The first great public triumph of Pavlov’s long life had been accepting the Nobel Prize; the second was hosting the International Physiological Congress in Leningrad and Moscow.
The Soviet state spared no effort or expense to impress his foreign colleagues and use this first large international scientific gathering in Russia to showcase its support for science and collective security against the threat from Nazi Germany. Having underestimated for years the unique threat of Nazism—having even facilitated Hitler’s rise to power by forbidding the German Communist Party to form a popular front with German socialists—Stalin had reversed course in December 1933. The USSR joined the League of Nations, belatedly endorsed that international body as a force to contain fascist Germany, and committed itself to collective security through multilateral treaties with Great Britain and France. “We do not seek an inch of foreign soil,” Stalin announced, “nor will we surrender an inch of our own.”
Like the USSR, Great Britain and France were playing their own game, which was stoking Soviet fears. The Western powers had responded tepidly in March 1935 when Hitler reintroduced conscription in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Three months later, Great Britain concluded a naval agreement with Germany that implicitly acknowledged the Nazis’ right to rearm and signaled Hitler’s success in circumventing the League of Nations framework. It was in this context that preparations for the Physiological Congress proceeded simultaneously with those for the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, which would convene in August 1935, several days after the physiologists departed, to abandon the call for worldwide revolution in favor of a popular front against fascism. The Physiological Congress, too, was an arena of popular front politics, an opportunity to portray the USSR as a peace-loving state prospering amid a worldwide capitalist depression that threatened to give rise to war, and as a modernizing socialist nation that supported and valued science like no other.
These themes—state patriotism and scientism—struck the very deepest chords in Pavlov’s political ideology. Alarmed by the fascist threat and the danger of war, he was more than willing to use the rostrum at the Congress to advocate peace and collective security. Yet for him the emotional significance of the gathering went much deeper. It would have been unimaginable during his youth in the 1860s, and the headiest of dreams in 1914, that his country, long a scientific backwater, would proudly host an international scientific congress for which the government would spend unheard-of sums of money and dispatch its leading figures to address scientific delegates, and during which the country’s leading newspapers would hail the gathering as a major event, cheering crowds would salute the visiting scientists, and the world’s leading physiologists from the United States, Germany, and Great Britain would marvel at Russia’s scientific facilities and new scientific cadres. For an old “man of the sixties,” this was a fantasy come true. As his foreign colleagues raved about the Congress, Koltushi, and the large cadre of young Soviet scientists, Pavlov was moved and grateful. In his first words to the Congress, he used a most personally resonant word—thanking the Soviet government for allowing Russian scientists to welcome their foreign colleagues dostoino—in an honorable, dignified manner. The emotional content of the Congress was further enhanced by the fact that it enabled Pavlov to bask in the affection and respect of his foreign colleagues at what everybody except him assumed would be his last international meeting.
The state had left nothing to chance in planning the Congress, creating both a ten-person organizing committee and an eight-person state committee to oversee it. The composition of the state committee reflected the great political importance of the event: headed by Ivan Akulov, former chief prosecutor and now secretary of the SNK’s Central Executive Committee, it also included Aleksei Stetskii, head of the Central Committee’s section on Cultural Propaganda; Grigorii Kaminskii, Commissar of Health Protection; and Ivan Kodatskii and Nikolai Bulganin, the leaders of the Moscow and Leningrad city soviets.1
The composition of the organizing committee was a sensitive political matter that was resolved only after a year of tense negotiations. Pavlov, of course, would serve as president, but when he returned from Rome in 1932 he announced his refusal to waste his time on organizational affairs and dragooned Orbeli into doing so as assistant president. Orbeli balked, not wanting to sacrifice three years of his life to the task, but Pavlov insisted that the Congress could proceed only if Orbeli agreed—and he finally did, most reluctantly.2
Pavlov now negotiated with the Communist Party over the composition of the organizing committee, using as leverage his great international prestige, without which the Congress would never have been scheduled for the USSR. Throughout the negotiating process, he made clear that he might withdraw demonstratively from the organizing committee, or even inform his foreign colleagues that his invitation to convene in the USSR had been a mistake. (According to one NKVD surveillance report, he considered doing so as late as September 1934.) By August 1933, the state had reluctantly agreed that Orbeli would serve as “first assistant to the president,” but along with two other assistants, one being Communist academician and biochemist Alexander Palladin. Pavlov wanted his former coworker Fol’bort to serve as committee secretary, but he finally accepted Communist Lev Fedorov as “general secretary,” with Fol’bort and Communist physiologist Khachatur Koshtoiants as simple “secretaries.” The Party was thus satisfied that, although only three of the organizing committee’s eight members were Communists, the Party dominated its secretariat.
Negotiations came closest to a breakdown regarding Lina Shtern, the Communist physiologist whom Pavlov still loathed. Shtern’s advocates insisted upon her inclusion in the organizing committee, but Pavlov refused. The SNK assigned Bukharin (who was otherwise pointedly excluded from involvement in an event much within his area of expertise) to change Pavlov’s mind. In a letter of March 1933, he turned on the charm: “I ask you fervently not to object to the one single lady in the bouquet of Your OrgCommittee. This is not gallant, on top of everything else (that is a joke, of course). Dear Ivan Petrovich, moderate your misogyny!.... I very, very personally ask this of you. Shtern, moreover, was in our delegation to the [1932] Congress and her ‘exclusion’ would be [anti-Semitic] ‘discrimination,’ which, again, is entirely untoward.”3
Pavlov dug in his heels: “No and no! I absolutely object. Jewishness, of course, plays not the slightest role here.” There was “nothing outstanding” in the scientific work of this “dishonorable and brazen individual, with whom I can’t stand to be in the same room.” Having spied on him during the 1929 Congress, she had “enlivened and sharpened this disgusting impression” three years later at the closing session in Rome by sitting among the members of the International Committee (“to the surprise of its members”) and then pushing her way into the front row, next to the Congress’s president, to represent Russian physiology. “Impudence and effrontery!” When she was therefore excluded from the proposed organizing committee, Shtern protested to the SNK and the Communist Party’s central committee. Stetskii and Shtern’s other supporters mobilized, insisting that there be no “political concession to Academician Pavlov” on this point. Shtern enjoyed “great scientific authority” abroad, Stetskii insisted, and her “political position” (she had emigrated to the USSR and become a candidate member of the Communist Party) made her participation in the organizing committee appropriate and valuable. Bukharin was alarmed that the “apparatus intends to insist, as an ultimatum, on Shtern” and that Pavlov’s response would destroy the Congress, so he turned to Stalin, explaining the situation and expressing his view that “Pavlov’s absence at the congress would be a huge scandal (especially in view of his American connections).” Only Stalin’s immediate intervention could head off disaster. Stalin no doubt dictated the ultimate compromise: Shtern was excluded from the organizing committee, but included in the much larger honorary presidium of the Congress.4
Once these matters were settled, the Congress machinery, with unlimited access to the state’s authority and resources, performed splendidly. As the meeting approached, Akulov dispatched state committee members to the various places where delegates would meet and visit. In view of the “great political significance” of the Congress, these needed to be cleaned up and arrangements made there for the visitors’ “maximum comfort.” As head of the Leningrad Soviet, Kodatskii submitted a list of suitable tourist destinations for those wishing to witness the successes of socialist construction and arranged for free use of public transportation by all delegates. He also supervised the renovation of Academician Pavlov Street (formerly Lopukhinskaia Street, location of Leningrad’s branch of the VIEM), which had a “neglected look” and needed to be cleansed of wooden shacks, dilapidated buildings and stables. The street was cleared, covered in fresh asphalt and beautified with trees and grass. Many institutions took advantage of the situation to gain special state funds. Orbeli reported, for example, that Aleksei Ukhtomskii’s physiology lab at Leningrad University needed to be modernized, repainted, and generally spruced up (500,000 rubles were allocated).
After Kaminskii’s visit to Koltushi in March 1935, construction had accelerated and concentrated on features that would impress visitors. Tours of selected scientific facilities were carefully arranged. For example, Kupalov, Rozental’, Ganike, and other coworkers would conduct one-hour tours of Pavlov’s physiology division at the VIEM; while Rikman, Denisov, Timofeeva, and Zeval’d would guide guests at Koltushi. Films highlighting Soviet scientific achievements were shown daily. For example, on August 16, delegates could choose between The Physiology and Pathology of Higher Nervous Activity (completed on the very eve of the Congress), Depth Phobia (portraying Petrova’s experiments on the dog John), and Experiments on Humans (about the research of another of Pavlov’s coworkers, Konstantin Bykov). Twenty-one people, including Speranskii and several of Pavlov’s coworkers, were assigned to help the press maximize attention to the Congress.
For the first time in Congress history, simultaneous translation was provided in English, German, French, and Russian (deploying, no doubt, the same resources that were organized for the upcoming meeting of the Communist International). The vice president of the SNK, Mezhlauk, arranged the delegates’ conference packages, which included medals honoring Ivan Sechenov and copies of his Selected Works in a choice of languages. The SNK’s executive secretary, Miroshnikov, organized transportation, providing convoys of Fords for the visiting physiologists.
Political preparations were equally meticulous. Massive press coverage throughout the Congress emphasized the “enormous significance” of convening the Congress in “the country where socialism is being triumphantly built” at the same time as capitalism wallowed in depression. Articles and exhibits at the Congress trumpeted the growth of physiology in the USSR—from 24 physiology labs before the war to 388 in 1935, from 20 to 40 publications per year to an average of 700—and the production of young scientists at such a rapid rate that almost half of current Soviet physiologists had been in the lab less than five years. The routine inflation of Soviet statistics notwithstanding, the record was indeed impressive—as was evident at the Congress itself, where about 500 of the 1,400 attendees and 170 of the 485 papers represented the host country. Many were delivered by Pavlov’s coworkers.5
Fedorov served as secretary of the Communist Party group at the Congress, organizing with Nikitin and Koshtoiants a meeting of Communist physiologists on its opening day in order to cover the sessions and respond to any hostile comments (especially at the session on the physiology of labor, another first for the Congress and a showcase for Soviet physiologists). The state committee delegated Kaminskii to confer with Pavlov about the “final editing of his introductory words.”6 The result was indeed, as American attendee Andrew Ivy put it, a “transcendental success” for the extravagantly feted guests, for the Soviet state, and for the beaming host.
On Thursday, August 8, the day of the Congress’s opening reception, Pavlov met Walter Cannon and his wife Cornelia at the train station and brought them to his apartment for breakfast. Other foreign delegates would marvel at the elderly physiologist’s vitality and health, but his old friend knew better. “It was obvious he was not well,” Cannon wrote later. Pavlov’s bout with pneumonia had left him with swollen ankles and an irregular heartbeat. He shared with his American friends his current preoccupation: “I think,” Cannon recalled a few years later, “he was rather appalled by the responsibilities of the huge development of his work and anxious that the great expenditure involved in the new establishment should be justified by important results. He greatly wished that it might have come twenty or twenty-five years earlier.”7
Other delegates arriving by railway were greeted by a placard welcoming them and, just outside the station, by the first sign of the fulsome reception to come. There, in the words of Yale University physiologist John Fulton, they encountered “a fleet of at least 150 Ford cars, 1930 model, ready to take the Congress members to the several hotels”—the best available: the venerable Hotel Europe and the Astoria, and the less upscale October. Any fear that the ten-day stay in the USSR would involve physical deprivation was immediately assuaged by the caviar and other fine foods available for Western currency at the Hotel Europe.
Nothing, however, prepared Fulton for the reception that evening in the Marble Hall of Leningrad’s Museum of Ethnography. After the delegates meandered through the exhibits for an hour or so, the doors to the great hall were thrown open: “I am sure that the sight which greeted our eyes has not been witnessed in Russia since the days of the Tsar. There [were] 80 to 100 long buffet tables spread with the most precious of Russian delicacies—8 or 10 varieties of caviar, huge sturgeon, some jellied, some arranged in fantastic ways, shell-fish of every description, foie gras, hundreds of bottles of champagne and other Russian wines, ices, pheasants, chickens, and a horde of waiters who kept plates and glasses filled for two hours.” An orchestra played as omnipresent waiters refilled plates and glasses for hours. Pavlov circulated about, “surrounded by a tight ring of Soviet and foreign delegates” eager to shake his hand. For Fulton, it was “one of the most surprising spectacles I have ever witnessed.”8
The Congress opened formally the next morning, August 9, at the stunning Tauride Palace—formerly the home of Catherine the Great’s lover Grigorii Potemkin, then the site of the tsarist Duma, the provisional government, and now, renamed the Uritskii Palace, home to the Leningrad Soviet. “Looking like a medieval saint,” at 11 a.m. Pavlov called the Congress to order. The simultaneous translation was “excellent”: the English version that “came through the ear phones was so well-timed to the old man’s spirited gesticulations that one fancied he was actually speaking English.... The most remarkable thing was to see a man of 86 years presiding over a huge gathering—great flood lights pointing at him and movies being taken from every direction—all with the fire and enthusiasm of a man of forty.”9
Pavlov’s force as personality and symbol energized the vast hall, but, unlike so many of his scientific presentations, it was not just the presence of this great old man of physiology, this passionate Russian survivor and truth seeker, that electrified his audience. There were also the occasion, the grim international background, and his words themselves. His brief remarks were proud, patriotic, and politically pointed. Beginning slowly, he welcomed the delegates on behalf of Russian physiologists and noted the appropriateness of holding the Congress for the first time on Russian soil. The gifts of Sechenov memorabilia honoring the “father of Russian physiology” should remind visitors that Russian physiology was quite young. There was no need to dwell on the usefulness of international congresses, so he would make just two brief points on especially timely subjects. First, the great number of papers on increasingly fractionalized subjects posed a challenge for gatherings in their increasingly diffuse discipline, which should therefore organize discussions around key thematic questions. Second, these meetings served the important role of attracting youth to science and stimulating their work. This was especially true of contemporary Russia, where “Our state now provides enormously great resources for scientific work and attracts masses of youth to science.” With this—his first compliment to the Soviet state before an international audience—Pavlov pivoted toward his main point: “We are all dear comrades, united in many cases by obvious friendly feelings. We are working, obviously, for the rational, decisive unity of mankind.” War would rend that asunder. “I can understand the grandeur of a war for liberation,” he commented (perhaps consciously softening his well-known denunciation of revolution in the preface to his Twenty Years of Experience). “Nevertheless, one cannot deny that war is essentially a bestial means of resolving vital difficulties, a means unworthy of the human intellect with its immeasurable resources.” These words elicited thunderous applause, after which he continued with a phrase that he had added at the last moment, probably as a result of consultation with Kaminskii and Petrova about the “final editing of his introductory words”: “And I am happy that the government of my mighty homeland, struggling for peace, is the first in history to proclaim: ‘Not an inch of foreign soil!’” Physiologists should be especially sympathetic with this position, and “as seekers of truth, we should add that it is necessary to be strictly fair in international relations. And this is the main and real difficulty.” Again applause. He concluded by thanking “our government, which has given us the opportunity to receive our dear guests in an honorable manner.” Pavlov had gone well beyond a plea for peace—he had endorsed Soviet foreign policy.10
There followed short speeches by Akulov (“straight propaganda,” wrote Fulton, “but in much better taste than were similar pronouncements [in Rome] a few years ago”); the elderly president of the Academy of Sciences Karpinskii (who stumbled on his path to the podium, to which he was then assisted by a gallant Pavlov), then the head of the Leningrad Soviet Kadetskii (“again propaganda”). All emphasized the connection between scientific progress and avoiding war. Pavlov then asked the audience to rise in memory of two physiologists who had passed away since the previous congress, “whereupon a large orchestra played the Chopin dirge most superbly.”
The plenary speech by Walter Cannon underlined Pavlov’s basic themes of the importance of scientific development and the dire threat of war. After accepting Pavlov’s invitation to deliver this address, Cannon had prepared for it carefully—soliciting from Babkin, Gantt, and others information on the true state of science in the USSR. He and his wife had arrived in Vladivostok after a trip to China, Korea, and Japan, and had taken the Trans-Siberian Railroad across the country. Like Pavlov’s, Cannon’s assessment of Soviet policies was decidedly mixed. He admired the indisputable progress of industry and science, sympathized with the goal of closing the great divide between rich and poor, and appreciated the possibilities of planning. He was also very critical of the terror and oppression, about which he was familiar both from his contacts and personal experience. (The Cannons’ train through Siberia had passed by various branches of the gulag, and Cornelia was detained briefly in Sverdlovsk for photographing the building in which the tsar’s family had been murdered.) Like Pavlov, Cannon thought he had detected encouraging signs of moderation in recent years. He was also concerned not to exacerbate the difficulties of his Russian colleagues, so his criticisms of Western countries were explicit, while those of the USSR were muted.
Cannon’s address was titled “Some Implications for Chemical Transmission of Impulses,” but he made his way to that subject through a warm tribute to Pavlov followed by a carefully crafted, passionate commentary on the frightening developments of recent years: “How profoundly and unexpectedly the world has changed! Nationalism has become violently intensified until it is tainted with bitter feeling. Governments whose strengths seemed deeply rooted in fixed tradition have vanished like phantoms, only to be replaced by the strange new forms and new agents.... Creative investigators of high international repute have been degraded and subjected to privations. Some universities have been closed; others have been deprived of their ideal social function of providing a sanctuary for scholars whose search for truth is free and untrammeled and where novel ideas are welcomed and evaluated.” These words, like his reference to racial theorists and “nationalistic science,” were clearly aimed at Nazi Germany. Others, such as his insistence on the need for scientists to enjoy a “free interchange of students and ideas,” expressed Cannon’s criticisms of the USSR as well. Discussing the impact of the economic depression on science, he contrasted the United States, where funding for science had been much reduced, with the USSR, where the importance of science was “especially appreciated” and funding “for the development and prosecution of scientific studies is relatively greater than in any other country of the world.”11
Cannon’s speech struck a deep chord with the delegates and, together with Pavlov’s remarks, set the themes and tone for the Congress’s public events. Fulton labeled it the pièce de résistance of the opening session, and it established Cannon’s reputation as a public spokesman for science. Pravda and Izvestiia lauded his “remarkable speech” as the “key to a great day,” and Molotov congratulated him personally. (At that private meeting, Molotov also solicited Cannon’s endorsement of a proposal to establish a Soviet counterpart to the Nobel Prize, but Cannon suggested that the funds instead be used to secure for Russian scientists free access to foreign scientific journals—an idea to which Molotov responded coolly.) The Soviet press emphasized that two great physiologists—one Russian, one American—had both recognized the relationship between the struggle for peace and the development of science. In this, “Let our scientist-guests know that academician Pavlov, speaking for peace and declaring that we don’t want even one inch of foreign soil, has expressed the will of the entire country.” Approving reactions by other delegates were also cited in the press.12
The Congress’s scientific sessions began that afternoon and continued for one week, through August 16. That week was punctuated by breaks for organized sightseeing, special events for eminent delegates, and lavish banquets, and culminated in the transportation of the entire Congress to Moscow for a closing plenary session and banquet in the Kremlin. Delegates visited Pavlov’s facilities at the VIEM and Koltushi as well as Orbeli’s and Ukhtomskii’s labs, the Institute of the Brain, and Leningrad’s main maternity clinic. Some were guided through the massive Kirov Electrical Station and a local meat-packing plant. Here, Izvestiia reported, “workers met the delegates very warmly, asked them about the work of the Congress, and showed them their facility.” The visitors then traveled in a convoy of some 400 Fords to Peter the Great’s grand palace and grounds outside Leningrad (Izvestiia reported on the cheering youth who lined both sides of the road as the convoy passed). There was a concert and ballet at the city’s Academic Theater followed by a late dinner for selected guests at Vladimir’s home; two days later, another formal dinner was hosted by the Pavlovs.
According to Fulton’s account, delegates were uniformly impressed by what they saw, except on those rare occasions when they deviated from the program. His devout Yale colleague William Mahoney, for example, “went on a solitary excursion in search of a Catholic church and came back somewhat crest-fallen.” Entering the Kazan Cathedral on Nevskii Prospekt for a quiet moment of prayer, a shocked Mahoney discovered that it had been converted to a Museum of Atheism “with comic signs plastered over the old altar and [posters] depicting the foibles of Jesus and the Twelve Apostles, and portraying merry jokes about the immaculate conception.”13
Fulton’s description conveys some sense of the experience of the more prominent delegates: August 14 began with some sleepy scientific sessions—a concert the previous evening, followed by an eight-course meal at Vladimir’s for some delegates and slow service at the 2:00 a.m. dinners at the hotels for others, had kept everybody up late the night before. A Russian professor then informed him that Cannon had recommended that Fulton represent the United States in a series of international radio broadcasts to describe the Congress and thank the Soviet government for its hospitality, so Fulton worked on his remarks, which had to be submitted to the censor by 7:00 p.m. He then joined about fifty guests at the Pavlovs’ formal dinner: “Madame Pavlov, whom I had not previously met, is a charming old lady of 75 with alert eyes, high forehead, a very vivacious manner, with much the appearance of a German Hausfrau and altogether a most delightful human being. She speaks German fairly well, but no other western language. She refers to her Ivan as though he were a school boy whom she had trouble keeping out of mischief.”
Next morning the sessions again “seemed to be a little dull,” so Fulton did some shopping in the Torgsin (hard currency) shops, visited the renowned Hermitage museum, toured Orbeli’s labs, and attended a lunch party that Orbeli hosted at the Astoria Hotel. It was then time to prepare for the evening’s gala banquet at Pushkin (renamed from Tsarskoe Selo), formerly the tsar’s principal residence outside the city.14
That memorable evening began with a tour of Nicholas II’s quarters, seemingly untouched since his hurried departure in July 1917. It continued in the throne room of the Catherine Palace, where “a gargantuan feast had been laid out for 1,400 people.” Fulton learned that new kitchens had been installed for the occasion and were staffed by 80 chefs and 180 waiters brought from Moscow. The tables were “piled high with elaborate hors d’oeuvres,” and at each place were seven wine glasses, a carafe of vodka, and two bottles of wine. When most of the guests were seated, at about 8:30, Pavlov entered to great applause, and the 180 waiters began distributing their delicacies. A loud ovation greeted the headwaiter, who bore an effigy of Pavlov in clear ice. Fulton was seated next to Krasnogorskii’s famously beautiful wife, who turned to him at one point in the bacchanal with the comment: “We love to be gay like this and now we have so little opportunity.”
Pavlov and representatives of France, Germany, and Sweden pronounced toasts—but these were inaudible in the din. (In his published remarks, which appeared the next day in Izvestiia, Pavlov lauded natural science as “the main strength of humanity” and physiology as the science that would “teach us how correctly to think, feel, and desire” and so provide “true happiness to human existence.”) Dessert consisted of “elaborately decorated sherbets and ices, some with flaming brandy, others with fire-works fizzing out of the top.” After dinner, “those who could still move” gravitated to the palace’s gallery and terrace, where they watched fireworks, danced, drank, conversed, and sometimes slumbered. Fulton watched three inebriated scientists—including Nobel laureate Edgar Adrian—playing leapfrog on the balcony. “I was inclined to agree with a proud but slightly intoxicated Russian who whispered in my ear: ‘This is a party to be remembered!’” He returned to the hotel at about 3:00 a.m. Scientific sessions the next morning again seemed “unusually dull.”15
Pavlov was not much for parties. He preferred escorting his foreign colleagues around Koltushi, which by all accounts impressed them mightily. An article in Izvestiia titled “World Center of Science” recorded the enthusiastic reactions of visiting scientists, including Pavlov’s longtime acquaintance Emil Abderhalden of Germany, who attested to the “enormous impression” made upon him by “the clever construction of the soundproof rooms” and the quality of the new science village. Here were “the most propitious opportunities” for scientific work on subjects of unparalleled scale and significance.
The Pavlovs spent most of the day hosting the Cannons there, “walking and talking, sitting in the warm sun on the porch, speaking German most of the time,” eating two fine meals, and touring the lab, the residences for humans and dogs, and Pavlov’s garden of fruit and flowers. The pair was most impressed. In a common trope, Cornelia recorded that “The dog kennels in which he keeps his experimental animals are beautiful, better than the accommodations of most of the children that we have seen.” Eager to show off his science village, Pavlov scrutinized each day the list of its tourists. Seeing that Fulton’s name was missing, he dispatched Vsevolod to his hotel room on August 19, as the American was packing hurriedly for the trip to Moscow, in order to transport him in his “huge and very comfortable Lincoln limousine” for a last-minute tour. “There seemed to be no choice but to go,” and Fulton, duly impressed, returned just one hour before leaving the hotel for Moscow.16
Pavlov was basking in the praise of his foreign colleagues for Koltushi, the Congress, and much else that they had seen, when, on August 16, he engaged in a long, friendly conversation with a reporter for Izvestiia. With a well-framed question—“How important was it for foreigners to gain some knowledge of our country?”—the journalist easily elicited expressions of pride, gratitude, and patriotic solidarity with the Soviet state: “The Congress has yielded very much in this respect,” Pavlov responded. “I have spoken much with my foreign friends about their general impressions from their stay in our country. And I was delighted to hear the unanimous opinion that our richly equipped Soviet laboratories, particularly my laboratories and the facility at Koltushi, the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, and so forth produced an enormous impression upon them. I was delighted to hear from those delegates who had visited us earlier that over the past three or four years our city has become unrecognizable, that people are better dressed, that the country has become more prosperous.” Thus, he continued, the Congress had strengthened scientific ties at a time when, as Cannon had correctly observed, international relations had taken an ominous turn. As the science of man—Pavlov repeated the theme of his toast at the banquet—physiology had the special obligation to teach people not only how to work, rest, and nourish themselves correctly, but also “how to think, feel, and desire correctly”—to establish the basis of a scientific psychology. The Soviet state fully understood this: “Take my laboratory at Koltushi. The state has spent and is spending much money on Koltushi; an entire scientific village has been built. And so I now constantly worry how we will redeem these expenditures by scientific work.” He added to that familiar sentiment a corollary that would develop over the next few months into a theme of his widely publicized essay, “Testament to Youth”: Russian scientists should be more concerned about discharging the moral obligation entailed by such generous support—they needed to put “more love, more energy” into their work. “Our state provides enormous resources for science. This creates an obligation.” The Soviet government’s peace policy, he continued, opened up “brilliant perspectives for the development of science in our country. We want not to fight but to create.” Economic depression in the West restricted the development of science and generated the danger of war. “In our country, the opposite is the case.”
Mr. Hitler wants to fight. It is true that in his book Mein Kampf he announced that he will not make war against the entire world, because there are no chances of victory. But he could create such chances through a game. And such a game is being played: they shower compliments on England, conclude a pact between England and Germany, and so forth. True, I am certain that this game will end in failure and England will provide clear proof that it does not want to fight. But the restructuring of Europe after the world war preserves a hotbed of war. Give Mr. Hitler a free hand and he will immediately attempt to swallow us and anybody else like a fly. That is why we should especially sympathize with and facilitate our government’s struggle for peace.17
That evening, Pavlov departed in a special cabin on the overnight Red Arrow train, which bore him and the other delegates to Moscow. His family accompanied him, as he planned to take advantage of Moscow’s relative proximity to Riazan to visit his hometown before returning to Leningrad. Arriving in Moscow, he was greeted at the station by Kaminskii, other officials, and reporters. “Hello, Moscow, it has been a long time since we last met,” quipped the smiling scientific dignitary as the flashbulbs popped and the cameras rolled.18
The final session proved to be Pavlov’s apotheosis as international celebrity. After two final scientific talks and a report from the International Committee, Edinburgh University biochemist George Barger took the podium to thank the Congress’s hosts. He did so in remarkable fashion. Turning toward Pavlov, who sat on the dais, he began in English: “I would like to begin my speech of thanks with an expression of feelings of respect and love for our president, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. But, since he understands German better than English, I will continue my speech in German.” Then, in German: “I want, esteemed teacher, first of all to express the feeling of respect, delight, and love that we all feel for you. I think that there is no single sphere in the natural sciences that one individual so indisputably heads as you do physiology. You are facile princeps physiologorum mundi [the undisputed Prince of World Physiology].”19
After the enthusiastic applause subsided, Barger continued in French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and Dutch. Pavlov’s face reflected his childlike astonishment at this display of linguistic prowess. Turning to Kaminskii, he exclaimed: “Look, look, yet another language, and another! Amazing—how can a person do that?!” Barger concluded in Russian: “As one of your newspapers correctly writes, this congress is a great event in the cultural life, not only of the Soviet Union, but also in the scientific and cultural life of the entire world. The representatives of scientific thought of this world could see the progress in science of our Soviet friends and also the creation of a new classless society. We are very grateful to you for the warm reception!” Pavlov then briefly addressed a moved silent hall, solemnly thanking the delegates in Russian and, in German, declaring the Congress closed.20
That evening another sumptuous feast was held at the Kremlin’s Great Hall. Molotov was the official host, and he sat at the head table with Kaminskii, Akulov, Vlas Chubar’, and members of the Congress’s International Committee. Amid the festivities, Pavlov took a moment to ask Molotov to release his coworker Adlerberg-Zotova and her family from exile, and also to inquire skeptically about collectivization. Molotov later recalled that he said “I know the countryside well and will follow what comes of your experiment” with collectivized agriculture. “I know the peasant well. He can suffer in silence, but then suddenly he will want to leave your kolkhozes for the old ways—what will you do?” Molotov responded with the Party line: the formerly wealthy peasants, the kulaks, had indeed suffered a material loss and were certain to complain (he did not have to explain what the Party “would do” about them, since that had been amply demonstrated during collectivization). Yet life for the great mass of poor and middling peasants had been very hard and would surely improve on the new collective farms. Pavlov, he recalled, “gave some thought” to his response.
Molotov delivered a closing speech that sounded the now-standard themes of peace, collective security, and the successful development of science and socialism in the USSR. His mention of Pavlov elicited “stormy applause” (according to Izvestiia) and his reference to Cannon elicited only slightly less enthusiastic “noisy applause” (according to the same source). The Congress’s delegates could judge the authority of science in the USSR and the attitude of Soviet proletarians toward it by their own reception over the past ten days, Molotov concluded, and could be confident that the USSR would prove a reliable ally in their struggle against the danger of war.
Pavlov rose with the first toast in response, and replayed with Molotov a scene that he had “rehearsed” with Kaminskii and Fedorov during their tour of the VIEM on the eve of the Congress. During that rehearsal, the splendid state of the facilities and Fedorov’s rhetorical question (“So, you won’t be ashamed to show this to your foreign colleagues?”) had elicited Pavlov’s now-standard response: the facilities were wonderful, state support for science was bountiful, and he only hoped that he could justify the expenditures. Now, during the final scene at the Congress, the overwhelming experience of the past ten days and the task of responding to Molotov’s speech served as a powerful stimulus for an identical response: “You have heard and seen the exclusively favorable position that science occupies in our country. I want to illustrate the existing relations between state power and science with just one example: we, the heads of scientific institutions, are anxious and uneasy regarding whether we are able to justify all those resources that our government has made available to us.” Molotov responded as had Kaminskii ten days earlier: “We are certain that you will unconditionally justify this!” Thunderous applause. Pavlov now proceeded to his toast, which combined his accumulated sentiments over the past month with the headiness of the moment in his warmest public comments yet about the Soviet state: “As you know, I am an experimenter from head to toe. All my life consists of experiments. Our government is also an experimenter, but of an incomparably greater category. I passionately wish to live in order to see the victorious conclusion of this historical social experiment.” To rising applause, he raised his glass “to the great social experimenters.”21 A series of leading Western physiologists followed suit, praising the Congress and all that they had seen. Ivan Razenkov, formerly Pavlov’s coworker and now chief of the Physiology Division of Moscow’s VIEM, concluded with a toast to Soviet science, socialist construction, Stalin, and Molotov. The banquet ended with a standing ovation for their host.22
Now the delegates left for home. Most poignant for Pavlov was Cannon’s departure. The friends’ leave-taking was, as Cornelia Cannon recorded, “a sad one,” for as Cannon “looked at the frail old man he could hardly hope ever to see him again and the thought was painful.”23
For Pavlov, busy days still lay ahead. Serafima, Vladimir, Vsevolod, and their spouses had arrived in Moscow to join him on his trip to Riazan. On the morning after the Congress, Pavlov and his extended family—including his nephew Alexander—visited Pavlov’s sister Lidiia. On Pavlov’s spontaneous impulse, some of them hopped into his limousine to visit Nesterov, who happily accepted Pavlov’s invitation to join the Pavlov entourage on their return trip and spend some time at Koltushi.
Pavlov talked with Nesterov about the paintings of a recently deceased mutual favorite, Viktor Vasnetsov, and, preoccupied with his own mortality, expressed special interest in the artist’s painting of Koshchei the Deathless, a figure in Russian folklore possessed of decrepit immortality (and a kidnapper of young women) with whom Pavlov had long compared himself in intimate conversations with Petrova. Nesterov had access to the painter’s studio and took his visitors for a tour. There they found Koshchei the Deathless, which made a powerful impression on the aged scientist.
Pavlov had earlier accepted an official invitation to attend the air show at Tushino airport, and although he was now very tired, he felt obliged to make an appearance. Declining an invitation to sit on the official dais—where he would have shared the stage with Stalin—he spent about an hour there, providing a quote for Izvestiia on the “marvelous skill of Soviet aviators” before returning to the city to join his family in their special wagon on the late evening train to Riazan.24 They arrived at 2:00 a.m., remaining aboard until their busy day began seven hours later.
This trip to the childhood home that he had left some sixty-five years ago proved deeply emotional, memory-laden, and bittersweet. First, his brother Sergei’s widow, Anna Pavlova, came by for a warm reunion. She was followed by an entourage of officials, whom Pavlov invited to enter his railcar. Having had his fill of official bloviation, he cut short their welcoming ceremony, interrupting the remarks of the president of the Regional Soviet by thanking him and inviting the delegates to join the family for a cup of tea and “some simple talk.” Pavlov disappointed his hosts by explaining that he would be leaving that very evening (perhaps because he was tired; perhaps at the insistence of Serafima, who had never warmed to Riazan).
Riazan officials had prepared for the homecoming by consulting with Anna Pavlova and so were prepared for Pavlov’s visit to the gravesite of his parents at his father’s former parish, Lazarev Church, and to his boyhood home. The cemetery’s paths had been renewed and the family plot spruced up: the dilapidated cast-iron railing that had bounded it had been replaced by a freshly painted wooden fence, flowers had been laid, and the names of the interred now glistened on a new marble headstone. Approaching it deep in his memories, Pavlov read aloud the names on the stone and consulted with Lidiia about them. At Serafima’s request the two priests summoned for the occasion sang a hymn for the deceased. The family then entered the church, where Pavlov pointed out where his father, his mother, and he himself had stood during services.
The next stop was Pavlov’s boyhood home on the former Nikol’skaia Street, now renamed Academician Pavlov Street. He climbed to the attic, where his father’s former caretaker now lived. Pavlov embraced him as a relative, moving the old man to tears. Walking from room to room, he recounted boyhood incidents to his sons and reminisced warmly about his seminary teacher Feofilakt Orlov, who had boarded with them. Entering the garden that he had worked with his father, he identified excitedly a tree that he had planted. “All these sights disturbed the nerves and brought a heavy sadness,” his cousin observed. “Ivan Petrovich was visibly disturbed, very enlivened, and in every corner tried to find traces of something familiar from the distant past.”25
A trip to the former seminary (now a military institution) completed Pavlov’s personal itinerary, allowing Riazan’s officials to proceed with two parts of their own program: a steamship ride up the Oka River to a reception at the Korablino collective farm and the evening’s gala banquet in the building of the Regional Soviet. As the steamship made its way slowly upriver, Pavlov remained on deck enjoying the scenery and peaceful reflection, marred only by the cameraman from the local newspaper. By the time they reached Korablino and saw masses of people on the shore with welcoming placards, however, they were running very late. The steamship could not negotiate the sandbar between the river and the shore, and there was no time to take a small boat back and forth. So Pavlov instead chatted for a few moments with the delegation of collective farmers who had arrived onboard to escort them. Listening to their accounts of agricultural success, he inquired about the precise yield, but the language of measurement familiar to him from boyhood, the traditional sam-piat and sam-shost, had long ago been replaced. Pavlov and the farmers onshore traded shouted greetings, questions, and answers for a few moments, and he professed delight at the educational opportunities available to them, as opposed to the “rampant illiteracy” of prerevolutionary times.26
When they returned to Riazan at about 10 p.m. and made their way to the Regional Soviet building, they were greeted by a military orchestra and thousands of well-wishers. Some fifty local dignitaries sat at tables heavily laden with food and drink. Speeches, speeches, and more speeches: from officials, educators, and physicians.
In his response, with the heady experiences of recent weeks fresh in his mind, Pavlov praised the status of science in the USSR and praised the Soviet state for that signal achievement. Scientists had been celebrated in tsarist Russia as well, but only within a narrow circle. “That which I see now does not resemble such jubilees. In our country now the entire people honors science.... Earlier, science was separated from life, alien to the population, but now I see something quite different: it is respected and valued by the entire people. I raise a glass and drink to the only government in the world that could accomplish this, which so values and supports science—the government of my country.”
After dinner, there were more official remarks and a procession of delegates to greet the visiting celebrity. One short speech delighted the audience and touched Pavlov with its sweet naiveté and resonance with his own remarks: twenty Young Pioneers, dressed in white shirts with red tie, presented him with flowers, and their leader, “a pretty and pert girl, ten or twelve years old,” recited her well-memorized speech, ending with “Dear Ivan Petrovich! We all promise you that we will study well and become great scientists like you!” Pavlov smiled, shook her hand, and complimented her. “If they wish it, they will become scientists,” he added to the smiling adults. Pavlov’s cousin noticed that the family’s companions at the head table, who had earlier seemed dour bureaucrats, became increasingly congenial as the night wore on. Having realized that the Pavlovs were not consuming the bottles of alcohol laid out before them, the officials “queried with their fingers whether we’d be willing to pass them their way.... Our bottles migrated toward them one after another, and so we acquired new friends quickly and wordlessly.”
The departure time for the Pavlovs’ train was approaching, so, with the evening still in full swing, Pavlov unexpectedly rose, thanked his hosts warmly, and asked to be taken to the station. (Parties such as this were quite rare, so the president of the Regional Soviet, who was escorting the Pavlovs, assured his tablemates in a whisper that the night was still young, they should not disperse, and he would return shortly.) The family left for Moscow around midnight, arriving in the morning for a final day in the capital while awaiting their train home.
That evening, August 20, having been constantly in motion and at the center of public attention for the month since his partial recovery from pneumonia, Pavlov, with his family and Nesterov, set off for Leningrad. Upon their arrival the next morning, he granted one last interview to a waiting TASS correspondent. The Congress had gone “superbly,” he said. “Our guests were completely delighted by everything they saw. Tens of foreign scientists told me this and I have no reason to doubt their sincerity.” He spoke animatedly about the research at Koltushi, where he hoped to produce “strong nervous types” with such desirable traits as bravery, energy, and so forth. “I am certain,” he added, “that in the future this work will also be applicable to people.”
What were his immediate plans? “To tell the truth, I am very tired. That’s why I have decided to take a two-week vacation to rest at Koltushi, and then again to work.”27