Behavioural Research, the Museum Darwinianum and Evolutionism in Early Soviet Russia

In 1907 the taxidermist Aleksandr Feodorovich Kohts founded a so-called "Museum Darwinianum" in Moscow. This museum first of all hosted a growing collection of stuffed, modelled, and visualized species and secondly — from 1913 on — a laboratory for the exploration of the evolution of species ruled by Koht's wife and psychologist Nadeshda Nikolaevna Ladygina-Kohts. While he was mainly dealing with dead animals and models, his wife was comparing the behaviour of a young chimpanzee to the behaviour of her little son. Ladygina-Koht's study was unique at the time and therefore acknowledged by colleagues worldwide. That she was using photomontages for her comparisons and how this has influenced her research has not yet been considered in historical accounts. The article will examine this medial practice in order to understand how these seemingly opposing approaches could have both been dedicated to Darwin's evolutionary theory.