A.P. Shurygin’s Memorandum on the Participation of Soviet Delegation in the First International Congress of Soil Science (USA, 1927)

The participation of Soviet scientists in the First International Congress of Soil Science
held in Washington, D.C., had a significant impact on the development of soil science in
the USSR. For the first time since the boycott of Soviet government by the Western countries, a large group of scientists from the USSR traveled to participate in a scientific event.
These scientists largely represented the “old professoriate” whom Soviet officials attempted to dilute with the representatives of the new, “communist” soil science. It was under this quota that A.P. Shurygin, an Agricultural Academy student, was included in this
delegation. Upon his return to the USSR, he produced a report. In this report, intended for
Soviet officials, he wrote about the successes and failures of Sovietparticipation in this international congress and reported politically suspect behavior of Soviet scientists. Shurygin (also spelled Shurigin) was particularly outraged by the behavior of B.B. Polynov, the
future director of the Soil Science Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Shurygin
demanded Polynov be banned from traveling abroad in the future. The information about
Polynov’s political unreliability, even though it had not affected his career at the time,
could have had led to his arrest in 1937.