[I. S. Beritashvili and his school in the critical period of 1948-1953]

Cynically violating the principles of science, the organizers of the scientific session of the USSR Acad. Sci. and Acad. Med. Sci. in 1950 made an attempt to make null and void of the contributions of Academician I. S. Beritashvili and his associates to the physiological science. At the special sessions of the "Pavlovian Council" in April 1951, Beritashvili's concept on the psychonervous activity was qualified as anti-Pavlovian, idealistic. The hypothesis developed by him and his associated on the process of inhibition was rejected as dualistic; the use of the notion "spontaneous electrical activity" was qualified as the deviation from the principles of determinism. In the resolution adopted, "vicious aims" of I. S. Beritashvili were censured, and soon he was exempted from the post of Director of the Institute of Physiology. The campaign against I. S. Beritashvili and his School ceased in 1953; it proved to be a vivid example of the form of leadership pernicious for science.