Welcome to Pavlov and the Kingdom of Dogs
Welcome!
Pavlov and the Kingdom of Dogs first existed as a physical exhibition, consisting of multiple scale models and artefacts, supported by text panels and additional audio. We have brought all those elements together in this online version of the exhibition, immersing you in different elements of Ivan Pavlov’s work, his dogs, and the city of St Petersburg, against a backdrop of scientific and political revolution in the late 19th and early 20th century Russia.
Look out for short videos of the original models and artefacts across the website.
From the enigmatic figure of Pavlov himself to the human co-workers, dogs, new technologies, and the backdrop of a bustling St Petersburg at the heart of pre- and post-revolutionary Russia, this exhibition explores the entanglements of science, medicine, society and politics during a period of enormous social change, centres the lives of the laboratory animals involved, and questions and reflects upon the legacy of Pavlov’s experiments.
A familiar figure?
Pavlov might seem familiar – you might know that he taught his dogs to salivate to a ‘stimulus’ like a sound or image, after being paired repeatedly with food. This apparently simple experiment gave birth to the concept of ‘classical conditioning’ and the infamous Behaviourist school of thought, as well as helping promote Psychology as a ‘proper’ experimental science in its infancy.
Pavlov remains one of the most esteemed and most cited figures in the history of psychology. But rather than setting out yet another ‘great man of science’ narrative, this exhibition focuses equal attention on the many humans and, importantly, the countless dogs, involved in Pavlov’s enterprise.
The kingdom of dogs
In 1924 a visitor to Ivan Pavlov’s St Petersburg laboratory complex in The Institute of Experimental Medicine dubbed it ‘the kingdom of dogs’. By then the Russian Nobel prize-winning scientist was a star of the international scientific community, outward symbol of Soviet propaganda, and a global celebrity.
He and his co-workers were conducting countless experiments, with hundreds of dogs, in a factory like system. They produced a steady stream of findings which, Pavlov claimed, revealed the universal mechanisms of learning, personality and the psyche.
Whilst you will find out plenty more about Pavlov himself, the pieces in this exhibition push him out of the spotlight at times to make room for his dogs, co-workers, lab practices, and the wider history of St Petersburg (later Petrograd / Leningrad), Russia, Psychology and science.
