ABSTRACT
It is difficult at this remove to imagine the proceedings of the Second International Congress on the History of Science and Technology, held from 30 June to 4 July 1931, at the Science Museum, South Kensington. But this Congress was no ordinary, run-of-the-mill affair. The Soviet Union, in an unprecedented move – an unexpected one too, even to the Congress’s organizers – flew over to London a high-powered delegation at the last minute, headed by no less a personage than Nikolai Bukharin. As one of Lenin’s closest associates during the Bolshevik Revolution, Bukharin had played a significant role in the elaboration of historical materialism and scientific socialism within the Soviet Union. Bukharin’s star was not, however, in the ascendant: he had lost his chairmanship of the Comintern, and was removed from the Politburo in 1929. Nevertheless, by 1931 he was still a force to be reckoned with – an intellectual force, for one thing, as we shall see. Bukharin in 1931 remained head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and Director of Industrial Research for the Supreme Economic Council. Other members of the Soviet delegation to the London Congress included F.A. Joffe, a prominent physicist, and N.A. Vavilov, a no less prominent biologist (who was later to be thrown to the wolves during the Lysenko affair).
