The Zoological Museum and Institute in Petrograd–Leningrad: from the First World War to the “Great Break” (1914–mid-1930s)

Abstract

This paper considers some aspects of the history of the Zoological Museum and the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which appeared on its base in 1931, during two decades following the outbreak of the First World War. It deals with the scientific, social and political consequences caused for the Zoological Museum by the First World War, two Revolutions of 1917 and subsequent Civil War. The paper describes establishment of the Museum’s Council, which ruled from 1917 to 1930, and an attempt to evacuate collections in 1917, as well as conditions under which the Museum zoologists had to work in the period of the wars and revolutions. The first years of the restoration of normal work of the Zoological Museum after the Civil War are considered, as well as the effects of the flood, which damaged the Ichthyological, Herpetological and Osteological departments of the Museum in 1924. The renaming of the Museum into the Institute during the reform of the Academy of Sciences in 1929–1934 is discussed as well as layoffs and repressions during this reform. The paper considers changes in the Exhibition Department, made on demand of the authorities. The information is given about the Faunistic Conference of 1932, which was hosted by the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR under the slogan for “the Party’s” and “Bolshevik’s faunistic studies”.