The Soviet Experiment: Eugenics and Medical Genetics in Russia 1900-1990

这笔拨款将允许首席研究员完成对俄罗斯从革命前到现在的自然-培养辩论的历史的研究和写作。这本书将记录20世纪20年代由几组实验生物学家、精神病学家、人类学家和医生创立的优生学；分析他们作为俄罗斯优生学协会的一部分所进行的研究；记录优生学在1930年的“消亡”，以及它在1934年作为“医学遗传学”的迅速转变和重生；展示在斯大林主义和李森科主义盛行的几十年里，个人和专业网络如何能够保持该领域的传统“地下”；并展示这些网络和机构如何在20世纪60年代和70年代重新出现，以帮助塑造勃列日涅夫时代的“新”苏联生物学。根据大约二十年的研究、档案工作和访谈，以及以特定人物、主题和时期为重点的初步出版物，这项工作还将包括许多最近才获得的信息，包括优生学局收集的关于彼得堡知识分子的数据；伊万诺夫试图用人工授精使人类和黑猩猩杂交的档案文件，关于H.J.穆勒在俄罗斯活动的信息；与校长的访谈记录；以及关于优生学与苏联心理学和精神病学之间持久联系的第一手和第二手材料。通过仔细追踪人类遗传领域，研究机构，以及创建和维持它们的专业和个人网络，我希望这项工作能够提供一个新的国家案例研究，帮助修改和拓宽我们对优生学的理解，阐明网络在极权主义下维持俄罗斯科学的复杂作用，并引起科学、技术、和医学网络在他们研究的事件中的作用，以及为当前的生物伦理问题和关注提供一种新的，稍微不那么受文化限制的视角。鉴于这个主题以及我将要讨论的许多内容令人吃惊的特点，这项工作不仅应该引起科学家、科学历史学家、俄罗斯历史学家、医生和生物伦理学家的兴趣，而且应该引起广大公众的兴趣。

This grant will allow the Principal Investigator to complete research and writing on a history of the nature-nurture debate as it unfolded in Russia, from pre-revolutionary times to the present day.The work will chronicle the creation of eugenics in the 1 920s by several groups of experimental biologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and physicians; analyze the research they conducted as part of the Russian Eugenics Society; chronicle the "demise" of eugenics in 1930 and its rapid transformation and rebirth as "medical genetics" in 1934; show how personal and professional networks were able to maintain the field's traditions "underground" during decades of Stalinism and Lysenkoism; and demonstrate the way these networks and institutions reemerged in the 1960s and 1970s to help shape the "new" Soviet biology of the Brezhnev era.Based on some twenty years of research, archival work, and interviews, as well as preliminary publications focusing on particular people, topics, and periods, the work will also include much information that has only recently become available, including data collected by the Eugenics Bureau on the Petersburg intelligentsia; archival documentation of Ivanov's attempt to hybridize humans and chimpanzees using artificial insemination, information on H.J. Muller's activities in Russia; recorded interviews with principals; and primary and secondary materials on the abiding connections between eugenics and Soviet psychology and psychiatry.By carefully tracking the field of human heredity, the institutions where it was studied, and the professional and personal networks that created and sustained them, I hope this work will help to revise and broaden our understanding of eugenics by providing a new national case study, illuminate the complex role of networks in sustaining Russian science under totalitarianism, and focus the attention of historians of science, technology, and medicine on the role of networks in the events they study, as well as affording a new and somewhat less culture-bound perspective on current bioethical issues and concerns. Given the topic and the rather startling character of much I will discuss, the work should be of interest not only to scientists, science historians, Russian historians, physicians, and bioethicists, but also to the broader public.