The Election of S.A. Zhebelev as Full Member of the Academy of Sciences of the ussr

Abstract

The article examines the history of the May 1927 elections of full members of the Academy of Sciences of the ussr. At the center of attention are issues such as the procedure of the electoral campaign and the criteria that ought to have guided the Academy of Sciences in electing new members – particularly the attitude of academicians to “improper borrowing of materials” (plagiarism) in candidates’ works. The article introduces several dozen documents – private letters, meeting protocols, reports and the like – illustrating the complex system of personal relationships within the Academy, the sharp disagreements of its members over crucial matters of scholarly ethics, and the archaic nature of the Academy’s organizational structure. These documents enable the authors to suggest that, in the 1927 elections of full members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, all participants ignored fundamental principles of scholarly ethics. The last elections to occur before the scandalous “Academy affair” showed that the Academy of Sciences badly needed organizational reforms: the cumbersome nature of the structure and the ease with which electoral manipulations occurred were too obvious to be ignored. Yet the reforms which followed the 1927 elections led to establishment of total state control over the Academy.