An examination of the early Soviet period of the Russian (Soviet) Academy of Sciences which focuses on the reactions of individual members of the academy to the new situation in which they found themselves after October 1917. Based on the extensive use of documents from the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the author discusses how the academicians justified their cooperation with the Bolsheviks and the ideological basis of the regime's policy towards the academy in the 1920s.

List of Tables - Acknowledgements - Introduction - PART 1: ACADEMICIANS AND THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION AND IN THE FIRST POST-REVOLUTIONARY DECADES - Academicians and the Academy of Sciences on the Eve of the Revolution: Growing Social Awareness - The Academy of Sciences in the 1920s: From Independence to Sovietization - The Academy of Sciences in the 1930s: Old Academicians in a Soviet Institution - PART 2: BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILES - Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr: Communist Cooperator Extraordinaire - Sergei Fedorovich Ol'denburg: Non-Communist Cooperator - Ivan Petrovich Pavlov: Bolshevism's Sharpest Critic - Aleksei Nikolaevich Krylov: Military Man in Academia - Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky: Within-System Reformer - Conclusion: Ideals of Youth Determine Political Positions - Appendix: Full Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1917 - Notes - Selected Bibliography - Index