This article identifies and analyses the historical, sociocultural and political background to the establishment of the Russian National Committee on Bioethics. Soviet society was dominated by “scientific optimism”. While bioethics in the West was institutionalised as a distinct area of research as the downsides of progress in science and technology were recognised, in the USSR this was impeded by ideological constraints. Nevertheless, Ivan Frolov and Boris Yudin worked on problems of the impact of science and technology on society from the perspective of bioethics