Revolutionary Experiments : The Quest for Immortality in Bolshevik Science and Fiction

Who are we? Where did we come from and where are we going? What is the meaning of life and death? Can we abolish death and live forever? These "big" questions of human nature and human destiny have boggled humanity's best minds for centuries. But they assumed a particular urgency and saliency in 1920s Russia, just as the country was emerging from nearly a decade of continuous warfare, political turmoil, persistent famine, and deadly epidemics, generating an enormous variety of fantastic social, scientific, and literary experiments that sought to answer these "perpetual" existential questions. This book investigates the interplay between actual (scientific) and fictional (literary) experiments that manipulated sex gonads in animals and humans, searched for "rays of life" froze and thawed butterflies and bats, kept alive severed dog heads, and produced various tissue extracts (hormones), all fostering a powerful image of "science that conquers death." Revolutionary Experiments explores the intersection between social and scientific revolutions, documenting the rapid growth of science's funding, institutions, personnel, public resonance, and cultural authority in the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. It examines why and how biomedical sciences came to occupy such a prominent place in the stories of numerous litterateurs and in the culture and society of post-revolutionary Russia more generally. Nikolai Krementsov argues that the collective, though not necessarily coordinated, efforts of scientists, their Bolshevik patrons, and their literary fans/critics effectively transformed specialized knowledge generated by experimental biomedical research into an influential cultural resource that facilitated the establishment of large specialized institutions, inspired numerous science-fiction stories, displaced religious beliefs, and gave the millennia-old dream of immortality new forms and new meanings in Bolshevik Russia -- Provided by Publisher Provides a cross-disciplinary understanding of early Soviet history that illustrates a central role that science came to play in the culture and society of post-revolutionary Russia - Opens up new directions for research and analysis in more than one field, including the history of science, cultural studies, the history of medicine, the history of Russia, and literary studies - Based to a large extent on previously unknown archival materials - Brings together the history of biomedical research and science fiction, analyzing why and how scientific knowledge is transformed into a powerful cultural resource, as well as different uses of this resource by a variety of interest groups Krementsov examines a particular fascination with the dream of immortality and the place of science and fiction in its pursuit in Russia during roughly a decade that followed the country's political revolutions of 1917. It argues that contemporary scientific experiments aimed at the control over life, death, and disease inspired many Russian writers to conduct their own literary experiments with the ideas and techniques offered by experimental biology and medicine, which found expression in both popular-science writings and a new literary genre, science fiction Cover 1 Contents 10 List of Illustrations 11 List of Abbreviations 13 Note on Names, Translations, and Transliterations 16 Prologue: Science and Fiction 18 1. “The Ray of Life”: Science in Revolutions 30 2. “Professor’s Head”: Isolated Organs 56 3. “Neither Life, Nor Death”: Anabiosis 82 4. “The Billionaire’s Last Will”: Hormones and Institutions 114 5. “The Dog’s Heart” and Monkey Glands: Rejuvenation 144 6. “Quo Vadimus?”: Human Biology and Human Destiny 177 Epilogue: An Unending Quest 211 Acknowledgments 218 Notes 220 Index 278