the same time, from the 1950s to the 1980s, the ethnographers succeeded in uncovering a number of important issues, for example the multi-structural nature of the Soviet economy and the functioning of archaic production practices and relations within the planned economy. Much attention was paid to the consumer behavior of citizens in different parts of the country and the changes in everyday life. Collective values, intended to be strength-ened on the path towards communism, were also a focal point. The studies covered the diversity of economic prac-tices, but encountered challenges due to the absence of a language for describing strategies and tactics of economic behavior in Soviet reality. Instead, people used euphemisms, adapted ideologemes, figures of silence relating to cer-tain production and consumption practices that were not entirely legal. The issues of planning, motivation, exchange, perception of economic reality, and informal relations, important for economic anthropology, remained largely unex-plored. Moreover, there was a giant bias towards rural residents and archaic practices.

The Role of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Formulation of the USSR Science and Technology Policy in the 1920s – 1940s

In the first quarter of the 20th century no common scientific policy existed neither in the Russian Empire nor in the Soviet Union although there was a need for such a policy in view of the want of addressing the tasks of industrialization and overcoming the country’s technology gap. The article shows how the young Soviet state formulated its science and technology policy priorities and how it succeeded in creating one the most effective science organization systems in the world. We analyze the measures aimed at introducing planned scientific research, creating scientific institutes, establishing a network of scientific centers in the country’s remote regions, and organizing postgraduate education to train the cadre of scientists. Taken together, these measures resulted in the emergence of a unique scientific complex whose formation proceeded differently than that in the advanced countries of the West. The intensified development of Soviet science occurred at the same time as global changes in the role of fundamental science in the progression of modern civilization. By the late 1940s, global science became a driver in the development of modern society and Soviet science in many aspects found itself at the forefront of this process.

Пропаганда антинаучных взглядов Т. Д. Лысенко на страницах французских периодических изданий в 1930-х ‒ 1940-х гг.

The article is devoted to foreign propaganda of T. D. Lysenko’s views on the nature of heredity and variability. Articles from French communist periodicals are used as an example. The article?s relevance is determined by understudied issue of the Lysenkoism promotion in France, although it is known that his doctrine, which was close to Lamarckism, was being implanted after 1948 in the countries of the socialist camp and criticized by the British and American biologists. The historical picture of purposeful promotion of anti-scientific views criticizing fundamental genetics has been reconstructed in materials of French periodicals and documents deposited in the T. D. Lysenko fond in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (fond 1521). To determine the political factors that influenced international scientific relations between Soviet and French scientists, the documents from the Political Bureau of the Central Committee fond of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (fond 3) have been used. When describing popularization of Lysenkoism in France, an integrated approach has been chosen, as it takes into account various factors (political, ideological, cognitive) that determined penetration and reception of scientific ideas. Using newspapers and magazines as historical source have permitted to detail the phenomenon, to supplement the available information with new facts, and to revise established notions. It is shown that T.D. Lysenko’s figure came into the spotlight in the French press as early as the late 1930s, when a campaign began in the Soviet Union against Mendelism-Morganism, called metaphysical-idealistic bourgeois science by the party elite. In those years, such scientists as N. I. Vavilov, G. D. Karpechenko, S. G. Levit, I. I. Agol were arrested and repressed. In 1948, with J. V. Stalin support, Lysenko organized the August session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, where representatives of classical genetics were accused of sabotage. Lysenko claimed that his experiments were aimed at increasing productivity of agricultural crops and solving food security issues. The Soviet bureaucracy saw innovation and bold struggle against old scientific dogmas in populist statements of the “People's Academician.” The fight against genetics was not limited the territory of the USSR, almost all socialist countries were involved. However, the leading scientific powers (the USA and Great Britain) actively resisted penetration of the works of Soviet Lysenkoists into scientific and popular publications. The exception was France, which had long-standing scientific contacts with the Soviet Union. Information on the “victory” of Michurin Biology over genetics at the 1948 Agricultural Sciences Session was widely presented on the pages of French liberal publications. It is shown that the French scientific community was not categorically opposed to Lysenkoism for a number of reasons, among them spread of communist ideas in the country, stability of Lamarckian traditions, cooling diplomatic relations between the USSR and the USA, desire of the Soviet leadership to make France its political ally.

РОЛЬ ЄБРР У КРЕДИТУВАННІ МАЛОГО ТА СЕРЕДНЬОГО БІЗНЕСУ

The most intensive development of international financial and credit legal relations took place in the 20th century. in connection with the consequences of world wars and numerous economic crises. The number of international credit agreements is growing every year, but a comprehensive analysis of them has not yet been conducted in the science of international law. It should be noted that scientific approaches to these issues were formed separately by Soviet and Western scientists. In their research, they took into account the specifics of the political and economic system of their states. Since the collapse of the socialist camp, domestic science of international law has received new approaches to the study of the so-called "international currency law" (as a prototype of modern international financial law), which arose from the combination of the positions of the Soviet and Western schools of international law. However, taking into account the mutually exclusive nature of these studies, their results should be updated and establish how the legal regulation of financial and credit relations is carried out in international public law. These relations are characterized by industry-specific features of subject composition and sources of legal regulation. International credit agreements, in turn, contain relevant special essential conditions. In the process of implementing these relations, scientific disputes often begin about the expediency of including TNCs in the list of subjects of public international law as a whole. Given the fact that Ukraine is an active participant in international financial and credit relations, this topic requires further scientific research. The work examines and systematizes information on the role of the EBRD in lending to small and medium-sized businesses. The purpose of the study is to analyse the role of the EBRD in lending to small and medium-sized businesses. The relevance of the study of this topic in the context of the development of the international economy is determined. Information about the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is provided, and the theoretical foundations of the creation and functioning of the EBRD are considered. The role of the EBRD in lending to small and medium-sized businesses is being studied. An evaluation of the current crediting of the Ukrainian economy by international financial organizations is carried out.

Improving the quality and efficiency of lawmaking against the backdrop of modern social transformations

In the modern era, social transformations contribute to the dynamic development of basic legal frameworks governing public relations. Consequently, the lawmaking process is facing a certain crisis due to the rising legislative inflation and a gap between the pace of social change and lawmaking mechanisms. In these circumstances, improving lawmaking activities should be based on doctrinal developments, including those concerning lawmaking quality and efficiency. The article uses constructivism methodology to illustrate the inextricable connection between the legal process and law enforcement, which is seen as the first stage in the process of shaping the legal reality. The authors analyze how domestic legal thinking has evolved in relation to the efficiency and quality of lawmaking. A list of the criteria and parameters proved by Soviet and post-Soviet scientists was compiled. It is shown that lawmaking activity efficiency and quality are dialectically related. It is justified to consider the social determinants that affect lawmaking efficiency. Accordingly, it is concluded that the efficiency of legal norms should be measured by what impact their application has had on society, in what extent they have met the goals of social management at the given stage of social development. The authors propose three levels of measuring the efficiency of legal norms in modern society: formal-legal, axiological and general social. The value of legal monitoring is highlighted in assessing the quality of lawmaking and determining the extent to which legal norms are efficient.

Influence of the French scientific school on the development of bioacoustics in the Soviet Union (60–70s of the last century)

The influence of the French scientific school on the development of bioacoustics in the Soviet Union in the 1960–70s is discussed. The main influence on the development of Soviet bioacoustics was provided by the Laboratory of Physiological Acoustics at the National Institute for Agricultural Research of France, created and directed by René-Guy Busnel. Soviet bioacoustics adopted the research experience of France in three main areas: 1) acoustic orientation and signaling of insects; 2) theory and practice of acoustic repellents in agriculture and aviation; 3) sonar systems, acoustic communication and orientation of marine mammals, echolocation. The main research centers in the Soviet Union are listed and the role of Soviet scientists in the development of various areas of bioacoustics in the Soviet Union is considered.

An Unfinished War: The Historiography of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army Problems

The article analyses the historiographical process related to the history of Ukrainian nationalism, namely the activities of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the 1930s–1950s. Drawing on the chronological-terri-torial and conceptual-methodological principles, the authors divide the secondary sources into five main groups: writings by authors of the Ukrainian diaspora, works of Soviet scientists and publicists, post-independence Ukrainian historiography, communist and contemporary Polish historiography, Western history writing. Within each group, key publications are examined through the prism of documentary sources, methodologies, and conceptual approaches, as well as the socio-political context in which they were created.

Ancient Slavery in Soviet Historiography of 1950—1970s

By the mid-1950s, the theme of the “slave revolution” in antiquity had lost relevance, ceased to be considered the “main” topic for Soviet historians of the ancient world. This was evidenced by the disappearance of works on this subject from the capital’s publications, and quite critical responses to the works of A. V. Mishulin. It was necessary to choose a new “main” theme. The importance of the topic of slavery in antiquity for Soviet science was due to the “socio-economic basis” of the study of the history of the ancient world (i.e. “slave-owning formation”), and opposition to “bourgeois science”, which, according to Soviet scientists, underestimated the importance of slavery in antiquity. A series of monographs “Studies on the history of slavery in the ancient world” and the publication of articles in the “Journal of Ancient History” in the section “Materials and research on the history of slavery” showed the potential of Soviet historical science, provoked a response abroad. However, interest in research on slavery in the USSR has been steadily declining since the second half of the 1960s, and in the 1980s it almost died out. Studies on the history of slavery in the ancient world were too “ideological” and therefore ceased to be of interest, especially for young Soviet historians.

Территориальная дифференциация и районирование города в исследованиях советской географии (1920–1980-е гг.)

There is an opinion in the scientific literature that intracity zoning has no tradition in Russian geography. This misconception is refuted in this article: a bibliography of the Soviet geographers` works on intracity territorial differentiation and zoning was collected and systematized, and the formation of the main directions of research was traced. As the author shows, at the first stage (mid-1920s – mid-1930s) the general theoretical ideas about the principles and methods of urban differentiation were developed, intraurban economic, social and cultural differences were considered in interrelation, research was interdisciplinary in nature with the leading role of local study (“geography of place”). At the second stage (mid1930s – early 1960s) in the conditions of tightening ideological restrictions zoning was reduced to the city`s anatomy: material space was zoned, complex studies were reduced to functional, social and humanitarian issues were discarded, the geographers views were turned to the past. There were four directions of city zoning: industrial, historical, physical and economicgeographical (planned), the first and last didn„t find continuation outside of the period. The socialization and humanization of research at the third stage (early 1960s – late 1980s) formed a request for study of the city`s physiology, the search for measurable differentiating features continued, but a generally accepted methodology wasn`t developed. The article emphasizes the relevance of the leading Soviet scientists` ideas (N.P. Antsiferov, V.V. Pokshishevsky, N.E. Dik, etc.). Those ideas were often significantly ahead of their time.

Animal Diplomacy between People’s Republic of China and Socialist States

For a long time, Western countries relied on science to conduct diplomatic activities and scientific research. During the Cold War, there was a wide exchange and even confrontation between the East and West camps and the major powers in many scientific fields. After 1949, The People’s Republic of China initiated an active stage of learning from the Soviet Union, and the creation of Chinese science was supported by the Soviet scientific community. This influence was particularly noticeable in the field of Chinese biology, especially zoology. A large number of Soviet scientists came to China to impart their knowledge, and many classic Soviet scientific works were translated into Chinese. In the 1950s, Chinese scientists published a large number of translations and descriptions of works by T. D. Lysenko and I. V. Michurin in journals such as Bulletin of Biology and other periodicals, which laid the foundation for Michurin’s teachings in Chinese biology and zoology. In 1953, Indian Prime Minister Nehru gifted an elephant to Chinese children, but due to the lack of skills and experience in keeping elephants, Beijing approved the creation of courses for training personnel in animal care and invited the director of the Moscow Zoo I. P. Sosnovskii to give lectures in Beijing and Shanghai to train Chinese specialists. China systematically embraced the Soviet system of knowledge in the areas of animal breeding and cultivation, and shaping of zoo functions. From then on, China and the USSR had developed extremely close cooperation in animal exchanges, academic exchanges, and “animal diplomacy”, which has had an impact to this day.