Sukhumi Primate Station

The Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy, the oldest medical primate centre in the world, and monkeys as 'laboratory doubles of man'

Background

Founded in 1927 on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia, the Sukhumi station was conceived by Soviet scientists who wanted a colony of monkeys to serve as 'laboratory doubles of man'. Of some fifteen apes shipped that first year, only two baboons and two chimpanzees survived the journey, the nucleus of a centre that pioneered work on poliomyelitis, penicillin, viral cancer and radiation biology.

Contrary to persistent legend, Ivanov neither founded nor worked there; records say he visited only once, for a few days in the summer of 1928. The station's Cold-War fame came from space: from 1963 it trained 'monkey cosmonauts', and rhesus macaques with alphabetical names, Abrek and Bion in 1983, then Dryoma and Yerosha and others, rode the Bion satellites into orbit. In 1977 it unveiled the world's only monument to the monkey.

The war of 1992–93 destroyed what Soviet science had built. As Georgian and Abkhaz forces fought over Sukhumi, monkeys were shot in their cages, turned loose to wander the streets, or left to starve; of some seven thousand animals, only around three hundred remained. The institute split and its Russian half relocated to Sochi-Adler.

Key facts