The Unity of the scientific community and the diversity of scientific ideas

The jubilee of the Russian Geographical Society (‘RGO’) is an occasion to reflect on its role
in the development of the country and of geography as a science. Before the 1917 Revolution, the Imperial Russian Geographical Society (‘IRGO’) was the most important organization engaged in the geographical and geological studies of the country. The IRGO Siberian
Division in Irkutsk was established in 1851, only six years after the Society’s founding. Its
role in the exploration of Siberia in a pre-revolutionarily sense – a space stretching from the
Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean – was enormous. The establishment of the Moscow
Branch of the USSR Geographical Society (‘MFGO’) almost a century later than the Siberian Division is a convincing evidence of the Society’s exploratory focus throughout most of
its history. During the Soviet period, the MFGO served an important function as a platform
where people could say things that could not be published due to censorship restrictions.
This information was then passed on orally. It was also easier to voice new radical ideas in a
neutral territory without any authorities or formal hierarchy. The MFGO was a platform for
intensive interdisciplinary communication as well as for the contacts between researchers
from the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geography and Moscow State University’s Geographical Faculty in the period when relations between these two institutions were
complicated. In 1984, the Committee on Methodological Problems of Geography comprising 20 geographers and 9 philosophers was established under the Presidium of the USSR
GO, with. B.M. Kedrov as its honorary chairman, S.B. Lavrov as its chairman, N.F. Ovchinnikov as its deputy chairman, and V.A. Shuper as its scholarly secretary. The Committee
met twice annually in various cities across the USSR and ceased to exist together with the
USSR. The Socratic Readings continued the Committee’s traditions.