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Opening address by Academician S.I. Vavilov at the opening of the constituent assembly
members of the All-Union Society for the dissemination of political and scientific knowledge.

Moscow, Bolshoi Theatre, July 7, 1947.
Comrades, we have gathered today within the walls of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, which has hosted so many historic conventions and meetings over the course of thirty Soviet years. We have before us an important and noble task: the creation of the All-Union Society for the dissemination of political and scientific knowledge. Our collective will, energy, and organization must make this meeting the beginning of a great and very necessary public affair for the entire Soviet people.
On May 1, 1947, a group of scientists, public and political figures, and workers of art appealed through the press to our intellectuals and scientific institutions with a proposal to establish an All-Union Society for the dissemination of political and scientific knowledge.
This endeavor immediately met with the approval and support of the Government. A decree of the USSR Council of Ministers transferred the Moscow Polytechnic Museum to the new Society and provided it with other facilities.
The appeal of the initiative group, published in all the newspapers, found a lively and concrete business echo in all strata of the population throughout the Soviet Union. The organizing committee of the Society has received and continues to receive many letters from our great scientists, intellectuals, students, workers, and peasants. These letters always express satisfaction and joy at the establishment of the Society, offer active assistance to its work in various forms, and sometimes make valuable practical suggestions.
The support of the Soviet Government and the ardent response of the public have strengthened our confidence in the timeliness and extreme necessity of the Society. Encouraged by this realization, the Organizing Committee began its work without delay. During the past two months, the Committee prepared this general meeting and drafted the Society’s Statutes, which are now being submitted to the meeting for consideration and approval. Necessary measures have been taken to create branch societies in the Union republics and in the largest centers of the RSFSR. 220 institutions were admitted to the Society as founding members. The Organizing Committee has so far approved about one and a half thousand full members of the Society.
Having received at its disposal, on the basis of the Government’s resolution, the apparatus and means of the former All-Union Lecture Bureau of the USSR Ministry of Higher Education, the Organizing Committee did not interrupt for a single day the regular work of the Lecture Bureau and organized a number of new lectures, especially on topical problems of science and technology. Since the beginning of the Organizing Committee’s work up to the present, about 500 lectures have been held in Moscow. Necessary measures have been taken to develop the building of the Polytechnic Museum and to organize the apparatus of the future board of the Society.
The purpose of the Society, at first glance, is so clear and obvious that a special consideration of it might seem superfluous. In reality, however, every day we encounter a wide variety of understandings and interpretations of the purpose and nature of its future activities. It is sometimes argued, for example, that the Society should be an association of numerous Soviet special scientific and technical societies, like the corresponding British and American associations.
This would mean that the Society should basically unite scientists of different specialties for the purpose of furthering the development of science in the USSR. The other point of view is that the task of the Society should only be the popularization of political and scientific knowledge, aimed at the widest circles of the Soviet Union’s population. From the comparisons of the two opinions cited, we can see how wide the gamut of different perceptions of the Society’s life is. Naturally, therefore, the founding congress of the Society will first have to come to an agreement on this question. Of course, even if we manage to reach a consensus, we should be aware that the practice of further work will inevitably introduce amendments into our positions and intentions. But certainty and clarity of the Society’s goals are indispensable for the beginning of the work.
In Europe the great social importance of science started to become clear from the 16th century on, when the collapse of the feudal society, the opening of printing, and the natural revolution began. In Russia, this understanding of the role of science became widespread in the Petrine era, from the end of the seventeenth century.
Science itself was a typical social phenomenon, necessarily associated with the activities of entire collectives. There was no scientist-Robinson, who drew his scientific knowledge and conclusions only for himself. The exchange of information, observations and logical conclusions, the collective discussion of scientific results, their criticism and comparison with each other, and the elimination of the unfit have been a necessary characteristic of science since time immemorial.

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