In April 1918, Pavlov referred in the past tense to “the very height of Bolshevik power,” believing, like many others, that the Communists would shortly be ousted.1 Between October 1919 and spring 1920, however, the tide of Russia’s civil war turned decisively in favor of the Red Army.2
Weary of the difficulties of daily life, heartsick at the suffering of his friends and colleagues, despairing at the impossible working conditions in his labs, and now facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life under Bolshevik rule, on June 11, 1920, he composed a letter to the Sovnarkom (SNK) requesting permission to emigrate. It is so carefully written, and communicates so much about Pavlov in this period—about his pain, values, self-image, and dignity—that it rewards reading in its entirety.
I have all my life preferred to act directly and openly. Aside from my nature, a half century of activity in the scientific and experimental (physiological) laboratory has not been without effect in this regard, for nature cannot be taken by guile. I am resolved to act in precisely such a manner in this case. I most humbly request the Soviet of Peoples’ Commissars to permit me to begin a correspondence (even a controlled one) with my foreign scientific friends and comrades about finding a place for me outside of my homeland, a place in which I could subsist satisfactorily with my wife and could without hindrance continue my scientific work, which I dare consider very important and for which my brain is still entirely capable and to which perhaps it is especially adapted in view of the enormous material (both literary and factual) collected over a long time and the extraordinary concentration of my thoughts upon it. Remaining here in Russia I cannot conduct this work, not only on the desirable scale and with complete fruitfulness but, I fear, at all—and this for many reasons, not even taking into account the insurmountable material difficulties of every type in contemporary Russian laboratories and the absence of contact, of links with international scientific work.
Here are the reasons.
I never was politically active, and never belonged to any political party, not wishing to surrender the freedom of thought to which I am so accustomed in the laboratory and which is so necessary in the successful search for truth, and not wishing to be distracted from my chosen task in life. But this did not mean that I closed my eyes to the reality around me and did not try to understand it. No. With accustomed laboratory thoroughness I have accumulated in my head general observations of life, systematized them, and drawn conclusions. And now, as a longtime experimenter at life, I am profoundly convinced that the social experiment being conducted on Russia is doomed to certain failure and will yield no result save the political and cultural death of my homeland; this thought oppresses me relentlessly and prevents me from concentrating on my scientific work. In the future this mood will naturally more or less gradually grow weaker. Subsequently, I will not be able to, and will not want to, be remade against my will into a socialist or Communist; that is, to reject all that is mine, to be a serf, a slave of others. I want to have at my own complete disposal the fruits of my intellectual work, the intellectual aspect of which—in the form of scientific results—will be useful to all people without nationalization. I want to create for myself certain comforts and satisfactions of life, to reward, to thank those who have helped me selflessly in the course of my life, especially in the difficult initial period of my scientific activity, of course first of all my wife, to support her in her old age if she survives me. That is second. Third. Although I now combine three positions—that is, receive salaries for three jobs, for a total sum of twenty-five thousand rubles a month, nevertheless, due to insufficient means, I am compelled to work as a gardener in the appropriate season, which at my age is not always easy, and also to constantly act even in the role of a servant, of an assistant to my wife in the kitchen and maintenance of the apartment’s cleanliness, which, all taken together, occupy a large, and even the best, part of the day. And despite this my wife and I eat very poorly, in both quantitative and qualitative terms; for years we have not seen white bread, for weeks and months at a time we have had no milk and meat, subsisting largely on black bread of poor quality, on millet, also of poor quality, and so forth, which naturally is causing us to gradually waste away and lose our strength. And this after a half century of intense scientific work crowned by valuable scientific results recognized by the entire scientific world.
Because of all of this, I most humbly request that you grant me and my wife the freedom to leave Russia and permit all those members of my family who agree to accompany us, in order to aid us with their youthful strength when we become decrepit, and also not to interfere with our converting our property into a form that would permit us, if only initially, to establish ourselves tolerably abroad.3
This is the letter of a dignified citizen rather than a terrified petitioner. It is both straightforward and multilayered. He hints in his first sentence that, had he wanted to, he could have just sneaked out of the country, but that this would be beneath his dignity. He requests permission to emigrate, but does not state that he wants to leave. He issues his simple scientific verdict on the Soviet experiment—it is “doomed to certain failure”—and explains calmly that he does not share, and never will, the Bolsheviks’ basic values. He refuses to be “a slave, a serf”; he wants the fruits of his own labor for himself and his family—and reminds the Communist leadership of the great value of his labor to the state and the world. Every sentiment in the letter comes back to his scientific work: the inevitable failure of Bolshevism so oppresses him that he cannot concentrate on his research. Even were he to reconcile himself to that tragedy, he could not work under the conditions the Bolsheviks had established. He was hungry, consumed with daily tasks, and unable—despite holding three academic positions—to provide decently for his family.
Pavlov was well aware that the leaders of Russia’s scientific community were bombarding the SNK with letters expressing the same sentiments and warning that current conditions and policies would lead to mass emigration and the death of Russian science.4 Just weeks earlier, the scholarly secretary of the Academy of Sciences, Sergei Ol’denburg, had concluded his own review of the dire conditions with the resigned suggestion that if the Bolsheviks were not prepared to change their policies toward science and scientists, they should at least permit scholars to leave with their families for abroad, “where their health and life will be preserved for scientific work.”5 In his letter, then, Pavlov was thinking about, and negotiating for, not just himself but also Russian scientists as a group.
Seventy years old, he did not relish the prospect of leaving Russia and beginning anew, especially since his opportunities abroad were uncertain. Yet his desire to pursue his research—and his sense that his own time was limited—was driving him toward emigration. One week after writing to the SNK, he explained to a colleague:
I have not much longer to live. I have entered my eighth decade, but my brain still works properly and I very much want to more or less complete my work of many years on the large [cerebral] hemispheres. Remaining here, I will not achieve this goal. The obstacles—material, moral, and mental—are insurmountable. I hope to find abroad that which is necessary to me.... I have there many friends and good comrades...I dare hope that a place will be found for me. It is difficult, terribly difficult, especially at my age, to leave my homeland, but what can I do? I do not have the strength to live here in current conditions.6
Pavlov’s ambivalence is again clear—as Lenin and his comrades no doubt noticed. Had he been determined to leave at any cost, there was no need to write any letter; Soviet Russia was not yet a police state with hermetically sealed borders. Anyone who firmly wanted to leave could still escape, let alone those with Pavlov’s international connections. One obvious exit lay to the southeast. In June 1920, Wrangel’s White Army still controlled the Crimea. Many scholars would join the remnants of that army in its final retreat from Crimean ports to Constantinople and emigration when White resistance finally collapsed in November 1921. (Pavlov’s son Vsevolod was among them.) It would no doubt have been an arduous journey for the aged Pavlovs, and it would have required the sacrifice of their belongings. (One visitor a few months later concluded that “I think he is too old to try the illegal way.”) But it was an option that he must have considered and rejected.7
Pavlov’s letter was routed to Commissar of Popular Enlightenment Anatolii Lunacharskii, who brought it quickly to Lenin’s attention. Lunacharskii reminded Lenin that earlier, at the height of the civil war, “we twice suggested that he go abroad.” Pavlov had responded that if abroad “I will have to speak the truth” and would make no pledges of silence. How, Lunacharskii asked, should he now proceed?8
Lenin considered Pavlov’s emigration impermissible and chose to regard his letter as a basis for negotiation. He informed Grigorii Zinoviev, head of the Communist Party in Petrograd, that Pavlov wanted to leave “in view of his difficult material situation,” and added that to allow this would “hardly be rational, since he expressed the thought that, being a truthful man, he will not, when appropriate discussions arise, fail to speak against Soviet power and Communism in Russia. Meanwhile, this scientist represents such a great cultural value that it is impossible to permit him to be forcibly restrained in Russia under conditions of material need.”9 Lenin urged Zinoviev to provide Pavlov a special food ration, improve his living quarters, and rectify conditions in his labs. Zinoviev passed Lenin’s letter to his assistant, Mitrofanov, asking him to find out what the scientist needed and “to set it up immediately.”10
Pavlov, meanwhile, had grown impatient. Just four days after sending his letter to the SNK, he contacted Lenin’s close associate and executive secretary of the SNK, Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, whom Pavlov had met years earlier at the home of their mutual friend, psychiatrist Alexander Timofeev. Briefly summarizing his first letter, he asked Bonch-Bruevich to support his request.11 In his short cover note, he emphasized his burning desire to continue his scientific research: “I am still very excited by my work of many years on the highest physiological object—the large hemispheres of the brain—and do not for many reasons have the hope of conducting it at all satisfactorily here. And I would so like, and feel myself still fully able, to take this investigation to its conclusion before my own end, which is already not so far distant (I have entered my eighth decade).”12
Bonch-Bruevich conferred with Lenin, who only two days earlier had sent his directive to Zinoviev. He later recalled that Lenin responded passionately to Pavlov’s letter and the general problem that it highlighted: “‘We must notify all our scientists that we want...them to have absolutely everything—from personal well-being to the very best laboratories, libraries, and scientific offices. We will achieve a flowering of science unlike anywhere else in the world, having freed it from dependence upon capital and its wishes.... Science in Russia will be truly free.... Write to [Pavlov] in this spirit—I would write to him myself, but you see how busy I am,’ and he gestured at his desk, which was entirely covered with decoded telegrams.”13
Lenin may well have regarded Pavlov with “colossal respect,” as Lunacharskii recorded—but, if so, this sentiment was part of a much more complex attitude.14 The Bolshevik leader knew little about his research, but had a well-read, intelligent layperson’s understanding of the scientific developments of his day and no doubt regarded Pavlov as a talented materialist scientist.
For Lenin, Pavlov’s letter raised the larger questions involved in Soviet science policy. 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.
They faced great difficulties providing for scientists in the ruinous conditions that prevailed when Pavlov wrote his letter. Russian industry and agriculture had been decimated by world war, revolution, and civil war. Famine stalked the cities and swaths of the agricultural heartland, where peasants died by the million in 1921–1922. Even in relatively fortunate rural regions, the policies of “War Communism” outlawed even small-scale trade and forcibly requisitioned excess crops for the cities, leaving no incentive for peasant farmers to produce beyond their needs for subsistence. The food crisis threatened the very survival of the regime, compelling the Bolsheviks to reluctantly accept the aid of the American Relief Administration (whose staff included a young physiologist, W. Horsley Gantt, later Pavlov’s most important acolyte in the United States). That same crisis enabled Lenin, in March 1921, to convince his reluctant comrades to institute his New Economic Policy (NEP). Legalizing small-scale private enterprise and trade (including the black markets that Serafima had patronized to feed her family), the NEP restored the exchange of goods between city and countryside and so encouraged peasants to produce. Food production rapidly reached prewar levels. In 1920, however, not only scientists but urban workers were hungry—and, unlike scientists, these workers had actively supported the Bolsheviks, and in many cases had fought on their behalf.
However much they valued science, the Bolsheviks had fundamental problems with scientists. For one thing, Russia’s scientific establishment had long struggled for autonomy from the state, and under the Provisional Government had begun to enjoy independence from centralized bureaucratic control. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, insisted upon state control over science. They quickly established a monopoly of funding and suppressed independent scientific organizations.
Furthermore, Russian scientists had long considered themselves not mere explorers of the natural world and potential providers of medical and technological wonders, but members of the intelligentsia. That very term had acquired since the 1860s the connotation of public-minded intellectuals in principled opposition to the tsarist state. The Russian intelligentsia regarded itself as both the conscience and—in the common formulation that Pavlov echoed in his 1918 speech—“the brains of the nation.” Yet, even in the relatively permissive 1920s, the Communist Party regarded itself as, in Lenin’s phrase, the “mind, honor, and conscience” of the country. Bolsheviks had little use for the long-standing pretensions of the intelligentsia (nor, for that matter, with any independent civil society). So when Maxim Gorky proposed in late 1919 to establish the Commission to Improve the Life of Scholars (Komissiia po uluchsheniiu byta uchenykh, or KUBU), Lenin agreed heartily. Yet when Gorky appealed for the release of imprisoned scholars, the Bolshevik leader responded that the writer ought not “to waste yourself on the whining of decaying intellectuals.... [They] consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact, they are not its brains, but its shit.”15 In 1922, the Bolsheviks would arrest and expel from the country a substantial group of these “whiners”—overwhelmingly philosophers, writers, and other humanists. Scientists, however, possessed knowledge and skills that they valued much more, and so required more sophisticated tactics.16
Even before Pavlov’s letter arrived in June 1920, the SNK had approved Gorky’s plan for KUBU and established local chapters in Petrograd and Moscow. Beginning in January 1920 (during that year’s especially harsh winter), it began distributing food rations to some scientists. The Petrograd chapter was headed by Gorky and included academicians Ol’denburg and Fersman and the key apparatchik in Petrograd’s branch of the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment, the head of the city’s Section on Institutions of Science and Higher Education, Mikhail Kristi.17 Housed in the expropriated palace of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, Petrograd’s KUBU distributed food and provided medical care and even housing to needy scholars. In late June 1920—while Lenin was conferring with Bolshevik leaders about Pavlov—Gorky informed Zinoviev that KUBU had the resources to provide rations to 2,000 Petrograd scholars. The needy, however, far exceeded that number, so Gorky proposed sending expeditions to Nizhnii Novgorod, Riazan, Siberia, and the Caucasus to buy food.18
Spurred by Pavlov’s letter, Lenin organized a June meeting of the Soviet leadership to discuss the scientists’ plight. These sessions continued throughout the summer and fall. One meeting in late August offered scientists a series of concessions: they were freed from mandatory work details (for example, the collective gathering of firewood) and would no longer have non–family members billeted in their homes (the practice to which Karpinskii had objected so sharply in his letter of March 1919).19
This, then, was the context in which Bonch-Bruevich replied to Pavlov on June 28, emphasizing the government’s desire to improve the conditions of his life and work. “It is extremely painful for me to think that you, the pride and glory of Russian science, will abandon our homeland in order to conclude the work you have begun.... Will you not first think about what can be done here in the homeland to guarantee all the possibilities of your work? After receiving your reply, I will immediately report to the President of the Sovnarkom, Comrade Lenin. Do not doubt for one minute that the Soviet government will do everything possible in order to provide you with absolutely everything that you wish so you do not feel in your life any shortages at all.” He left unanswered Pavlov’s request concerning emigration.20
In keeping with Lenin’s new attention to the crisis in Russian science, Bonch-Bruevich sent copies of his correspondence with Pavlov to several commissariats, encouraging them to adopt special measures to support scientists. The urgency and authority of his cover letter to Zinoviev clearly reflected Lenin’s convictions: “It is necessary to quickly—not waiting for a reply from this internationally famous Russian scientist who has made colossal discoveries in physiology, discoveries serving as the beginning of a new era in the investigation of the life of man and animals—to immediately...put into motion the entire apparatus at our command in order to immediately equip and provide I. Pavlov with absolutely everything, both for his personal life and for the conditions of work in his laboratory, in which he works indefatigably despite having entered his eighth decade. It would be a terrible pity if, despite all the difficult conditions of the civil war, we cannot support such an outstanding man, who really constitutes the pride and glory of scientific Russia, and provide everything so he wants for nothing and continues his wonderful investigations in his declining years.” Zinoviev passed the letter to Mitrofanov, adding in red ink: “I already gave you Lenin’s letter about this. What has been done?”21
Pavlov responded quickly, thanking Bonch-Bruevich for his “kind and sympathetic letter” but insisting that his thinking about emigration involved much more than his own privations and the miserable conditions in his labs. In the hellhole of contemporary Russia, he insisted, he found it impossible to concentrate on science and maintain his personal dignity.
Here are the circumstances, the atmosphere, in which I now live. Consider just the house where I have an apartment—the residence of the Academy of Sciences. In this house during the past year, two comrades, academicians, have died—not at all aged people, from illnesses that no doubt led to death because of their emaciation. And look at this house now. My neighbors along the entrance hall and staircase are five academicians. They all live without servants. The wife of Academician U., extraordinarily emaciated, turned to me in terror two or three months ago—since I am a physician, although a nonpracticing one—because of a swelling that had unexpectedly appeared and quickly grown. Questioning her, I concluded that this is probably a hernia. I spoke by telephone with a comrade in the Medical Academy, who tells me that this is now a common occurrence because of extreme emaciation, and that it is best to operate. The wife of Academician L. (who, previously healthy, has himself spent the past year in the hospital with dropsy due to poor nutrition and weakness of the heart) came to me a month ago asking me to recommend a physician. She cannot see in the shade and at twilight. I consulted about this with physicians in my laboratory and heard from them that this night blindness, which usually occurs at times of national famines, is now a common disease.
The wife of Academician N., who earlier suffered from epileptic attacks once or twice a year, is now terribly emaciated and complains of attacks almost every two weeks. And Academician N. himself, also terribly emaciated and constantly falling, has expressed the fear that he is coming down with tuberculosis. Academician K., a widower, has a daughter who takes care of his home, and Academician S. has a wife—both have fallen ill with scurvy.
And here are the impressions of life from a wider region, from just my small circle of close friends in Petrograd. My fellow Riazan native and close friend from childhood T[erskii] lives in a suitably large apartment with his wife and two daughters—one the widow of an artist with her son [Dubovskoi’s family], and the other with her husband and daughter.... A couple—a man and his consort—was forcibly installed in the apartment, ignorant people, and moreover the woman likes to eavesdrop and is untrustworthy, so one must be always on one’s guard. K., a bachelor and professor, has twice during the past year unexpectedly disappeared without a trace—once when going to buy a newspaper and the other time when taking a book to some acquaintances. After long searches for him, it turned out that he was ambushed and arrested on the street, sat in prison for several weeks, and was then released without any charges whatsoever. Finally, after such trials and having eaten poorly, he contracted a disease of the digestive tract. The talented artist V. [Berggol’ts], having accumulated some capital and acquired several valuable things exclusively through his artistic work, and having deposited these in the bank, was deprived of both one and the other. Depressed by these losses, having lost his energy, eating poorly,...with his apartment extremely damp and cold during winter, he took ill with galloping consumption...and I buried him one month ago. The son of physician-scientist Professor K[amenskii], a very talented musician, who had returned to his homeland after enduring a long imprisonment by the Germans, and was then required to endure back-breaking labor, also became ill (in a cold apartment during winter) with galloping consumption and died. Just yesterday, at the funeral service, I spoke with the bereaved mother and heard from her the following words: “It is I who am to blame for his death. He had to walk home at night from Baltic Station (a distance of seven or eight versts [4.5 miles]); tired and hungry, he would ask for some black bread, but I had nothing to give; or you require him to drag firewood up from the courtyard to the apartment (on the sixth floor), after which he again asks for bread, and again you don’t give him any.” And the woman speaking is herself but flesh and bones, worn out (also without servants), having been bedridden for several months during the winter with a lung infection....
And all this, as I said, is only in my small Petrograd circle of close friends. And in that same Petrograd, among friends, comrades, people whom I simply know, in the provinces among dear comrades and friends—over and over the same inescapable, ever-increasing grief.
If I have written even a single word here that violates reality, I urge you rightfully to consider me an unconscientious man capable of lies.
Now, tell me yourself—can one in such circumstances, without losing respect for oneself, without self-reproach, agree to exploit accidental conditions to acquire only for oneself a life in which everything I desire is provided in order not to sense in my life any shortages (the expression from your letter). Even were I free from nocturnal searches (there have been three at my home over this time), even were I not threatened with arrest by those conducting these searches, even were I unconcerned about the forcible installation of lodgers in my apartment, and so forth and so on. Before my eyes, before my consciousness, would still stand the life—with all of this—of those dear to me.
And how could I then peacefully work on my scientific task? This is why, even after your letter, I request that you support my request. Only in another setting can I hope to distract myself somewhat, to amuse myself and concentrate more on the peaceful and still, for me, attractive sphere of my scientific work.22
Bonch-Bruevich did not respond to this letter for three months, eventually explaining in a short, less personal note that he had been traveling. He was quite familiar with the terrible conditions that Pavlov described, which represented the inevitable tribulations of revolutionary epochs and popular distrust of an intelligentsia that had long stood against the interests of workers and peasants. When the people became familiar with Pavlov himself, however, they would regard him with “the greatest respect.” He added: “If you insist on your desire to leave the country, I ask you to send me a short official attestation with the specific reasons that you wish to leave and the names of those to accompany you; I will then officially raise your request with Narkomindel [Commissariat of International Affairs], and the results will be conveyed to you immediately.”23
Convinced, apparently, that Bonch-Bruevich was stalling and that permission to emigrate was not forthcoming, Pavlov never replied. Instead, he began to investigate his opportunities in the West secretly through various channels. He drew on a wide circle of colleagues and well-wishers, including William Bayliss and Ernest Starling in England; Francis Benedict, Walter Cannon, and Simon Flexner in the United States; Svante Arrhenius and Johan Erik Johansson in Sweden; Robert Tigerstedt in Finland; and their contacts in the Red Cross—particularly the Swedish Red Cross, whose emissaries were constantly passing through Petrograd.
Pavlov’s calculus concerning the reasons to stay or (try to) leave was complex, the situation in Russia was fluid, and his opportunities in the West were uncertain. There is no evidence that he ever firmly decided to emigrate, but, clearly, between June 1920 and June 1921 he was seriously considering it—and apparently more than once reached the conclusion (for how long we cannot know) that if there arose an opportunity to continue his scientific research abroad, he might well do so.
Rumors of Pavlov’s arrest and death circulated periodically in the West, and in late October 1920 Bayliss assured his colleague Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer that “Something is being done about Pavlov.” One hundred British pounds had been raised from the Royal Society and British Physiological Society and sent to Arrhenius, who had planned to forward the funds to Pavlov through the Danish Red Cross. That plan, however, had changed: “At Pavlov’s request the money was held by Arrhenius to be given to Pavlov on his way to England, as he hoped to be able to get away.” More recently, however, Gleb Anrep (Pavlov’s former coworker who had emigrated to England) had learned from Pavlov that he “seems to be afraid of receiving any money on account of the probability of its being taken from him, but it is evident that he will not be allowed to leave.”24 Clearly, sometime in fall 1920—whether for a moment or months—Pavlov was hoping to leave Russia. Yet he remained fully committed to his scientific research and did not know what opportunities might await him in the West.
Meanwhile, spurred by directives from the Kremlin, Petrograd’s authorities mobilized. The local branch of KUBU decided in early July 1920 “to determine by personal conversations with I. P. Pavlov the character and scope of the material aid he needs and to provide it in the maximum amount.” Later that month, the inner circle of the Petrograd Soviet also discussed how best to help him. Mitrofanov turned to Gorky as the Communists’ emissary to the intelligentsia, asking him to find out.25
Testing his negotiating leverage, Pavlov now addressed a personal request to Commissar of Health Protection Nikolai Semashko. To raise money for food, Serafima had pawned the family’s gold medals—Pavlov’s from St. Petersburg University for his first scientific investigation, two others from the Military-Medical Academy and the Academy of Sciences, and two of his sons’ from gymnasium. These had been confiscated by the state when it nationalized precious metals, but had great sentimental value to the Pavlov family. Would Semashko please see that they were returned? The Commissar went to work on Pavlov’s behalf, winning approval for the scientist’s request despite the opposition of one militant member of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate who objected to this undeserved privilege for a bourgeois intellectual. The medals were returned two months later in recognition of Pavlov’s “scientific services.”26
Encouraged by this result, 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, and paper for its journal. All were quickly granted.27
He did not, however, trim his political sails, continually urging his colleagues to resist Bolshevik policies and himself criticizing them publicly. In a meeting of academicians on March 6, 1920, Pavlov pressed his colleagues to insist that the state respect civil liberties. Two months later, he protested against the removal of phones from academicians’ homes and urged the Academy leadership to insist that these were necessary to their scholarship.28 He signed every letter composed by that leadership criticizing Soviet science policy.
He also devoted each year’s inaugural lecture at the Military-Medical Academy to criticism of Bolshevik rule, a practice that guaranteed him an auditorium packed with the regime’s ardent supporters and opponents, along with many who simply relished the show. In September 1919, he spoke on the conditions in Petrograd that prevented him from performing satisfactorily as a scientist and professor. One year later—three months after his letter to the SNK—he announced: “I will speak now about the contemporary state of Russia, of course, with complete freedom, for otherwise a man of science, searching for truth his entire life, has no reason to touch upon this subject.” This role was especially important now, when in Russia “there is no freedom of the press.” According to the Communists, he observed, Russia was “a socialist republic,” but “What kind of a republic is it when I, a mature man and, it would seem, in full possession of my senses, am deprived of any possibility of participating even in the most distant, smallest manner...in the resolution of various vital questions of the republic; and what kind of socialism is it with the constant assertions of a dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, of the rule of one class over another[?]”
If socialism meant the abolition of private property, it was an abomination threatening the very essence of individuality: “Property is the embodiment of our selfhood, of that which we have accomplished with our own hands; it is our externally visible value, the value of our selves. To take this away or constantly to prevent it from forming depersonalizes a person, deprives him of a measure of his selfhood.” Private property was also necessary to the “reflex of purpose”; it provided “the impulse to thrift, to prudence, and generally to a planned direction of vital activity; otherwise a person becomes a machine, and frequently a machine without thought, without interest, without energy.” He also denounced the Marxist notion of class struggle: “Class struggle means class hostility. We see how struggle between states, war, embitters and brutalizes people. Instead of making every effort to humanize Homo sapiens, Marxists, then, renew its brutalization...within the state itself, within a single nation.”29 Should he remain in Russia, Pavlov clearly had no intention of being a model Soviet citizen.
On the last day of December 1920, Lenin was appalled to receive a letter from the president of the Swedish Red Cross, Baron Erik Stiernstedt, suggesting that the Soviet government reciprocate for aid to Petrograd’s hospitals by allowing Pavlov to emigrate to Sweden. There the scientist would find what was missing in Russia: “propitious and peaceful conditions to conduct his great investigations.” Stiernstedt added soothingly that he did not intend “to deprive Russia of the honor and advantages of Professor Pavlov’s works and possible discoveries,” but rather to provide “one of our Nobel laureates with great opportunities to serve humankind while continuing to remain a Russian scholar.” This suggestion, he assured Lenin, had originated with Swedish scientists at the Nobel Institute. Pavlov knew nothing about it.30
A furious Lenin scribbled a note to his executive secretary on the back of the envelope: “Comrade Gorbunov! Inform Semashko [Commissar of Health Protection] and M. N. Pokrovskii [Deputy Commissar of Popular Enlightenment]. A scandalous affair. Come up with a draft of my reply in agreement with both of them and send it to me.”31
The Bolshevik leadership correctly detected here the long arm of Pavlov’s international contacts. Stiernstedt’s proposition almost certainly originated with Johan Erik Johansson, physiologist at the Karolinska Institute. Johansson had played a critical role in securing Pavlov the Nobel Prize in 1904 and had since maintained friendly contact with him. As another of Pavlov’s concerned foreign friends, the American physiologist Walter Cannon, noted at the time, Johansson had direct communication with Pavlov through contacts in the Swedish Red Cross.32 Johansson’s main contact was probably Axel Odelberg, who, having returned from a visit to Pavlov in late 1920 or early 1921, knew of the Swedish Red Cross’s letter on Pavlov’s behalf, writing in late January that “The Swedish Red Cross now has written to Lenin in order to get him free but I don’t think it will succeed.”33 It is extremely unlikely that Johansson or any of Pavlov’s friends would have taken such a step without Pavlov’s approval.
Expecting awkward publicity from émigré circles—which had proven disturbingly well informed about Pavlov’s earlier correspondence with the SNK—Lenin carefully prepared his response and asked Gorbunov to check with Semashko and Pokrovskii whether he could reply confidently that Pavlov did not want to emigrate. That, Semashko advised, would be “risky.” Pavlov had never formally requested permission to leave, but he was clearly very dissatisfied and surely knew of the Red Cross’s overture.34
While preparing his reply, Lenin received a detailed report on conditions in Pavlov’s lab from Pokrovskii’s associate Emmanuil Enchmen. The creator of an idiosyncratic “new biology” combining Marxism and Pavlovian physiology, Enchmen had spent the last days of 1920 in Pavlov’s lab at the IEM. He reported that, months after the SNK’s June directive that the Petrograd Communist leadership attend to Pavlov’s needs, he had witnessed in December “the complete death of the enormous initiative of this singular scholar.” The Towers of Silence—“the only facility in the world technically equipped for the experimental investigation of conditioned reflexes”—was “completely closed and frozen,” its staff had plummeted from twenty-five to two, and many valuable lab dogs had perished. The state needed to intervene decisively on Pavlov’s behalf.”35
This advice accorded with Lenin’s thinking. While composing his reply to the Swedish Red Cross, he consulted widely about a state decree to improve the conditions of Pavlov’s life and work. The Red Cross was informed that Pavlov would not be allowed to emigrate, “since the period of economic construction that Russia has entered requires the efforts of all the creative forces of the country.” Lenin added to the draft proposed by his counselors his own phrase that “Pavlov is an exceptionally outstanding scientist in his field.” The Soviet state was determined to create the best possible conditions for him and other scientists, he wrote in conclusion, and would happily accept any aid the Red Cross might offer toward this end.36
By its decree of January 24, 1921, “On Conditions Facilitating the Scientific Work of Academician I. P. Pavlov and His Coworkers,” the SNK assured him a privileged place in Soviet science. Acknowledging “the completely exceptional scientific services of academician I. P. Pavlov, which have enormous significance for workers of the entire world,” the SNK resolved, first, to form a special commission charged with creating “the most propitious conditions” for his research. Chaired by Gorky, this commission included leading Petrograd apparatchiks Kristi and Boris Kaplun. The decree awarded Pavlov all royalties from domestic and international sales of a “deluxe edition” of his works, assigned his family a special ration equivalent to twice the normal academician’s allotment, and decreed that his living quarters and central lab be furnished with “all possible conveniences.”37
The next day, Lunacharskii sent a letter to Pavlov introducing a certain Comrade Aleinov as his “scientific consultant.” Aleinov was empowered to take “an entire series of measures” to facilitate Pavlov’s work. The letter continued: “We very much want you to remain within [Russia], to produce here your work without prejudice either to you personally or to your activities. If, despite our measures, you should insist on moving abroad it would be desirable to reach agreement about an entire series of circumstances.... I hope that, whatever the results of our discussions, you will in no case have reason for any grudge against Soviet power, which truly wishes to build you a life as comfortable as is conceivable in our country, which is undergoing such great trials, and for you to use your remarkable gifts to their full extent.”38
This, then, was the situation by late January 1921: Pavlov had never technically requested permission to emigrate, but he had formally communicated his desire to explore that possibility—and had done so through his foreign contacts. He had perhaps hoped to pressure the Soviet government by publicizing abroad his correspondence with the SNK and by encouraging Johansson to make an approach through the Red Cross. Whatever formalistic hairs the Communist leadership might split, Lenin demonstrated clearly that he understood Pavlov’s wishes by his decision not to risk international embarrassment by claiming that Pavlov did not want to emigrate. Neither Bonch-Bruevich nor Lunacharskii had ever directly denied Pavlov permission to leave, but they had continually stalled and used elliptical language with clear and ominous meaning. Lunacharskii’s phrase in his letter of January 25 about the need to “reach agreement about an entire series of circumstances” should Pavlov choose to emigrate invoked unpalatable conditions regarding the fate of family members, family possessions, and a pledge of silence abroad. The Pavlovs themselves were quite clear about this. Pavlov informed a foreign visitor in January 1921 that he had “tried several times to get permission to leave the country, but [it is] impossible.”39 Serafima summed up their understanding of the Bolshevik position astutely: the state would “give Ivan Petrovich everything that he wants, but [would] under no circumstances allow him abroad.”40
Nor had Pavlov ever firmly and finally decided that he wanted to emigrate. He was deeply conflicted. His pained letters to the SNK and others expressed reasons for considering emigration—which he considered his right—and he vacillated as he pondered them. The pivotal consideration always remained his ability to pursue his scientific research, which in turn depended on conditions in his labs, his ability to reach an honorable modus vivendi with the state, and, because he felt so deeply about it, to ease the suffering of his colleagues. However much he detested the Bolsheviks, he was unenthusiastic about leaving his beloved homeland for foreign shores, and he was uncertain about the prospects for continuing his scientific research abroad. Now in his early seventies, he was unwilling to trade a productive scientific enterprise in Soviet Russia for a quiet retirement in the West. So, almost a year after his letters to Bonch-Bruevich, he confessed himself uncertain about whether or not he really wanted to leave.41
There was, after all, some hope that the Bolsheviks might see reason and that conditions for scientists might improve. Sometime after June 1920, Pavlov composed another letter to Bonch-Bruevich (though it is not clear that he ever sent it) regretting his earlier tone. He had always been, he explained, “an extremely explosive person”—and had written while upset about a police summons for his son (probably for yet another interrogation about Vladimir’s discharge papers). After sending his letter to the SNK, he had “quickly regretted it, because I had long had another plan. I wanted to write to the Soviet [of Peoples’ Commissars] about the same subject, but differently, in another tone, advising and requesting a change of tactics in relation to scientific thought.” Science, he explained, cannot be “confined within any bridle.” Sooner or later, the government would recognize this—it would leave philosophy and science to the philosophers and scientists, and would confine its own activities to “practical affairs.”
Whatever new people the authorities promote, if they are not stupid and if they become educated in the full meaning of that term, they cannot but, sooner or later, recognize the right of freedom of thought. And why cruelly violate people who are already educated? Are Marx, Engels, and Lenin really the absolute legislators of human thought[?] You know, this smacks of some old divine authority! Where are the other geniuses of humanity whose every spoken word is considered an immutable law?...Believe me, everything intelligent and honorable in our homeland will breathe freely again when there is no longer the bitter necessity of speaking against sense and reality, and how much more conciliatory will become the attitude toward the authorities by our truly honorable and valuable people.42
Here Pavlov scolded the Communists for their dogmatism and intolerance while also expressing his hope that they might finally see reason. However he might despair and rage at the weaknesses of the chronically unrealistic Russian mind, he also believed deeply that, in the final analysis, reality and education would lead people (“if they are not stupid”) to grasp such basic truths as the nature and power of science. This, then, was reason for hope—and for remaining in Russia and maintaining a dialogue with its rulers.
Having responded to the Swedish Red Cross and issued his decree on Pavlov, Lenin took two more steps before returning to his many other problems. First, he again summoned to the Kremlin a delegation of scientific leaders for consultation. Their suggestions for improving the lot of Russian scientists were discussed by the SNK, and some were adopted in a decree later that year: “On the Improvement of the Lives of Scholars.”43 Acutely aware that his various directives after Pavlov’s letters of June 1920 had not produced decisive results, Lenin also dispatched Gorky to talk directly with him.
Gorky was a poor choice for that mission. Pavlov heartily disliked him and the feelings were mutual.44 The timing of Gorky’s visit also proved unfortunate. It was a freezing winter day in January or February 1921, and V. V. Il’inskii, who had just dropped by with a letter from the IEM’s administration, found Pavlov and Petrova cozily bundled up in candlelight (“or something like that”). As Il’inskii departed, he heard Gorky’s booming voice: “Where is Professor Pavlov?” Pavlov and his son Vladimir met Gorky at the lab’s entrance. Vladimir left this transcript of their frigid encounter:
| GORKY: | I am the writer Gorky. I have come at the instruction of V. I. Lenin. |
| PAVLOV: | Let’s go in. I can spare fifteen minutes. |
| GORKY: | Yes, yes, surely. (Pavlov, wearing a light coat, hat and felt boots walked in front, with Gorky, in his fur coat behind. They entered the second floor study. On the wall hung a large portrait of Prince Ol’denburgskii.) |
| PAVLOV: | Sit down, it’s a bit cold. (Steam was coming out of his mouth.) |
| GORKY: | Ivan Petrovich, you already no doubt know about the decree of the SNK. So, how can we be useful? |
| PAVLOV: | (gesturing angrily with his arms) I don’t need anything. The dogs are dying. You understand. Dogs are needed, dogs. How the devil can one work if one has to chase every dog on the street? |
| GORKY: | We’ll find the dogs. This is not a complex task |
| PAVLOV: | Yes, and firewood is needed. They say that now one doesn’t heat homes with stoves, one heats stoves with homes. |
| GORKY: | There will be dogs, firewood, and hay if you need it. |
| PAVLOV: | Yes, yes. Give hay and oats for the horses. We acquire serums from their blood. |
| GORKY: | We will give hay and oats, Ivan Petrovich. And as for you and your wife, the commission has been directed to double your ration. |
| PAVLOV: | Double our ration? Why? Give us the same as everybody. One must distribute products carefully. |
| GORKY: | You are right—with firewood and oil things are rather bad. |
| PAVLOV: | Rather bad? Nonsense. If one demonstrated a little persistence there wouldn’t be any shortages. In a country like ours? Well, excuse me (looking at his watch). They tell me that you work hard despite bad health. |
| GORKY: | Yes, Ivan Petrovich, such is my habit. But it is not difficult, since it is my favorite task. |
| PAVLOV: | That’s wonderful.45 |
Pavlov thereafter pointedly avoided all communication with Gorky, contacting the Pavlov Commission instead through Kristi. He indignantly reiterated his refusal to accept double rations—one can easily imagine his emotional reaction to having Gorky, a man he disliked intensely, offer him hay for the horses and double rations for his family—but he also forcefully informed Kristi of the resources necessary to his research.46
Responding to the Kremlin’s demand for information about the Petrograd Soviet’s efforts to meet Pavlov’s needs, Mitrofanov reported in late January 1921 that eight of Pavlov’s coworkers had received a special supplementary food ration, clothes, and shoes; his dogs were now well fed; and the lab had use of the Soviet’s special garage and would soon receive two horses for transport. Special measures were being taken to heat the lab and provide it with electricity, although problems remained, as they did everywhere. Expressing some pique at Pavlov’s privileges, Mitrofanov observed archly that “The situation in the laboratory is now better than in hospitals and children’s shelters.” Rectifying the difficulties in Pavlov’s domestic life was more difficult, since he “stubbornly refuses help. He says that he cannot accept privileges not enjoyed by his colleagues.” (The Pavlovs received at the time two rations through KUBU—one each for Pavlov and his son.)
He concluded perspicaciously that “Professor Pavlov’s situation can be improved by providing the leading scholars of Petrograd with family rations; this will probably satisfy Pavlov.”47 The eminent physiologist did not, after all, object either to living well or to being substantially better off than the great majority of his colleagues. He had done so before 1917 and believed that his achievements entitled him and his family to a comfortable life. He did, however, strenuously object to living well while his colleagues starved—and he was using his leverage to improve their lot.
In any case, the expanding ration system left no room for egalitarian sentiments. For one thing, the basic worker’s allotment contained considerably less food than did the “academic ration” distributed to 1,849 Petrograd scientists in 1920 and to 5,700 by 1922. This was one reflection of the more conciliatory post–civil war Communist line on “bourgeois specialists,” which recognized that, despite their political unreliability, scientists, engineers, factory managers, and others who had acquired specialized knowledge in tsarist times had to be nurtured and their skills deployed until a new generation of truly Soviet successors could be trained.
Nor were all scientists treated equally. KUBU categorized each on a scale from 1 to 5—from beginners to “outstanding scholars whose work has worldwide significance”—and allotted varying rations accordingly. So, for example, Vladimir Pavlov and his father’s coworker Nikolai Podkopaev each received half the standard academic ration; Pavlov’s assistants Orbeli, Savich, and Rozental’ each received a full one; and leading scientists such as Lev Berg, Bekhterev, and Pavlov himself received one and a half rations. Privileged institutions—including, eventually, the Academy of Sciences—gained their own ration systems, as did the militant cultural movement Proletkult, widows of writers, veteran revolutionaries, and others.
The ration system developed over time into a large operation headquartered in Moscow, where bureaucrats merrily classified and reclassified scientists, adjusting their food parcels accordingly. It also provided a convenient form of social control. As one militant cynically observed: “The threat [to a professor] of losing his academic ration can, in the time span of a single course, transform even the most inveterate counterrevolutionary into a Marxist.” This system was an early manifestation of the manner in which social distinctions and blat (personal connections and influence) generated a system of privileges that separated selected individuals and groups from policies affecting the general population in Soviet Russia. It did not entirely solve the food problem for Russian scientists, but was certainly a great boon.48
Pavlov had originally been allotted one and a half academic rations, but the special food package mandated by Lenin’s decree was much more sumptuous. It had first been devised for Nikolai Zhukovskii, a scientist of unparalleled practical value as a specialist in aerodynamics and Russia’s leading expert on aerial bombardment. Pavlov’s research could not compete with Zhukovskii’s in terms of immediate practical significance, but his international fame as revolutionary Russia’s sole Nobelist, his symbolic importance to Russia’s scientific community, the perceived ideological import of his materialist approach to mind, and, perhaps, dreams of future practical applications made him a worthy second recipient of this special ration. Provided directly by the Commission for Workers’ Provisions within the People’s Commissariat of Supplies (Narkomprod), Pavlov’s monthly food packet included seventy pounds of wheat flour, twenty-five pounds of meat, twelve pounds of fresh fish, three pounds of black caviar, ten pounds of millet, ten pounds of buckwheat, ten pounds of rice or semolina, twenty pounds of various beans, five pounds of sugar, six pounds of butter, two pounds of cooking oil, four pounds of cheese, four pounds of salt, one pound of cocoa, one pound of coffee beans, one-half pound of tea, five pounds of dried fruit, three pounds of soap, 750 papirosy (thick cigarettes), and ten boxes of matches.49 As Pavlov saw more and more of his colleagues receiving rations of highly varied content, there would have been little reason to reject his own as an unacceptable privilege. In any case, his approval was not necessary. As conditions normalized, Serafima resumed full authority over household affairs and, as family friend and physician S. V. Kurakin recalled, she often accepted special favors from the government without her husband’s knowledge.50 Two other sources contributed in 1921 to the end of the Pavlovs’ hungry years: KUBU obtained permission for Pavlov’s friend and fellow physiologist Robert Tigerstedt to send food by train from Helsinki, and, shortly thereafter, the Pavlovs, like millions of other Russians, began receiving provisions from the American Relief Administration. Tigerstedt also sent supplies for Pavlov’s dogs, eliciting from his grateful friend this mournful observation: “Look what we have come to. Formerly dogs stole meat from humans, but now the workers here steal this meat from my dogs.”51 In prerevolutionary years, he had once discovered a hungry coworker pilfering the dogs’ food, but in the Soviet era this became the enduring theme for mordant humor reflecting people’s sense of diminished dignity and their recognition of Pavlov’s privileged status in the new order.By early 1921, when some $2,000 raised for Pavlov by Cannon and other American colleagues reached Tigerstedt in Helsinki, Pavlov had little need for it. Tigerstedt reported that “all that Pavlov was asking for was bonbons!” (to satisfy Serafima’s sweet tooth). Horsley Gantt later added that “I don’t think he has used as much as he has given away. In Russia there has been so much suffering among the professors that it is hard for a person to live well himself and feel comfortable.”52
In the months after Lenin’s decree, the SNK financed and closely monitored the complete overhaul and reequipping of Pavlov’s main lab, a project that also benefited the IEM as a whole. The Petrograd Soviet’s representative to the Pavlov Commission reported in June that “as a consequence of the difficult economic conditions it underwent and, mainly, because of the absence of necessary heating oil, the general structure of the Institute—the water, steam, gas, sewage, and electrical systems—has fallen into ruin and requires capital repair.” On August 1, Pavlov requested that the SNK extend him a one-billion-ruble credit for necessary repairs to his lab and allow him to purchase supplies and hire expertise on the free market if these were unavailable through state institutions. The Pavlov Commission and IEM administration supported his request (which, as it turned out, underestimated the galloping pace of inflation), and Lenin himself approved the initial allocation in October of almost one billion rubles for general repairs to the Institute and another 300 million specifically for Pavlov’s lab. Pavlov’s much smaller lab at the Academy of Sciences was also repaired and reequipped in 1921; by year’s end, he could report that “five dogs have been put to work.”53
He continued, however, to explore his possibilities abroad. No doubt at his behest, Ernest Starling, professor of physiology at University College, London, asked his country’s Medical Research Council in early 1921 for funds to support his Russian colleague. The Council refused, citing doubts about the seventy-one-year-old Pavlov’s physical and mental ability to carry on new investigations.54 In April 1921, Pavlov sent a letter through Tigerstedt to another longtime contact, Francis Benedict, director of Boston’s Nutrition Laboratory, requesting an assessment of his prospects abroad.
Five days after writing to Benedict, Pavlov asked Lunacharskii to arrange for him, Serafima, and Vladimir to visit the United States for several months in order to rest and catch up with scientific literature. Serafima’s presence was necessary because she was “my constant scientific secretary,” and also because, “tortured and exhausted by the unusual and difficult way of life” they had been forced to endure, she badly needed a rest. Since neither he nor she spoke English, Vladimir would serve as translator. As for the costs of this trip, he noted that before 1917 he had used his Nobel Prize money to pay for his periodic scientific trips abroad. Since the state had confiscated “fifty thousand in normal money [hard currency] of my capital,” and since Lenin’s decree had restored “my rights to property,” it was only just for the government to pay for this trip.
There was, he stated frankly, one other reason for this trip: to assess his feelings about leaving Russia permanently.
This holiday should not be seen as a masked deceptive emigration. As an external guarantee of the faithfulness of my request for a temporary holiday there is my daughter, who is as close to us as our son (who must travel with us) and also my entire apartment setting—the single remaining material result at my disposal from half a century of the most intense scientific work, and dear to us for its scientific and family mementos. And, furthermore, I cannot look upon myself as a prisoner who, being guilty, runs from prison. I do not want to renounce my right to insist openly before the government upon my freedom to leave the homeland if life in it is made, through no fault of my own, fruitless and unbearable. Consequently, when I finally resolve the question of emigration I will announce this openly. And I will do so only upon my return from the trip, having tested myself preliminarily (my thoughts and my mood) after temporary liberation from the oppressive impressions of current life [in Russia], having witnessed contemporary [life] abroad, where I would resettle, and having determined over this time to what degree the now possible restoration of normal affairs in Russian laboratories has really occurred (the measures that were promised).55
Pavlov’s request was granted—but, as Soviet citizens came to say, in principle rather than in practice. A letter of May 7, 1921, informed him that 10,000 gold rubles had been allocated for the trip, but added that, to obtain the necessary documents, Pavlov also required permission from the People’s Commissariat of International Affairs and one other agency—“which usually takes a considerable time.”56 The physiologist’s request then languished for months, buried in the bureaucracy.
He did not pursue the matter, perhaps because of Benedict’s deeply disappointing response to his inquiry. Having consulted with Cannon and Simon Flexner, Benedict replied on May 27 that, although Pavlov had many friends in the United States, he should consider settling there only “as a last resort.” He could, however, find support for a modest existence in Switzerland, Holland, or England. Pavlov’s Western colleagues respected him immensely and cared deeply about his welfare. They were pleased to do what they could to support him in Russia or in a modest retirement abroad. Yet for them, clearly, he was an aged scientist whose best scientific work was behind him. This was hardly Pavlov’s view—and Benedict’s letter was clearly a great emotional blow, not least to his pride. That is evident from the fact that he allowed Serafima and his coworkers to believe that he had been courted ardently by the West, a falsehood that permeates the memoirs of those around him.57
In early June 1921, it was Flexner’s and Cannon’s turn to receive an alarming communication from the Red Cross. Ernest Bicknell, acting director of foreign operations for the American Red Cross, relayed to them a telegram from its representative in Russia: “Professor Pavloff, eminent Russian physiologist, may soon receive permission to come out. Simon Flexner anxious have Pavloff go America. Please inform Flexner and arrange that U. S. State Department instructs American Consul Reval vise Pavloff’s passport for America upon presentation. This necessary in order arrange permission enter Esthonia. Suggest also inform Walter Cannon, Harvard Medical School.” Bicknell asked Flexner to write a formal request to the State Department to secure Pavlov’s visa.58
An appalled Flexner assured Cannon that “I have never had anything to do with urging Pawlow to come to America; indeed, quite the reverse. I have informed Starling that his coming here would be, I believed, most unfortunate. I know of no means by which he could be supported, and he would find here no Russians of his class with whom to associate.” He telegraphed Bicknell: “Obviously some mistake. Know nothing of proposal to have Pawlow come to America and unless his support assured, regard his coming as extremely hazardous. Under circumstances cannot undertake to write State Department as requested.”59 Cannon agreed:
Benedict had previously informed me of his correspondence with you regarding Pavlov and I felt certain, therefore, that there was nothing to be done with reference to the plan of having Pavlov come here. I told Benedict that I quite agreed with the judgment which he said you and he had arrived at that it would be much wiser for Pavlov, if he were to leave Russia, to settle at Helsingfors or Stockholm or at Copenhagen where he would possibly be near friends and not so far from Russia in case conditions developed which would permit him to return. The sum which was contributed to his relief by American friends amounted to approximately $2,000. I sent it to Johansson who transferred it to Tigerstedt. I have had no answer from either of them regarding its disposal. In case Pavlov has occasion to leave Russia, it may be of service to him in getting settled elsewhere. 60
Flexner responded that he was “happy to know that you feel as I do about Pawlow’s coming to America,” which would surely be “a disastrous blunder.”61
Cannon and Flexner, then, were not even considering the possibility of establishing Pavlov as a working physiologist in the West—let alone with the large lab enterprise essential to his research style. Helsinki, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, rather, were relatively inexpensive cities where the elderly émigré might be maintained in modest circumstances through the charity of his Western admirers. For Pavlov, that was absolutely unacceptable.
Meanwhile, Lenin’s largesse was beginning to revive his research facilities. Pavlov wrote to a colleague who had emigrated that “due to the special favoritism of the present government toward me, the situation in my laboratories is somewhat more tolerable. But this work is darkened and disturbed by constant impressions of the life around me, which you probably cannot imagine. It seems to me that Russia will doubtless perish irreparably and irretrievably. How can one work in such a mood[?] I wanted to leave Russia. But, first, they won’t let me out; and, second, even abroad what work [could I do] with this unrelenting thought of the death of the motherland[?]”62
By mid-1921, Pavlov had decided to remain in Russia, but he hungered for rest and a respite from Russian realities. He wrote again to Lunacharskii in November requesting permission to spend a month in Helsinki over the upcoming Christmas holiday. “I need to take a trip abroad. Otherwise I will have to end my scientific work. One cannot work seriously and usefully in science without constant contact with one’s international colleagues in one’s specialty.” He asked that Serafima accompany him, but made no mention of Vladimir (in Helsinki he could communicate in German and Russian, so he would not require his son’s services as translator). He also asked that Lunacharskii cut the red tape involved. Pavlov refused to engage in the official process of gathering formal recommendations and guarantees of his return “since my dignity as a person and scientist do not permit me to submit to this.” Lunacharskii turned to Lenin, expressing his chagrin that Pavlov’s earlier request to visit the United States had died in the increasingly unwieldy Soviet bureaucracy and asking Lenin to ensure that Pavlov receive a foreign passport without what the scientist considered “humiliating” formalities. “I am also completely convinced that...Pavlov will return on time,” he assured Lenin, adding, “He is an obstinate and sick old man. I think that, in view of his immeasurable services to science and in order that they not begin to chatter abroad again about our cruelty to scholars, it is necessary to meet him halfway.” Lenin wrote the necessary directive and had Semashko monitor the results.
The Soviet bureaucracy processed the Pavlovs’ passports with lightning speed, but he postponed his trip until spring 1922 in order to attend the meeting in Helsinki of the Society of Physicians. There he caught up on the physiological literature, mingled with his foreign colleagues for the first time since his visit to Cambridge in 1912, and delivered a speech on “The Normal Activity and General Constitution of the Cerebral Hemispheres.”63
He took a moment there to write a short note to Cannon. “Science, literature, and art unite the entire world, not the lower instincts, the standard of the present Third Communist International in Moscow, which, in Lenin’s words, promise Terror and Violence to all nations. Yes, science not only has given and is giving me the fullest satisfaction and joy of my life, but also provides me and my family the greatest support, both moral and material, in the form of worldwide sympathy and different kinds of help in our very sad circumstances.... Without work it was almost too painful to live, continually depressed by the conviction that my Fatherland was falling to ruins.” Now, however, his scientific investigations were reborn. “For almost a year now I have had the possibility of working somewhat in a laboratory.64
Pavlov returned to Petrograd as scheduled, his future firmly and finally tied to Russia’s. The Communists had never permitted him to leave, and his foreign colleagues had offered no acceptable prospects in the West. With the end of the civil war, the situation for Russian scientists and, especially, for his own life and work were improving. Lenin himself had made clear the state’s special interest in his research and well-being, and Pavlov had good reason to believe that he might turn his special status to the advantage of Russian science as a whole.
The negotiations between Pavlov and the Bolsheviks in these difficult years defined their relationship over the next two decades. The state would not permit emigration, but it offered special privileges to him and his scientific enterprise. Pavlov could count on foreign support and travel abroad, but only in Russia could he acquire the resources necessary to pursue his investigations on a grand scale. There he would be allowed to maintain control over his labs, including his patriarchal relationship to his coworkers. This modus vivendi, moreover, had been forged while Pavlov criticized the Bolsheviks roundly and insisted that doing so was a matter of personal honor.