‘Bringing natural behaviour into the laboratory’: international networks, aggression research, and Czechoslovak psychopharmacology in the 1970s

This article explores the development of ethological research on aggression in late socialist Czechoslovakia, focusing on the work of pharmacologist Miloslav Kršiak (1939-2016) at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Drawing on archival records, personal correspondence, and institutional sources, it examines Kršiak's international networks and shows how he sustained collaborations with colleagues abroad, as well as the strategies he adopted to navigate the political setting of the Normalization period. The study also demonstrates how ethological approaches were adapted to meet state socialist research priorities, particularly in the study of addiction to over-the-counter analgesics. It suggests that, although pharmacological research on aggression drew on a shared transnational repertoire of methods, its development and uses were shaped by the political structures, institutional routines, and public health priorities of late state socialism. By tracing both transnational exchange and local adaptation, the article contributes to a more differentiated history of Cold War science and to a broader understanding of how biological approaches to aggressive behaviour took shape in different post-war settings.