PHJ № 2 (50) 2026 — Table of contents

The article discusses the speech of the Russian Nature Amateurs Society secretary V. A. Kazitsyn, discovered in the Central State Archives of St. Petersburg in the fund of the Leningrad Branch of the Main Directorate of Scientific Institutions of the Academic Center of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment of the RSFSR (F. 2555). It raised the question of simplifying the reporting of scientific societies to administrative bodies, scientific administrative and financial control institutions. V. A. Kazitsyn’s speech focused on the difficulties that are caused by redundant reporting and control over the activities of scientific societies. This problem was one of the most important in the relationship between the authorities and scientific societies in the mid‑1920s. The published document is dated 1926. The report was intended for a meeting of directors of scientific institutions subordinate to Glavnauka, which took place in Leningrad on April 1, 1926. Undoubtedly, V. A. Kazitsyn was the spokesman not only for the opinion of the council of the Russian Nature Amateurs Society, but also for other scientific societies. The ways of solving problems in relations between the authorities and scientific societies, proposed in the speech, testify to the fact that scientists were striving to democratize these relations. However, the proposed adjustments to the system of state regulation of the activities of scientific institutions and organizations in the conditions of the formation of a totalitarian system in the country could not be implemented. We believe that the published document is an interesting source on the social history of Russian science in the 1920s.