In August 1935, addressing an international audience at the XVth International Physiological Congress that convened in Leningrad, the scientist who had become famous for his bold opposition to Communist rule stunned his audience by praising the Soviet Union’s foreign policy and support of science, and then offering a toast to “the great social experimenters.”
Pavlov had been neither bought nor brainwashed, nor was he lulled by life in a comfortable cocoon into ignorance of or indifference toward the crimes and horrors of Stalin times. Even during the Congress, he took a few moments to convince one of the “great experimenters,” Molotov, to free the wife and child of a former coworker from political exile. He never surrendered his criticisms of Stalinist despotism, dogmatism, terror, and persecution of religion, nor did he ever excuse or justify them.
Yet, having regarded the Soviet state throughout the 1920s as a dogmatic, incompetent, and terrorist regime, by 1935 he had accepted it as his country’s government, one with a mixed record of crimes, blunders, and important achievements. “I am not a Bolshevik and do not support their policies,” he told one colleague in 1935, but Russia’s fate was now in their hands, and “we must help the Bolsheviks in everything good about them.”1
This change of heart was not simple, sudden, or absolute. It transpired in small steps in the early and mid-1930s amid his continued trenchant criticism. One early sign was Pavlov’s endorsement in 1932 of a long-standing state desire to convene the International Physiological Congress in the USSR. Pavlov’s support was necessary for success, and he had refused consent in 1926 and 1929, not wanting his country embarrassed either by the Congress’s rejection of its invitation or, even worse, by the poor conditions that visiting delegates would encounter. The warm welcome extended to Pavlov and the Soviet delegation at the 1929 Congress in the United States began to change his mind on the first count. And by mid-1932 he clearly felt that the authorities were capable of organizing a successful conference and that the growth of scientific institutions (including his own at Koltushi) would make a good impression.2
Ideologically, Pavlov’s transformation revolved around the two longstanding pillars of his political views: scientism and state patriotism. Since the 1860s, he had believed that the growth of scientific knowledge and its cultural impact was the truest guarantor of social progress. In the USSR, the number of institutions and cadres was increasing at a remarkable rate, and science enjoyed unprecedented cultural prestige. This, in turn, encouraged Pavlov to look for promising signs of the regime’s moderation during a confusing time in which such signs could certainly be discerned. He was also deeply concerned by the threats posed by Japanese militarism and, especially, German Nazism. And so—as when tsarist Russia was embroiled in World War I—he was powerfully inclined to stand behind his country’s government.
Attitudinally, Pavlov’s transformation also reflected his acquisition of a certain insider status. For one thing, he had long been surrounded by Communists whom he liked and respected and with whom he had developed smooth working relations—administrators and coworkers such as Fedorov, Nikitin, Asratian, and Denisov. He also enjoyed direct access to such influential leaders as Bukharin, Kirov, Kaminskii, and Molotov, and used those connections to fix various problems—to have a noisy street moved away from his lab, to expedite work on Koltushi, or to save a coworker from the gulag. He was inevitably influenced by his privileged status, yet he had enjoyed that status for more than a decade without its affecting his political views. The building of a scientific kingdom and country home at Koltushi, however, was special, and it clearly had a profound impact on him. Furthermore, he felt morally obligated to repay the Russian people and the Soviet state with good works—and this feeling created an emotional bond with the government.
Finally, Pavlov was under constant surveillance and surrounded by people who did not enjoy his own immunity from arrest. Detailed information about his moods and intentions enabled the state to influence his behavior through the timely intervention of those around him. Members of Pavlov’s circle had varying attitudes toward Soviet power, but all had their own interests and, by the early to mid-1930s, their well-founded fears. Especially important in this regard was Petrova, whose relationship with Pavlov was widely known (and of course known to the NKVD) and who—motivated by some combination of conviction, opportunism, and fear—could be depended on to prod him at critical moments.3
Against this background, Pavlov responded to dramatic developments on the international and domestic scenes. Especially menacing were Hitler’s rise to power and the dangers posed to Russia by German militarism and demands for lebensraum in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Having lived through Russia’s traumatic defeat by Japan in the war of 1904–1905 and the cataclysmic consequences of its war with Germany in 1914–1918, he reacted to this threat with great alarm and patriotic feeling. When Denisov returned from Europe in August 1933, he found Pavlov immersed in the newspapers (which he had begun to read avidly), particularly reports of Nazi foreign policy chief Alfred Rosenberg’s remarks at a recent world economic conference. After a discussion of scientific subjects, Denisov recalled, Pavlov suddenly asked if we had read about Rosenberg’s speech. Grabbing the newspaper and quoting Rosenberg’s words, he was very upset at the “unbridled insolence” of Germany’s pretensions to Soviet territory and urged a robust Soviet response to “the speeches of the scoundrels threatening our homeland.”4
Shortly thereafter, a provincial scientist who had enjoyed swapping anti-Soviet jokes with Pavlov and his coworkers in the 1920s discovered that things had changed when he told a similar anecdote upon his return: “It is a scoundrel,” Pavlov snapped at him, “who undermines his government when the homeland is in danger.” The Nazi threat grew constantly over Pavlov’s last years, and he followed with increasing alarm Germany’s remilitarization, the impotent response of the League of Nations, and the refusal of the Western democracies to enlist in Stalin’s belated policy of collective security. Pavlov’s fixation on Nazi Germany mirrored that of his closest associate in the upper echelons of the Communist Party, Nikolai Bukharin. When the Soviet press began publishing interviews with Pavlov in 1935, this sentiment provided a reliable “hook” for questions guaranteed to elicit a politically correct response.5
Closing ranks behind the Soviet state in the face of the menacing international situation, Pavlov ceased to criticize it even in private conversations with close foreign colleagues. Horsley Gantt recalled that in 1933, after having regaled his former coworker for more than a decade with his biting assessments of Soviet power, Pavlov told him that he now had no criticisms of it. That was hardly the case, but he was no longer sharing such thoughts with his foreign confidantes.6
The direction of political developments in the USSR from late 1933 through early 1936 was confusing and contradictory. On the one hand, one could discern a “thaw” of sorts. The Second Five-Year Plan announced in 1933 was much more moderate than the First and led to a noticeable increase in the availability of consumer goods. Rationing was ended in January 1935, occasioning Stalin’s pronouncement that “Life has become better, life has become more joyful.” Soon after the Nazi seizure of power, there was a palpable loosening of controls in many fields—for example, at the August 1934 Soviet Writers’ Congress, which, while enshrining the principle of “socialist realist” literature, also heard Gorky’s speech on the value of diversity among those loyal to Soviet power. Having renounced their earlier opposition to Stalin’s policies, Kamenev and Zinoviev were readmitted to the Communist Party and Bukharin was restored to the public stage.
The Party’s “Congress of Victors” in January–February 1934 featured unrestrained, mandatory sycophantic praise of Stalin’s genius and achievements, but also considerable underground sentiment for his removal as general secretary and his replacement, perhaps, by his protégé, Leningrad Party boss Sergei Kirov. The Congress also witnessed Bukharin’s return to a position of official eminence (though not of real power). Permitted to address the delegates, he praised Stalin in the requisite terms (“the glorious field marshal of the proletarian forces, the cream of the cream of the revolutionary leadership”) and urged Russians to close ranks behind him in the face of the growing threat from Germany and Japan. Bukharin also assumed the editorship of Izvestiia, which would carry a number of friendly interviews with Pavlov in subsequent years.
Responding tactically to moods in the Congress and the broader public, Stalin now portrayed himself as an advocate of reconciliation and democratization. Most dramatically, he championed a rewriting of the Soviet Constitution more appropriate to the new conditions that had emerged with the achievements of the First Five-Year Plan. Stalin cochaired with Bukharin a commission that, to much fanfare in the press, solicited public recommendations for this new “Stalin Constitution” that would guarantee freedom of assembly, religion, and speech; universal suffrage; multicandidate elections; and the secret ballot. As Stalin himself put it, a lively electoral system would be “a whip in the people’s hands against poorly functioning government organs.” Even in high state and Party circles, Stalin convinced many that he intended to humanize and democratize the regime in the face of the threat from Nazi Germany.7
Simultaneously, however, a new wave of arrests and expulsions from the cities swept through the land. The pretext was the assassination of Kirov on December 1, 1934, in Leningrad Party headquarters. In January 1935, Kamenev and Zinoviev were imprisoned after a quick trial and conviction of “moral complicity” in the murder. A “quiet terror” from early 1935 through summer 1936 swept up various “former people”—former aristocrats, civil servants, merchants, and clerics (in Leningrad, they were deported en masse with just twenty-four hours’ notice). Arrests extended also to the Communist Party, particularly members unmasked as “double-dealers”—that is, former White Guardists, Trotskyists, or Zinovievites who now hid their anti-Party attitudes behind formal support of the Party line.8
This, then, was the context for Pavlov’s dense and emotional eighty-sixth year—a year of agony and hope for his homeland, of the great flourishing of his scientific enterprise and research, and of his apotheosis as icon of Soviet and international science.
* * *
In 1929, the state had decided only at the last moment, at the initiative of Pavlov’s Communist coworkers, to publicly mark his eightieth birthday; preparations for his eighty-fifth in 1934 began long in advance. In the intervening five years, Pavlov had confined his bitter criticisms of the Bolsheviks to conversations, correspondence with his countrymen, and the Wednesday meetings; he had campaigned successfully to have the upcoming Physiological Congress planned for the USSR; he had developed good relations with Bukharin and other Communists; and, as surveillance reports made clear, he now entertained conflicting sentiments about Soviet power. One agent reported in September 1934 that Pavlov had abandoned his “former position of [unalloyed] hostility to the Soviet government.” This had displeased his son Vsevolod and other anti-Soviet members of Pavlov’s circle, the informant continued, who were especially alarmed by Pavlov’s role in bringing the upcoming Congress to the USSR. They attempted constantly to reignite his oppositional sentiments, to “provoke him into making anti-Soviet remarks,” and to undermine the Congress.9 Pavlov’s eighty-fifth jubilee, then, became yet another episode in the longstanding struggle over his loyalties.
On September 26, the day before Pavlov’s birthday, Molotov and Kaganovich reported to Stalin on the SNK’s tentative plans. Fedorov had informed them that Pavlov did not want a big official celebration or an honorary state title but would respond positively to greetings from the SNK. The official four-sentence statement that they submitted for Stalin’s approval offered “fervent greetings and congratulations,” noted Pavlov’s “inexhaustible energy in scientific creativity, the successes of which have deservedly placed your name among the classics of natural science,” and wished him “health, happiness, and fruitful work for many years for the benefit of our great motherland.” The SNK planned an annual Pavlov Prize of 20,000 rubles for the best scientific work in physiology, five stipends in Pavlov’s name for improving the scientific credentials of young physiologists, the publication of his collected works (which, aside from the honor, would bring the scientist a considerable financial dividend), and an additional one million rubles for Koltushi.
Stalin responded immediately, comparing Pavlov to the elderly pro-Soviet botanist Ivan Michurin, who had been honored with the Order of Lenin. “Pavlov, of course, is not Michurin. Michurin is ours politically, but Pavlov is not ours. It is necessary that this difference not be greased over in the press, especially in Bukharin’s Izvestiia. Even if he wanted to receive one, no honorary title should be given to him. I agree with everything else.”10
Coverage of Pavlov’s birthday in Pravda, the official organ of the Communist Party, reflected the spirit of Stalin’s telegram. Short items on Koltushi and the republication of Pavlov’s works preceded the great day, but on Pavlov’s birthday itself there appeared only the SNK’s greetings. Bukharin’s Izvestiia, official organ of the Soviet state, was much more effusive. In the days before September 27, it published items on Koltushi, the new edition of Pavlov’s works, and a long article by Pavlov’s former coworker Iurii Frolov on the scientist’s life and achievements. The September 27 issue included lengthy articles by Podkopaev on the current direction of Pavlov’s research, by Davidenkov on the connection between Pavlovian science and the clinic, and by Rozental’ on Pavlov’s influence upon world science; a short item about a forthcoming film on Pavlov’s research; an enumeration of the SNK’s birthday gifts to Pavlov; the text of its greetings; and a very warm article about Pavlov by Bukharin himself.
Bukharin did not exactly “grease over” the scientist’s differences with the Communists, but, in a brilliant piece of political propaganda—one that he knew Pavlov would read carefully—he cast them in a friendly, diplomatic, and even positive light. Describing Pavlov’s personal and scientific attributes, he highlighted his own warm relations with the scientist and the patriotism and materialist traditions that united Pavlov and the Bolsheviks against the Nazi threat.
“Ivan Petrovich Pavlov,” he began, “belongs to the pleiad of the most outstanding people of our time. A brilliant physiologist, the recognized head of an entire school, and a brilliant experimenter with a mind that encompasses any detail and is capable of both fractional analysis and powerful generalizations; a noble, direct character, highly passionate in defense of his views, with an iron discipline, exceptional caution in his conclusions, a hatred for any unproven and superficial conclusions; a remarkable purposiveness of will that directs his entire scientific activity; the chiseling severity of a single consistently implemented method in numerous experiments; a profound liveliness and overflowing optimism, physical and mental health, a sort of universal cheerfulness—this is the profile of this eighty-five-year-old noble old man with a youthful temperament, the most remarkable scientist of our day.”
Pavlov did not “fully understand the enormous social restructuring that the proletariat’s party is conducting in our country,” Bukharin conceded, and had on more than one occasion reacted to it “erroneously.” Yet that did not make him an unreasoning opponent of Soviet power:
I will always remember the scene as I. P. and I were strolling along the banks of the Neva River. The sun was setting, a wind blew from the beautiful river. Ivan Petrovich was practically running in his usual hurried hopping stride. “Ivan Petrovich,” I say...“in twenty or thirty years some writer will describe how we strolled together and you agitated [against Communist policies], and, if you will permit me, he will say: ‘what a great man, but how little he understood his epoch.’” Ivan Petrovich thought for a moment, fixed his wise eyes on the earth, and suddenly, unexpectedly, said “Perhaps you Bolsheviks are right and I really understood nothing.” A pause. He thought for a moment. And suddenly he raised his eyes, which shined from under thick white brows, and practically shouted: “And what if just the opposite is the case?”
Here Bukharin highlights his frank and friendly relationship with Pavlov, shows the scientist willing to consider that he was mistaken in his opinion of the regime, and paints a pleasing image of two thoughtful men discussing politics and finally agreeing to disagree (in Stalin times!).
In the years since that conversation, Bukharin continued, “many difficulties have been overcome, many true miracles of construction have been accomplished.” He could not claim that Pavlov endorsed Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan or had been won over by its achievements, but he could write that the scientist was “undoubtedly proud of his country, which he loves fervently” and that, as a patriot and a man of “enormous sincerity, with a profound internal truthfulness,” he could not help but respect and delight in the Russian people’s enormous creative efforts.
Finally, Bukharin emphasized Pavlov’s political and ideological unity with his homeland in the face of the foreign threat: “His angry words against the Japanese and German imperialists have been heard many times.” Despite his “prejudices against philosophy, dialectics, and so forth,” Pavlov’s research “provides water for the materialist mill,” extending the realm of scientific law to the human psyche. This was especially important at a time when mysticism was flourishing in the decaying capitalist world. Pavlov’s very person, then, constituted a “profoundly progressive banner.” Were he to live in fascist lands, he would certainly be condemned as a “fiend and a satan”; in the USSR, however, this great product of the Russian materialist tradition, this offspring of Pisarev and Sechenov, was master of “an entire new scientific village, and the material base of his experiments broadens and grows noticeably every year.” A celebrated guest at international congresses, Pavlov upheld with great dignity the honor of his country and of science. With great pride, “we wish him to live to Methuselan years for the benefit of mighty human reason and science, for the benefit of the peace, well-being, and happiness of toiling mankind.”11
Whatever Stalin might have thought of Bukharin’s column, Pavlov was deeply touched and instructed Vsevolod to inform Izvestiia of the favorable impression it had made upon him.12
Greetings poured in from throughout Russia, eliciting grateful, patriotic, and sometimes nostalgic responses. The Leningrad Soviet hailed his “many years of indefatigable scientific work,” which were “highly valued by the toilers of Leningrad”—and marked the occasion by establishing five stipends in Pavlov’s name for especially promising students and by renaming Lopukhinskaia Street, which Pavlov had trod for more than four decades on his way to the IEM, Academician Pavlov Street. Responding to warm messages from Riazan’s city council and other local institutions, Pavlov wrote that these had reinforced his longstanding intention to visit his hometown, “to bow before the remains of my parents, to see the places where my dreams first were born.”13
Surveillance reports filed by an NKVD informer very close to the family describe in detail Pavlov’s contradictory and emotional reactions on the days surrounding his jubilee. Strolling with leading physicist Petr Kapitsa, Pavlov had exclaimed loudly enough to draw the attention of passersby that “The people are starving, [the Communists] have ruined the entire country.” During their walk, Pavlov found himself in front of St. Andrew’s Cathedral and, as he often did, crossed himself. A young worker who witnessed this gesture thumped Pavlov rudely on the shoulder and scolded him with a slogan from an antireligious ditty: “Oh old man, old man—you are our ignorance.” These words produced a “lasting impression” on the horrified Pavlov. Later that evening, Vsevolod having convinced him not to participate in any official celebrations, he departed for Koltushi, leaving instructions not to reveal his destination.14
Pavlov’s birthday hardly provided the occasion for satisfied, peaceful reflection. His family arrived in the morning, and his two sons quarreled all day as Vladimir reproached Vsevolod for obstructing official efforts to honor their father. In the afternoon, an official delegation (well apprised of Pavlov’s location despite his specific instructions) delivered a packet of greetings from the SNK. Visibly moved, he read the messages aloud to his family and announced, according to the informant: “I thought the government’s greetings would surely be published in the press, but never expected to receive a personal greeting above the signature of the President of the Sovnarkom, Molotov. Now that’s enough. I will hear no more [objections to participating in official celebrations] and if I succeed in living until the next one I will act according to my conscience. I will celebrate the jubilee as one is supposed to, that is, with all the ceremonies.” The informer reported that “The entire family listened to the academician’s statement with tense attention and without a single comment or objection.”15
After learning that Fedorov and some coworkers were organizing a small banquet in his honor at Petrova’s apartment, Pavlov, making amends, agreed to attend and proposed inviting his chauffeur, Nikitin, and the assistant director of the Leningrad VIEM, N. E. Lebedev. The evening unfolded in high spirits and the NKVD source provided details, including a revealing comment by Petrova. Alluding to the anti-Soviet views of Pavlov’s younger son, she assured Lebedev that she used every opportunity to convince Pavlov of the “baseness” of Vsevolod’s behavior. Pavlov, alas, “always insisted on the bond of ‘parental feelings.’”16
In his public response to the SNK’s gifts and greeting, Pavlov for the first time dignified Bolshevik efforts to restructure society with the term “grand experiment” and expressed his hope for its success: “I want very much to live longer. . .most of all to see over the greatest possible period the result of your grand experiment. The result of this experiment, to my mind, is of course distant, still far from determined. And it involves the fate of the motherland!” He wanted to live, too, in order to continue his efforts toward “man’s knowledge of himself and for the final victory of the idea of the unity, the wholeness of our nature.”17
Pavlov’s attitude toward the Bolsheviks was certainly changing, but he was no believer in their “experiment” and remained trenchantly critical of Party authoritarianism. When Commissar of Health Protection Kaminskii, with whom Pavlov had developed good relations, added to his birthday greetings a comment on the great successes of the Revolution, Pavlov responded: “Unfortunately, I have almost the complete opposite feeling about our revolution as do you. For you, enthused by several of its truly enormous positive achievements, it ‘inspires good cheer at the wondrous forward movement of our homeland’; for me, on the contrary, it is very often alarming, filling me with doubts. Do you see clearly...its enormous, truly negative sides? Do you think sufficiently about the fact that many years of terror and the unrestrained arbitrariness of power are transforming our already Asiatic nature into a shamefully slavish one? I have seen, and I see constantly, many extraordinary examples of this. Can one construct much good with slaves? Pyramids, yes; but not universal, true human happiness.”18
Two months later, on December 1, 1934, Leonid Nikolaev, a sometime Party member of murky background and beliefs, assassinated Kirov. Two weeks of nonstop press coverage raised Leningrad’s Party boss posthumously to cult status while ratcheting up anxieties about the reasons for and consequences of his death. Stalin arrived immediately in Leningrad to take over the investigation and to use it as the pretext for accelerating waves of arrests.
Kirov had been one of Pavlov’s insider contacts. He had visited Koltushi and helped to speed up construction there, and in 1933 had intervened when Pavlov’s brother-in-law was deprived of his right to live in Moscow because of his prerevolutionary post with the Holy Synod. Pavlov had dispatched Vsevolod to Kirov, who had solved the problem with a phone call. Pavlov also had reportedly enlisted Kirov’s help when he was stopped at the Soviet border on his way home from the United States in 1929; Kirov intervened to allow the returning scientist to pass through Soviet customs without relinquishing his “contraband” phonograph records and other such acquisitions.19
Four days after Kirov’s death, Asratian reported to his Party cell on reactions at the Physiological Institute. Pavlov had twice raised the subject: “Both times one sensed that he condemns...this foul murder, sympathizes with our grief.”20
The circumstances and consequences of Kirov’s murder were murky at year’s end, when a delegation from the Koltushi Rural Soviet, with a Pravda correspondent in tow, made its way to Pavlov’s residence there to inform him that he had been elected “first delegate” and voting member of their Regional Congress of Soviets. Accepting the honor, Pavlov thanked the delegation and spoke a bit about his research: “I dream of having the ability to make mankind healthy, so people entering upon marriage will produce a physically healthy, intelligent, thoughtful generation. We are now conducting our experiments upon animals, dogs. We are working on the improvement of dog breeds and are convinced that our experiments will also prove significant for people.” He did not accept the implicit suggestion to say something positive about the Soviet state, but he did express his gratitude for its support and gave voice to his preoccupation with redeeming it: “The state has faith in me, and I am very grateful for that trust. You see that here an entire city has been built. Now I am mainly concerned with seeing that those expenses were not in vain.”21
In the early days of the New Year, Pavlov fastened upon hopeful signs that the regime was growing more moderate and “realistic.” He was predisposed to believe this by his own scientistic faith—his belief that, in the final analysis, the great development of Soviet science would inevitably give rise to a more scientific and realistic (and so, for him, more democratic and humane) approach to individual and societal problems.22
He opened the Wednesday gathering of February 6, 1935, with a hopeful statement about the direction of developments: “I have complained many times about the oppressiveness of [our] life. Now I want to say something different. It seems to me that our life is changing for the better.” The hopeful signs—the “swallows of summer”—were the end of rationing and the guarantee of a secret ballot. The public nature of Soviet voting had constituted a “terribly difficult and humiliating history, humiliating violence.... How many times I had to complain about the difficult situation for the average citizen when he was forced by various measures to vote for whatever and whomever. Now that is over. I must say that, although I have all my life suffered periodically from short attacks of melancholy (that is my nature), I am by nature not a pessimist, but rather more of an optimist—so I want to believe that there is really occurring a turn toward a normal structure of life.”23
The Stalin Constitution would also supposedly permit a limited loyal opposition to the Communist Party, and Bukharin reportedly secured Pavlov’s agreement to participate in a new political party composed of intellectuals that would propose “changes and remedies” in state policies. Bukharin did not, of course, share with Pavlov his doubts about the sincerity of Stalin’s commitment to reform and democratization, though he had come to fear the general secretary as a tyrant who “will kill us all.”
The new Constitution proved a mere feint toward democracy—real events were moving decisively in the opposite direction. The “quiet terror” struck particularly hard at Leningrad, where in the three months after Kirov’s assassination about 900,000 citizens were arrested. In late December 1934, Pavlov wrote to the SNK that “We have lived and are living under an unrelenting regime of terror and violence.” The terror accelerated in the early months of 1935, reaching into Pavlov’s extended family, his scientific community, and his circle of acquaintances. As he moved toward greater rapprochement with the Bolsheviks and gazed hopefully at the “swallows” of moderation, then, he also used his influence to save victims of the terror from banishment and the gulag.24
In early 1935, the terror reached members of the Communist Party, and the NKVD arrested Denisov and Maiorov. Denisov’s life story might easily have been viewed as a heroic tale of revolutionary commitment, but in Stalin times it rendered him extremely vulnerable: imprisoned (and so perhaps turned) by the Whites, briefly a member of a Socialist Revolutionary brigade fighting Kolchak in Siberia (and so perhaps corrupted), and then, in the mid-1920s, a defender of Trotsky’s program for rapid industrialization, his apparent loyalty to Stalin’s line might easily be viewed as hypocritical cover. Having also traveled abroad (perhaps for meetings with international enemies), he was cast by accuser Anna Dolinskaia as a typical “double-dealer.” He was arrested and sent to Alma-Ata for imprisonment or execution. Maiorov had also sympathized with the Trotskyist program in the mid-1920s, and he, too, was arrested. Pavlov saved Maiorov with a phone call and Denisov with a telegram to Molotov, who had him plucked from the road and returned to Koltushi.25
Stanislav Vyrzhikovskii, the first director of Koltushi and then a coworker there, and Nikolai Krasnogorskii, a longtime favorite who managed Pavlov’s Nervous Clinic at the VIEM, were also arrested in late 1934 or early 1935. Vyrzhikovskii came from a Polish noble family (reason enough for arrest), had perhaps served in the White Army, and had earlier been identified by agents as anti-Soviet. Available materials shed no light on the circumstances of Krasnogorskii’s arrest, but he too was of privileged birth. Pavlov’s intervention saved both men.26
Pavlov also acted successfully on behalf of other members of his extended scientific family, saving from arrest and exile the son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter of his longtime former coworker Vladimir Fol’bort, as well as his former coworker Valentina Adlerberg-Zotova along with her husband and child. These innocents, he informed Molotov, represented just a “very few of a large group of the unjustly accused” for whom he could vouch personally. When A. I. Barkhatova, who cleaned the kennel at the Physiological Institute, was for obscure reasons banished from Leningrad, Pavlov helped her by playing upon the state’s preoccupation with the upcoming Physiological Congress. He notified the Leningrad Soviet that she was an “extraordinarily necessary and valuable worker, who fulfills very serious work in service of the kennel and the experimental animals of the Institute.” Her labors were indispensable to preserving the “normal state of the animals” and so to his efforts to “develop fully his scientific work and to demonstrate it before the delegates of the Congress.”27
Every day, according to one report, “dozens of ‘former people’ lay siege” to Pavlov’s apartment seeking help. Others reached out through his official secretary, Vsevolod. “There were many such matters,” Vsevolod’s wife later recalled, and her husband “frequently returned home in a state of moral exhaustion.” So many requests poured in from people of the most varied social strata that the rescue work was regularized. Vsevolod sometimes decided himself how to proceed, asking only for his father’s agreement and signature; in other cases, the two consulted, and Pavlov sometimes made a personal call to a higher-up.28
Petrova, too, recalled that Pavlov was deeply disturbed by the “heavy repressions” after Kirov’s death and by the tales of the people who turned to him for help. “As an impressionable person, [he] reacted strongly to all this, and suffered much at this time. This could not but be reflected in his nervous system. He began to suffer from insomnia.” Many people asked Petrova to contact Pavlov on their behalf, but she refused to do so, because “I could not bring him personal unpleasantness and suffering. I loved him too much and valued his peace of mind.”29
Perhaps that is what she told herself, but she was terrified by her own vulnerability to arrest and wanted nothing to do with helping any accused “enemies of the people.” She was, after all, the daughter of a wealthy priest who had served the tsar’s military, the ex-wife of another who had fled the country after the Bolshevik seizure of power, and the mother of a soldier who had died fighting for the Whites. Her family album still contained the photos of many former friends among high-ranking tsarist officials and military figures, and of the aristocratic ladies in her prerevolutionary social circle. Petrova shared her fears with Pavlov, who spoke to Nikitin, who in turn set up a meeting between Petrova, Nikitin, and his assistant director, Lebedev. According to Petrova, Nikitin and Lebedev assured her that they were well aware of her prerevolutionary background, but also appreciated her humane care of Red Guards during the revolutionary days. They also no doubt bore in mind Petrova’s help with her politically troublesome intimate friend. In any case, they assured her that she was safe from arrest—but she was certainly not going to endanger her special dispensation by interfering with the Bolsheviks’ repression of former priests and aristocrats.30
From December 1934 through December 1935, Pavlov wrote a series of letters, first to the SNK and then directly to its president, Molotov, expressing outrage at the terror and other Communist policies and petitioning on behalf of victims. These letters also express other revealing undercurrents: his desire to explain himself and to convince Molotov of his point of view, and his naive sense that, however different their outlooks, he was dealing with fundamentally sincere and honest men with whom one could have a meaningful dialogue. Pavlov devoted much time and thought to these letters. His personal papers contain many different drafts of those he ultimately sent and of others that apparently remained in his desk drawer. Some survive in the central Communist Party archive.
In a pained letter to the SNK in December 1934, he recalled his difficult decision to remain in Russia after the Bolshevik seizure of power—his realization that “I absolutely cannot part with the motherland and break off my work here.” But, he continued, he was writing because “it is difficult, sometimes very difficult, to live here.” He ridiculed Communist talk of world revolution and insisted that the frightening example of Soviet society was, rather, facilitating the rise of fascism. But what disturbed him most was that Soviet rule was destroying his homeland and dehumanizing its citizens. The attempt to build a new type of society was “grandiose in its courage,” yet it was only an experiment; and like every experiment its final result remained unknown. Moreover, “this experiment is terribly expensive (and here resides the essence of the matter), with the extermination of all cultural peace and all the cultural beauty of life.”
We have lived and are living under an unrelenting regime of terror and violence.
If our normal activity were to be reproduced in full, without omissions, with all its daily details, this would be a horrifying picture, a shocking impression that for real people would hardly be much softened even if placed next to another picture of us with the miraculously growing new cities, Dneprostrois, gigantic factories, and innumerable scholarly and educational institutions.... One must remember that for man, having come from the beast, to descend is easy but to ascend is difficult. Those who maliciously sentence to death masses of their own kind and do so with satisfaction, like those who are forced to participate in it, can hardly remain beings who feel and think in a human way. And the reverse. Those who are transformed into beaten animals can hardly become beings with a sense of their own human moral dignity.
When I encounter new cases from the negative side of our life (and these are legion) I am torn by a stinging reproach for having lived and living in such conditions.
Am I alone in feeling and thinking this way?!
Have mercy on our homeland and on us.31
In order to avoid a harangue, he had deleted many criticisms of the regime from earlier drafts of this letter. These included the “shameful” absence of free elections (which inevitably humiliated intimidated participants), the persecution of religion (“how many people guilty only of being believers and caring about the church have been deprived of their freedom, exiled to cruel distant lands, and condemned to forced and often completely unbearable labor”), the forcible expropriation of valuable metals and hard currency through interrogation in “gold rooms” (in which suspects were “deprived of freedom, detained in a room, and subjected, of course, to torture”), and the imposition upon scientists in the Academy of Sciences of a formal requirement to employ dialectical materialism. “Is this not the greatest violence against scientific thought? How is this different from the inquisition of the Middle Ages?”32
“A new nonsensical letter from academician Pavlov,” wrote Molotov in the margin as he passed it to Stalin. Molotov replied one week later in a letter whose salutation and closing —“Academician I. P. Pavlov” and “President of the SNK of the USSR”—mirrored Pavlov’s frosty formality. (They had earlier begun a less frigid correspondence related to the construction at Koltushi, and continued to be in contact on that subject of mutual interest.) Acknowledging Pavlov’s “sincerity,” Molotov rejected his “completely unconvincing and insubstantial” political views. How could Pavlov label as the “cultured world” such imperialist powers as the United States and England, which sought world domination and oppressed millions in India and the Americas, as opposed to the Communists, who had saved millions of lives by withdrawing from the imperialist war and were now “successfully building a classless socialist society, a society with authentically high culture and free labor, despite all the difficulties of the struggle with enemies of this new world”? Nor should Pavlov so readily “draw categorical conclusions regarding fundamentally political questions, the scientific basis of which is clearly completely unknown to you.” The Party would never do so “regarding physiological questions, in which your scientific authority is unquestioned.”33
Three months later, the accelerating terror had reached into Pavlov’s family circle. He wrote to Molotov again, but this short note—addressed more informally to “Much-esteemed Viacheslav Molotov” and signed more cordially “Your devoted Ivan Pavlov”—was less a political condemnation than a horrified, pained, and confused query.
Forgive the pestering, but I do not have the strength to be silent. There now proceeds around me something terribly unjust and unbelievably cruel. I’ll vouch for it with my life, for whatever it is worth, that a mass of honest people, working as usefully as their strength allows, which is often minimal, having entirely reconciled themselves to all possible deprivations, are without the slightest basis (yes, yes, I assert this) being punished unmercifully, not appearing at all to be dangerous enemies of the State, the existing state structure and the motherland. How to understand this? Why is it happening? Under such conditions one throws up one’s hands, it is almost impossible to work, you fall into insurmountable shame [at the thought]: “And I am prospering amid all this.”
He added in conclusion: “Thank you for support of the Koltushi work.”34
With Stalin’s approval, Molotov responded three days later, invoking national security and insider knowledge, and adopted a friendlier, informative tone in response to Pavlov’s own. Insisting on the necessity of “special measures” against traitors and saboteurs with ties to Russia’s international enemies, he acknowledged that “there are possible isolated mistakes, which must be corrected,” and expressed his willingness to discuss them.35
Responding immediately, Pavlov seemingly took Molotov at his word—thanking him for “explaining the situation”—and asked him to correct “one indubitable mistake”: the arrest and banishment of Vsevolod’s father-in-law, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law. The Miklashevskii men worked for state institutions, the woman was a housewife. “This is the family of my son’s wife and I have long known them as well as my own and I can vouch, as for my own, that there are not and never will be among them traitors to the motherland.” He added: “And all the same the current situation is such that my already very tired heart cannot take it.” Molotov contacted NKVD chief Yagoda and the Miklashevskiis were quickly restored to their home in Leningrad.36
Pavlov now knew that he could help individuals if, rather than challenging the terror itself, he approached their salvation as exercises in correcting mistakes. “I am very grateful to you for lifting the Miklashevskiis’ banishment,” he wrote to Molotov one week later, introducing a request concerning another family, the Nikol’skiis, who had been unjustly banished from Leningrad. The two brothers were conscientious engineers who could not possibly betray their homeland, and the mother, a native of Riazan whom Pavlov had known for many years, “has a very ill heart and barely can move around the apartment; exile would seriously threaten her life.” He added what proved a vain special request: “Permit me also to request of you in advance that the current measures not touch my scientific family, my scientific coworkers—I will answer for them.” He closed with a statement about his feelings and a question that took Molotov’s explanation of the banishments at face value: “I am tortured all the time and at times cannot work. Why, for example, are people so hurried into exile—given three or five days? You know this means ruin in many cases, the danger of impoverishment and starvation, and frequently involves children and the elderly?” Molotov left that question unanswered, but he did lift the Nikol’skiis’ banishment.37
* * *
In late March 1935, his activities were interrupted by a powerful reminder of his mortality. On March 25, he had, as usual, walked to his Institute at the Academy of Sciences for the Wednesday meeting. The weather was frosty and the wind biting, and he caught cold. Two days later he asked Petrova to examine him. Finding him “unusually pale and very weak,” she listened with “great alarm” to the harsh breathing in both of his lungs. Fearing bronchitis, she urged him to take to bed, but since his temperature and pulse were normal, he consented only to a mustard plaster and some camphor to ease his cough. When he returned home, however, his family insisted upon summoning his physician, M. A. Gorshkov, who diagnosed severe bronchitis. On Sunday, Pavlov seemed better and played his usual evening game of durachki with Serafima, Vyrzhikovskii, and Krasnogorskii. Toward the end of the evening, however, his temperature soared, and the family summoned M. M. Bok, a specialist in lung diseases. Bok diagnosed infection of the right lung with diffusing bronchitis and noticed some weakening of the heart. The patient resisted hospitalization, and soon it was judged too late to move him. By the next Tuesday, a seven-member medical team was in place to oversee his treatment at home. Eminent Moscow physician and heart specialist Dmitrii Pletnev traveled to Leningrad three times to add his voice to the consilium.
Vsevolod described the frightening course of his father’s illness: “The infection spread literally to all organs, especially to the gastrointestinal tract.... Aside from this there was intestinal paresis, then spasms in the digestive tract and respiratory passages, and finally suppurating inflammation of both middle ears. This entire picture developed gradually with continual wave-like variations. The last alarming pathological symptoms were a pronounced arrhythmia and some weakening of cardiac activity.” The physicians recorded the continuing spread of the infection during the first two weeks of April, when the patient was in great pain, took even liquid nourishment with great difficulty, and manifested delirium and hallucinations.
Petrova and almost everybody else considered the situation hopeless. Neither she nor any of the other physicians could recall any case in which even a much younger patient had recovered from such a state. On April 17, however, the first positive sign was recorded: some improvement in Pavlov’s lungs and a lessening of his convulsions. Two days later he suffered from cardiac arrhythmia and an extremely high pulse, but these passed in a few days amid general improvements. On May 2, Pavlov was able to sit in a chair.
By mid-May, family members were catching up on their correspondence, writing relieved letters about the terrible ordeal. “Only father’s iron constitution could sustain all these terrible attacks at the age of eighty-five,” wrote Vera to Babkin. “We have all suffered greatly, but all’s well that ends well. The ears are still suppurating, and he can hardly hear; the digestive symptoms remain—he has no taste or appetite, and forces himself to eat. He says he has to learn how to eat all over again.” Savich dropped by on June 6 and reported that he was in good spirits—and eager to discuss “the political situation in the world”—but feared that this illness signaled the beginning of the end for a man whose example “means so much to us all.”38
The state spared no effort or expense on Pavlov’s care, earning Serafima’s “profound gratitude.” She found him so well attended that it remained for her only to pray and go about her daily errands. “Our government was very attentive and solicitous, making available to the physicians everything they required for good care,” she recorded. “Literally the smallest desire of the patient, the smallest need expressed by the professors, was immediately fulfilled.” Aside from the four leading physicians who planned Pavlov’s care and the professors who advised them, specialists were summoned when needed, and three other physicians and two physicians’ assistants monitored him around the clock.
Their labors and the acquisition of necessary supplies were supervised by yet another physician and by Nikitin, in his capacity as director of the Leningrad branch of the VIEM. So when the physicians decided that the phone was disturbing the patient and that a second line out of his earshot would be useful, that line, with direct access to the Kremlin, was installed within two hours. Sergei Kurakin was on duty one night when Pletnev resolved that the patient would benefit from a particular foreign champagne. Under orders to satisfy immediately any of Pavlov’s medical needs, Kurakin used the direct line to inform the Kremlin. The champagne could not be located in Leningrad, but nevertheless arrived at the Pavlov apartment in two hours. The Kremlin had contacted its consulate in Finland, which located the necessary beverage and had it flown to Leningrad. Commissar of Health Protection Kaminskii closely monitored the situation and attended the final meeting of the physicians’ consilium on May 9.
The sickbed was inevitably enmeshed in the web of intrigue that surrounded the patient. The state’s solicitousness was of course in large part motivated by the starring role that Pavlov was scheduled to play at the upcoming Physiological Congress. Petrova assisted the other physicians before Serafima and Vsevolod managed to banish her from the apartment. According to Petrova, “Serafima Vasil’evna was certain that Iv. P. would not recover this time, so she ceased to restrain her behavior toward me.” (Serafima avoided all mention of Petrova in her own memoirs, but it requires little imagination to guess how she might have experienced this.) Pavlov himself was well aware of the state’s extraordinary efforts on his behalf. Few people who so nearly escape death forget those who succored them in their hour of need, and his illness thus became yet another factor nudging him toward reconciliation with the regime.39
On June 10, he escaped to Koltushi to recuperate. He dashed off a short note to Kaminskii thanking him for his “warm attention during my illness” and assuring him that “Koltushi is restoring me superbly.” In a letter to Serafima, who was resting in Kelomiaki with Vladimir’s family, he exulted at being alive and at his beloved science dacha, and attributed his health problems in part to his nervous reactions to current events:
As you know from Volia, I reached Koltushi by automobile on Tuesday, the 10th. I am extraordinarily pleased with it. I stroll through the fields delirious with contentment. It is quiet, there is nobody around, the distant horizon is pleasing, the larks are singing, I gather flowers. I’ve also begun to swim regularly. We play gorodki, but moderately and not every day, since sometimes there are no partners. We eat our full and well.... I occupy myself a little with the conditional reflexes research. I am very satisfied with the entire organization of the work here. And then I read Molière and my beloved Shakespeare and again dedicate some time, not especially much, to psychology. You see—a varied, easy, and free life....
But I forgot to write the main thing: imagine—my [heart] irregularity has completely vanished. Neither strolls nor gorodki nor sometimes very filling suppers bring on the slightest irregularities. Apparently, this is a purely nervous thing, and the immediate cause is my reaction to my impressions of current events. Here I somehow forget them or, more accurately, lose my sensitivity to politics.40
Pavlov never fully recovered from his illness. His heartbeat remained irregular and his digestive system unreliable, his pulse often raced and his ears ached. Yet he now looked forward to a very demanding period: a ten-day trip to London in late July to address the International Neurological Congress and collect an honor from the Royal Medical Society, and, almost immediately upon his return, hosting the Physiological Congress. His family was dead set against his trip to London, but he was determined to go.41
While resting at Koltushi, Pavlov granted several interviews to correspondents from Izvestiia and Pravda, initiating what can only be termed a public lovefest. For the first time, he was prepared to praise the Soviet state publicly, not only for its support of his research and science in general, but also for its broader goals and its diplomatic and military measures to defend Russia in perilous times. However contradictory his sentiments, he was closing ranks behind his homeland. The interviewers well understood that they should ask him about particular subjects (especially Koltushi and the international situation) and avoid others (such as the suppression of religion and “enemies of the people”), and their articles cast Pavlov as a proud patriotic symbol of prospering Soviet science.
The first of these articles, published in Izvestiia on July 6 under the title “Academician Pavlov on the Soviet Motherland,” began by noting that Pavlov had granted an interview on the first anniversary of the announcement of the projected new Soviet constitution. Pavlov took it from there, explaining that, having recently recovered from a serious illness, he was resting in his beloved Koltushi and hoping to live “to one hundred...and even longer!”
Why do I so want to live a very long time?
Most of all for my dear single treasure—for my science. I want myself to complete work on conditional reflexes, to strengthen the bridge already thrown from physiology across to the clinic and to psychology....
I want to live for a long time because my laboratory in Koltushi is flourishing as never before. Soviet power has provided millions for my scientific work, for the construction of laboratories.... Soviet power provides extraordinary means for science....
Whatever I do, I constantly think that I am, insofar as my powers permit, serving most of all my homeland. In my motherland a grandiose social restructuring is now proceeding. The barbaric chasm between rich and poor is eliminated. And I want to live to see the final results of this social restructuring....
An enormous achievement of Soviet power lies in the unceasing strengthening of the country’s defensive abilities. I want to live as long as possible also because I feel confident in the safety of our motherland.42
From the eve of Pavlov’s departure for London on July 24 until his return to Russia on August 6, Pravda and Izvestiia constantly published items on his triumphant trip. Three articles in Izvestiia were written by its “special correspondent,” Pavlov’s son Vladimir, who accompanied his father. “We have arrived splendidly,” he telegrammed from London, where the Soviet ambassador Ivan Maiskii greeted their train. British newspapers were abuzz, added another Izvestiia reporter, about Pavlov’s participation in the upcoming congress, his scientific experiments, and the remarkable laboratory at Koltushi built for him by the Soviet state. Both newspapers reported that every mention of Pavlov’s name at the congress elicited “stormy applause” from the audience and that a special plenary session would be devoted to his report, which Pavlov had previewed at a reception in the Soviet embassy. On July 30, by prior arrangement, his report on “Types of Higher Nervous Activity in Connection with Neuroses and Psychoses, and the Physiological Mechanism of Neurotic and Psychotic Symptoms” appeared in Izvestiia. The following day Pravda carried an interview, conducted by telephone with Vladimir as his father sat nearby and listened. “Academician I. P. Pavlov—Most Popular Figure at the Congress” elaborated an article the next day.
The Soviet press had not exaggerated the enthusiasm of Pavlov’s reception. Mobbed by reporters at Victoria Station upon his arrival, he had escaped to Maiskii’s limousine. Outlining his upcoming talk to the London press at a reception in the Soviet embassy the next day, he spoke “energetically, passionately, with a glint in his eyes, and with his characteristic gesticulations,” recalled the consul. His audience was utterly charmed.43
The New York Times reported that the lecture hall at University College where Pavlov spoke was “packed with medical men of many countries eager to catch a glimpse of him, and afterward dozens of them surrounded the little old man begging him to autograph copies of his lecture.” (This had been translated and printed in advance.) In a follow-up story—“Finds Dogs React Same as Humans: Pavlov Says He Has Proved They Possess Our Four Fundamental Temperaments”—the Times reporter summarized Pavlov’s explanation of canine and human temperaments. This was not mere theory, he explained, but the factual results of sixty years of careful experiments. “A choleric dog,” for example, “tends to have same higher nervous disorders as a choleric man,” and Pavlov claimed to have reproduced “claustrophobia and other familiar mental disorders of humans in his lab dogs.”44
London’s Sunday Express brought Pavlov’s conclusions closer to readers’ daily lives in an interview published under the title “The World’s Most Brilliant Brain Scientist Tells WHY YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE. The Cause of Genius: How Children Are Changing: The Impulse That Rules Your Life.” What is genius? According to the great physiologist, it was a “state of the brain where one mental attribute overshadows the remainder.” The genius’s brain responded especially sensitively to a particular type of stimuli, and he worked “along one channel alone, with the result that whatever he does in that particular field is well-nigh perfect.” What makes people who they are? “Hunger, fear, and sex, and of these I place fear first.” Not so much physical fear as fear of deprivation. Yet this fear could be changed by experience—and he had done so in the lab:
Man, like all other animals, is controlled by two things—heredity and environment. My tests on the brains of dogs over a period of thirty years have proved that the primary fears are responsible for what we term the nature of the animal. Take two puppies of the same litter—both with equally strong nervous systems. In one I check the instinctive fears that beset any living being due to heredity and to a lack of knowledge when faced by certain stimuli. I do this by repeating the experience over and over again until the dog realises that his fears are unfounded. With the other I deliberately stimulate conditions under which those primary fears have full sway, and in which the unexpected happens without regularity. The second puppy, gifted with identical qualities of brain and heredity, becomes like so many humans, a prey to fears which are unfounded, but which are responsible for so much misery, both mental and economic, in the world.
Explaining that there was “no essential difference between the brain of any animal or human,” Pavlov elaborated by reference to Roza and Rafael, about whom, in his enthusiasm, he made claims (even allowing for journalistic inaccuracies) that he would hardly have published in a scientific paper—but which indeed reflected the direction of his thinking:
For instance, I have two apes. Those apes have now, as a result of my experiments, minds equal to the mind of a child of eight years living in the Stone Age. My apes live under conditions closely akin to those in which the link between ape and man first stumbled upon the road which led to—shall we say—Bernard Shaw? In five years I have been able to develop the brains of those two apes through my knowledge of conditional reflexes to absorb experiences that the link between man and ape took thousands of years to acquire. But, these same experiences I have given to dogs. They have been unable to react as the apes have, because their brains have not the mechanical aid in the shape of the four semi-hands of the ape.
If all that was so, the interviewer asked, did Roza and Rafael love Pavlov? The great scientist responded patiently: “Love is merely an impression; not a lasting phenomenon. Man is a social animal, and the love of two humans for one another soon dies, giving place to comradeship. How could I be a comrade to an ape? In every case mentalities differ, but the primary cause of love—physical attraction due to the necessity for a continuation of the species—could hardly be true of a possible reaction to myself on the part of an ape.” 45
The sole recorded dissenting voice during the triumphant tour came from the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, which protested the visitor’s experimental practices and sent him a letter through the Russian Embassy disputing (correctly) the claim that his experiments with dogs were “completely painless.”46
During his stay in London Pavlov developed a strong rapport with the Soviet ambassador, Maiskii, conferring several times “on the most varied themes—on science, the Russian people, the future prospects for humanity.” It was characteristic for Pavlov, after ruminating about any complex subject, to finally fasten upon a particular phrase to express his conclusions, and then to repeat that phrase subsequently whenever the subject came up. Maiskii’s later account of their conversations records a number of these phrases—some of which Pavlov first uttered in early July, others which he would repeat in the later days of his “lovefest” with the Soviet press. For example, he recalls Pavlov’s preoccupation with his age and how long he still had to live (“I will try to live to 100! I will fight for that!”), which (as on other occasions) led to his explanation of why he wanted to live much longer (for his science and to witness the results of the “Soviet experiment”), and then to some assessment of the prospects for that experiment.
Describing these conversations in a memoir published in Soviet times, Maiskii wrote in the requisite triumphalist spirit, but the sentiments and phrases he recorded would soon be repeated by Pavlov in other forums: “Pavlov wanted very much to live and work. He was full of engrossing scientific interests and plans, full of the desire to see the results of that which had been born and was taking shape in the life of the peoples of the Soviet Union.... ‘It is becoming very interesting to live. What will happen? What will be the results?’ And then, alluding pointedly to his unfriendly attitude toward Soviet power in the years after October, Pavlov added in full sincerity: ‘You Bolsheviks will achieve your goals. I earlier doubted this, but now am certain that you will win.’” He was not really “certain,” but perhaps he was trying that conclusion on for size—and he would repeat some variation of this basic formulation more than once. Parting warmly, they agreed that Maiskii would visit Koltushi when he returned to Russia on holiday that fall.47
In high spirits on the road home, Pavlov sent Bukharin a playful telegram, which was published in Izvestiia (highlighting for the public, again, their informal friendly relationship). Bukharin’s newspaper also published another item by Vladimir on his father’s warm reception and day of rest in Riga. Vladimir added that, during an interview with an Italian correspondent, his father had dwelled upon his delight with Koltushi and expressed his concern about justifying the great support he received from the Soviet government.”48
When his train reached the Soviet border, Pavlov was seated in a special car and joined by Nikitin. A large crowd of family members, coworkers, and officials greeted the returning scientist upon his triumphal return on August 5. Both Nikitin and Vladimir reported Pavlov’s enthusiastic remarks about his health, his trip, and his country: he thanked the Soviet Embassy in London for his “wonderful” reception there, mentioned his friendly relations with Maiskii, and added: “At the basis of the social structure of our motherland lies respect for labor. And I explain the extraordinarily warm reception from Soviet representatives abroad during my trip as respect for my work and scientific services. For all my work goes to the benefit of my great motherland.” That led him inevitably to thoughts of his beloved science village: “When I show my foreign colleagues Koltushi, I will tell them directly of the solicitousness of the government and about my gratitude. You know, an entire scientific city has been created. This is a shining example of how highly science is valued in our country, in the Soviet Union.” That thought, in turn, led him, as it had in his conversations with Maiskii, to a hopeful conclusion about Russia’s prospects: “I am increasingly inclined to the thought that the great socialist construction that is being conducted by our country and our state will be completed successfully.”49
The next day, with the Physiological Congress fast approaching, Pavlov accompanied a high-powered delegation from Moscow on an inspection of the Leningrad branch of the VIEM. A photograph in Pravda captured him in intense conversation with national Communist Party leaders Ivan Akulov and Grigorii Kaminskii, and the newspaper reported that Pavlov paused in front of the sculpture to Lenin at the campus entrance and approved the choice of location. He admired the newly landscaped grounds and freshly painted buildings, the panoramic view of the central courtyard and fountains, and the new sculpture memorializing the dog that had been designed with his close collaboration.
Watching a delighted Pavlov drink all this in, Fedorov asked with a smile: so he will not be ashamed to show the Institute to his foreign colleagues? “No, hardly ashamed. There is of course something to show, and not only here. Not long ago Koltushi was an empty space, but now how construction has unfolded! I’m already thinking: will I be able to fully justify the enormous expenditures that the Soviet government has made to create the optimal conditions for my scientific work?” “You will be able to, unconditionally!” rejoined Kaminskii. “You will justify them unconditionally!”50
All was ready for the Congress.