A Cinematic and Physiological Puzzle: Soviet Conjoined Twins Research, Scientific

Cinema and Pavlovian Physiology

Nikolai Krementsov, PhD, (University of Toronto)

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/collections/films/medicalmoviesontheweb/

conjoinedtwinsessay.html \

Among the many old motion pictures shelved in the collection of the National Library of

Medicine is a uniquely strange two-reel 16 millimeter film, with an ungainly title: Neural and

Humoral Factors in the Regulation of Bodily Functions (Research on Conjoined Twins). It was

produced by the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow in 1957, but the making of it

stretched across two decades, from the time of Joseph Stalin’s “Great Terror” to Nikita

Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign, known as the “Thaw.” Its first frames were shot in

1937 with the birth of the conjoined twins Ira and Galia. Its last frames, shot in 1957, document

the seventh birthday celebration of a second pair of twins, Masha and Dasha. The film now

stands as the only substantial record of the research conducted on these two pairs—no significant

scholarly publications ever appeared. It also stands as a precious record of a few select moments

in the conjoined lives of Masha and Dasha (who will be discussed at the end of this article). And

it offers a fascinating glimpse into the history of both Soviet physiology and Soviet “scientific

cinema.”

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 The film is a bit of a mystery. Never intended to reach beyond a narrow specialist

audience, to an attentive viewer it presents numerous puzzles, beginning with its very presence in

the United States, in the collection of the National Library of Medicine (which has no records of

the film’s provenance). But the puzzles get more complicated. The occurrence of conjoined twins

with a common blood circulation, but separate nervous systems, presented researchers with

unique opportunities for the study of a variety of interesting questions, not only in physiology,

but also psychology, genetics, immunology, embryology, and child development. But Research

on Conjoined Twins focuses exclusively on the relative role of “neural and humoral factors in the

regulation of bodily functions.” Indeed, the entire movie is nothing more than an exposition of

Ivan Pavlov’s views on the subject.

Pavlov (1849–1936), best known for his experiments on conditional reflexes in dogs, was

Russia’s first Nobel Prize winner and the doyen of Soviet physiology.[1] Following the long-

standing Russian medical tradition of “nervism,” Pavlov emphasized the dominant role of the

nervous system in the organism’s physiology and behavior, and largely ignored the role of

humoral factors, such as blood chemistry and endocrine gland secretion (a blind spot which

nearly cost him his Nobel Prize).[2] Yet, while the film is thoroughly imbued with Pavlovian

lingo and concepts, the man himself is inexplicably absent. In the 1950s, iconic portraits of

Pavlov graced every Soviet physiology textbook, but his name and image never appear in

Research on Conjoined Twins. This omission is all the more puzzling given that the film’s

“research director” (as he is identified in the credits), Petr Anokhin (1898–1974), was Pavlov’s

student and protégé from the early 1920s on.[3] Anokhin actively helped to build the myth of

Pavlov as a heroically “Soviet” scientist in numerous articles and wrote a 400-page-long

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biography of his teacher and patron.[4] Why then did he pass up the opportunity to publicly

emphasize (as he had so often in the past) his personal connections to the “founding father” of

Soviet physiology? Another puzzle is the very brief appearance of Anokhin himself—only a

cameo in the film’s last few frames. But that twenty-second-long stint provides a clue to the

puzzles which lay hidden behind the film’s striking visuals, questions about the entwined

histories of physiology, studies of conjoined twins, and “scientific cinema” in the Soviet Union.

1. Ivan Pavlov and Soviet scientific film

Research on Conjoined Twins is a fine exemplar of a cinematographic genre—“scientific

film,” as it was then called—that had a long and distinguished history in the Soviet Union.[5]

Following the rebirth of the Russian movie industry after the end of the bloody civil war that

erupted in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, this genre occupied a prominent place in

Soviet film production and distribution efforts.[6] Practically all movie studios, both state- and

privately-owned, made scientific films, while industry distributors bought hundreds of foreign-

made films for screening around the country. In just a few years, by the end of 1926, the total

number of scientific films in circulation had reached 746 (though only 118 had been produced

locally).[7] Subjects ranged widely: from prevention of venereal diseases, to electrification of the

country, to physical development of the human organism, to manufacturing of cloth from cotton.

Some films were short, under five minutes. Others ran longer than two hours. Some were

addressed to specialists, others to general audiences. Some were mere recordings of scientific

experiments, medical procedures, and biological or technological processes. Others were

elaborate productions based on carefully written scripts with professional actors and film

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directors. These films became part and parcel of the huge education and propaganda campaigns

to popularize science and undermine religion, waged by the country’s new Bolshevik rulers. But

cinematography also attracted the attention of scientists who began to employ it as a tool in

research.

Physiology figured prominently among the subjects of Soviet scientific films, both in

propaganda and research. Physiologists were among the first to exploit the new possibilities

offered by cinematography to record their investigations and popularize their findings. One of

the first Soviet-made full-length scientific films was produced by Leonid Voskresenkii, Pavlov’s

former student, a professor of physiology at the Tver Pedagogical Institute. But this motion

picture had nothing to do with Pavlovian physiology. Beginning in 1923, Voskresenskii was

deeply involved with studies of “rejuvenation,” inspired by the extraordinarily popular work of

Austrian physiologist Eugene Steinach and French surgeon (of Russian extraction) Serge

Voronoff.[8] Voskresenskii’s research aimed to replicate Steinach’s and Voronoff’s experiments

with vasectomy and sex gland transplantation. Not to be outdone by Western colleagues who had

already made movies about their research, Voskresenskii also documented on film his own

experiments (conducted over three years) with “rejuvenating” animals and humans.[9] His full-

length silent motion picture (7 reels, 1885 meters), titled Who Needs to be Rejuvenated, opened

in Moscow in the early fall of 1925. Accompanied by lectures on rejuvenation and press

interviews by its producer, the film made a triumphant tour all over the country and remained in

the repertoire of Soviet movie theaters for many years.[10] A year later, Voskresenskii wrote a

screenplay for a full-length film, The Issue of Nutrition (1927), that aimed to explain the basic

facts of human digestion and nutrition. While he was deeply engaged in producing scientific

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films for non-scientific audiences, he also proselytized for the value of cinematography as a

research tool among his fellow-physiologists.

Voskresenskii’s crowning achievement as a filmmaker was The Mechanics of the Brain

(1926), the most famous Soviet scientific film of the 1920s. Intended for the general public,

Mechanics attempted to explain the basic elements of Ivan Pavlov’s concept of conditional

reflexes as the foundation of animal and human behavior.[11] According to a prospectus issued

by Amkino (the agency representing the Soviet movie industry in the United States), “within the

limits of a six-reel motion picture,” the film covers “twenty-seven years of uninterrupted

thinking concerning the nature of animal and human behavior, and is…an animated photographic

record of the experiments and studies of a single individual, Professor Pavlov.”[12] Pavlov

himself, however, was not involved in the film’s production and, according to his biographer

Daniel P. Todes, “did not—and in some cases would not—conduct” many of the experiments

portrayed in the film, for instance, experiments with conditional reflexes in children.[13]

According to the credits, the film was scripted and directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin, a

rising star of Soviet cinematography, and produced by the Soviet-German joint-stock movie

company “Mezhrabpom-Rus’.”[14] It was Pudovkin’s first full-length motion picture, and he

undoubtedly tried his best to direct and edit.[15] But he lacked the expertise to write a script for

such a sophisticated account of contemporary Soviet research on “higher nervous activity,” as

Pavlov had defined the subject of his studies.[16] The film’s credits, however, identify two

“scientific consultants” who did have the requisite knowledge to do the job: Dmitrii Fursikov and

Leonid Voskresenskii. Both were former students and collaborators of Pavlov, and were deeply

involved in research on conditional reflexes and higher nervous activity.[17] Indeed, at the time

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the film went into production, Fursikov was director and Voskresenskii deputy-director of a

brand new Institute for the Studies of Higher Nervous Activity, recently established under the

auspices of the Communist Academy—a Bolshevik counterpart to the “bourgeois” Russian

Academy of Sciences. And both had conducted the kinds of experiments which Pavlov himself

did not and would not do!

It seems likely that the very idea of producing the film emerged from within the walls of

the Communist Academy.[18] With the huge success of his film on rejuvenation under his belt,

Voskresenskii likely originated the idea and then “sold” it to his long-time friend Fursikov. Who

in turn might well have sold it to his patrons in the Presidium of the Communist Academy, which

was composed of high-level Bolsheviks. Two members of the Presidium would likely have taken

a special interest in the idea. The first was Nikolai Bukharin, the Bolshevik Party’s leading

theoretician and member of its highest council, the Politburo, who had two years earlier had

published a sixty-page essay praising Pavlov’s scientific work, but disparaging his “unscientific”

attitude toward the Bolshevik Revolution. Bukharin remained keenly interested in Pavlov’s

research.[19] The second was Anatolii Lunacharskii, the Soviet “Commissar of Enlightenment,”

whose movie-script Bear’s Wedding was at that very time in production at the Mezhrabpom-

Rus’ studio. Either one (or both) of them could have suggested that the studio undertake the

production of a film about Pavlov’s research. Whatever the case, the studio did take up the

project. And although Pudovkin was undeniably responsible for the film’s cinematographic

techniques and artistic qualities, its contents clearly show that it was Fursikov and Voskresenskii

who defined and shaped the film’s scientific substance and ideological message.

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 The Mechanics of the Brain opened in Moscow in November 1926. While not a

commercial success—the studio did recover its costs of about 30,000 rubles—it served its

propaganda function quite well. In subsequent years it was regularly shown in theaters

throughout the country and was still in the repertoire as late as the mid-1930s. It was also shown

abroad. In March 1928, it was screened at a special meeting of the New York Society of Clinical

Psychiatry, held at the New York Academy of Medicine. That screening was accompanied by a

lecture by Howard Scott Liddell, an assistant professor of Cornell University, who had visited

Pavlov’s laboratory in Leningrad just two years prior.[20] Two months later, the film was

screened at the New York City Town Hall, this time with commentary provided by the “father”

of behaviorism, John B. Watson.[21] Over the next few months the film had regular showings in

movie theaters across the city.

Although Pavlov did not take part in the production of the movie, he apparently was quite

pleased with the results. In the summer of 1932, he brought The Mechanics of the Brain to the

14th International Congress of Physiological Sciences in Rome. During its screening there he

reportedly supplied congress participants with a personal commentary, and then left his copy of

the film for his host, Carlo Foà, chairman of the Department of Human Physiology at the

University of Milan Medical School, who went on to use it in his courses in the subsequent

years.[22]

Despite the success of The Mechanics of the Brain, Pavlov himself never employed

cinematography in his own research. But some of his former students did: Voskresenskii used it

in studies of primate behavior undertaken under his supervision at the Sukhumi primate-breeding

station during 1928–1930. Voskresenskii tried to interest Pavlov in studying higher nervous

7
activity in primates, but Pavlov remained faithful to his favorite research subject—dogs. Other

colleagues did take up cinematography. In the early 1930s, at Koltushi, a “science village” built

for Pavlov’s studies on the outskirts of Leningrad, several of his collaborators recorded on film

their experiments on the behavior of chimpanzees.

But then the use of scientific cinema as a tool for both propaganda and research got

“institutionally” separated. In the late 1920s–early 1930s, the country was plunged into a new

revolution—the “revolution from above.”[23] Stalin began to consolidate his power over the

Bolshevik party, and consolidate the power of the party apparatus over the nation, in order to

implement his policies of crash industrialization, the forced collectivization of the peasantry, and

extensive militarization. The “Great Break,” as Stalin named it, inaugurated drastic changes in all

facets of life. Private initiative and the market were suppressed and a total state monopoly over

resources, production, and distribution was established, which led to the emergence of a system

of strict centralized controls, administrative fiat, and greatly diminished local and individual

autonomy, enforced by the creation of gigantic bureaucratic and secret-police apparatuses.

Both science and the movie industry were profoundly affected. The abolition of private

enterprise spelled the end of privately owned movie companies and theaters. The production and

distribution of all films was concentrated in a few state studios, administered by Soiuzkino, a

special agency created in 1930. The state expanded the manufacture of equipment and materials

for the movie industry, but strictly controlled both the production of new films and the repertoire

of movie theaters. The new institutional structures and ideological strictures further stimulated

the production of scientific films for educational and propaganda purposes. And Pavlovian

physiology provided perfect opportunities for both.

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 During the early 1930s, several educational films for use in high schools and universities

depicted Pavlovian-style experiments with conditional and unconditional reflexes. But these

educational films reached only limited audiences. In contrast, propaganda films reached nearly

everyone. In the summer of 1935, at Pavlov’s invitation, the 15th International Congress of

Physiological Sciences met in the Soviet Union. The congress became a vehicle to showcase

“advances of Soviet science,” both domestically and internationally, in numerous news reels.

Highlights included greetings by Soviet officials and the opening speech by Pavlov, the

congress’s president, as well as a banquet at the Kremlin and excursions organized for foreign

participants.

Pavlov died the next summer. His death occasioned the production of a special

documentary, Academician Ivan Pavlov (1936), with footage of Pavlov at work in his lab, with

students and family, with British author H.G. Wells, and, of course, delivering speeches at the

congress. The film also extensively covered Pavlov’s state funeral, which was attended by the

luminaries of the Soviet government and Soviet science.[24]

The perceived importance of science and technology in Stalin’s “Great Break” led to the

enlargement of government support for science, providing funding for a vast expansion of the

network of scientific institutions and personnel, while simultaneously limiting the considerable

autonomy enjoyed by the scientific community in the previous decade.[25] The creation in 1932

of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (VIEM) effectively centralized all scientific

activity in biomedical fields. VIEM quickly absorbed practically all biomedical research

institutions, and established branches in cities throughout the country. As part of this gigantic

enterprise (run by one of Pavlov’s collaborators), a special VIEM “department of scientific

9
photo- and cinematography” was created. Similar departments were established within the

rapidly growing USSR Academy of Sciences, and in Moscow and Leningrad universities.

During this period, cinematography became a standard research tool in many fields of

biomedical science. And so, in 1937 when the conjoined twins, Ira and Galia, were born, Petr

Anokhin began his experiments before the motion-picture camera.

2. Petr Anokhin’s conjoined twins research

Government propaganda and professional publications (by Anokhin, among many others)

hailed Ivan Pavlov as a quintessentially “Soviet” scientist. That carefully constructed heroic

narrative was fully fictitious, a myth. Pavlov came into the academic medical research long

before the Revolution and worked on research subjects which fit broadly within the scope of the

research that colleagues across Europe and all over the world were doing. He openly criticized

the Bolshevik project and Soviet policies almost up to the end of his life. Anokhin was a more

fitting claimant for the title of Soviet scientist.[26] He belonged to the cohort who came of age

during the first years of the Soviet regime and was profoundly shaped by it. Born in 1898 to the

family of a railroad worker in Tsaritsyn (today’s Volgograd) in the south of the Russian Empire,

young Anokhin began his education at a “real school” (an analogue of the German Realschule

which mixed vocational with academic subjects). In 1915 he entered an agricultural college in

Novocherkask, the capital of the Don Region. He probably planned to become an agronomist or

a land prospector—the two specializations offered by the college—but the Bolshevik Revolution

dramatically changed the life of his homeland and opened unexpected opportunities for the son

of a worker.

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 The civil war that followed the Revolution raged with particular fury in the Don Region,

a stronghold of the “White Guard” fighting against the Bolshevik “Red Army.” Anokhin joined

the Bolsheviks and fought on the front lines. By 1920, at the end of the civil war, he had become

a member of the Novocherkask City Soviet, the press and finance commissar of the Don

Republic, and the editor-in-chief of its main newspaper, Red Don. In early 1921, Anatolii

Lunacharskii, the Commissar of Enlightenment in Lenin’s government, visited Novocherkask

and met the young Bolshevik. The chance encounter was fateful. Reportedly, Anokhin shared

with Lunacharskii his dream of studying the human psyche. At Lunacharskii’s directive, Anokhin

was sent to Petrograd (renamed Leningrad after Lenin’s death in 1924) to become a student at the

State Institute of Medical Knowledge created and run by Vladimir Bekhterev, Russia’s foremost

neurologist and psychiatrist, under the aegis of the Commissariat of Enlightenment.

Anokhin proved to be a quick study. The next year, while training at Bekhterev’s

institute, he began research on the mechanisms of internal inhibition in Pavlov’s laboratory. By

the time he graduated in 1926, Anokhin had published several articles on Pavlov’s work in

popular science magazines and delivered a report on his own research to the Second All-Union

Physiology Congress. The same year, on Pavlov’s recommendation, he was appointed lecturer in

physiology at the Leningrad Zootechnical Institute. For the next few years, along with his

teaching duties, he continued research in Pavlov’s laboratory on a variety of subjects, ranging

from the particularities of blood circulation in the brain to the neural mechanisms of inhibition.

He published his results in leading Russian and German physiology journals and reported on

them at various conferences.

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 In 1930, again on Pavlov’s recommendation, Anokhin was appointed professor and

chairman of the physiology department at a new medical school created in Nizhnii Novgorod, a

large industrial center in the Volga Region. He proved to be not only a talented researcher, but

also a capable administrator. In just a few years, Anokhin built from scratch one of the best

physiology laboratories in the country. In 1933 he managed to make it a branch of the rapidly

expanding VIEM, tapping into the huge flow of resources allocated to the flagship institution of

Soviet biomedicine. In Nizhnii Novgorod, Anokhin began to develop his concept of “functional

system” as the basic principle in the organization of brain activity. For the first time, he

formulated the principle of a neural back-loop (“return afferentation,” he named it), which, he

argued, played a key role in the formation of purposeful and adaptive behavior.[27] In the

summer of 1935, he presented the outlines of his argument to the 15th International Congress of

Physiological Sciences. Shortly after the congress, Anokhin was transferred to Moscow and

appointed head of a new “department of neurophysiology” created by VIEM expressly to support

his research.

Among the numerous subjects Anokhin had pursued over the years was the interaction of

humoral and neural mechanisms in various physiological processes, particularly in sleep. So,

when, in early 1937, he learned of the birth in one of Moscow’s hospitals of the conjoined twins

Ira and Galia,[28] he immediately realized that he was presented with a unique opportunity.

Although Ira and Galia had two separate hearts (whose rhythms did not coincide), they shared a

circulatory blood system. Their nervous systems were completely separate. Thus they could

serve as a rare “natural tool” for studying the interplay between neural and humoral factors.

Anokhin quickly organized a cross-institutional research group and put in charge Tatiana

12
Alekseeva, one of his first graduate students in Nizhnii Novgorod and a long-time collaborator.

[29] He also arranged for a film crew from the VIEM department of scientific photo- and

cinematography to record it (some of that footage was included in the 1957 film).

Alekseeva developed a broad research program aimed at investigating the role of neural

and humoral factors in various physiological processes, including appetite, pain, temperature

regulation, and sleep. Unfortunately, for reasons that remain unknown, the twins lived for only

sixteen months and the program could not be completed. Given the unavailability of archival

materials, we cannot say how much Anokhin personally contributed to this research.

Nevertheless, in late 1938 he published in a popular-science magazine a long article on one facet

of the program, the study of sleep.[30]

Anokhin opened that article with an overview of the main competing theories of sleep,

neural and humoral. The neural theory assigned the leading role in the development of sleep to

the central nervous system, though its adherents disagreed on the exact localization of the “sleep

centers.” Pavlov argued that the brain cortex was primarily responsible and that sleep was merely

a particular manifestation of the basic neural process of inhibition (which he and his

collaborators, including Anokhin, had investigated in various experiments). Other physiologists

thought that the “sleep centers” were located in subcortical areas (thalamus and hypothalamus

were prime suspects). In contrast, the humoral theory (developed in the 1910s by French

physiologists Rene Legendre and Henri Pieron) assigned the leading role in the development of

sleep to the accumulation in the blood of certain metabolic products, named “hypnotoxins.” In

1938 it had many supporters.

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 With a shared blood circulation, but completely separate nervous systems, Ira and Galia

were an ideal research subject for a “natural” experiment that investigated the claims of the two

competing theories. Numerous observations of the twins’ sleep patterns demonstrated that one

could remain awake while the other was asleep. These observations seemed to undermine the

hypnotoxin theory. And this is exactly how the 1957 film interpreted it: “The simultaneous

existence of both states, sleep and wakefulness, … is direct proof of the crucial role of the

nervous system in sleep occurrence, which speaks against the humoral theory of sleep.”[31] Yet

in contrast to the rigid, uncompromising formulation of these facts in the 1957 film, the 1938

article offered a much more nuanced, “dialectical” interpretation: “It would be wrong to think

that our data obtained in research on conjoined twins, completely negates the influence of certain

blood components on the entire process of sleep.”[32] Referring to research by various foreign

and Soviet investigators (including his own studies on the influence of potassium bromide on

sleep), Anokhin stated that, “along with the nervous mechanisms, certain humoral factors do play

a role in the development of sleep.”[33]

3. The Pavlovian sessions

Why then did Anokhin drop this “dialectical” approach to the interplay of nervous and

humoral factors in the 1957 film?

The second pair of the conjoined twins, Masha and Dasha, were born in January 1950.

The dozen years which had passed since the end of research on Ira and Galia were momentous,

and full of trauma. It began in the midst of the Great Terror, went through the horrors of World

War II and the famine-punctuated post-war years of rebuilding and reconstruction, and ended

14
with full outbreak of Cold War between the former war-time Allies. Anokhin, lucky to have

survived all that, quickly rose to the top of the Soviet scientific bureaucracy.

At the start of the war, Anokhin joined a Moscow hospital as a neurosurgeon. He

specialized in trauma to the peripheral nerves and developed novel techniques for the

transplantation and regeneration of damaged nerves. As Moscow came under threat, the

personnel of the hospital were evacuated and he spent several years in the rear, in Siberia. At the

end of the war he returned to Moscow to become head of a major division, and then director, of a

large institute of physiology created under the auspices of the USSR Academy of Medical

Sciences (that had been established on the basis of VIEM in 1944).[34] He became a member of

the Academy and its governing body, the Presidium, and came to head the Academy’s Secretariat

and Planning Commission, a position of much influence and responsibility, which he cleverly

used to further enhance his standing within the community of Soviet physiologists.

After his death, Pavlov was enshrined as a “great Soviet scientist” and his doctrine of

higher nervous activity canonized. Almost every Soviet physiologist claimed to be Pavlov’s pupil

and a cultivator of “Pavlov’s legacy.” Various groups and individuals successfully used Pavlov’s

name as a rhetorical umbrella to legitimate their own research not only in physiology, but also in

psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and even hygiene. Anokhin was no exception. Between 1936

and1946, he published dozens of articles in various venues about “the great Soviet scientist and

patriot” Pavlov, the “school” of Pavlov, and his own efforts to “develop further Pavlov’s legacy.”

He tried to legitimize his own concept of functional system as a direct continuation of Pavlov’s

ideas and to position himself as heir apparent to his teacher’s intellectual and institutional legacy.

He succeeded in the first task, but not the second.

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 It was Leon Orbeli, Pavlov’s oldest and most respected pupil, who became the official

spokesman for physiology in the party-state apparatus and the official “guardian” of Pavlov’s

legacy. He “inherited” Pavlov’s institutes in Koltushi and Leningrad, became member of the

governing bodies of both the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and

headed the Military Medical Academy, the country’s premier medical school. Other students of

Pavlov attempted to challenge Orbeli’s position and initiated various intrigues to get a piece of

Pavlov’s legacy for themselves, but their efforts proved futile. After the end of the war such

attempts greatly intensified, especially within the Academy of Medical Sciences. Anokhin was

one of their main architects and instigators.

In the fall of 1948, in the wake of Trofim Lysenko’s infamous campaign against genetics,

Anokhin played a leading role in establishing “unbreakable links” between Lysenko’s

“Michurinist biology” and Pavlovian physiology, and used the newly concocted image of

“Pavlov the Michurinist” to undermine Orbeli’s position.[35] This greatly damaged Orbeli’s

standing with the party-state apparatus, but Anokhin’s efforts backfired. At a special “Pavlovian”

session, convened jointly by the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences in

the summer of 1950, Anokhin was condemned, alongside Orbeli, for “perverting Pavlov’s

legacy” and discharged from all administrative positions. He was “exiled” to Riazan, a large city

about one hundred miles southeast of Moscow (ironically, Riazan was Pavlov’s hometown), and

appointed professor (later chairman) of physiology department at Riazan Medical School. It was

exactly at this time that he commenced research on Masha and Dasha.

Once again, Tatiana Alekseeva assumed a leadership role and designed a program that in

many ways recapped the research conducted on Ira and Galia. Masha and Dasha were placed in

16
the Institute of Pediatrics of the Academy of Medical Sciences, where the experiments were to be

conducted and filmed. In the aftermath of the “Pavlovian session,” an atmosphere of strict

orthodoxy prevailed—stringently enforced by a special watchdog body, the “Scientific Council

on the Issues of the Physiological Doctrine of Academician I. P. Pavlov” (created jointly by the

two academies in order to oversee all physiological research in the country). Any deviation from

narrowly Pavlovian interpretations of experimental data was obviously out of the question. That

perhaps explains why, in the 1957 film, the interpretation of the twins’ sleep patterns was so

much more rigid and strictly “Pavlovian” than in Anokhin’s 1938 article. It may also explain why

Pavlov is never invoked in the film. For Anokhin, who had been repeatedly forced to publicly

confess his “mistakes in the development of I. P. Pavlov’s teaching” and who had to promise to

find “ways of correcting them,”[36] the appearance in his own work of a portrait (or the exact

words) of the “Great Teacher” could be construed as “sacrilege” and entail unpleasant

repercussions. Anokhin clearly followed the Biblical dictum “Thou shalt not take the name of the

Lord thy God in vain” and tried to avoid provoking “Pavlov’s watch-dogs.”

But it was not just Soviet physiology that was thoroughly “Pavlovized”: all related

disciplines were subjected to the same process. Between 1950 and 1952, special “Pavlovian”

sessions were held in psychiatry, pedagogy, neurology, and psychology.[37] This perhaps

explains why, despite the marked differences in the twins’ “higher nervous

activity” (occasionally noted in the film’s running commentary), no research was directed at

comparing their cognitive abilities, attention span, emotions, language acquisition, and many

other psychological characteristics. Although the film ends with a mention of “the promising

prospects in future studies for the assessment of neural and humoral factors in the mental life of

17
the twins,” no further studies followed. On the basis of her experiments, Alekseeva published a

few articles in specialized periodicals and prepared a dissertation for the degree of “Doctor of

Medical Sciences.”[38] But in 1959 she unexpectedly died. The materials she had collected over

nearly twenty years of research remained unpublished.[39] And so the 1957 film is the only

available extensive record of her research.

Anokhin never again took part in studies of conjoined twins, even though in 1960 another

pair was born in Moscow and studied extensively at the Institute of Pediatrics (reportedly also

documented on film). Instead, he returned to research on functional systems. In the wake of

Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign that culminated in his famous “secret” speech to the

20th Congress of the Communist Party in February 1956, the “Scientific Council on the Issues of

the Physiological Doctrine of Academician I. P. Pavlov” was dismantled—just before the last

frames of Research on Conjoined Twins were shot. The “deviationist” label, which had been

affixed to Anokhin and his concept of functional system, was removed. And that perhaps

explains why Anokhin appeared in the film’s last frames, shot in early 1957, but not in any of the

previous shots.

Anokhin’s career took off again. But the debacle of the Pavlovian session had taught him

a lesson: he avoided administrative intrigues and focused his formidable energies on research and

teaching. By the time the film was finished, he had become professor and chairman of the

physiology department at the First Moscow Medical Institute, the country’s oldest and most

prestigious medical school. He had also headed two large physiological laboratories at two

separate institutes of the Academy of Medical Sciences (the Institute of Normal and Pathological

Physiology and the Institute of Surgery). In 1961 he was awarded the highest civilian decoration,

18
the “Order of the Labor Red Banner”; a few years later he was elected to the USSR Academy of

Sciences. Anokhin expanded his research on what was now called neuro-cybernetics, and got

involved in the physiology of space flight. In 1968 the Academy of Sciences bestowed on him its

highest honor in the field of physiology, a Pavlov Gold Medal, thus officially recognizing him as

“Pavlov’s heir.” In 1972, for his monumental work Biology and Neurophysiology of the

Conditional Reflex, he was awarded the highest Soviet scientific honor, a Lenin Prize. Anokhin

died two years later, just a few months before a translation of his life work on functional systems

would be issued in English.

4. Research on Conjoined Twins comes to America

So how then did Research on Conjoined Twins end up at the National Library of

Medicine? For the Soviet scientific community, one of the major results of Khrushchev’s “Thaw”

was a partial restoration of international contacts, which had been completely severed after 1948.

In 1958 Anokhin helped bring to Moscow a conference of the International Federation of

Electroencephalography (IFEEG), attended by scientists from all over the world, including

Canada, China, France, Great Britain, Japan, India, and the United States.[40] During the

conference, a group of Western and Soviet scientists, with Anokhin’s active involvement,

discussed the idea of creating an International Brain Research Organization (IBRO). Two years

later, IBRO was formally instituted and Anokhin became a member of its governing council.

Perhaps it was during the 1958 conference, or subsequent IBRO meetings, that Anokhin

gave a copy of the film to one of his American colleagues, who turned it over to the NLM. Or

maybe, in the early 1960s, when Anokhin’s research attracted the close attention of a number of

19
eminent Western scientists, including Mary A.B. Brazier, Horace W. Magoun, Giuseppe

Moruzzi, Wilder Penfield, and Norbert Wiener (all of whom visited Anokhin’s Moscow

laboratories), he gave one of them a copy. Most likely, Anokhin himself brought the film to the

United States. In 1968, the 25th International Congress of Physiological Sciences was held in

Washington, DC. Anokhin was a member of the official Soviet delegation. Although his report to

the congress had nothing to do with conjoined twins, perhaps, imitating his mentor Pavlov,

Anokhin brought with him the cinematographic record of his research, and gave it to one of the

congress organizers.

Whatever the case, thanks to the efforts of the NLM staff, the film is now available to

anyone interested in the histories of Soviet physiology, conjoined twins, and scientific films, as

well as the man who brought it all together, Petr Anokhin.

5. The Sisters Krivoshliapov

This article has focused on Anokhin and his film, but the two figures who got the most

screen time—Masha and Dasha—have their own story, and it is not pretty. After the film was

finished, Soviet scientists seem to have lost any interest in the sisters. Without access to archival

materials, it is impossible to figure out why. Perhaps the death of Tatiana Alekseeva in 1959

played a role. Or maybe some administrative body, such as the Presidium of the Academy of

Medical Sciences, decided to terminate the research. Whatever the case, I could find no trace of

any further studies involving the twins.

Although the 1957 film was probably accessible to interested biomedical specialists, and

maybe medical students, its viewers knew next to nothing about the “research subjects” it

20
portrayed. The twins’ last name was not mentioned in the film or in any of the scientific

publications reporting the research. The Soviet public was kept completely unaware of Masha

and Dasha’s existence.[41] Beyond the footage of Research on Conjoined Twins, little is known

about the pair. The only source of information on the twins’ actual life are journalistic reports,

based on Masha’s and Dasha’s recollections recorded in the late 1980s and 1990s. These reports

are contradictory and clearly include plenty of journalistic invention. Their reliability is highly

questionable, especially regarding the twins’ early years.[42]

What we know with more or less certainty is this. Masha and Dasha were born by

caesarean section on January 4, 1950, in a Moscow hospital, to Ekaterina and Mikhail

Krivoshliapovs. The parents were told that the twins died at birth.[43] The next seven years of

their life in the Institute of Pediatrics are documented in the 1957 film. On camera, they seem

happy and thriving, enjoying the attention they were getting from the scientists, nurses, teachers,

and filmmakers. Yet every simple thing (such as sitting or standing) was a struggle. Doctors from

the Central Institute of Orthopedics designed a special program of training and exercise to help

the sisters develop necessary motor skills. It took Masha and Dasha almost two years, but, as

shown in the film, by the age of seven they had learned how to walk using crutches and even to

ride a tricycle—no mean feat given that each twin had a complete control of one leg, but no

control of the other. Sometime in the early 1960s, the twins’ third vestigial leg (clearly visible in

the film) was amputated. Along with the development of necessary motor skills, the sisters were

schooled in all the subjects of a Soviet primary school curriculum (reading, writing, math, etc.).

Then, suddenly, their life at the Institute of Pediatrics came to an end. In 1964 Masha and

Dasha were sent to a special boarding school for disabled children in Novocherkask (the very

21
city where Anokhin had begun his career as a Bolshevik).[44] According to the twins’

recollections, recorded some thirty years later, the school turned out to be a living hell. Their

classmates shunned and bullied them. Masha and Dasha took up drinking and smoking (Masha

preferred the latter, Dasha the former). With the help of Nadezhda Gorokhova, a physical therapy

nurse who had cared for them at the Institute of Orthopedics, they “ran away” from the school

and came to Moscow in 1970. For a year they stayed with the nurse. Finally, after overcoming

numerous bureaucratic hurdles (one of which was getting two separate passports), the sisters

were given a very small disability pension (sixty rubles a month for both of them) and placed in a

“retirement home” on the outskirts of Moscow. Even though some individuals, including

Anokhin, tried to help Masha and Dasha adjust to their “independent” life, the sisters largely kept

to themselves to avoid the morbid curiosity and sordid proposals of nosy strangers. Alcohol

became their constant companion, a not very fulfilling escape from the poverty, loneliness,

emptiness, and sadness of life.

In the late 1980s, in the heyday of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost’, the

Soviet public finally learned about the twins’ existence. A group of journalists, including Irina

Krasnopol’skaia, a science correspondent of the popular daily Moscow Truth, Vladislav Listyev,

the producer and anchor of the most popular “perestroika” TV program “Glance” (Vzgliad)[45],

and Valerii Golubtsov, a correspondent of the Soviet News Agency (APN), reported on Masha

and Dasha’s dismal existence and appealed to the public for help.[46] The appeal bore some

fruit, helped the twins obtain better housing and financial assistance. A special bank account was

set up for cash donations.[47] Several individuals provided household items and clothing. A

certain “Mr. Maier” brought the sisters a specially designed wheelchair.[48]

22
 After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rapidly “yellowing” Russian press

made Masha and Dasha notorious. Tabloids had a field day with the stories of the twins’

alcoholism and sex life and alleged that their father had worked as a personal driver of Lavrentii

Beria, Stalin’s most infamous executioner, implying that the sisters’ birth had been “proper

punishment” for Beria’s associate. The highlight of their life in the early 1990s was a short visit

to Germany. The sisters were deeply impressed: they stayed in an ordinary hotel, ate at ordinary

restaurants, went everywhere they wanted. Nobody stared at them! They were treated as

“ordinary persons.”[49] Back in Russia, Dasha fell into deep depression, which she fought with

the familiar medicine—alcohol.[50] Journalists kept pestering the twins with requests for

interviews, but for the most part the sisters refused. They made an exception to Juliet Butler, a

British journalist stationed in Moscow, who recorded Masha’s and Dasha’s recollections of their

life. These recordings provided the foundation for the sisters’ “autobiography” written by Butler

and published in early 2000 in German and Japanese.[51] Butler arranged for the sisters to get a

portion of the royalties from the sale of the book. In October 2000, she was instrumental in

getting Masha and Dasha featured in a special episode devoted to conjoined twins on the BBC2

documentary series Horizon.[52] Their financial situation improved, but it did little to break the

vicious circle of loneliness, isolation, and heavy drinking. The sisters’ health began to

deteriorate. In April 2003, Masha died of a cardiac infarction. Seventeen hours later, Dasha

followed.[53] At the time of their death, Masha and Dasha were said to be the oldest living

conjoined twins in the world.

23
 Acknowledgments. I am profoundly grateful to Michael Sappol for inviting me to write

this commentary on Research on Conjoined Twins and for providing numerous suggestions and

edits, which improved tremendously the quality of the final text.

Notes

[1] For a monumental biography of Pavlov, see Daniel P. Todes, Ivan Pavlov. A Russian

Life in Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

[2] For a detailed discussion of Pavlov’s nervism, see Daniel P. Todes, Pavlov’s

Physiology Factory (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002); on the Nobel Prize, see

322–46.

[3] No full-fledged biography of this talented man, often hailed as the founder of Soviet

“neuro-cybernetics,” is available in any language. There are only a few largely hagiographic

publications by his students and several obituaries in various periodicals. See Iu. A. Makarenko

and K.V. Sudakov, P.K. Anokhin (Moscow: Meditsina, 1976); P.V. Simonov, ed. Petr Kuz’mich

Anokhin. Vospominaniia sovremennikov, publitsistika (Moscow: Nauka, 1990). But his major

works are available in English, see P.K. Anokhin, Biology and Neurophysiology of the

Conditioned Reflex and its Role in Adaptive Behavior (Oxford; New York: Pergamon Press,

1974); indeed, a year ago, the book was reissued in the Kindle format!

[4] See P.K. Anokhin, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. Zhizn’, deiatel’nost’ i nauchnaia shkola

(Moscow-Leningrad: Izd-vo AN SSSR, 1949).

[5] See a treatise on the subject by the foremost theoretician of the genre, L.M.

Sukharebskii, Nauchnoe kino (Moscow: Kinopechat’, 1926).

24
 [6] For a detailed overview of the early Russian/Soviet cinematography, see N.A.

Lebedev, Ocherki istorii kino SSSR. Nemoe kino: 1918–1934 gody (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965),

2d expanded ed.

[7] See Nauchnye fil’my. Opisanie fondov nauchnykh fil’m (Moscow: Teakinopechat’,

1927).

[8] For a detailed analysis of the “rejuvenation craze” in 1920s Russia and

Voskresenskii’s work, see Nikolai Krementsov, Revolutionary Experiments: The Quest for

Immortality in Bolshevik Science and Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013),

127-58.

[9] He also detailed his studies in several scholarly publications. See L.N. Voskresenskii,

“Opyty nabliudeniia nad ‘omolozheniem’ liudei i krupnykh sel’skokhoziastvennykh

zhivotnykh,” Omolozhenie v Rossii (Leningrad: Meditsina, 1924), 98-126.

[10] See “Kogo nado omolazhivat’,” Vecherniaia Moskva, 3 Sept 1925: 3; “Kogo nuzhno

omolozhivat’,” Vecherniaia Moskva, 29 Oct 1925: 3. Alas, I was unable to find a copy of this

film in the archives.

[11] A copy of the movie with English subtitles is available at http://vimeo.com/

20583313. This copy is not complete (containing only about two thirds of the original) and was

heavily edited during its restoration in the 1960s at the Wayne State University, with

rearrangement of several parts and additions that had been absent in the original.

[12] Mordaunt Hall, “The Screen: A Scientific Study,” New York Times, 20 Nov 1928: 38.

[13] Todes, Ivan Pavlov, 492.

25
 [14] On the history of this very interesting studio, see Viacheslav Rebrov, “I snova o

‘Rusi’,” Iskusstvo kino, 1999, no. 4; available at http://kinoart.ru/archive/1999/04/n4-article15.

[15] On Pudovkin and his career as a movie director, including extensive discussions of

“The Mechanics of the Brain,” see Amy Sargeant, Vsevolod Pudovkin: Classic Films of the

Soviet Avant-Garde (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001); Panayiota Mini, Pudovkin’s Cinema of the

1920s. Unpublished PhD diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002; and Margarete

Vöhringer, Avantgarde und Psychotechnik. Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik der

Wahrnehmungsexperimente in der frühen Sowjetunion (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2007).

[16] The existing analyses of the movie uncritically attribute to Pudovkin the film’s

sophisticated scientific underpinnings, for instance, inferring his intimate knowledge of Pavlov’s

unpublished works and contemporary heated debates on the import of Pavlovian physiology for

the materialist understanding of human behavior. See Sargeant, Vsevolod Pudovkin; Mini,

Pudovkin’s Cinema of the 1920s; and Vöhringer, Avantgarde und Psychotechnik.

[17] On Fursikov and his role in Pavlov’s research, see Todes, Ivan Pavlov.

[18] Alas, I did not have time to test this hypothesis in the Russian archives. But the

circumstantial evidence presented below is highly suggestive.

[19] On Bukharin’s relations with Pavlov, see Todes, Ivan Pavlov.

[20] See “Film Shows Brains All Operate Alike,” New York Times, 9 March 1928: 8.

[21] See “Reviews Studies in Human Behavior,” New York Times, 24 May 24 1928: 35.

[22] It was this copy that ended up in the Wayne State University and was restored during

the 1960s.

26
 [23] See Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941

(New York: Norton, 1990).

[24] A copy of this film is available at http://www.net-film.ru/film-31036/?search=p231|

v1&order=m1

[25] For details, see Nikolai Krementsov, Stalinist Science (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1997).

[26] Unfortunately, in the last five years, the Scientific Archive of the Russian Academy

of Medical Sciences, which houses a large collection of Anokhin’s papers (fond 36), had been

closed. Thus I didn’t have access to any documents pertaining to Anokhin’s work on conjoined

twins and to the production of the film.

[27] See Galina G. Egiazaryan & Konstantin V. Sudakov, “Theory of Functional Systems

in the Scientific School of P.K. Anokhin,” Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 16 (2007):

194–205.

[28] Available publications are completely silent on the circumstances of the girls’ birth,

parents, and their eventual demise.

[29] Alekseeva appears in the film several times, for instance, in Part 2: 20:00.

Unfortunately, I was unable to locate her personal papers in the Russian archives.

[30] See P.K. Anokhin, “Problema sna i srosshiesia bliznetsy,” Nauka i zhizn’ 11–12

(1938): 26–34. See also a short unsigned article, with several photographs, “A two-headed baby

gives scientists new evidence on the nature of sleep,” Life Magazine, 26 Sept 1938: 28.

[31] Part I. 25:06.

[32] Anokhin, “Problema sna,” 33–34.

27
 [33] Ibid., 34.

[34] On the establishment of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and its early years

of operation, see Krementsov, Stalinist Science; and idem, The Cure: A Story of Cancer and

Politics from the Annals of the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

[35] For details see Krementsov, Stalinist Science, 260–75.

[36] See, for instance, P.K. Anokhin, “O moikh oshibkakh v razrabotke ucheniia I. P.

Pavlova i o putiakh ikh ispravleniia v dukhe ukazanii Ob”edinennoi Pavlovskoi sessii AN SSSR i

AMN SSSR,” Vestnik AMN SSSR 2 (1951): 45–49; almost two years later Anokhin published yet

another, much longer “confession” under a virtually identical title, see idem, “O printsipial’noi

sushchnosti moikh oshibok v razvitii ucheniia I. P. Pavlova i o putiakh ikh preodoleniia,”

Fiziologicheskii zhurnal SSSR 38.6 (1952): 758–77.

[37] For an analysis of this process in psychiatry see Benjamin Zajicek, “Scientific

Psychiatry in Stalin’s Soviet Union: The Politics of Modern Medicine and the Struggle to Define

‘Pavlovian’ Psychiatry, 1939-1953,” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2009.

[38] See T. Alekseeva, “Kharakteristika uslovno-reflektornoj deiatel’nosti srosshikhsia

bliznetsov,” Zhurnal VND im. I. P. Pavlova, 1956, 6(1): 113–20; idem, “Nekotorye dannye o

mekhanizme narushenii sekretornoi funktsii zheludka i podzheludochnoj zhelezy pri dizentirii

(issledovanie na srosshikhsia bliznetsakh),” Pediatriia, 1957. 4: 35–47; idem, “Rol’ nervnykh i

gumoral’nykh faktorov v podderzhanii pishchevoi vozbudimosti u nerazdelivshikhsia

bliznetsov,” Fiziologicheskii zhurnal SSSR, 1958. 14(4): 295–304; idem, “Sootnoshenie

nervnykh i gumoral’nykh faktorov v razvitii sna u nerazdelivshikhsia bliznetsov,” Zhurnal VND

im. I. P. Pavlova, 1958. 8(6): 835–45.

28
 [39] Only a twenty-page abstract of her dissertation was published in a very limited print

run. See, T.T. Alekseeva, O neirogumoral’noi reguliatsii funktsii v organizme cheloveka

(issledovanie na nerazdelivshikhsia bliznetsakh). Avtoreferat diss. na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni

doktora med. nauk (Moscow, 1959).

[40] In the summer of 1956, Anokhin attended the 20th International Congress of

Physiological Sciences in Brussels, where plans for a future IFEEG meeting were discussed.

[41] I didn’t find any publications about Masha and Dasha in the Soviet press prior to

1989. But, curiously, in April 1958 an article in a French popular-science journal did mention the

twins, see “L’extraordinaire clinique du Dr. Anokhine,” La Science et la Vie, 1958. Avril (No.

487), pp. 98-104. In 1966, another article on the twins, accompanied by several photographs,

appeared in the Life Magazine, see “Masha and Dasha: Rare Study of Russia’s Siamese twins,”

Life Magazine, 8 April 1966: 67–69. Both articles mention Anokhin as the director of the

described research, but doesn’t mention the 1957 film. Either of these articles could have

motivated one of Anokhin’s colleagues to inquire about this study and perhaps led to Anokhin’s

giving a copy of the 1957 film to the NLM. Reportedly, the Life article has also inspired Brian

De Palma’s famous thriller Sisters (1973).

[42] The most complete account is the sisters’ “autobiography,” compiled by British

journalist Juliet Butler, Masha und Dasha. Autobiographie eines siamesischen Zwillingspaares

(Fischer Scherz, 2000). Certain information from this “autobiography” was used in an entry

about the twins in Christine Quigley, Conjoined Twins: An Historical, Biological and Ethical

Issues Encyclopedia (London: McFarland, 2003). I have tried to collate and “distill” all of the

available information to reconstruct certain key events in Masha’s and Dasha’s life.

29
 [43] Later Ekaterina and Mikhail had two more children.

[44] Why this happened remains a mystery. In August of that year, the Seventh World

Congress of Anthropology and Ethnology met in Moscow. Its proceedings included a special

session on twins studies. But though a number of Soviet participants presented results of their

physiological and psychological research on “normal” twins, they uttered not a word about

Masha and Dasha. See, for instance, Iu.P. Averkieva & V.K. Sokolova, VII Mezhdunarodnyi

kongress antropologi-cheskikh i etnograficheskikh nauk (Moscow: Znanie, 1964); N.A.

Kryshova & K.M. Shteingart, Sravnitel’naia kharakteristika rechevoi deiatel’nosti bliznetsov

(Moscow: Nauka, 1964); Z.V. Beliaeva & M.A. Zhilinskaia, Issledovanie vysshei nervnoi

deiatel’nosti i nekotorykh vegetativnykh reaktsii u bliznetsov (Moscow: Nauka, 1964).

[45] In late January 1989, Listyev featured Masha and Dasha in his program.

[46] See I. Krasnopol’skaia and O. Lysenskii, “Den’ posle otchaianiia,” Moskovskaia

Pravda, 1 Feb 1989, 3; V. Golubtsov, “Nemiloserdnoe miloserdie,” Meditsinskaia gazeta, 17 Feb

1989, 3.

[47] See T. Borisova, “Vot takie bliznetsy,” Sovetskaia Torgovlia, 18 Feb 1989, 4.

[48] Newspaper reports are very vague about this episode. Most likely it was Wilhelm

Meyer, the owner of “Meyra,” a leading German company, specializing in designing and

manufacturing wheelchairs and other devices for individuals with limited mobility.

[49] See Anna Amel’kina, “Siamskie bliznetsy ishchut narkologa,” Komsomosl’skaia

Pravda, 19 Dec 1997, 9.

30
 [50] See, for instance, Irina Bobrova, “Siamskie bliznetsy p’iut na dvoikh,” Moskovskii

komsomolets, 14 Oct 1999, available at http://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/

1999/10/14/135011-siamskie-bliznetsyi-pyut-na-dvoih.html

[51] See Butler, Masha und Dasha.

[52] “Conjoined Twins.” BBC2. 9:00pm Thursday 19th October 2000; a transcript of the

program is available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/

conjoined_twins_transcript.shtml

[53] See Irina Bobrova, “Dve dushi, pokinuvshie odno telo,” Moskovskii komsomolets,

April 16, 2003; available at http://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/2003/04/16/137815-dve-

dushi-pokinuvshie-odno-telo.html.

31