"Sleeping rabbits stay alive two weeks longer than others": The Institute of Physiology in Yerevan after the " Pavlov’s Session" in 1950 Cover Image
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„Приспаните зайци остават живи две седмици повече от другите“: Институтът по физиология в Ереван след „Павловската сесия“ през 1950 г.
"Sleeping rabbits stay alive two weeks longer than others": The Institute of Physiology in Yerevan after the " Pavlov’s Session" in 1950

Author(s): Kristina Popova
Subject(s): History, History of ideas
Published by: ЮГОЗАПАДЕН УНИВЕРСИТЕТ »НЕОФИТ РИЛСКИ«
Keywords: Late Stalinism; Soviet natural sciences; Armenian physiology; Levon Orbeli; Pavlov’s Committee

Summary/Abstract: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the place of physiology in the structure of the Soviet scientific knowledge as well as in the system of its popularization changed. The process of raising the role of the natural sciences in the USSR using them for central ideological aims related to the triumph of materialism was marked by loudly propagated scientific events of greater political significance. Such an event was the so-called Pavlov’s Session in Moscow in 1950, whose decisions influenced the scientific institutions in Soviet Union as well as in the Eastern Bloc countries. The school of the Soviet physiologist of Armenian origin Levon Orbeli was criticised and rejected. A Pavlov’s Committee was set up to control the implementation of the Pavlov’s teaching. The aim of the article is to present the influence of the Pavlov’s session of the development of the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences in Yerevan in the early 1950-es when its experimental and research work became subordinated to the " Pavlovization " of physiology and political and propaganda tasks were added. The institute staff and activities grew, but institutional life was traumatized by the persecution of Levon Orbeli 's school, which reflected on his adherents like the Institute director Ararat Alexanyan who was pressed to leave the position in 1953 during the power struggles were disguised by the session's rhetoric.

  • Issue Year: 30/2021
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 104-124
  • Page Count: 21
  • Language: Bulgarian