Lysenkoism[a] was a political campaign led by the SovietbiologistTrofim Lysenko againstgenetics and science-basedagriculture in the mid-20th century, rejectingnatural selection in favour of a form ofLamarckism, as well as expanding upon the techniques ofvernalization andgrafting.
More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign tosuppress scientific opponents.[1][2][3][4] 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.[3][4] Research and teaching in the fields ofneurophysiology,cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.
The government of theSoviet Union (USSR) supported the campaign, andJoseph Stalin 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-orientated in nature. Lysenko served as the director of the USSR'sLenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Other countries of theEastern Bloc including thePeople's Republic of Poland, theRepublic of Czechoslovakia, and theGerman Democratic Republic accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees, as did thePeople's Republic of China for some years.
Mendelian genetics, the science of heredity, developed into an experimentally based field of biology at the start of the 20th century through the work ofAugust Weismann,Thomas Hunt Morgan, and others, building on the rediscovered work ofGregor Mendel. They showed that the characteristics of anorganism are carried by inheritedgenes, which were located onchromosomes in each cell'snucleus. Genes can be affected by random changes (mutations), and can be shuffled and recombined duringsexual reproduction, but are otherwise passed on unchanged from parent tooffspring. Beneficial changes can propagate through a population bynatural selection or, in agriculture, byplant breeding.[6]
Some Marxists, however, perceived a fissure between Marxism andDarwinism. Specifically, the issue is that while the "struggle for survival" in Marxism applies to a social class as a whole (theclass struggle), the struggle for survival in Darwinism is decided by individualrandom mutations. This was deemed aliberal doctrine, against the Marxist framework of "immutable laws of history" and the spirit ofcollectivism. In contrast,Lamarckism proposed that an organism can somehow pass on characteristics that it has acquired during its lifetime to its offspring, implying that changing the body can affect the genetic material in the germ line. To these Marxists, a "neo-Lamarckism" was deemed more compatible with Marxism.[7][6][8]
Marxism–Leninism, which became the official ideology in Stalin's USSR, incorporated Darwinian evolution as a foundational doctrine, providing a scientific basis for itsstate atheism. Initially, the Lamarckian principle of inheritance of acquired traits was considered a legitimate part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin himself supported it.[9] Although the Mendelian view had largely replaced Lamarckism in western biology by 1925,[10] it persisted in Soviet doctrine. Besides the fervent "old style" Darwinism of Marx and Engels which included elements of Lamarckism, two fallacious experimental results supported it in the USSR. First,Ivan Pavlov, who discovered conditioned reflex, announced in 1923[11] that it can be inherited in mice;[10] and his subsequent withdrawal of this claim was ignored by Soviet ideologists.[10] Second,Ivan Michurin interpreted his work on plant breeding as proof of the inheritance of acquired traits.[10] Michurin advocated directed plant breeding by environmental control: "We cannot wait for favors from nature: we must wrest them from her".[12]
Kliment Timiryazev, a popularizer of science in Russia, had sympathies with communism, and allied with the new Soviet republic. This made his views more orthodox and widely known. When gene theory rose in early 1900s, some gene theorists promoted saltativemutationism as an alternative to gradualist Darwinism, and Timiriazev vigorously argued against it. Timiryazev's views influenced many, including Michurin.[13]
Soviet agriculture around 1930 was in a crisis due to Stalin's forcedcollectivisation of farms and extermination ofkulak farmers. The resultingSoviet famine of 1932–1933 provoked the government to search for a technical solution which would maintain their central political control.[14]
In 1928, rejectingnatural selection andMendelian genetics,Trofim Lysenko claimed to have developed agricultural techniques which could radically increase crop yields. These includedvernalization, species transformation (one species turning into another),inheritance of acquired characteristics, and vegetative hybridization (see below).[6] He claimed in particular that vernalization, exposingwheat seeds to humidity and low temperature, could greatly increasecrop yield. He claimed further that he could transform onespecies,Triticum durum (durum spring wheat), intoTriticum vulgare (common autumn wheat), through 2 to 4 years of autumn planting. This species transition he claimed to occur without an intermediate form.[15] However, this was already known to be impossible sinceT. durum is atetraploid with 28 chromosomes (4 sets of 7), whileT. vulgare ishexaploid with 42 chromosomes (6 sets).[6] This objection did not faze Lysenko, as he claimed that the chromosome number changed as well.[15]
Lysenko claimed that the concept of a gene was a "bourgeois invention", and he denied the presence of any "immortal substance of heredity" or "clearly defined species", which he claimed belong toPlatonic metaphysics rather than strictly materialist Marxist science. Instead, he proposed a "Marxist genetics" postulating an unlimited possibility of transformation of living organisms through environmental changes in the spirit of Marxiandialectical transformation, and in parallel to the Party's program of creating theNew Soviet Man and subduing nature for his benefit. Lysenko refused to admitrandom mutations, stating that "science is the enemy of randomness".[16]
Lysenko further claimed that Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics occurred in plants, as in the "eyes" of potatotubers, though the genetic differences in these plant parts were already known to be non-heritablesomatic mutations.[6][18] He also claimed that when a tree isgrafted, thescion permanently changes the heritable characteristics of thestock. In modern biological theory, such a change is theoretically possible throughhorizontal gene transfer; however, there is no evidence that this actually occurs, and Lysenko rejected the mechanism of genes entirely.[17]
Isaak Izrailevich Prezent, a biologist politically out of favour, brought Lysenko to public attention. He portrayed Lysenko as agenius who had developed a revolutionary technique which could lead to the triumph of Soviet agriculture, a thrilling possibility for a Soviet society suffering through Stalin's famines. Lysenko became a favorite of theSoviet propaganda machine, which overstated his successes, trumpeted his faked experimental results, and omitted any mention of his failures.[19] State media published enthusiastic articles such as "Siberia is transformed into a land of orchards and gardens" and "Soviet people change nature", while anyone opposing Lysenko was presented as a defender of "mysticism,obscurantism and backwardness."[20]
Lysenko's political success was mostly due to his appeal to theCommunist Party andSoviet ideology. His attack on the "bourgeois pseudoscience" of modern genetics and the proposal that plants can rapidly adjust to a changed environment suited theideological battle in both agriculture and Soviet society.[21][17] Following the disastrouscollectivization 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 ofLeninism.[22][17] The Party-controlled newspapers applauded Lysenko's practical "success" and questioned the motives of his critics, ridiculing the timidity of academics who urged the patient, impartial observation required for science.[22][23] 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",[24] and to decry traditional biologists as "wreckers" working to sabotage the Soviet economy. He denied the distinction between theoretical andapplied biology, and rejected general methods such as control groups and statistics:[25]
We biologists do not take the slightest interest in mathematical calculations, which confirm the useless statistical formulae of the Mendelists … We do not want to submit to blind chance … We maintain that biological regularities do not resemble mathematical laws.
Lysenko presented himself as a follower ofIvan Vladimirovich Michurin, a well-known and well-liked Soviethorticulturist, but unlike Michurin, Lysenko insisted on using only non-genetic techniques such ashybridization and grafting.[6]
Support fromJoseph Stalin increased Lysenko's popularity. In 1935, Lysenko compared his opponents in biology to the peasants who still resisted the Soviet government's collectivization strategy, saying that the opponents of his theories were opponents of Marxism. Stalin was in the audience for this speech, and was the first to stand and applaud, calling out "Bravo, Comrade Lysenko. Bravo."[26] Stalin personally made encouraging edits to a speech by Lysenko, despite the dictator's skepticism toward Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-orientated.[27] The official support emboldened Lysenko and gave him and Prezent free rein to slander any geneticists who still spoke out against him. After Lysenko became head of theSoviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences, classical genetics began to be called "fascist science"[28] and many of Lysenkoism's opponents, such as his former mentorNikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, were imprisoned or executed, although not on Lysenko's personal orders.[29][22]
During 1947 October, Lysenko and Stalin exchanged multiple letters. Lysenko promised Stalin to breed branching wheat into a yield of 15,000 kg/ha. At that time, the most productive wheat breed under exceptionally favorable conditions could achieve 2,000 kg/ha.[23] Lysenko's letter to Stalin, dated October 27, 1947 read;
Mendelism-Morganism, Weissmanist neo-Darwinism ... are not developed in Western capitalist countries for the purposes of agriculture, but rather serve reactionary purposes of eugenics, racism, etc. There is no relationship between agricultural practices and the theory of bourgeois genetics.[23]
From July 31 to August 7, 1948, theAcademy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) held a week-long session,[30] organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin.[23] At the end of it, Lysenkoism was declared as "the only correct theory." As Lysenko performatively spoke at the end, "the Central Committee of the Communist Party has examined my report and approved it". Attendants recognized this as the birth of a new orthodoxy. Of the 8 scientists who advocated genetics during the session, 3 immediately announced repentance.[23]
Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko,[31] and criticism was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist". TheMinistry of Higher Education commanded all biological institutes to immediately follow the Lysenko orthodoxy:[32]
The Central University Administration and the Administration of Cadres are directed to review within two months all departments of biological faculties to free them from all opposed to Michurinist biology and to strengthen them by appointing Michurinists to them.Point 6 of theOrder No. 1208 (August 23, 1948)[33]: 125
For several months, similar central directives dismissed scientists, withdrew textbooks, and required the removal of any references to heredity in higher education. There was also an order to destroy all stocks ofDrosophila, a commonmodel organism for research in genetics.[33]: 125 Leading geneticists were being monitored by secret agents from the State Security Service.[33]: 129
The same wave ofpropaganda supported a number of otherpseudo-scientific "new Marxist sciences" in the Soviet academy, in fields such aslinguistics andart.Pravda reported the invention of aperpetual motion engine, confirming Engels' claim thatenergy dissipated in one place must concentrate somewhere else.[16] Lysenko's journalAgrobiology published reports of wheat turning into rye, cabbages into rutabaga, etc.
In 1948, the filmMichurin portrayed Michurin as an ideal Soviet scientist, bringing the propaganda to the masses.[12] Published songbooks included songs praising Lysenko, "He walks the Michurin path/With firm tread;/He protects us from being duped/by Mendelist-Morganists."[33]: 132
In Lysenko and his followers' political claim, the "Weismannist-Mendelist-Morganist" theory was reactionary and idealistic, a tool of the bourgeois, while the "Michurinist" theory was progressive and materialistic. The victory of Michurinism was framed as a victory of socialism over capitalism. Some even traced Hitler's racial policies to the genetic theory.[33]: 119–121
A prominent promoter of Lysenkoism was the biologistOlga Lepeshinskaya, who attempted to demonstrateabiogenesis of cells and tissues from "vital substance". She delivered a speech in 1950 in which she equated all of the "bourgeois"heresies:[34]
In our country there are no longer classes hostile to each other, and the struggle of idealists against dialectical materialists still, depending on whose interests it defends, has the character of a class struggle. Indeed, the followers of Virchow, Weismann, Mendel and Morgan, who speak of the invariability of the gene and deny the influence of the external environment, are the preachers of the pseudo-scientific teachings of the bourgeois eugenicists and of all perversions in genetics, on the soil of which grew the racial theory of fascism in the capitalist countries. The Second World War was unleashed by the forces of imperialism, which also had racism in its arsenal.
Perhaps the only opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to escape liquidation were from the small community of Sovietnuclear physicists: according toTony Judt, "it is significant that Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone and never presumed to second guesstheir calculations. Stalin may well have been mad but he was not stupid."[35]
Genetics was eventually banned in the Soviet Union.[3] Over 3,000 biologists were fired, and numerous scientists were imprisoned, or executed[2][3][36] for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism, and genetics research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953.[3][4] Secret research facilities such assharashka were where numerous scientists ended up imprisoned.[37]
From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (includingIzrail Agol,Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii,Georgii Karpechenko andGeorgii Nadson) or sent tolabor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist and president of the Agriculture Academy,Nikolai Vavilov, was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943.[38] In 1936, the AmericangeneticistHermann Joseph Muller, who had moved to theLeningrad Institute of Genetics with hisDrosophila fruit flies, was criticized as bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, and a promoter of fascism, and he returned to America via Republican Spain.[39]Iosif Rapoport, who worked on mutagens, refused to publicly repudiate chromosome theory of heredity, and suffered several years as a geological lab assistant.Dmitry Sabinin's book on plant physiology was abruptly withdrawn from publication in 1948. He died by suicide in 1951.
Those who supported Lysenkoism were favored.Oparin vigorously defended Lysenkoism and was politically favored, although he may have been genuine in his belief, as he continued to defend it even in 1955, after its fall.[40]
Inspired by the success of Lysenkoism and the 1948 VASKhNIL session, other fields of Soviet science experienced brief revolutions, albeit with less success: against "Pavlovians" in medicine, against "reactionary Einsteinism" in physics and quantum mechanics, and againstPauling resonance theory in chemistry.[33]: 133
In addition to the biological sciences, Lysenkoism had an impact on geological sciences, especially paleontology and biostratigraphy in the USSR.[41]
At the end of 1952, the situation started to change, and newspapers published articles criticizing Lysenkoism. However, the return to regular genetics slowed down inNikita Khrushchev'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 orrehabilitated posthumously. The ban was finally lifted in the mid-1960s.[42][43]
Lysenkoism was never dominant in the West, and during the 1960s, it increasingly was seen aspseudoscience.[44] Soviet scientists noticed the great advance inmolecular biology, such as the characterization of DNA, and even hold-out Lysenkoists were starting to accept DNA as the material basis for heredity (though they still rejected gene theory).[10]
In the 21st century, Lysenkoism is again being discussed in Russia, including in respectable newspapers likeKultura and by biologists.[43] The geneticist Lev Zhivotovsky has made the unsupported claim that Lysenko helped found modern developmental biology.[43] Discoveries in the field ofepigenetics are sometimes raised as alleged late confirmation of Lysenko's theories, but in spite of the apparent high-level similarity (heritable traits passed on without DNA alteration), Lysenko believed that environment-induced changes are the primary mechanism of heritability.Heritable epigenetic effects have been found, but are minor and unstable compared to genetic inheritance.[45]
Heredity was reformulated as "the property of the living body to demand certain environmental conditions and to react in a certain way to them".[33]: 144 Michurin attempted to explain Lamarckian heredity by theorizing that some sort of "heredity" is present all throughout an organism, which reacts to environmental influence. This is incompatible with theWeismann barrier, which leads Lysenkoists to denounce Weismann. Instead, they proposed a "physiological" theory, that the heredity diffused throughout the body is somehow collected in the germ cells, which are "built from molecules, granules, of various organs and parts of the organism", i.e. thepangenesis theory.[15] When two germ cells form a zygote, the "weak" one is assimilated by the stronger one, like food digestion.[10]
This theory also explains vegetative hybridization, as the heredity in the scion may diffuse into the stock, resulting in a change in the stock's offspring. The vegetative hybridization theory was further tested on animals by injecting blood, for example, by injecting blood from colored chicken into a white chicken. It was claimed that the white chicken's offspring showed partly and fully colors. However, such claims were rejected by Western scientists. The plant hybridization experiments did not replicate, and the chicken experiment did not control forrecessive alleles.[10]
Lysenko also proposed a form of Lamarckianheterochrony. An individual plant develops in stages, depending on its environment. A change in environment can speed up or slow down the stages, and result in downstream effects that are then inherited. This theory justified Lysenkoist plant-breeding practices.[10]
As Darwin proposed the pangenesis theory, this partly redeems Darwin for Lysenko, though the historical correctness of Darwin was demoted in comparison with Lamarck's.[15]
Other countries of theEastern Bloc accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees. InCommunist Poland, Lysenkoism was aggressively pushed by state propaganda. State newspapers attacked "damage caused by bourgeoisMendelism-Morganism" and "imperialist genetics", comparing it toMein Kampf. For example,Trybuna Ludu published an article titled "French scientists recognize superiority of Soviet science" byPierre Daix, a French communist and chief editor ofLes Lettres Françaises, basically repeating Soviet propaganda claims; this was intended to create an impression that Lysenkoism was accepted by the whole progressive world.[20] While some academics accepted Lysenkoism for political reasons, the Polish scientific community largely opposed it.[46] A notable opponent wasWacław Gajewski: in retaliation, he was denied contact with students, though he allowed to continue his scientific work at the Warsaw botanical garden. Lysenkoism was rapidly rejected starting from 1956, and in 1958 Gajewski founded the first department of genetics, at theUniversity of Warsaw.[46]
Communist Czechoslovakia adopted Lysenkoism in 1949. The prominent geneticist Jaroslav Kříženecký (1896–1964) criticized Lysenkoism in his lectures, and 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"; he was imprisoned in 1958.[47]
InEast Germany, although Lysenkoism was taught at some universities, it had very little impact on science due to the actions of a few scientists, such as the geneticistHans Stubbe, and scientific contact withWest Berlin research institutions. Nonetheless, Lysenkoist theories were found in schoolbooks as late as the dismissal of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.[48]
Lysenkoism dominatedChinese science from 1949 until 1956, during which open discussion of alternative theories like classical Mendelian genetics was forbidden. Only in 1956 during a genetics symposium opponents of Lysenkoism were permitted to freely criticize it and argue for Mendelian genetics.[49] In the proceedings from the symposium,Tan Jiazhen is quoted as saying "Since [the] USSR started to criticize Lysenko, we have dared to criticize him too".[49] For a while, both schools were permitted to coexist, although the influence of the Lysenkoists remained large for several years, contributing to theGreat Famine through loss of yields.[49]
Almost alone among Western scientists,John Desmond Bernal, Professor of Physics atBirkbeck College, London, aFellow of the Royal Society, and a communist,[50] made an aggressive public defence of Lysenko.[51]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Academician Schmalhausen, Professors Formozov and Sabinin, and 3,000 other biologists, victims of the August 1948 Session, lost their professional jobs because of their integrity and moral principles [...] "To arrest, torture, and execute opponents of scientists whose professional opinion was supported by the Party and the state was the OGPU/NKVD/NKGB method of solving professional disagreements in science." [...] "
Communist Party leaders wholeheartedly embraced Lysenko's promising claims. By 1934, Lysenko was proclaiming that genetics was a hostile science for those who supported communist ideology — a view that culminated in a ban on genetics. Political dictatorship in science in the USSR led to the complete collapse of not only genetics, but also soil sciences, mathematical economics, statistics, cybernetics and many other disciplines. Outstanding scientists who were considered the enemies of the Communist state were arrested and many were executed.
Many saw agreement between Darwin and Marx in that each of them regarded struggle as the motor of development, one the class struggle, the other the struggle for existence. But there is a great difference between these two kinds of struggle! ... For Marx, the mass is the carrier of development, for Darwin it is the individual, though not as exclusively as for many of his disciples... A quite individualist conception which corresponded very well to the thought of liberalism that was all-powerful in Darwin's time and which was therefore easily accepted... A materialist neo-Lamarckism, freed not only of all of the naivete of its origins but also of all mysticism, which some of its followers seek to inject into it, seemed to me to assert in biology the same principles that Marx had revealed for society in the materialist conception of history.
... conditioned reflexes, i.e., the highest nervous activity, are inherited. At present some experiments on white mice have been completed. ... Three hundred times was it necessary to combine the feeding of the mice with the ringing of the bell in order to accustom them to run to the feeding place on hearing the bell ring. ... The fourth generation required only 10 lessons. ... I think it very probable that after some time a new generation of mice will run to the feeding place on hearing the bell with no previous lesson.
Two weeks after the end of the August 1948 session...Lysenko seized this chair and the nation's oldest and most respected higher educational institution in the field of agriculture was now completely in Lysenko's hands. A wave of dismissals followed, in which about three thousand biologists lost the jobs they had held in institutions of research and higher education. The universities affected included those in Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky, Kharkov, Kiev, Voronezh, Saratov, Tbilisi, and many other towns. Some of the people who were dismissed were also arrested.
As mentioned in Chapters 1 and 2, special institutes for imprisoned scientists existed from the late 1920s. However, a system of secret sharashki under the NKVD Department of Special Design Bureaus was established in the late 1930s, on September 29, 1938. Even arrested NKVD specialists, especially those from the Foreign Intelligence, were transferred under the NKVD Special Bureau for some time for teaching and writing textbooks. Later, they were tried and usually executed. In July 1941, this department was renamed the NKVID/MVD Fourth Special Department, in which 489 imprisoned scientists and 662 NKVD officers worked.
