Authors

Discussion

In this paper, I will look at the expeditions of the Soviet scientist Evgeny Nikanorovich Pavlovsky into wartime Iran through the perspective of disruptive science. Pavlovsky, arguably the USSR’s most famous disease ecologist and medical entomologist, was sent to Iran in 1941-1943 to study insect-borne disease outbreaks there. During the war, British and Soviet forces invaded and successfully occupied Iran, and crucial military aid to the USSR from Allied countries passed through it. Sharing a border with Turkmenistan, a Soviet Socialist Republic, Iran also shared a cultural history with peoples across Central Asia who had been absorbed into the USSR. Iran thus represented a possibility for Soviet postwar expansion. Pavlovsky’s military-scientific expeditions conducted research to locate the environmental sources of diseases such as malaria, anthrax, and others endemic to Iran. They also identified indigenous poisonous animals and carefully noted the locations of available water supplies in this arid region. In this case study, Soviet wartime conditions provided opportunities for Soviet scientific knowledge to develop in new environments and cultural locations. Using archival sources and Pavlovsky’s visual representations of wartime Iran, I argue that these activities not only scientifically supported the Soviet military but were also designed to disrupt British power in the region and to acquire crucial knowledge for potential Soviet expansion.