A word about “Soviet penicillin”

The article analyzes the evolution of terms denoting penicillin produced in the USSR in the 1940s, as well as the motives that determined their transformation. It is shown that in the second half of the 1940s, the original names, which directly indicated the producer and the institution producing the drug, were replaced by the term “Soviet penicillin”, devoid of specifics, but corresponding to the political moment. Its introduction into circulation made it possible not to advertise the new strains that were tested and put into production, which did not always come to the USSR legally. The introduction of a new politically correct term and the upholding of domestic priority in the study of antibiotics joined the general course of ideological work in the conditions of the Cold War.