Parallel publications and selective interactions : food and agricultural sciences and the Soviet scientific paradigms under the early People’s Republic of China

Food provision was key for the Chinese Communist Party; mobilizing science to feed the growing population was a persistent issue at the margins of the regime’s land-reform policy. The 1950s Learning from the Soviets policy encouraged Chinese scientists to engage with their Soviet counterparts. This policy was influential, as Chinese agronomists became increasingly concerned with planting environments. This article is specifically a comparison of the impact of two particular Soviet paradigms—Michurinism and Pavlovianism—on Chinese publications related to food and agricultural sciences. It focuses on a cohort of food and agriculture scientists educated in the United States before 1949, who were mid-career by 1949. Well established when the scientific paradigm shifted toward the Soviet Union, they embodied boundaries as geopolitical conditions changed. Navigating the intersections and ambivalences between Soviet science, productivism, and the value of local, experiential knowledge, two general strategies emerged: parallel publications and selective interactions with Soviet paradigms. Core, high-profile generalist scientific publications, such as Science Bulletin, were stages for “performances”—translations of Soviet campaign pieces and scientific publications demonstrated politically expedient ways of aligning with Soviet scientific leaders. In contrast, subfield journals allowed scientists to engage some components of Soviet science while allowing for deviations based on local knowledge and production results. In popular publications, Soviet influence was minimal. Different types of publications created silos where Soviet paradigms, with their doctrinal flavor, had limited influence. Beyond such patterns, Michurinism and Pavlovianism were implemented with different levels of force and influenced topics that placed varying level of emphasis on the external environment of the organism, setting the stage for the scientists’ selective interactions with the two scientific paradigms.