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To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Boris Osipovich Dolgikh, the great Russian ethnographer of Siberia, this article gives an account of his first field expedition to the Kets, Evenkis, Nganasans, and Dolgans of central Siberia. The author, himself a former student of Dolgikh, argues that Dolgikh's work as an enumerator for the 1926/27 census forged his identity as an ethnographer. He also implies that the expedition for the 1926/27 census was a cradle for the careers of many other scientists. The article is framed by a history of Soviet science by the editor. It also serves as an introduction to the unique polar census expedition, which the editor argues is better understood as ‘an inscription’ of Siberian aboriginal peoples than as a statistical census in the traditional sense.

ArgumentPost-Stalinist reforms resulted in dramatic changes in the ways of operation of Soviet science: one can say that they altered the very understanding of what science was, or should be, in the socialist society. A new vision came about as a result of political and rhetorical efforts of scientists, who pushed forward their various, often conflicting, agendas acting in accordance with specific rules of Soviet polity. The most visible part of the reform came with the 1961 administrative reorganization of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The related series of changes, however, was much broader and comprehensive, modifying the relationships between science and ideology, politicians and academic researchers, and establishing the very division between fundamental and applied research, which had been strongly rejected during the preceding Stalinist period.

The social conditions for scientific work in the Stalin era are often assumed to have been patterned more or less after Lysenkoism and Soviet genetics in the 1930s and 1940s. Much less is known about other areas of Soviet science in the same period. Were Lysenkoism and the fate of genetics typical or atypical of what was happening in other areas of Soviet science under Stalin? The case of Vladimir I. Vernadskii, an earth scientist, and his scientific school in the years between 1928 and 1945 documents the survival and development of an important tradition very different from that of Lysenkoism and suggests something about the mentality of one segment of the scientific intelligentsia with strong ties to prerevolutionary Russian science. The fate of the Vernadskii school suggests something of the diversity and complexity of Soviet science, even during the worst years of the Stalinist regime and illuminates some of the ways Soviet scientists like Vernadskii were able to protect their scientific enterprises and continue a critical tradition in Russian science despite political interference. The defenses employed by those non-Communist scientists who, like Vernadskii, were able to survive this period relatively unscathed by the Stalinist purges deserve more attention than they have previously received from western scholars.1 Vernadskii (1863-1945) was an important scientific organizer, a philosopher of science, and probably Russia's leading earth scientist in the first half of the twentieth century. He is considered one of the pioneers of geochemistry in world science, together with his student Aleksandr Fersman in Russia, Victor M. Goldschmidt in Norway and Germany and such scientists of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., as Frank W Clarke, Joseph P. Iddings, Charles Van Hise, Arthur Day, and Norman L. Bowen.2 Vernadskii's students and scientific heirs

According to my definitions, any society must combine “science,” “technology,” and “design” whenever it creates useful material objects. Science establishes principles which technology (with some admixture of common sense, and guidance from economics) embodies in physical components through manufacture. Design attends to the composition and arrangement of these components, as well as to the appearance and balance of qualities of the assembled product, with a view to satisfying consumers and other users. Given a conception of three essentially distinct elements, imports of advanced equipment by the USSR do not necessarily signify an inability to create original designs. The intention might rather be to put certain designs into production, using processes not offered by indigenous technology.

What is the relationship between the field of science and the philosophy of dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union? Ninety-five per cent of the fears and misgivings expressed by American writers in regard to this subject are quite unwarranted. They have been arrived at, not by any use of the scientific method of carefully examining observable facts, but by accepting the superficialities and distortions of the sensational press, and by making sweeping "deductions" from wholly unverified premises, or from isolated and exceptional instances. Some scientists who would not dream of approaching their own field of specialty in any such manner apparently feel that the complex problem of the relations between science and a certain philosophy within a new society can be so approached. It is clear upon reflection that anyone who wants to deal seriously with this question, or to express himself with any degree of competence upon it, must study carefully the philosophy in question, and undertake a comprehensive scholarly examination, or avail himself of the data of others who have made such an examination, of the actually operative facts on a large social scale, and in some detail. The attitude, for example, that dialectical materialism is not worth any serious study is hardly compatible with the claim to possess any serious views as to its possible relationship to science. Having mentioned certain prerequisites, the present writer may as well make immodest haste to say that he has at least tried to satisfy them by learning the Russian language, examining in detail the historical development of the philosophy of dialectical materialism, and spending the major part of two years in independent investigations in the U.S.S.R., as Cutting Travelling Fellow of Columbia University. While the Soviets have made various mistakes in the handling of certain problems, the over-all picture is so much better than we have ordinarily been led to believe, that our general thinking on these matters must undergo basic modification to come within hailing distance of the existing facts. The following answers to a few key questions frequently raised by scientists in this country will epitomize some of the findings, as they bear upon the theme before us today. Question 1: What is the actual relationship between the scientific method and dialectical materialism? The relationship is this: dialectical materialism in one of its parts tries to explain what the scientific method is, tries to develop an adequate theory regarding the nature of this method. Certainly very few of us here present will imagine that it is not necessary to do this, or that it is an easy matter. In reality, of course, it is a very difficult problem to state fully and exactly the premises, procedures, underlying conditions and leading implications of this method. Aristotle tried to do it, Francis Bacon tried to do it

There is a sense in which a philosophic theory can be confirmed. We may ask what its effects were on the development of scientific theory,—did it clarify ideas and help open up new areas of research, or did it constrain the work of science? In this essay, we shall try to judge the significance of dialectical materialism from this standpoint. We shall be concerned with the bearing of this philosophy on scientific work, especially in the Soviet Union.Now dialectical materialism is not a “philosophy” in the same sense which the word has when applied to, let us say, logical empiricism. The difference is evident when a writer like Haldane asks, for instance, how far scientific discoveries have verified the principles of dialectical materialism.' We could not ask in a similar way whether scientific discoveries have confirmed the principles of logical empiricism. For the latter affirms no factual propositions concerning the world; it enunciates solely the principle of verifiability, and there is clearly no scientific discovery which could possibly refute the requirement of verification. If it makes sense to ask how far scientific discoveries verify dialectical materialism, then the latter must obviously contain factual propositions concerning nature which should be stated in a way to permit of confirmation of rejection.