SOVIET INFLUENCE ON CHINESE MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-00809A000500590153-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 2, 2000
• Sequence Number: 153
• Publication Date: July 29, 1954
• Content Type: REPORT

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
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COUNTRY Chine,kJSSR
INFORMATION REPORT
DATE DISTR. ScA y 1751.7
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R~6-f-Y1~FT-G DNf,11N/ INIOIY ATTTIM ~rrlcf~~o t.1 NATION., W 1.1a
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OF TII& UNITED ITAt11. N I T H I N 04 IWCANINI Or TI 111 11. SICMION. 711
AND f1~. 0I TN[ U.C. COOI. AI ANINOIO. 111 THAN IN I III ON 01 1111,
LArION OI 1II CONTINTI TO OA Nlcc Ut It AN Autt011:64 ACNION .1
INONLAICC IV L1._ TNt IITNOOUSTION CF TH ? NIIONT N ANON ? [
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NO. OF PAGES 4
NO. OF ENCLS.
SUPP. TC
REPORT NO.
I bacteriological research in China is concentrated in
Harbin and Tsitsihar, directed and supervised from a large cents :1 installation
at Sverdlovsk. The installations at Harbin and Tsitsihar are large-scale develop-
ments with extensive underground laboratories. Dr (fnu) Oolovanoff, bacteriologist
from the State Military II`,edical Academy in Leningrad is medical advisor in both
cities reporting to Sverulovsk. He has 12 or 14 assistants. He is
~an outstanding figure in his field. his publi.she works In t e
World Medical News and other abstracts scientifically sound and in
matter explored in carious abstracts published by the USSR and signed Golovanoff,
Golovachoff and Cirucheff. So remarkab tee, in fact, is the close integration of the
various facets of the subject (a group of typhoid organisms) dealt with under these
three names that t e other two are pseudonyms of Oolovanoff's.
Use o pseudonyms would fall easily into the pattern of Soviet social
controls In e scientific field. First class scientific talent is rare and it is
not at all difficult to deduce that by virtue of a so-called "social order"
Golovanoff was compelled to ~,I,read himself thin under three names for the benefit
of Soviet prestige abroad.
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This report is for the use within the USA of the Intelligence components of the Departments or
Agencies indicated above. It is not to be transmitted overseas without the concurrence of the
originating office through the Assistant Director of the Office of Collection and Dissemination, CIA.
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The anxiety of the USSR to establish such Irestige probably accounts for the pre-
mature publication of experimental research by Dr Filatoff, dealing with the
possibility that anti-biogenic stimulation may resorb scar tissue, in the field
of ophthamological surgery. The few rather promising observations in Dr Filatoff's
early experiments justified further extensive work, but publication of the ex-
periments on the premise that the proposed treatment had been proved efficacious
was completely unjustified, and accounts in part for the widely acknowledged
failure of the treatment as practiced in China. Its failure is further accounted
for by its misuse by both Soviet and Chinese physicians and surgeons, who capital-
ized upon its publicity for their own profit and prescribed its use for every ail-
ment from fallen arches to pharyngeal carcinoma. Publication of his experiments
in this field at this premature stage was grossly unfair to Dr Filatoff who was
one of the leading ophthamologists and ophthamological surgeons of the old school in
Russia before the Revolution. His early work commanded high respect in Berlin and
other western European medical circles, and although he is approximately 76 years
old and has been discredited through no fault of Y-s own by the failure of this ex-
perimental surgical treatment, he is still as highly qualified and valuable a
Soviet scientist as any now at work in the USSR. It is impossible to imagine that
Dr Filatoff would have consented voluntarily to the publication of his experiments
in this early stage. Another example of Soviet social pressures in the scientific
field is a USSR medical abstract titlad "Transplantation of the Spinal Cord" and
signed by the well known Soviet neuro-surgeon, Professor Levchenko, who visited
the US in 1947. This is one c. the most ridiculous
lished;
Dr Levchen o a,.mitted the work was
published in response to a Soviet "social order."
4. Soviet medical literature has been completely prostituted by propaganda; current
medical abstracts, treatises and textbooks are spoiled by nauseating prefaces ex-
tolling the new social order for encouraging vast achievements in scientific re-
search. It is so rare that anything of sciencific value is found in current
medical literature that almost ceased to explore it. Such propaganda is
swallowed. whole however by the new crop of Chinese medical students. All Soviet
medical periodicals are translated into Chinese and circulated to medical schools
free of charge, in addition to which selected Chinese abstracts ai'e translated in-
to Russian thus complimenting the Chinese, with excellent psychological effect.
130% of Chinese nationals in
the medical profession can now reaC the Russian language. Medical literature
from the US is available, but the supply is inadequate. From..'1949,53W0h'nese med-
ical schools were badly handicapped by their lack of current medical information.
But during that year enormous amounts of current medical literature were poured
into China from the USSR, all translated into Chinese by the Soviets. The proof
of its availability is apparent in the Chinese Medical Journal of the Chinese
Medical Association.
Soviet science propagandists have made a strong appeal to the laboring classes
through a series of leaflets, roughly comparable to U5 comic books, published
on cheap Chinese paper, some distributed free of charged and. some costing approx-
imately two cents each: trese leaflets discuss in simple language all branches of
one particularlyldealt with flood control and explained that -now.
is the USSR advisors had arrived, there would be no more floods of the Yellow
and Yangtoe rivers. F.nother dealt with the new means of utilizing the rays of
the sun. The premise is the materialistic triumph of the USSR over nature, and
the pr6diction that eventually"Allrwill come under the will oi''The People; under
the guidance and direction of the Soviet Union. Despite its absurdity, the im-
plicationsin the wide acceptance of this propaganda are deadlyl
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6. At the be inning of 1952 every city in north China had a Soviet mdy-inor
health.
Each Soviet advisor has a thoroughly indoctrinated Chinese assistant
trained in the Sun Yet Sea Institute o2 Oriental Studies f tl1aocme These
Chines- have had only the most rudimentary training in public health neasuiea
their function is primarily political. The nucleus of this body of indoctrinated
young Chinese was begun in 1930 when promising students all over China were picked
'op and sent to Mao Toe Tung who, after further selection, dispatched the most
Sifted tc F;oscgw. Every year up to a thousand young students have been sent to
Mao Toe Tung for such training, and from there to the USSR.
Since 1949 it; has been extremely difficult to account for the whereabouts of Chinese
medical specialists because every key man in his field has been assigned by USSR
medical advisors to a tern in some USSR or satellite med.t~al institution. A survey
of Chinese scientists was begun early i> 1948; tke outstanding men were
picked up through personal contact and sent for political indoctrination and in-
for at least a year and in some cases two. When they went to the USSR they re-
ceived new names, since then it has become increasingly difficult to trace them.
In 1949 the primary trend in BW research was toward the development of techniques
for spreading a virus. A good deal of work was being done on virus pneumonia and
[work is currently going forward in this field at Harbin and
Tsitsihar, directed and supervised from Sverdlovsk. the Peking Scientific
Research Institute is similarly engaged. r__ I
the Soviets. There was hardly a Chinese left on the staff. The big hospital and
laboratory were under the direction of Red Army personnel. The South Manchurian
Railroad Experiment St!tion in .1 950 was being directed by Japanese-trained Chinese.
research was being done to evalistte the strategic importaroe of
plague, but this work has been discontinued (plague has
been found unsatisfactory for B purposes).
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9. All c tical equipment for these laboratories been supplied and is being
n ly Purchased from Germany.
scopes from the 011-mis Co nce 1953 Japanese micro-
matel pg p Company have bee appearing in Hong Kong, priced at epproxi-
Y $ 75 each. The comparable Leitz instrument, sells at US$ 175. Obviously,
there iw a vide ,lleparity in quality and precision of orkmanship, but the Japanese
instrument can be used to good effect by students, and many of them have been
purchased by the Communists for this purpose. The amount of equipment being
poured into China and th.; satellites provides a good key to a reasonably accurate
picture of the magnitude of the USSR program for scientific research.
10. Because of the difficulties of securing accurate information on current projects,
i' is impossible to estimate its probable success or failure. It is possible how-
ever, to state without danger of contradiction that Chinese scientists trained be.
fore 19116 and those trained after that year are &ivided by an obvious demarcation.
It will take generations of hard and unceasing effort to undo the damage to medical
oduca?,.ional standards which has been inflicted by Communist supervision of this
field since 1949. Scientific research particularly requires the constant
development of major talents, and althouga this is provided for in the cane of a few
gifted students, such maturation on a sufficient scale, under the current USSR
eurarvision, is unlikely.
IIQote: Filatoff's original work mentioned in paragraph three is
listed in the English Index to Soviet Medical Periodicals as follows: 'ry p
Translation;'Tissue Therapy: Treatment with Biogenus Stimulators'. (I;ussian
Trans
3PEHvi.9."7 Published in the Sovietoph',hanological News
25 Jan 46. Reviled in a German textbook by Gravitz: 'Cellular Pathology" j
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