Pavlovian Reflexology and Lamarckism in the Soviet Popular-Science Film Genre

• In Event: Escaping the Discipline: Mind, Body, and Behavior in Early Soviet Biomedical and Psychological Discourses

Abstract

This paper addresses the ideological framing of Pavlovian reflexology and Lamarckism—two vulgarized doctrines elevated to the status of oppressive dogma during the Stalinist period. By juxtaposing Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the Human Brain (1926), made during the avant-garde period, with Grigori Roshal’s Salamander (1928), a sentimental drama and full-fledged Socialist Realist hagiography, Olenina will trace the evolution of manipulative tropes depicting the “materialist” integrity of Soviet science, its superiority over “bourgeois” counterparts, and its “commitment” to Enlightenment, humanism, progress, and moral rectitude.

Author

• Ana Hedberg Olenina, Arizona State U