Bibliography of Russian and Soviet science: Life sciences

This is a select bibliography of academic level English language books (including translations) and journal articles, published mainly post World War II, about the history of the life sciences in Russia and the Soviet Union.

For other areas of science, please see:

Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources are included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see the Further reading section for other bibliographies, and the External links section for historical sites, academic sites, and museums.

Citations follow APA style. Book have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, relevant chapter or section titles are provided when useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.

Biology

Adams, M. B. (Ed.). (1990). The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia. Oxford University Press. Falk, R., & Lazcano, A. (2012). The forgotten dispute: A.I. Oparin and H.J. Muller on the origin of life. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 34(3), 373–390. Graham, L. R. (1987). Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union. Columbia University Press. Joravsky, D. (1959). Soviet Marxism and biology before Lysenko. Journal of the History of Ideas, 20(1), 85–104. Krementsov, N. (2011). A Martian Stranded on Earth: Alexander Bogdanov, Blood Transfusions, and Proletarian Science. University of Chicago Press. Krementsov, N. (2014). Revolutionary Experiments: The Quest for Immortality in Bolshevik Science and Fiction. Oxford University Press. Martin, B. (2023). A crusade in Soviet biology. In Roy and Zhores Medvedev: Loyal dissent in the Soviet Union (pp. 16–31). Academic Studies Press. Oldfield, J. D., & Shaw, D. J. B. (2013). V. I. Vernadskii and the development of biogeochemical understandings of the biosphere, c.1880s–1968. The British Journal for the History of Science, 46(2), 287–310. Todes, D. P. (1989). Darwin Without Malthus: The Struggle for Existence in Russian Evolutionary Thought. Oxford University Press. Todes, D. P. (1997). Pavlov's physiology factory. Isis, 88(2), 205–246. Weiner, D. R. (1988). Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia. Indiana University Press. Yurchak, A. (2019). Communist proteins: Lenin's skin, astrobiology, and the origin of life. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 20(4), 683–715.

Biological weapons See

Darwinism and Russian Evolutionary Thought Rogers, J. A. (1965). Marxist and Russian Darwinism. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 13(2), 199–211. Rogers, J. A. (1973). The reception of Darwin's Origin of Species by Russian scientists. Isis, 64(4), 484–503. Rogers, J. A. (1974). Russian opposition to Darwinism in the nineteenth century. Isis, 65(4), 487–505. Voerkelius, M. (2025). Darwinism and the human-animal boundary in the Soviet Union. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 26(1), 35–61.

Genetics and Lysenkoism

Adams, M. B. (Ed.). (1990). The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia. Oxford University Press. Caspari, E. W., & Marshak, R. E. (1965). The rise and fall of Lysenko. Science, 149(3681), 275–278. deJong-Lambert, W. (2012). Lysenkoism in Poland. Journal of the History of Biology, 45(3), 499–524. deJong-Lambert, W. (2012). The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair. Springer. deJong-Lambert, W. (2013). Hermann J. Muller, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Leslie Clarence Dunn, and the reaction to Lysenkoism in the United States. Journal of Cold War Studies, 15(1), 78–118. deJong-Lambert, W., & Krementsov, N. (Eds.). (2017). The Lysenko Controversy as a Global Phenomenon (2 vols.). Palgrave Macmillan. Duančić, V. (2020). Lysenko in Yugoslavia, 1945–1950s: How to de-Stalinize Stalinist science. Journal of the History of Biology, 53(1), 159–194. Gordin, M. D. (2012). How Lysenkoism became pseudoscience: Dobzhansky to Velikovsky. Journal of the History of Biology, 45(3), 443–468. Gordin, M. D. (2018). Lysenko unemployed: Soviet genetics after the aftermath. Isis, 109(1), 56–78. Graham, L. R. (2016). Lysenko's Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia. Harvard University Press. Harman, O. S. (2003). C. D. Darlington and the British and American reaction to Lysenko and the Soviet conception of science. Journal of the History of Biology, 36(2), 309–352. Iida, K. (2015). A controversial idea as a cultural resource: The Lysenko controversy and discussions of genetics as a "democratic" science in postwar Japan. Social Studies of Science, 45(4), 546–569. Jones, G. (1979). British scientists, Lysenko and the Cold War. Economy and Society, 8(1), 26–58. Joravsky, D. (1962). The Lysenko affair. Scientific American, 207(5), 41–49. Joravsky, D. (1970). The Lysenko Affair. Harvard University Press. Kneen, P. (1998). Physics, genetics and the Zhdanovshchina. Europe-Asia Studies, 50(7), 1183–1202. Konashev, M. (2020). Soviet genetics and the communist party: Was it all bad and wrong, or none at all?. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 42(2), 1–19. Krementsov, N. (1996). A "second front" in Soviet genetics: The international dimension of the Lysenko controversy, 1944–1947. Journal of the History of Biology, 29(2), 229–250. Lecourt, D. (1977). Proletarian Science? The Case of Lysenko. New Left Books. Medvedev, Z. A. (1969). The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. Columbia University Press. Mikulak, M. W. (1970). Darwinism, Soviet genetics, and Marxism-Leninism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 31(3), 359–376. Muller, H. J. (1951). Science in bondage. Science, 113(2924), 25–29. Prenant, M., & Levy, J. (1948). The genetics controversy. Science & Society, 13(1), 50–78. Pringle, P. (2008). The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century. Simon & Schuster. Roll-Hansen, N. (2005). The Lysenko Effect: The Politics of Science. Humanity Books. Roll-Hansen, N. (2008). Wishful science: The persistence of T. D. Lysenko's agrobiology in the politics of science. Osiris, 23(1), 166–188. Rossianov, K. O. (1994). Stalin as Lysenko's editor: Reshaping political discourse in Soviet science. Russian History, 21(1), 49–63. Schandevyl, E. (2003). Soviet biology, scientific ethos and political engagement: Belgian university professors and the Lysenko case. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 19(2), 93–107. Soyfer, V. N. (1994). Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science. Rutgers University Press.

Botany and Agriculture

Bakhteev, F. Kh., & Dickson, J. G. (1960). To the history of Russian science: Academician Nicholas Ivanovich Vavilov on his 70th anniversary (November 26, 1887 – August 2, 1942). The Quarterly Review of Biology, 35(2), 115–119. Brain, S. (2010). The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature. Environmental History, 15(4), 670–700. Davidian, G., Ivanov, N., & Lekhnovich, V. (1977). Pyotr Mikhailovich Zhukovskii: A distinguished Soviet scholar and plant scientist. Economic Botany, 31(4), 432–435. Fitzgerald, D. (1996). Blinded by technology: American agriculture in the Soviet Union, 1928–1932. Agricultural History, 70(3), 459–486. Moon, D. (2013). The Plough That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia's Grasslands, 1700–1914. Oxford University Press. Nabhan, G. P. (2009). Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine. Island Press. Schönfelder, T. (2022). The good, the bad, and the pochvoved: Viktor Kovda, Soviet soil science, and the agromeliorative complex. Cahiers du Monde russe, 63(1), 59–80. Vavilov, N. I. (1992). Origin and Geography of Cultivated Plants (D. Löve, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1926–1940)

Huamn Biology, Medicine, Public health, and Anthropology

Medicine and Public Health

Bernstein, F. L., Burton, C., & Healey, D. (Eds.). (2010). Soviet Medicine: Culture, Practice, and Science. Northern Illinois University Press. Conroy, M. S. (1998). Pharmacy in Soviet Russia before the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). Pharmacy in History, 40(1), 3–24. Conroy, M. S. (2004). Russian-American pharmaceutical relations, 1900–1945. Pharmacy in History, 46(4), 143–166. Conroy, M. S. (2004). The Soviet pharmaceutical industry and dispensing, 1945–1953. Europe-Asia Studies, 56(7), 963–991. Graham, L. R. (1977). Science and values: The eugenics movement in Germany and Russia in the 1920s. The American Historical Review, 82(5), 1133–1164. Gray, J. A. (Ed.). (1964). Pavlov's Typology: Recent Theoretical and Experimental Developments from the Laboratory of B. M. Teplov. Pergamon Press. Haber, M. (2013). Concealing labor pain: The evil eye and the psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth in Soviet Russia. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 14(3), 535–559. Hastings, A. B., & Shimkin, M. B. (1946). Medical research mission to the Soviet Union. Science, 103(2681), 605–608. Henderson, D. J. (1968). Soviet medicine. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 59(3), 105–110. Hutchinson, J. F. (1990). Politics and Public Health in Revolutionary Russia, 1890–1918. Johns Hopkins University Press. Joravsky, D. (1977). The mechanical spirit: The Stalinist marriage of Pavlov to Marx. Theory and Society, 4(4), 457–477. Krementsov, N. (2002). The Cure: A Story of Cancer and Politics from the Annals of the Cold War. University of Chicago Press. Krementsov, N. (2008). Hormones and the Bolsheviks: From organotherapy to experimental endocrinology, 1918–1929. Isis, 99(3), 486–518. Michaels, P. A. (2000). Medical propaganda and cultural revolution in Soviet Kazakhstan, 1928–41. The Russian Review, 59(2), 159–178. Michaels, P. A. (2003). Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin's Central Asia. University of Pittsburgh Press. Mudd, S. (1947). Recent observations on programs for medicine and national health in the USSR. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 91(2), 181–188. Roemer, M. I. (1962). Highlights of Soviet health services. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 40(4), 373–406. Semashko, N. A. (1946). Friedrich Erismann: The dawn of Russian hygiene and public health. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 20(1), 1–9. Sigerist, H. E. (1937). Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union. W. W. Norton. Solomon, S. G. (1990). Social hygiene in Soviet medical education, 1922–30. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 45(4), 607–643. Solomon, S. G. (2003). Knowing the "local": Rockefeller Foundation officers' site visits to Russia in the 1920s. Slavic Review, 62(4), 710–732. Solomon, S. G. (Ed.). (2006). Doing Medicine Together: Germany and Russia Between the Wars. University of Toronto Press. Solomon, S. G., & Hutchinson, J. F. (Eds.). (1990). Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia. Indiana University Press. Solomon, S. G., & Krementsov, N. (2001). Giving and taking across borders: The Rockefeller Foundation and Russia, 1919–1928. Minerva, 39(3), 265–298. Starks, T. (2008). The Body Soviet: Propaganda, Hygiene, and the Revolutionary State. University of Wisconsin Press. Todes, D. P. (2002). Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise. Johns Hopkins University Press. Todes, D. P. (2014). Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science. Oxford University Press.

Psychiatry, Psychology, and Sexuality