III. THE POST-REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD OF 

 DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET 

 AGE-ASSOCIATED PHYSIOLOGY 



(Its formation as a science and the establishment of the more 

 prominent scientific schools) 



The greatest development of the research of Russian scientists in the fields of 

 age-associated physiology, biochemistry, and morphology has been achieved 

 since the Great October Socialist Revolution. During this period, the struggle 

 for a long and happy human life, with retention of the ability to work, became 

 the task of the State and assumed importance for the entire people. The struc- 

 ture of the socialist society creates the social prerequisites for success in this 

 struggle: a radical improvement in the life and environment of the workers, a 

 maximum concern for their work and rest, a great expansion of medical serv- 

 ices. State care for the aged, care for mothei's and children, construction of a 

 network of sanatoria and rest houses, large-scale development of physical 

 culture and sports, etc. 



Soviet science, which was provided with extremely favorable conditions 

 for its growth, found itself confronted with one of the most pressing of problems: 

 the development of the necessary prerequisites for longevity. This has been 

 described in an excellent fashion in the classic work on Soviet ontophysiology 

 written by A. V. Nagorniy (1940): "And now, when the last shadows of the 

 social conditions that shortened life are fading into the past, when the earth is 

 ceasing to be 'a world of groans and tears,' Soviet science is confronted with the 

 great task of overcoming those biological disharmonies that interfere with 

 longevity and that, long before death, condemn man to senile weakness and 

 senile degradation." 



In the development of Soviet ontophysiology, there has been an organic 

 fusion of both those trends and schools that had arisen before the October 

 Revolution and the new scientific schools and trends. Out of the uncoordinated 

 individual investigations and efforts of the narrow scientific communities of 

 post-Revolutionary ontophysiology, there developed a powerful, rapidly grow- 

 ing outgrowth of the science with many large schools and trends. 



A remarkable contribution to the problems of age-linked physiology was 

 made by I. P. Pavlov (1908-1936) and many of his pupils. The creation of an 

 integral science of higher nervous activity inevitably necessitated an expansion 

 of research on the phylogeny and ontogeny of conditioned bonds in the animal 



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