Writing this book has been a constant encounter with the generosity, intelligence, erudition, and skills of others.
I am profoundly grateful to my wife Eleonora Filippova for research, insights, and constant discussions over the past twenty years that became inseparable from my understanding of Pavlov and his Russian milieu; and, infinitely more, for her love, wisdom, and spiritual support.
Three other persons helped me constantly over the years. Nikolai Krementsov shared his unique knowledge of Soviet science and Russian archives, constantly alerted me to new sources, enriched my thinking in countless conversations, and provided a very helpful reading of the penultimate manuscript. Jay Schulkin was a constant source of encouragement and stimulating perspectives, my invaluable interlocutor on matters scientific and philosophical, and a careful, critical reader of the most challenging sections about science. Iurii Vinogradov greeted me with open arms when I first arrived in Leningrad, shared his great knowledge of Pavlov’s archival legacy, taught me to decipher the scientist’s handwriting, introduced me to many helpful souls, and responded generously to scores of questions over the years.
I spent most of 1990–1991, a tumultuous year for Russia, studying Pavlov’s extensive personal papers at the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which became an indispensable partner in my research and a warm home-away-from-home, with many wonderful people who felt like extended family. That relationship deepened with my many return visits amid bitter and sweet times over the years. I am profoundly grateful to Vladimir Semenovich Sobolev, the director when I first arrived, who greeted me warmly, facilitated my work in the Archive’s vast holdings, helped me gain access to other archives, and became a valuable consultant and valued friend. His successor, Irina Vladimirovna Tunkina, has been equally kind, flexible, and supportive. My warmest thanks also to Ol’ga Vladimirovna Iodko, Natal’ia Valentinovna Kraposhina, Marina Vasil’evna Mishenkova, Natal’ia Sergeevna Prokhorenko, Dar’ia Aleksandrovna Udalova (Chirkovskaia), and Irina Mikhailovna Shchedrova.
I am very grateful to Natal’ia Alexandrovna Zagrina, Director of the I. P. Pavlov Memorial Museum in Riazan, for extending a similarly warm welcome—and to her and the collective there, especially Vera Podguzova, for generously sharing with me not only their archival riches, but also their own research and thoughts.
I have been deeply touched by and grateful for the trust, warm support, and help of the Pavlov family over the years. My most heartfelt thanks to Liudmila Vladimirovna Balmasova, Marina Anatol’evna Balmasova, and Maria Vladimirovna Sokolova.
I have a dim memory of a conversation in which Mark Adams first suggested that I consider writing a biography of Pavlov. At the very least, that memory expresses the fundamental role that Mark, as my mentor in the history of science, has played in all my scholarly efforts. My thanks, too, for his encouragement over the years and his sage advice about managing such a long project.
My greatest institutional debt is to The Johns Hopkins University, and in particular to its School of Medicine, which provided an ideal base for my research. Special thanks to the longtime chair of our Department of History of Medicine, Gert Brieger, who was always deeply supportive of this project, who understood without asking what I was doing when not in my office, and who was an inspiring beacon of humanist and scholarly values. My thanks to Dolores Sawicki, Molly Manfredo, and Coraleeze Thompson for their help with the practical exigencies of my research.
The research necessary to this book was made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (RH-20970-90, RH-21113-93, FT-51254003), the National Science Foundation (0002141), Fulbright-Hays (1990–1991), the International Research and Exchanges Board (1990–1991, 1997) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1993–1994). I am, then, also indebted to the taxpayers of the United States and to those who defend the value of the humanities.
Nancy Toff, my editor at Oxford University Press, combined scholarly values, sensitivity to the reader’s perspective, and a sharp editorial eye in her thorough and discriminating commentaries on a very long manuscript. This book is much better as a result. My thanks to her also for soliciting reviews of the manuscript from Michael Gordin and an anonymous Russian historian, both of whom responded with substantial and extremely helpful comments. My thanks to Rebecca Hecht for carefully and skillfully preparing the manuscript for press, and to Kate Nunn at Newgen for her delightfully efficient and gracious work as production editor. I am deeply grateful to Steve Dodson, who proved not only an extraordinarily dedicated, perspicacious, and skillful copy editor, but also a most valuable final reader with a remarkable knowledge of Russian language and culture.It would require many pages to acknowledge adequately the many others who helped me over the years. I can only mention them here: N. I. Abdulaeva, Danil Aleksandrov, N. S. Antonova, Katherine Arner, I. N. Artiukheviia, Saul Benison, Sharon Blackburn, Robert Boakes, V. K. Bolondinskii, Jeffrey Brooks, T. Iu. Burmistrova, John Burnham, Stephen Casper, Stephen Cohen, Nathaniel Comfort, L. Ia. Fedulina, Larisa Filippova, Michael David-Fox, Igor Dmitriev, V. D. Esakov, Yakov Gall, Gerald Geison, Sander Gliboff, Stephen Greenberg, Jeremy Greene, V. N. Gusev, Andrew Harrison, Angelika Hoelger, Natal’ia Izmailova, Daniel Jones, V. M. Klimenko, T. P. Kashennova, Sergei Krasikov, K. A. Lange, Christopher Lawrence, Phoebe Letocha, Larry Holmes, I. V. Kotova, John Mann, Nancy McCall, Andrew Mendelsohn, Yiota Mini, Bipasha Mukherjee, Charles Newman, Evgenii Petrov, Vera Podguzova, E. L. Poliakov, T. E. Propolianis, Christian Pross, Elizabet Pujadas, Robert Rescorla, O. A. Reznitskaia, Lesley Rimmel, Christine Ruggere, Gabriel Ruiz, V. O. Samoilov, Natividad Sánchez, I. I. Sazonova, Larry Schramm, S. V. Shvedov, Mikhail and Zinaida Sidorov, Irina Sirotkina, Marina Sorokina, Roger Smith, I. V. Sulaeva, E. A. Suntsova, N. N. Tikhimirov, Rick Tracey, Tilli Tansey, Elizabeth Valkenier, I. N. Veshniakova, Boris Volodin, W. Jeffrey Wilson, Anna Yukhananov, and Yuri Zagvazdin.
I have taken seriously everybody’s advice, but the interpretive and stylistic decisions are of course my own.
The chapters in this volume on digestive physiology are adapted and revised from my previous work on this subject, and I thank the publishers for permission to use it here. Chapters 11 and 12 are slightly revised versions of “Pavlov’s Physiology Factory,” Isis 88, 2 (1997), pp. 205–246 (© University of Chicago Press); Chapters 14 and 18 are slightly revised—and Chapter 17 substantially revised—from chapters in Pavlov’s Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 190–216, 332–347, 217–254. © 2002 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Finally, I want to most gratefully acknowledge the spiritual support and wise counsel of my late parents, Josephine and Renan Todes, my lifelong friend and fellow historian Marc Levine, and my daughter Sarah, who, as a four-year-old in 1990, joyfully embraced the year in Leningrad as a great adventure and showed great forbearance regarding her dad’s “obsession with Pavlov”—and whose love, confidence, and encouragement throughout the long years of this book’s gestation have been more important and appreciated than she could know.