genetics for a generation.
To understand how a man who claimed to be able to turn wheat into rye came to dominate Soviet agriculture for thirty years, wenave recall the material conditions of the Soviet Union during the first years of its existence. The devastation or the First World War, followed rapidly by severe droughts in 1920 and 1921, led to a catastrophic famine which killed over one million people.
Severe winters in 1927 and 1928 destroyed over 32 million acres of wheat. To natural hazards was added in 1928 one of human origin Stalin's forced collectivisation of the peasantry. This campaign met with massive resistance and sabotage. Rather than turn their livestock over to the collective farms, the peasants sauentered them; crops plougned in and resowing boycor ted. As a result agricultural production fell by 15-20 per cent in 1929/30.
PROBLEM The crisis of food production was problem facing One Soviet scientists. How was it possible to develop new plants and new breeds of animals to withstand the harsh climactic conditions and simultaneously increase production?
Classical geneticists argued that such changes would take time time to carry out experiments necessary to produce. ane more resistant Varieties STALIN'S FAVOURITE scientist, Trofim Denisovitch Lysenko, died last week at the age of 78. Hailed in the '20s and '30s as the originator of theories fundamental to Soviet agriculture, holder of the Order of Lenin, winner of two Stalin prizes, ex-Vice-Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and Director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1940-64, he was at the time of his death regarded by almost the entire scientific world as a charlatan and a fraud. His main 'contribution' to science was to retard Soviet But Lvsenko discovered a short-cut. He had come to prominence for his studies on enabled winter varieties of cereals (r.e. seed sown in te autumn) to be treated with low temperatures and sown as spring crops, thus avoiding DIVIDED Turning his back on genetics, which he accused of being anti-materialist for its concepts of unchanging genetic, material, claimed WaS produce a directed change in heredity by manipulating environment. (In WOIC the case above. he claimed to nave winter wheat wheat.)
Naturally Lysenko's claims were received with great enthusiasm, for they promised rapid solutions to the food supply problem. Stalin's philosophers were rapturous support for Lysenko's which they claimed confirmed Marxist principles.
As with the "line' of socialist realism in the arts, Lysenko's opponents were gradually removed from their posts. point in 1948 with the banning of all work other than that based on the breeding teachings of Lysenko. was to admit being influenced by 'alien class interests'. Total monoHave which Classica The possibie INTO spring in their theories, This reached its high To dissent read it lithism was the order of the day -Stalin's order.
But to maintain itself, Lysenkoism had not only to shut out all news of scientific developments in the west, but also to come up with the goods in the Soviet Union. This it signally failed to do, and after Stalin's death his theories came increasingly under attack. But it was not until Khruschev's removal that Lysenko himself was removed from his position at the Institute of Genetics. Even so. retained substantial power in the field of agriculture up to his death Any socialist critique of the development of Lysenkoism in the USSR cannot fail to condemn the take theories of acquired inheritance developed by Lysenko as against the Darwinian view of evolution by nata selection PERVERSION For the bourgeois critics, 'Lysenko affair provided the basis Tor a wole spare or propagande extolling ine vinues of western 'neutral' science as against the perversion of science in the Soviet bloc But recent revelations concerning the relation between genetics and intelligence by Black Paperite Cyril Burt, 'the father of educational psychology, show that deception and Tate are note excusive vrooert of the Stalinist bureaucracy and their favourites The work on the demystification of science is only just beginning to get popular recognition. DOOr recently published, edited by Hilary and Steven Rose, The Radicalisation of Science* which contains a section on Lysenkoism, is a part of that process. We urge all readers to try to ADRIAN YEELES and JOHN DUVEEN Radicalisation of Science, edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (Macmillan, £3.95)