The professionalization of applied entomology in the Russian Empire officially began in 1894 with the creation of the Bureau of Entomology as part of the Scientific Committee in the Ministry of Agriculture and State Domain. However, long before that, as early as the 1840s, the Agricultural Department had been collecting information on pest outbreaks and on the methods by which to control them. The Ministry had also hired several experts to make inspections, answer queries of the landowners and provincial authorities, as well as to write both specialized and popular manuals. The Russian Entomological and Free Economic Societies, along with some Zemstvos, were involved in this work. By the 1870-80s several projects to create experimental stations in applied entomology were proposed, but their research programs were still quite crude. However, in the first half of the 1890s quantitative growth shifted to qualitative. First, the landowners and administrators learned the language of scientific descriptions for pest insects, a process during which their requests to entomologists became much more clear. Secondly, entomologists became familiar with the methods of plant cultivation, harvesting, storage of the yield, etc., so that their recommendations became more useful for farmers. My paper will discuss this preparatory phase in which little was accomplished towards developing effective methods of pest control, but which was still an important process of forming a common language and the formulation of specific research programs. While it would take several decades for these realities to take root in the Russian Empire, it signaled the creation of applied entomology as an professional discipline that included the specific study of life cycles and the distribution of insects – i.e. ecology. This development was one of continuous dialogue; at one end were farmers, at another, biologists. Between these two groups agronomists as well as local and central administrators functioned as mediators, but their role was no less important than the “main actors” in this process of professionalization.