Kirill Rossiianov

Attempts to crossbreed humans with apes took place in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. Although the experimenters’ goals were primarily scientific, the larger symbolic meaning of those investigations cannot be ignored. Were those experiments a “denigration” or “desecration” of humans by soulless, manipulative science? Or were they, on the contraiy, a human “liberation,” the ultimate removal of the restrictive bond of the species, following the destruction of the social boundaries of class, estate, and nation? And would the creation of a hybrid have also meant “liberation” of the ape species closest to us? The issue of cultural symbolism is simultaneously an issue of moral judgment, one currently of particular importance, now that the rapid development of biotechnology has once again raised the possibility of creating “chimeras” and “hybrids” between human and animal.