Bandit! Barbarian!

Protests in favour of animal rights and campaigns to improve animal welfare are not exclusively modern concerns. Though rarely discussed in coverage of Pavlov’s methods today, he faced a barrage of criticism from the anti-vivisection movement of the time. 
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Propaganda

In the grounds of the Institute of Experimental Medicine in St Petersburg there stands a stone monument dedicated to the laboratory dog. It was built at Pavlov’s request, and includes various inscriptions that describe the sacrifice’ of dogs to science as noble and necessary, emphasise the dogs’ joy’ in their service to the experimenter, and the dignity’ of their treatment, and avoidance of any unnecessary torment’. 

One of the inscriptions reads: The dog, thanks to its long-standing arrangement for man, its prudence, patience, and obedience, served, even with remarkable joy, for many years, and sometimes for the whole life, to the experimenter’. 

The statue can be thought of as a piece of propaganda, broadcasting to the world Pavlov’s message that a laboratory dog’s suffering was kept to a minimum, and wholly justified by knowledge gained, and any loss of life a regrettable but necessary sacrifice. 

In London I couldn’t show myself at all. An antivivisectionist journal poured buckets of abuse upon me: Bandit. Barbarian.’ I should photograph this memorial and send it to them.
What Pavlov reported to have said to his long-time assistant Boris Babkin at the statue’s unveiling. He had just returned from the London leg of his latest European tour. Source: Daniel Todes, Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science, p.812.

Protest

Whilst this was a view shared by many men (and they were almost exclusively men) of science at the time, it did not go unchallenged. And often by women, who were central to the anti-vivisection movement in Russia and globally.

Detail from the diorama. Photo: Matt Adams 

Pavlov faced protest abroad, but back in Russia too, the movement often targeted Pavlov’s practices in letters and pamphlets and protested at his public appearances. 

The diorama on its plinth — beneath ground is patterned with canine skeletons. Photo: Mark Hawdon 

They pointedly (and correctly) questioned his assertion that experiments were completely painless, and that the dogs were happy and healthy – claims he repeatedly made in public.

A cartoon from the pro-vivisection Baynes lectures, 1920. Source: Wellcome Collection. 

Our diorama is created as a counterpoint to the usual story about Pavlov as a caring man who never willingly hurt his animals, still often repeated today, and the assumption that the public went along with it. It is a reminder that Pavlov’s methods really were challenged, at home and abroad.

Detail from the diorama. Photo: Mark Hawdon 

We imagine a version of the monument as a target for protestors, just as many statues have become such a focal point for progressive political movements in recent years. 

Hear more about the brown dog affair — a true antivivisection protest story 

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