The collection of Ivan Pavlov’s Memorial Museum: Opening new pages

Abstract

The collections of the Memorial Museum Apartment of Academician I. P. Pavlov contain a large number of photographs, documents, and original letters written by Pavlov’s colleagues, family and friends. The article features the highlights of the collection. Among them are the letters from Pavlov’s wife, Serafima, sent from Stockholm in 1904, where she accompanied her husband at the Nobel Prize ceremonies. The letters, addressed to their children who stayed in Saint Petersburg, provide many details of the Pavlovs’ trip to and stay in Stockholm, which makes a perfect addition to the official information about the event. Pavlov’s military ID and a letter he received from Professor V. N. Tonkov, Head of the Military Medical Academy (MMA), Saint Petersburg, dated 7 July 1925, are published for the first time. It was then that Pavlov took a voluntary redundancy from the MMA in protest against the ban on the admission of clergy children to the academy. Of special value is the selection of letters from the members of the Pavlov’s family written during the Great Patriotic War. Among them are the letters from Vladimir Ivanovich Pavlov and his family from the evacuation, letters from Serafima Vasilyevna and Vera Ivanovna Pavlov from Koltushi, where during the war years the Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Pathology of Higher Nervous Activity named after I. P. Pavlov (now the Institute of Physiology named after I. P. Pavlova RAS) continued its work, and where they managed to survive the Siege of Leningrad. All the materials presented in the article are published for the first time.