[1] The session was organized by the Soviet Government headed by Joseph Stalin in order to fight Western influences in Russian physiological sciences.
At first, it is necessary to stealthily collect Academician Pavlov's supporters, organize them, assign roles, and only after this to gather the session of physiologists... where it will be necessary to give decisive battle to the opponents.
Four keynote speakers outlined the main topics of the session: Sergey Vavilov, the President of the USSR Academy of the Sciences; Ivan Petrovich Razenkov, the vice-president of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences; Konstantin Bykov, the Director of the General Physiological Department at the Institute of Experimental Medicine; and Anatoly Grigorievitch Ivanov-Smolenskiy, a psychiatrist.
[1][2] In his inaugural address, Sergey Vavilov, praised Stalin and Pavlov for their materialistic approach to the problem of relationship between the material and mental.
For example, experts who participated in a broad discussion of materialistic linguistics in Pravda did not even mention the role of Pavlov's theory in the study of language.
Vavilov explained that the goal of the joint session of physiologists and psychiatrists was to conduct "a critical and self-critical examination of how matters stand with regard to the development of Pavlov's legacy in the Soviet Union".
He concluded: "There can be no doubt that it is only a return to Pavlov's road that physiology can be most effective, most beneficial to our people and most worthy of the Stalin epoch of the building of Communism.
He emphasized the importance of opposing the "reactionary idealist trend" in physiology following the example of Trofim Lysenko who contributed to a "decisive victory" of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin's teachings over Weismannism-Morganism.
Bykov condemned the West-European theories of the pre-Pavlovian stage which explained complex nervous phenomena based on idealistic analytical physiology.
Bykov named Pavlov's disciples who correctly followed the theories of their teacher: Anatoly Ivanov-Smolenskiy and Ezras Asratovich Asratian.
In his long speech, Anatoly Ivanov-Smolenskiy reviewed of Pavlov's achievements in the development of the theory of higher nervous activity.
According to Ivanov-Smolenskiy, Pavlov's contribution to psychiatry was "of immense value" as opposed to the failure of foreign scientists who did not achieve anything important.
In particular, they failed to pursue research in several important fields, for example cortical localization of functions and fixation of inherited conditioned reflexes in the next generation.
[11]: 42 A precursor of later abuses in psychiatry in the Soviet Union and the most somber event in the history of Russian-Soviet psychiatry was the so-called 'Joint Session' of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and the Board of the All-Union Neurologic and Psychiatric Association, held in the name of Ivan Pavlov in October 1951, considered the matter of several leading neuroscientists and psychiatrists of the time (for example, Grunya Sukhareva, Vasily Gilyarovsky, Raisa Golant, Aleksandr Shmaryan, Mikhail Gurevich) who were charged with practicing 'anti-Pavlovian, anti-Marxist, idealistic, reactionary' science damaging to Soviet psychiatry.
[12]: 540 But in the closing speech, the lead author of the policy report Andrei Snezhnevsky stated that they "have not disarmed themselves and continue to remain in the old anti-Pavlovian positions", thereby causing "grave damage to the Soviet scientific and practical psychiatry", and the vice president of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences accused them that they "diligently fall down to the dirty source of American pseudo-science".
[13] The fear and less than noble ambitions of the accusers including Irina Strelchuk, Vasily Banshchikov, Oleg Kerbikov, and Andrei Snezhnevsky were also likely to make them serve in the role of inquisitors.
Psychological approaches during diagnosing, treating and explaining the mechanisms of mental disorders have been banned and virtually excluded from the practice of psychiatrists.
[16]: 494 The Soviet doctors, under the incentive of Snezhnevsky, devised 'Pavlovian theory of schizophrenia' on the strength of which they diagnosticated this illness in political oppositionists.