“Assistance is here and protection is there”: Soviet commissions for scientists as a showcase in the 1920-1930s

The article describes the history of the unique Soviet government institutions aimed at improving the welfare of scientists in the 1920s-1930s: the Central Commission for the Improvement of the Life of Scientists and the Commission for Assistance to Scientists. There were no analogues of these institutions abroad, except for the German organization “Notgemeinschaft der deutschen Wissenschaft”. Thus, the Soviet commissions occupied a unique niche; their work was widely covered in foreign periodicals, through the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and local diplomatic institutions. On the other hand, the activities of the commissions caused ambiguous assessments due to the ideological and politicized nature, the narrowness of the beneficiary circle, an uneven distribution of privileges, and, finally, the instability of approaches to supporting scientists - from ensuring their economic and living conditions to detailed regulation of scientific work and its planning. Based on unpublished documents from the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the author characterizes the evolution of the “foreign” component of the commissions’ activities, their vatious tasks from popularizing the achievements of Soviet science abroad to attracting foreign specialists to the USSR during the years of industrialization. The author concludes that the work of the commissions corresponded to the tasks set for Soviet science at different stages of its transformation, changed along with them. Therefore, the study of this problem can contribute to a more accurate understanding of the deep processes of the development of Soviet science in the 1920s-1930s.