Lysenkoism (russian: Лысенковщина, Lysenkovshchina, ; uk, лисенківщина, lysenkivščyna, ) was a political campaign led by Soviet biologist
Trofim Lysenko against
genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
and science-based
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
in the mid-20th century, rejecting
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...
in favour of a form of
Lamarckism
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
, as well as expanding upon the techniques of
vernalization
Vernalization (from Latin ''vernus'', "of the spring") is the induction of a plant's flowering process by exposure to the prolonged cold of winter, or by an artificial equivalent. After vernalization, plants have acquired the ability to flower, ...
and
grafting
Grafting or graftage is a horticultural technique whereby tissues of plants are joined so as to continue their growth together. The upper part of the combined plant is called the scion () while the lower part is called the rootstock. The succ ...
. In time, the term has come to be identified as any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable.
More than 3,000 mainstream
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...
s were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to
suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Soviet Agriculture Academy,
Nikolai Vavilov, who had been Lysenko's mentor, but later denounced him, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of
neurophysiology
Neurophysiology is a branch of physiology and neuroscience that studies nervous system function rather than nervous system architecture. This area aids in the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological diseases. Historically, it has been dominated b ...
,
cell biology
Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...
, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.
The government of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
(USSR) supported the campaign, and
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
personally edited a speech by Lysenko in a way that reflected his support for what would come to be known as Lysenkoism, despite his skepticism toward Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-oriented in nature.
Lysenko served as the director of the USSR's
Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Other countries of the
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
including the
People's Republic of Poland
The Polish People's Republic ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million nea ...
, the
Republic of Czechoslovakia, and the
German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees, as did the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
for some years.
Context
Mendelian genetics, the science of heredity, developed into an experimentally-based field of biology at the start of the 20th century through the work of
August Weismann,
Thomas Hunt Morgan, and others, building on the rediscovered work of
Gregor Mendel. They showed that the characteristics of an
organism
In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and ...
were carried by inherited
gene
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...
s, which were located on
chromosome
A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...
s in each cell's
nucleus
Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to:
*Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom
*Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA
Nucle ...
. These could be affected by random changes,
mutation
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...
s, and could be shuffled and recombined during
sexual reproduction
Sexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that involves a complex life cycle in which a gamete ( haploid reproductive cells, such as a sperm or egg cell) with a single set of chromosomes combines with another gamete to produce a zygote tha ...
, but were otherwise passed on unchanged from parent to
offspring
In biology, offspring are the young creation of living organisms, produced either by a single organism or, in the case of sexual reproduction, two organisms. Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny in a more general way. This ca ...
. Beneficial changes could spread through a population by
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...
or, in agriculture, by
plant breeding
Plant breeding is the science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics. It has been used to improve the quality of nutrition in products for humans and animals. The goals of plant breeding are to produce cro ...
.
In contrast,
Lamarckism
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
proposes that an organism can somehow pass on characteristics that it has acquired during its lifetime to its offspring, implying that change in the body can affect the genetic material in the germ line.
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various co ...
, which became an official ideological doctrine in Stalin's USSR, incorporated Darwinian evolutionary theory as its integral part. Initially, Lamarckian principle of inheritance of acquired traits was considered a legitimate part of the evolutionary theory, and even Darwin himself recognized its importance.
[ Although the Lamarckian hypothesis was essentially abandoned in the West by 1925,][ it was still a part of the Soviet ideological doctrine. Besides the fervent "old style" Darwinism of Marx and Engels (which included elements of Lamarckian theory), two other factors prevented abandonment of the Lamarckian doctrine in the USSR. First, ]Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov ( rus, Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов, , p=ɪˈvan pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈpavləf, a=Ru-Ivan_Petrovich_Pavlov.ogg; 27 February 1936), was a Russian and Soviet experimental neurologist, psychologist and physiol ...
, who discovered conditional reflex, initially announced that conditional reflex in mice can be inherited;[ his subsequent withdrawal of this claim in light of new evidences didn't lead to abandonment of Lamarckian doctrine by Soviet ideologists.][ Second, Ivan Michurin's work on plant breeding was interpreted by him as proof of inheritance of acquired traits, which bolstered anti-Mendelian theoretical views.]
Soviet agriculture
Agriculture in the Soviet Union was mostly collectivized, with some limited cultivation of private plots. It is often viewed as one of the more inefficient sectors of the economy of the Soviet Union. A number of food taxes (prodrazverstka, prodn ...
around 1930 was in a crisis due to the forced collectivisation of farms
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...
, and the extermination of the kulak farmers. The resulting Soviet famine of 1932–1933 provoked the government to search for a solution to the critical lack of food. Lysenko's attack on the "bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience (russian: Буржуазная лженаука) was a term of condemnation in the Soviet Union for certain scientific disciplines that were deemed unacceptable from an ideological point of view due to their incompatibility ...
" of modern genetics and the proposal that plants can rapidly adjust to a changed environment suited the ideological battle in both agriculture and Soviet society. State media published enthusiastic articles such as "Siberia is transformed into a land of orchards and gardens," "Soviet people change nature" while anyone opposing Lysenko was presented as a defender of "mysticism
Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in u ...
, obscurantism
In philosophy, the terms obscurantism and obscurationism describe the anti-intellectual practices of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject. There are two ...
and backwardness."
In the Soviet Union
Lysenko's claims
In 1928, rejecting natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...
and Mendelian genetics, Trofim Lysenko claimed to have developed agricultural techniques which could radically increase crop yields. These included vernalization
Vernalization (from Latin ''vernus'', "of the spring") is the induction of a plant's flowering process by exposure to the prolonged cold of winter, or by an artificial equivalent. After vernalization, plants have acquired the ability to flower, ...
, species transformation, inheritance of acquired characteristics, and vegetative hybridization. He claimed in particular that vernalization, exposing wheat
Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...
seeds to humidity and low temperature, could greatly increase crop yield
In agriculture, the yield is a measurement of the amount of a crop grown, or product such as wool, meat or milk produced, per unit area of land. The seed ratio is another way of calculating yields.
Innovations, such as the use of fertilizer, the c ...
. He claimed further that he could transform one species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
, ''Triticum durum
Durum wheat (), also called pasta wheat or macaroni wheat (''Triticum durum'' or ''Triticum turgidum'' subsp. ''durum''), is a tetraploid species of wheat. It is the second most cultivated species of wheat after common wheat, although it represen ...
'' (pasta wheat, a spring wheat), into another, ''Triticum vulgare
Common wheat (''Triticum aestivum''), also known as bread wheat, is a cultivated wheat species. About 95% of wheat produced worldwide is common wheat; it is the most widely grown of all crops and the cereal with the highest monetary yield.
Ta ...
'' (bread wheat, an autumn wheat), by 2–4 years of autumn planting. Since ''T. durum'' is a tetraploid with 28 chromosomes (4 sets of 7), and ''T. vulgare'' is hexaploid
Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei (eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes, where each set contains ...
with 42 chromosomes (6 sets), Western geneticists at that time already knew this was impossible.
Lysenko further claimed that Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics occurred in plants, as in the "eyes" of potato tuber
Tubers are a type of enlarged structure used as storage organs for nutrients in some plants. They are used for the plant's perennation (survival of the winter or dry months), to provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing ...
s, though the genetic differences in these plant parts were already known to be somatic mutations. He also claimed that when a tree is grafted, the scion permanently changes the heritable characteristics of the stock
In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...
. This would constitute vegetative hybridization, which Yongsheng Liu and colleagues note could possibly occur by horizontal gene transfer.
Rise
Isaak Izrailevich Prezent
Isaak (Isay) Izrailevich Prezent (Russian: Исаа́к (Исай) Изра́илевич Презе́нт; 27 September ( O.S. 15 September) 1902 – 6 January 1969) was a Soviet philosopher of biology, best known for his work on Marxist method ...
brought Lysenko to public attention, using Soviet propaganda
Propaganda in the Soviet Union was the practice of state-directed communication to promote class conflict, internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself.
The main Soviet censorship body, Glavlit, ...
to portray him as a genius who had developed a new, revolutionary agricultural technique. Lysenko's resulting popularity gave him a platform to denounce theoretical genetics and to promote his own agricultural practices. He was, in turn, supported by the Soviet propaganda machine, which overstated his successes, cited faked experimental results, and omitted mention of his failures.
Lysenko's political success was mostly due to his appeal to the Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
and Soviet ideology
The ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Bolshevist Marxism–Leninism, an ideology of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state to realise the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Union' ...
. Following the disastrous collectivization efforts of the late 1920s, Lysenko's "new" methods were seen by Soviet officials as paving the way to an "agricultural revolution." Lysenko himself was from a peasant family, and was an enthusiastic advocate of Leninism
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the Dictatorship of the proletariat#Vladimir Lenin, dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary Vanguardis ...
. The Party-controlled newspapers applauded Lysenko's "practical" efforts and questioned the motives of his critics. Lysenko's "revolution in agriculture" had a powerful propaganda advantage over the academics, who urged the patience and observation required for science. Lysenko was admitted into the hierarchy of the Communist Party, and was put in charge of agricultural affairs. He used his position to denounce biologists as "fly-lovers and people haters," and to decry the " wreckers" in biology, who he claimed were trying to disable the Soviet economy and cause it to fail. Furthermore, he denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary in ...
and concepts such as control groups and statistics in general:
Lysenko presented himself as a follower of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, a well-known and well-liked Soviet horticulturist
Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...
, but unlike Michurin, he advocated a form of Lamarckism, insisting on using only hybridization
Hybridization (or hybridisation) may refer to:
*Hybridization (biology), the process of combining different varieties of organisms to create a hybrid
*Orbital hybridization, in chemistry, the mixing of atomic orbitals into new hybrid orbitals
*Nu ...
and grafting, as non-genetic techniques.
Support from Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
increased Lysenko's momentum and popularity. In 1935, Lysenko compared his opponents in biology to the peasants who still resisted the Soviet government's collectivization strategy, saying that by opposing his theories, the traditional geneticists were setting themselves against Marxism. Stalin was in the audience when this speech was made, and he was the first one to stand and applaud, calling out "Bravo, Comrade Lysenko. Bravo." This emboldened Lysenko, and gave him and Prezent free rein to slander any geneticists who still spoke out against him. After the appointment of Lysenko as head of the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences
VASKhNIL (), the acronym for the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences or the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences (), was the Soviet Union's academy dedicated to agricultural sciences, operating from 1929 to the dissolution of ...
, classical genetics began to be publicly called "fascist science" and many of Lysenkoism's opponents, such as his former mentor Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov
Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov ( rus, Никола́й Ива́нович Вави́лов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ vɐˈvʲiləf, a=Ru-Nikolay_Ivanovich_Vavilov.ogg; – 26 January 1943) was a Russian and Soviet agronomist, botanist a ...
, were imprisoned or executed because of their denunciations, although Lysenko wasn't directly responsible for this incident.
On August 7, 1948, at the end of a week-long session organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences ( VASKhNIL) announced that from that point on Lysenkoism would be taught as "the only correct theory." Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko. Criticism of Lysenko was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist," and analogous "non-bourgeois" theories also flourished in other fields such as linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
and art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
in the Soviet academy at this time. Perhaps the only opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to escape liquidation were from the small community of Soviet nuclear physicists
Nuclear may refer to:
Physics
Relating to the nucleus of the atom:
* Nuclear engineering
*Nuclear physics
*Nuclear power
*Nuclear reactor
*Nuclear weapon
*Nuclear medicine
*Radiation therapy
*Nuclear warfare
Mathematics
*Nuclear space
*Nuclear ...
: as Tony Judt has observed, "It is significant that Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone and never presumed to second guess ''their'' calculations. Stalin may well have been mad but he was not stupid."
Effects
From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Izrail Agol
Izrail Iossofovich Agol (Russian: Израиль Иосифович Агол; November 20, 1891 – March 8, 1937) was a Soviet geneticist and philosopher. He was a member of the USSR Academy of Science, worked briefly in the United States of Ameri ...
, Solomon Levit
Solomon Grigorievich Levit (Russian: Соломон Григорьевич Левит; 6 July 1894 – 29 May 1938) was a Soviet physician, and human geneticist who was executed during the Stalinist purges along with other geneticists who opposed T ...
, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko
Georgii Dmitrievich Karpechenko (1899 in Velsk, Vologda Governorate – July 28, 1941) was a Russian and Soviet biologist. His name has sometimes been transliterated as Karpetschenko.
G. D. Karpechenko specialized in plant cytology and created se ...
and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camp
A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
s. The famous Soviet geneticist and president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943.
In 1936, the American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller
Hermann Joseph Muller (December 21, 1890 – April 5, 1967) was an American geneticist, educator, and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation (mutagenesis), as well as his outspoken political ...
, who had moved to the Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
Institute of Genetics with his ''Drosophila
''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...
'' fruit flies, was criticized as a bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, and promoter of fascism, so he left the USSR, returning to America via Republican Spain. In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience". Over 3,000 biologists were imprisoned, fired or executed for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism and genetics research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953. Due to Lysenkoism, crop yields in the USSR actually declined.
Fall
At the end of 1952, the situation started to change, and newspapers published articles criticizing Lysenkoism. However, the return to regular genetics slowed down in Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
's time, when Lysenko showed him the supposed successes of an experimental agricultural complex. It was once again forbidden to criticize Lysenkoism, though it was now possible to express different views, and the geneticists imprisoned under Stalin were released or rehabilitated posthumously. The ban was finally waived in the mid-1960s. In the West, meanwhile, Lysenkoism increasingly became seen as pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
.
Reappearance
In the 21st century, Lysenkoism is again being discussed in Russia, including in "respectable" newspapers like ''Kultura
''Kultura'' (, ''Culture'')—sometimes referred to as ''Kultura Paryska'' ("Paris-based Culture")—was a leading Polish-émigré literary-political magazine, published from 1947 to 2000 by ''Instytut Literacki'' (the Literary Institute), ini ...
'' and by biologists. The geneticist Lev Zhivotovsky has made the unsupported claim that Lysenko helped found modern developmental biology.[ which cites ] Discoveries in the field of epigenetics
In biology, epigenetics is the study of stable phenotypic changes (known as ''marks'') that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix '' epi-'' ( "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are "o ...
were sometimes raised as alleged late confirmation of Lysenko theory, but in spite of the apparent high-level similarity (heritable traits passed without DNA alterations), Lysenko believed that environment-induced changes are the primary mechanism of heritability. Heritable epigenetic effects were found but are minor as compared to genetic and often unstable.
In other countries
Other countries of the Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees.
In Communist Poland, Lysenkoism was aggressively pushed by state propaganda. State newspapers attacked "damage caused by bourgeois Mendelism
Mendelian inheritance (also known as Mendelism) is a type of biological inheritance following the principles originally proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1865 and 1866, re-discovered in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, and later popularize ...
-Morganism," "imperialist genetics," compared it to ''Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
'' — for example, '' Trybuna Ludu'' published an article titled "French scientists recognize superiority of Soviet science" by Pierre Daix
Pierre Georges Daix (24 May 1922, Ivry-sur-Seine – 2 November 2014, Paris) was a French journalist, writer and art historian. He was a friend and biographer of Pablo Picasso.
As a young man, Daix was an ardent Stalinist. He joined the French Co ...
, a French communist and chief editor of ''Les Lettres Françaises
''Les Lettres Françaises'' (French language, French for "The French Letters") is a French literary publication, founded in 1941 by writers Jacques Decour and Jean Paulhan. Originally a clandestine magazine of the French Resistance in German occup ...
'', who basically reworded Soviet propaganda claims, which was intended to create an impression that Lysenkoism was already accepted by the whole progressive world. The scientific community, however, opposed the introduction of Lysenkoism. Some academics accepted it for political reasons, with Wacław Gajewski
Wacław Gajewski (; 28 Februari 1911 – 12 December 1997) was a Polish geneticist, one of the founders of the Polish post-war genetics and author of academic and popular scientific books.
Biography
Gajewski was born in Krakow in 1911. He ...
being a notable and vocal opponent to forced introduction of Lysenkoism into universities. As a result he was denied contact with students, but was able to continue his scientific work at the Warsaw botanical garden. Lysenkoism was rapidly rejected starting from 1956 and the first department of genetics, at the University of Warsaw
The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...
, was founded in 1958 with Gajewski as its head.
Communist Czechoslovakia
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, ČSSR, formerly known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic or Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, was the official name of Czechoslovakia from 1960 to 29 March 1990, when it was renamed the Czechoslovak ...
adopted Lysenkoism in 1949. Jaroslav Kříženecký (1896–1964) was one of the prominent Czechoslovak geneticists opposing Lysenkoism, and when he criticized Lysenkoism in his lectures, he was dismissed from the Agricultural University in 1949 for "serving the established capitalistic system, considering himself superior to the working class, and being hostile to the democratic order of the people," and imprisoned in 1958.
In the German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
, although Lysenkoism was taught at some of the universities, it had very little impact on science due to the actions of a few scientists (for example, the geneticist and fierce critic of Lysenkoism, Hans Stubbe
Hans Karl Oskar Stubbe (7 March 1902 – 14 May 1989) was a German agronomist and plant breeder. During the Second World War he was dismissed by the Nazi government from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research in Müncheberg in 1936. Aft ...
) and information exchange with West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
research institutions. Nonetheless, Lysenkoist theories were found in schoolbooks as late as the dismissal of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.
Lysenkoism dominated Chinese science
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
from 1949 until 1956, particularly during the Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. CCP Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruc ...
, when, during a genetics symposium opponents of Lysenkoism were permitted to freely criticize it and argue for Mendelian genetics. In the proceedings from the symposium, Tan Jiazhen
Tan Jiazhen (15 September 1909 – 1 November 2008), also known as C. C. Tan, was a Chinese geneticist. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of United States National Academy of Sciences. Tan was a main ...
is quoted as saying "Since heUSSR started to criticize Lysenko, we have dared to criticize him too". For a while, both schools were permitted to coexist, although the influence of the Lysenkoists remained large for several years, contributing to the Great Famine through loss of yields.
Almost alone among Western scientists, John Desmond Bernal, Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, London
, mottoeng = Advice comes over nightTranslation used by Birkbeck.
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £4.3 m (2014)
, budget = £10 ...
, a Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
, and a communist, made an aggressive public defence of Lysenko.
See also
* Anti-intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically mo ...
* '' Deutsche Physik''
* Junk science
* Pavlovian session The Pavlovian session (russian: Павловская сессия) was the joint session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences held on June 28 to July 4, 1950.Scientific Session on the Physiological Teachings of Ac ...
* Politicization of science
* Suppressed research in the Soviet Union
References
Further reading
* Denis Buican, ''L'éternel retour de Lyssenko'', Paris, Copernic, 1978.
* Ronald Fisher, "What Sort of Man is Lysenko?" ''Listener'', 40 (1948): 874–875. Contemporary commentary by a British evolutionary biologist
pdf format
* Loren Graham
Loren R. Graham (born June 29, 1933, in Hymera, Indiana) is an American historian of science, particularly science in Russia.
Career
He has taught and published at Indiana University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Techno ...
, "Stalinist Ideology and the Lysenko Affair", in ''Science in Russia and the Soviet Union'' (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
* Oren Solomon Harman, "C. D. Darlington and the British and American Reaction to Lysenko and the Soviet Conception of Science." ''Journal of the History of Biology'', Vol. 36 No. 2 (New York: Springer, 2003)
* David Joravsky, ''The Lysenko Affair'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
* Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, "Lysenkoism", in ''The Dialectical Biologist'' (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1985).
* Anton Lang
Anton Lang (17 January 1875 – 30 May 1938) was a German studio potter and an actor in the Oberammergau Passion Play. He played the role of Jesus Christ in 1900, 1910, and 1922. He was the Prologue Speaker in 1930 and again in the Jubilee Produc ...
, "Michurin, Vavilov, and Lysenko". ''Science'', Vol. 124 No. 3215, 1956)
* Roger Pearson, "Activist Lysenkoism: The Case of Barry Mehler". In ''Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe'' (Washington: Scott-Townsend Publishers, 1997).
* Valery N. Soyfer
Valery Nikolayevich Soyfer (russian: Валерий Николаевич Сойфер), born in 1936 in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky is a Russian-United States, American biophysics, biophysicist, molecular genetics, molecular geneticist, History of scie ...
, ''Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science'' (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
* "The Disastrous Effects of Lysenkoism on Soviet Agriculture". ''Science and Its Times'', ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer, Vol. 6. (Detroit: Gale, 2001)
External links
SkepDic.com
– 'Lysenkoism', The Skeptic's Dictionary
''The Skeptic's Dictionary'' is a collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays by Robert Todd Carroll, published on his website skepdic.com and in a printed book. The skepdic.com site was launched in 1994 and the book was published in 2003 wi ...
Lysenkoism
BBC Radio 4 discussion with Robert Service, Steve Jones & Catherine Merridale (''In Our Time'', June 5, 2008)
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Anti-intellectualism
Denialism
Politics of the Soviet Union
Lamarckism
Non-Darwinian evolution
Obsolete biology theories
Political terminology
Politics of science
Pseudoscience
Science and technology in the Soviet Union
Science and technology in Ukraine
Scientific misconduct incidents
Soviet phraseology
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic