The article is devoted to the history of the State Institute of Public Health of the People’s Commissariat of Health (“GINZ”) in the early years of its work (1919–1920). The author reconstructs an episode associated with the organization of work environment at the GINZ institutions during the period under study, based on the materials deposited in the Archive of Russian Academy of Sciences and State Archive of the Russian Federation. The article introduces for scientific use the internal reports, written by the GINZ staff members, engineer G. A. Ostapovich and facilities manager N. A. Kharitonov in 1920. These documents were discovered in the fonds of GINZ director L. A. Tarasevich (RAS Archive, f. 1538) and in the fonds of the Institute of Experimental Biology (f. 570) that was a part of GINZ in the 1920s. Both documents illustrate one of the key issues in the organization of work environment and are valuable sources for history of professional everyday life of the GINZ institutions in 1919–1920.
The early 1930s were marked by the organization of regional branches of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The Far Eastern Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences was established in 1932 and V. L. Komarov, a prominent botanist and future president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, had an important role in its creation. The first Academy’s institution in Russia’s Far East, however, was the Gornotayozhnaya Station that was founded under the auspices of the South Ussuri Branch of the Far Eastern Regional Research Institute in 1931 and became part of the Far Eastern Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1932. The article focuses on the first, the most difficult years of existence (1932–1936) of the Station. Despite poor living conditions and research facilities, the scientists had performed a number of studies, primarily on the flora and fauna of the newly established Ussuri Nature Reserve and its phytocenoses, clarified the taxonomy of some arboreal and shrubby species, and conducted phenological observations of the arboreal and herbaceous plants. An important part of their work was associated with botanical resource studies. The researchers studied medicinal plants (including the “root of life”, ginseng) as well as fodder, edible plants (primarily fruit and berries), ornamental plants and weeds. Zoological research focused on the pests of forest plants and crops, mainly Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. The results of scientific work carried out in 1932–1935 are reflected in the first volume of the “Proceedings of the Gornotayozhnaya Station”, published in 1936. A number of the Station’s researchers became prominent representatives of the national science. These include A. I. Kurentsov, G. E. Kurentsova, E. N. Klobukova-Alisova, Z. I. Gutnikova, Z. I. Luchnik and others.
