scholars often tend to dismiss Soviet scholarship and 

 its fiercely patriotic perversions. But Blyakher, despite 

 his effectively cold war context, remains relatively 

 restrained and reasonable. 



The author's concern with establishing scientific 

 priorities, with establishing who first discovered such-and- 

 such, seems equally open to objection from the perspective 

 of current history of science. Yet this orientation clearly 

 does not result strictly from Blyakher ' s Russian point of 

 view; most historians of science in the 1950' s sought 

 to establish priorities and to document high points of 

 scientific "progress." 



In sum, then, Blyakher does provide a very useful 

 descriptive guide to major works in the history of embryology, 

 many of which happen to be Russian in some sense. His inter- 

 pretative discussion, which seeks to establish that the 

 Russian connection in important embryological work was 

 not merely coincidental needs to be questioned, dissected, 

 and then explored further to discover just what the essential 

 Russian influences were. We should thank Blyakher for his 

 suggestions and use his volume as a guide for that further 

 exploration . 



Because the materials are so widely known, I have 

 decided not to provide a full bibliography of works relevant 

 to the subjects Blyakher discusses. See the DICTIONARY 

 OF SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY entries for the key figures 

 and standard sources in the history of developmental biology 

 for additional references and for discussion of similar 

 materials from various non-Russian perspectives. 



Jane Maienschein 

 July 1981 Arizona State University 



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