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 The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...

along with other geneticists who opposed

Trofim Lysenko Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (russian: Трофим Денисович Лысенко, uk, Трохи́м Дени́сович Лисе́нко, ; 20 November 1976) was a Soviet agronomist and pseudo-scientist.''An ill-educated agronomist with hu ...

. Solomon Levit was born as Shliom Girshevich Levit in to a Jewish family in Vilkomir (now Ukmerge) and was the only son to be educated. He went to the local gymnasium and then moved to Petrograd, initially studying law and then studied medicine. He served in the medical corps during the 1918

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. After receiving a medical degree in 1921 he went to work in the Moscow University Clinic. He took an interest in blood-related diseases and published a monograph on hemorrhagic diathesis in 1929. Levit also rose to hold various positions in 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. ...

. He trained in 1927 under

Alexander Sergeevich Serebrovsky Alexander Sergeevich Serebrovsky (Russian: Александр Сергеевич Серебровский; 18 February 1892 – 26 June 1948) was a Russian geneticist, poultry breeder, and eugenicist. He was among the founding figures of genetics ...

and was strongly opposed to

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 ...

that was still in fashion. He left work in the clinic to move to the Narkomzdrav Biomedical Institute in 1928. In 1930 he became the head of the Genetics Division of the Institute and in the same year, he was nominated by the Government along with

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 ...

to train in the United States of America under

H.J. 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 ...

. Muller along with Agol and Levit, took an interest in positive eugenics and included a chapter on the idea in his book ''Out of the Night'' (1935) and sent a copy of it to Stalin. By the time he returned to the Soviet Union in 1932 his post had been abolished but he was made a director of a newly created Maxim Gorky Biomedical Research Institute. Levit was publicly opposed to

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

ideas on eugenics and racism. In 1935 the institute was renamed to the Maxim Gorky Research Institute of Medical Genetics and they had begun work among others on 234 twins. There had also been a proposal for positive eugenics with human artificial insemination under Alexander Serebrovsky. The communist party met in November 1936 and denounced Levit and Agol as promoters of fascist ideas. At the international meeting of geneticists in Moscow, Muller was an invited speaker and there was considerable debate on eugenics. This was utilized by Trofim Lysenko to demonstrate that his opponents who had been trained in genetics were fascists. Muller, who stayed on early in 1937, later faced the threat of being arrested but escaped. Shortly after his exit, Izrail Agol was arrested and executed while Levit was removed from his position as a director and arrested on 11 January 1938. He was declared an American spy and executed in Lubyanka prison in May that year.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Levit, Solomon 1894 births 1938 deaths Soviet geneticists Great Purge victims from Lithuania Jewish eugenicists Soviet Jews Soviet physicians Moscow State University alumni Jews executed by the Soviet Union Physicians from Moscow