The period of persecution of genetics in the USSR, which lasted from 1935 to the end of 1964, was called Lysenkoism after T.D. Lysenko, the leader of a political campaign unprecedented in the natural sciences. The beginning of this period coincided with the escalation of political repression, when a huge number of people were killed, regardless of their specialty and views. Among them were geneticists. However, among biologists involved in genetics, many, including Academician N.I. Vavilov, suffered, undoubtedly, as adamant opponents of the ideas of T.D. Lysenko, supported by the entire power of the party repressive apparatus.

Since the mid-1930s. in genetics, discussions broke out between scientists dealing with problems of theoretical biology and genetics, and supporters of the gaining strength of T.D. Lysenko. Belief system of T.D. Lysenko in those years, known as “Soviet creative Darwinism”, or “Michurin’s teaching” (note that the gardener I.V. Michurin, who died in 1935, had very little to do with this), was briefly reduced to the following.

Heredity T.D. Lysenko defined it this way: “Heredity is the property of a living body to require certain conditions for its life, its development and definitely respond to certain conditions” (“On the situation in biological science.” Verbatim report of the session of VASKHNIL., M., 1948. P. 28). From such a definition, which is completely different from the generally accepted one, it does not follow that heredity manifests itself during the reproduction of organisms in a series of generations, and genetics, accordingly, was deprived of the specific subject of research characteristic of this science.

One of the main provisions of the “doctrine” was the denial of genes as units of heredity and the role of chromosomes as an apparatus of heredity. It was believed, on the contrary, that heredity is characteristic of any part of the living: “plastic substances... just like chromosomes, like any part of a living body, have breed properties, they are characterized by a certain heredity” (ibid., p. 32).

The second main point of the teaching of T.D. Lysenko consisted in recognizing the adequacy of changes in heredity to changes in living conditions and, accordingly, the inheritance of acquired characteristics. “The sharply intensified struggle, which divided biologists into two irreconcilable camps, thus flared up around the old question: is it possible to inherit the characteristics and properties acquired by plant and animal organisms during their lives? In other words, does a qualitative change in the nature of plant and animal organisms depend on the quality of living conditions affecting the living body, the organism? Michurin's teaching, materialist-dialectical in its essence, confirms such a dependence with facts. The Mendelian-Morganist teaching, metaphysical-idealistic in its essence, rejects such a dependence without evidence” (ibid., p. 13).

An important place in his constructions is T.D. Lysenko also considered vegetative hybridization. He argued that plant grafting changes their heredity, and that the “vegetative hybrids” obtained as a result of grafting do not differ from sexual ones.

The essence of the “Michurin teaching” was thus reduced to a compilation of ideas that existed in biology in the 19th century. Naturally, for competent geneticists in the 20th century. they were unacceptable.

In the discussions of the 1930s. N.I. Vavilov, A.S. Serebrovsky and others tried to appeal to facts proving the existence of genes, the role of chromosomes in heredity, and the non-heritability of acquired properties. The Lysenkoites ignored these arguments, and were often simply unable to understand due to insufficient education. They referred to their own achievements in agriculture and, increasingly, turned to ideological and political accusations.

If the first discussions (1936 and 1939) could still be considered such, then the final one, which marked the defeat of genetics in 1948, was an “exposure”: “We will not discuss with the Morganists, we will continue to expose them as representatives of a harmful and ideologically alien , brought to us from an alien foreign country, a direction pseudoscientific in its essence” (Present I.I. Ibid., p. 510).

The historical outline of events was as follows. T.D. Lysenko began as an experimental agronomist, and in the late 1920s. he managed to make certainly interesting observations about the influence of temperature conditions on the development of cereals. The theory of staged development of plants, which relates to the physiology of development, formulated on the basis of these experiments, was inappropriately opposed to genetics and, most importantly, formed the basis of the widely advertised agrotechnical method of vernalization.

Since 1929 T.D. Lysenko worked at the Selection and Genetics Institute in Odessa, where he promoted and widely introduced the agrotechnical method of vernalization. The reception was not sufficiently justified (later it was completely abandoned). T.D. Lysenko, defending his proposals in the spirit of the times, resorted to political phraseology: “... although vernalization, created by Soviet reality, was able to grow into an entire branch of science in a fairly short period of time, in just 4-5 years, it was able to repel all attacks class enemy, and there were many of them, but much more needs to be done. Comrades, pest kulaks are found not only in your collective farm life. You know them well from collective farms. But they are no less dangerous, and they are no less anathema to science. A lot of blood had to be wasted in defense in all sorts of disputes with some so-called “scientists” regarding vernalization, in the struggle for its creation, and a lot of blows had to be withstood in practice. Comrades, wasn’t there and isn’t there a class struggle on the front of vernalization?... Both in the scientific world and in the non-scientific world, but the class enemy is always an enemy, whether he is a scientist or not.” (Speech by T.D. Lysenko at the II All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers
in 1935)

Following the opponents of vernalization, the attacks of T.D. Lysenko underwent genetic testing. The turning point was 1935, when N.I. Vavilov resigned from the post of president of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after V.I. Lenin, which he organized, and T.D. Lysenko became a member of this academy.

Attacks on genetics and the positions of N.I. Vavilov’s views on agricultural science caused divisions among biologists and agronomists. Constant appeals to dialectical materialism attracted the attention of philosophers to Lysenko. The next discussion was organized by the magazine “Under the Banner of Marxism” in the fall of 1939.

By this time, the Lysenkoites began to persistently talk about genetics (“Mendelism-Morganism”) as a metaphysical-idealistic bourgeois science. At the meeting organized by the magazine, the discussion was not only about the philosophical assessment of various concepts in genetics, but also about the importance of genetics for agricultural practice. In the discussion, in addition to N.I. Vavilov, many geneticists took part.

Former among them was Leningrader Yu.I. Polyansky recalled that in general the debate of 1939 made a grave impression with its bias and desire to destroy genetics at any cost. Principled and firm speeches of N.I. Vavilov and his associates showed, however, that genetics cannot be defeated in a scientific debate.

In August 1940 N.I. Vavilov was arrested. In the first half of 1941, the same fate befell his closest collaborators at the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing - geneticists G.D. Karpechenko, G.A. Levitsky, botanists L.I. Govorova and K.A. Flaksberger. In the arrest warrant for G.D. Karpechenko said: “The materials of the NKVD Directorate for the Leningrad Region have established that Karpechenko for a number of years, under the leadership of Vavilov, waged an open struggle against advanced methods of research work and the most valuable achievements of Academician Lysenko in obtaining high yields.”

G.D. Karpechenko and N.I. Vavilov were sentenced to death on the same day (July 9, 1941); Vavilov’s execution was later commuted to a 20-year sentence.

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, the objects of the main attacks from the Lysenkoites were the evolutionist academician I.I. Schmalhausen and geneticist, President of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus A.R. Zhebrak, who after the death of Vavilov in 1943 could be considered the leaders of genetics in the USSR.

Publication of articles by A.R. Zhebrak and N.P. Dubinina in the magazine Science in 1946 was used to accuse them of “groveling groveling before bourgeois science.” The Ministry of Higher Education (A.R. Zhebrak headed the department at the Moscow Agricultural Academy) organized a “court of honor” that condemned the scientist’s act.

In 1948, having achieved the personal support of I.V. Stalin, T.D. Lysenko organizes and conducts the so-called August session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences “On the situation in biological science.”

The session was planned not as a discussion, but as a “parade of winners.” Nevertheless, voices of dissent were heard: geneticists I.A. Rapoport, S.I. Alikhanyan, A.R. Zhebrak, evolutionist I.I. Schmalhausen, botanist P.M. Zhukovsky. I.A. spoke and behaved most sharply during the meetings. Rapoport. It was he who shouted during the report of one of the Lysenkoites: “Obscurants!”

After the session, most of the geneticists and biologists who sympathized with them were fired, some remained unemployed for several months. Only from universities, by order of the Minister of Higher Education, 127 teachers, including 66 professors, were dismissed. Thus, Academician I.I. was dismissed from Moscow University. Shmalhausen, plant physiologist D.I. Sabinin (who later committed suicide), geneticists N.I. Shapiro, S.I. Alikhanyan, R.B. Khesin, from Leningrad University - prof. M.E. Lobashev, P.G. Svetlov, Yu.I. Polyansky, physiologist E.Sh. Airapetyants, from Gorky University - S.S. Chetverikov, from Kievsky - S.M. Gershenzon.

Naturally, the teaching of genetics was stopped, books from libraries were confiscated and destroyed.

Although in 1956–1957. Genetics research has resumed on a limited scale, T.D. Lysenko retained enormous influence and power in biological science until the end of 1964.

What caused the appearance and such a long duration of a gloomy phenomenon in the history of our science, known as “Lysenkoism”? When considering the reasons, it should be remembered that Lysenkoism is not only and not so much a scientific phenomenon as a socio-historical one. Let us consider the factors that led to the phenomenon of Lysenkoism.

Political factors

Despite all the statements of philosophers, genetics, like any other natural science discipline, is far from ideology. In the social sciences - history, political economy, philosophy - in the Soviet era, only certain systems of ideas were officially accepted, stemming from the views of Marx-Lenin and corresponding to the ideology of the Communist Party. In the natural sciences, if desired and with skills in scholasticism, it was possible to recognize any specific scientific theory as corresponding to dialectical materialism.

Philosophical debates on natural scientific issues in the 1920s–1940s. were based on the ambitions of certain individuals and groups. The origins of the hostile attitude of the authorities towards genetics should not be sought in the field of ideology.

The most important thing is the following circumstance. Agriculture since the late 1920s in the USSR it was an arena for voluntaristic experiments that led to hunger and impoverishment of the peasants. Agricultural production did not increase or grew extremely slowly. Naturally, the initiators of the experiments did not want to admit their responsibility for the failures and sought to find “scapegoats.” At the first stage they were pest fists.

Agricultural science, which “lags behind,” “is not being rebuilt,” “isolating itself from needs,” etc., was also a suitable “scapegoat.” Unfortunately for N.I. Vavilov and his colleagues at the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing worked directly in agricultural science, and N.I. Vavilov headed it for a number of years. I tried to actively work in the genetics of farm animals and A.S. Serebrovsky.

In discussions of 1936, 1939, 1948. genetics was presented not as a fundamental science, but as an agricultural science, designed primarily to ensure an increase in agricultural productivity. Accusations against genetics and geneticists made it possible to avoid considering the true causes of failures in agriculture.

In the late 1920s–early 1930s. the number of agricultural scientific institutions in the USSR increased like an avalanche: in 1929, when the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences was formed, it included one institute, after 5 years their number exceeded 100. It was impossible to provide such a number of institutions with well-trained personnel, and a stream of dropouts poured into science. Precocious promoters, sometimes energetic and ambitious, who did not understand and did not want to understand the complexities of science (this applies not only to genetics, but also to statistics and experimental work), formed the army that Lysenko led and moved against the “bourgeois scientists.”

Scientific factors

In its rapid development in the first third of the 20th century. genetics has overtaken not only related branches of biology, but also other natural sciences. Geneticists substantiated the existence of the gene, discovered its main property, the ability to reproduce itself (autocatalysis), and widely used mathematics in the analysis of genetic phenomena. The latter was unusual for most biologists (biology at the beginning of the 20th century remained predominantly a descriptive science). As for the postulated properties of the gene, they were incomprehensible to both biologists, chemists and physicists. As a result, genetics did not receive adequate support from scientists in other specialties in its struggle. To some of them, both the postulates of genetics and Lysenko’s fantasies were equally alien; to others, Lysenko’s views were more understandable and therefore appealing.

Let us note that in biology, especially in Russia, for a long time there was sympathy for the hypothesis of the inheritance of acquired properties, not to mention the fact that doctors and agricultural workers were predominantly spontaneous Lamarckists. Discussions on the issue of inheritance of acquired properties took place in the USSR in the late 1920s. and showed that this concept is quite widespread among professional biologists. Thus, put forward by T.D. Lysenko’s system of views of the “Michurin teaching” did not and could not cause general rejection in the scientific community.

The situation changed only in the 1950s. The gene was materialized in DNA, and the discovery of the double helix made it clear how the properties of the gene are realized, in particular its previously mysterious ability for auto- and heterocatalysis. New discoveries not only made genetics understandable to physicists and chemists, but also fascinated some of them. So, for example, in the 1950s. The physicist, later Nobel laureate, I.E. gave lectures on genetics in Moscow and Leningrad. There M.

At the same time, T.D. Lysenko, who ignored new facts until the end of his life, expanded his range of interests and began to speak out on issues of evolution. He denied intraspecific struggle and began to preach the idea of ​​degeneration of species (wheat turns into rye, cuckoos are born from the eggs of small forest birds). Naturally, these fantastic ideas outraged biologists familiar with evolutionary theory. Discussions on speciation began in the early 1950s. (even during the life of I.V. Stalin). Lysenko now faced a much broader front of biologists than had been the case in the 1930s. Physicists and chemists began to actively support genetics.

Subjective factors

No no. Vavilov, nor the creator of the Moscow school of genetics N.K. Koltsov was not suitable for the role of the leader of Soviet science. Non-proletarian origin, education received under tsarism, work abroad - all this made them socially dubious elements. On the contrary, T.D. Lysenko, not accidentally called the “people's academician,” was from this position an ideal figure.

T.D. Lysenko was not a conscious falsifier. He belonged to the type of paranoid individuals who blindly believe in their ideas. Such individuals often have the ability to influence others and convince them that they are right. T.D. Lysenko managed to achieve the patronage of not only I.V. Stalin, but also N.S. Khrushchev. One of Lysenko’s first speeches was interrupted by Stalin’s remark: “Bravo, Comrade Lysenko!”, after which his career rapidly took off.

T.D. Lysenko had enormous ingenuity and for 35 years proposed more and more new ways to solve agricultural problems: vernalization, cross-pollination of self-pollinators, nest plantings of forests, fat milk production of cows... A new proposal was put forward, advertised and began to be widely implemented even before the previous one failed .

In October 1964, at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, N.S. Khrushchev was removed from all posts, and it immediately became clear that Lysenko stayed afloat only thanks to his support. Just a few days after the plenum, articles rehabilitating genetics appeared in the general press. In December, specific measures were already planned to restore genetics in the system of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Most of Lysenko's supporters, who sometimes occupied high positions, retained their positions. Some of them hid, others “reformed”, and others tried to defend the provisions of the “Michurin teaching” for another 20 years. T.D. himself Lysenko, remaining an academician, until his death in 1976, was in charge of the experimental base of the USSR Academy of Sciences “Gorki Leninskie”.

Brief biography of T.D. Lysenko

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was born on September 29, 1898 in Ukraine, into a peasant family. After graduating from two classes of a rural school, he entered the horticulture school and took a two-year course in breeding. In 1925 he graduated from the Kyiv Agricultural Institute in absentia. He worked in Azerbaijan at a breeding station in the city of Ganja, where he conducted experiments on the influence of sowing dates on the duration of plant development phases. From 1929 he worked at the Ukrainian Institute of Genetics and Selection (later the All-Union Selection and Genetics Institute) in Odessa, in 1934–1938. - Director of this institute.

In 1934 T.D. Lysenko was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, in 1935 - an academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in 1939 - a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1938 to 1956 and in 1961–1962. – President of VASKhNIL, 1941–1965. - Director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Three times awarded the Stalin Prize, Hero of Socialist Labor (1945), awarded 8 Orders of Lenin.

On January 26, 1943, at the age of 55, the great Russian biologist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov died of exhaustion in a Saratov prison hospital. One of the most prominent scientists of the twentieth century, a member of many foreign academies of sciences and scientific societies, a plant breeder, a geneticist, who, during expeditions to more than 50 countries, created a unique and invaluable world collection of plants, which now represents the gene pool of the plant world.
A man of colossal efficiency, who knows two dozen foreign languages, Vavilov traveled all over the world, sending parcels with seeds and fruits to his homeland. Plants grown from them served as the basis for the creation of new varieties of cultivated plants.
And he himself died of starvation in prison...

Vavilov's long journeys suddenly ended in the mid-30s. After forced collectivization, Stalin needed to achieve impressive results in agriculture in the blink of an eye. One could not expect such a miracle from Vavilov, an independent-minded popular scientist who maintained close contacts with foreign colleagues - he proceeded from scientific principles that required money and time to develop new varieties. Then Stalin found a “miracle worker” who promised to collect fabulous harvests within a year or two without any special expenses. The Ukrainian agronomist T.D. became such a person. Lysenko.

Lysenkoism
Genetics was one of those sciences that was persecuted and prohibited during the period of Stalin’s personality cult and after it. The persecution of genetics and geneticists began in the 30s. At this time, discussions were organized on genetic issues. Discussions played a prominent role in the development of science, for example, the debate between supporters and opponents of the spontaneous generation of microorganisms or supporters and opponents of evolutionary theory. Scientists gave arguments to defend their points of view, proposed new experiments, etc. However, discussions on genetics in the USSR were of a completely different nature. While geneticists presented scientific arguments in favor of their theories, their opponents, led by Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. The main accusations against geneticists were political in nature. Genetics was declared a bourgeois reactionary science. It was opposed to the so-called advanced Michurin biology (the name of the remarkable breeder I.V. Michurin, who had died by that time, was used in the name). Geneticists who cited foreign scientists in their works were accused of kowtowing to foreigners; Mendel's laws were contemptuously called "pea laws." Lysenko's supporters mocked the work on Drosophila; they said that it was necessary to work on cows and sheep. Working on fruit flies is a waste of people's money and sabotage. One of the famous geneticists was called a “Trotskyist bandit.”
As for human genetics, Lysenko’s supporters argued that citizens of a socialist country cannot have hereditary diseases, and talk about human genes is the basis of racism and fascism.

All these accusations, in the atmosphere of suspicion of the 1930s, when pests and enemies of the people were looked for everywhere, yielded results. The first victim, even before discussions on genetics, was the outstanding scientist S.S. Chetverikov. In 1929, he organized a seminar on genetics, "COOP" (from the words "cooperative shouting"). This seminar was not held at the institute, but alternately at the homes of its participants. When this became known, Chetverikov was fired and expelled from Moscow to Sverdlovsk, where he managed to get a job as a consultant at the zoo. If this had happened not in 1929, but several years later, he would not have gotten off so easily.
Many geneticists were arrested in 1937. Among them was G.A. Nadson, who died in custody. Karpechenko, Levitsky (this was his third arrest), who died in prison, and other geneticists were arrested. Karpechenko and Levitsky aroused suspicion simply because they had been abroad: Karpechenko in 1929-1931. trained in the USA, and Levitsky was expelled from Russia for anti-government activities back in 1907 and worked first at a biological station in Naples, and then in Germany in the laboratory of the famous cytologist Strassburger. (He, like O. Hertwig, came to the conclusion that the carrier of heredity is the cell nucleus). And every person who visited abroad was considered in those years as a potential spy.

Persecution of Vavilov
Lysenko and his followers understood that they had their most dangerous enemy in Vavilov, and therefore repeated among themselves more than once that “Babylon must be destroyed,” that is, Vavilov’s scientific school must be destroyed. Feeling which way the wind was blowing, many biologists went over to Lysenko’s side. “These targeted mutations are caused by the absence of decency genes,” Vavilov joked bitterly.

Lysenko's complaints against Vavilov to the NKVD followed, and at the beginning of 1940, Stalin gave the go-ahead for the arrest of Nikolai Ivanovich. At this time, the world war was already underway, and there was no fear of an explosion of indignation in the USA, France and Great Britain, where the scientist was especially popular. In order not to attract attention, Vavilov was arrested not in Moscow, but in Western Ukraine, where he was part of a complex expedition of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture. On August 6, 1940, in the afternoon, a black Emka drove up to the student dormitory in Chernivtsi, where its participants lived, and two NKVD officers invited Nikolai Ivanovich into the car, allegedly for urgent negotiations with Moscow. At midnight the car returned without him to collect his belongings.

It is known what followed next: Nikolai Ivanovich was taken on August 10, 1940 by train through Kyiv to Moscow to the Lubyanka. He was accused of being an English spy (they recalled his work in England in Batson’s laboratory), as well as “sabotage,” “sabotage,” and “participation in a counter-revolutionary organization.” Endless interrogations of investigator A.G. began. Hvat, as well as two “slaughterers” who used brutal interrogation methods - Shvartsman and Albogachiev. According to the published list of interrogations, a total of about 230 of them were carried out over about 1,000 hours (according to other sources, there were 400 of them, and they lasted 1,700 hours).

In 1941, when N.I. Vavilov was in prison, agrochemist and academician D.N. Pryanishnikov nominated him for the Stalin Prize. Then it was a heroic act associated with the risk of life.

On July 9, 1941, the trial of the scientist took place. Vavilov himself wrote about this trial: “At the trial, which lasted several minutes, I categorically stated that the accusation was based on fables, false facts and slander, which were in no way confirmed by the investigation.”

Nikolai Ivanovich was sentenced to death, but later the sentence was “softened” to 20 years of hard labor. In prison, Vavilov wrote a large book about the history of agriculture since ancient times. He had no encyclopedias or scientific works at hand - only a pencil, paper and his own memory.
On January 26, 1943, at the age of 55, the great scientist Nikolai Vavilov died of exhaustion in a prison hospital in Saratov.
Vavilov’s investigative file shows that at the end of the investigation, his numerous scientific works and materials were burned.

The case of Nikolai Vavilov, which by a unique coincidence became the subject of research back in the 1960s (Mark Popovsky’s book “The Case of Academician Vavilov,” first published in the USSR in 1991), is one of the most widely discussed fabricated criminal cases in the history of world science.

The final defeat of genetics after World War II
The Second World War temporarily stopped the persecution of geneticists, but after its end it resumed. Lysenko decided to finish off his opponents, and he could do this because he had the support of Stalin. In 1948, a session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after. V.I. Lenin (VASKhNIL), at which Lysenko made a report “On the situation in biological science.” The report lambasted genetics. Geneticists who were present at the session tried to object to certain statements of the report; they were forced to go to the podium and express their point of view. But at the end of the session, Lysenko announced that his report had been approved by Comrade Stalin. It turned out that those geneticists who criticized the report opposed Stalin’s views.

Lysenko trashes geneticists at a session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after. IN AND. Lenin (VASKhNIL). 1948

In this situation, some geneticists made statements of repentance, while others continued to defend their views. Here it is appropriate to remember I.A. Rappoport - a very courageous man who showed remarkable courage in the war against the Nazis. He also behaved courageously after the VASKhNIL session. At a meeting of the party bureau of the institute where he worked, he was demanded to renounce the chromosome theory, and Molotov’s speech was cited as an argument for its unsuitability. Rappoport replied that he understood genetics better than Molotov, and was immediately expelled from the party for this and fired from the institute.

After the VASKhNIL session, all leading geneticists were fired from their jobs, and teaching genetics at schools and universities was prohibited. Collections of mutant fruit flies, other plants and animals were destroyed. N.P. Dubinin was forced to study birds in forest shelter belts, I.A. Rappoport became a laboratory geologist, etc. Some geneticists were arrested after the session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, for example D.D. Romashov, an employee of N.P. Dubinin. Medical genetics specialist V.P. Efroimson was also arrested. Student Sergei Muge was arrested for visiting his dismissed professor and giving him flowers. Fortunately, they all survived and were released after Stalin’s death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1. Aleksandrov, V. Ya. Difficult years of Soviet biology. - St. Petersburg, -1992.
2. V.P. Efroimson: " "
3. Korochkin, L. I. Neolysenkovism in modern biology // In defense of science. Bull. No. 3 / Rep. ed. E. Kruglikov; Commission for Combating Pseudoscience and Scientific Falsification. research RAS. - M., -2008.
4. Muzrukova, E. B., Chesnova, L. V. Soviet biology in the 30-40s: crisis under the conditions of a totalitarian system. // Repressed science. - Vol. 2. - St. Petersburg.. - 1994.
5. Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov. Lysenkoism and the defeat of Soviet genetics.
6.V.N. Soyfer, 2001. “The consequences of political dictatorship for Russian science,” Nature Reviews Genetics 2, 723-729

Genetics was one of those sciences that was persecuted and prohibited during the period of Stalin’s personality cult and after it. The persecution of genetics and geneticists began in the 30s. At this time, discussions on genetics were organized. Discussions played a prominent role in the development of science, for example, the debate between supporters and opponents of the spontaneous generation of microorganisms or supporters and opponents of evolutionary theory. Scientists gave arguments to defend their points of view, proposed new experiments, etc. However, discussions on genetics in the USSR were of a completely different nature. While geneticists presented scientific arguments in favor of their theories, their opponents, led by Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, used insults and political accusations in the dispute. Lysenko said that there cannot be a special substance of heredity; the whole organism has heredity; that genes are an invention of geneticists: after all, no one has seen them. He said that practitioners cannot wait a thousand years for the mutation they need to occur. Plants and animals must be nurtured; as a result of upbringing, their heredity will quickly change in the right direction.

These claims were not supported by any scientific evidence. But the main accusations against geneticists were political in nature. Genetics was declared a bourgeois reactionary science. It was opposed to the so-called advanced Michurin biology (the name of the remarkable breeder I.V. Michurin, who had died by that time, was used in the name). Geneticists who cited foreign scientists in their works were accused of kowtowing to foreigners; Mendel's laws were contemptuously called "pea laws." Lysenko's supporters mocked the work on Drosophila; they said that it was necessary to work on cows and sheep. Working on fruit flies is a waste of people's money and sabotage. One of the famous geneticists was called a “Trotskyist bandit.”

As for human genetics, Lysenko’s supporters argued that citizens of a socialist country cannot have hereditary diseases, and talk about human genes is the basis of racism and fascism.

All these accusations, in the atmosphere of suspicion of the 1930s, when pests and enemies of the people were looked for everywhere, yielded results. The first victim was the outstanding scientist S.S. Chetverikov, even before discussions on genetics. In 1929, he organized a seminar on genetics, "COOP" (from the words "cooperative shouting"). This seminar was not held at the institute, but alternately at the homes of its participants. When this became known, Chetverikov was fired and expelled from Moscow to Sverdlovsk, where he managed to get a job as a consultant at the zoo. If this had happened not in 1929, but several years later, he would not have gotten off so easily.

Many geneticists were arrested in 1937. Among them was G.A. Nadson, who died in custody. In 1940, N.I. Vavilov was arrested. He was accused of being an English spy (they recalled his work in England in Bateson’s laboratory). In 1941, when N.I. Vavilov was in prison, the agrochemist academician D.N. Pryanishnikov nominated him for the Stalin Prize. Then it was a heroic act associated with the risk of life. In 1943, Vavilov died in Saratov prison from exhaustion. Following Vavilov, Karpechenko, Levitsky (this was his third arrest), who died in prison, and other geneticists were arrested. Karpechenko and Levitsky aroused suspicion simply because they had been abroad: Karpechenko in 1929-1931. trained in the USA, and Levitsky was expelled from Russia for anti-government activities back in 1907 and worked first at a biological station in Naples, and then in Germany in the laboratory of the famous cytologist Strasburger. (He, like O. Hertwig, came to the conclusion that the carrier of heredity is the cell nucleus). And every person who visited abroad was considered in those years as a potential spy.

The Second World War temporarily stopped the persecution of geneticists, but after its end it resumed. Lysenko decided to finish off his opponents, and he could do this because he had the support of Stalin. In 1948, a session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after. V.I. Lenin (VASKhNIL), at which Lysenko made a report “On the situation in biological science.” The report lambasted genetics. Geneticists who were present at the session tried to object to certain statements of the report; they were forced to go to the podium and express their point of view. But at the end of the session, Lysenko announced that his report had been approved by Comrade Stalin. It turned out that those geneticists who criticized the report opposed Stalin’s views.

In this situation, some geneticists made statements of repentance, while others continued to defend their views. Here it is appropriate to remember I.A. Rappoport - a very courageous man who showed remarkable courage in the war against the Nazis. He also behaved courageously after the VASKhNIL session. At a meeting of the party bureau of the institute where he worked, he was demanded to renounce the chromosome theory, and Molotov’s speech was cited as an argument for its unsuitability. Rappoport replied that he understood genetics better than Molotov, and was immediately expelled from the party for this and fired from the institute.

After the VASKhNIL session, all leading geneticists were fired from their jobs, and teaching genetics at schools and universities was prohibited. Collections of mutant fruit flies, other plants and animals were destroyed. N.P. Dubinin was forced to study birds in forest shelter belts, I.A. Rappoport became a laboratory geologist, etc. Some geneticists were arrested after the session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, for example D.D. Romashov, an employee of N.P. Dubinin. Medical genetics specialist V.P. Efroimson was also arrested. Student Sergei Muge was arrested for visiting his dismissed professor and giving him flowers. Fortunately, they all survived and were released after Stalin’s death.

Who doesn’t remember the popular phrase at one time: “Genetics is the corrupt girl of imperialism.” But the heroes mentioned here weren't having so much fun. It was not only about the destruction of one of the areas of science, but also about the further fate of the heroes... Thanks to Dudintsev’s novel “White Clothes” and the film of the same name, many people learned and thought about this. Thanks to Lysenko and others like him, our science was set back for many years...

The semi-literate, fanatical “people’s academician” Trofim Lysenko, with the support of I.V. Stalin, who pointed out that “... what is needed now is not old methods, not methods of discussion, but new methods of uprooting and defeat,” with his “experiments” he plunged our science and agriculture into darkness and ignorance. By order of the Minister of Higher Education Kaftanov, about 3,000 scientists related to genetics were fired from their jobs after the session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Lysenko's rise was a natural result of the party's dictatorship in science. A characteristic feature of Lysenkoism was the unity of its “scientific” supporters with party organizations, and the main method of struggle was the political discrediting of scientific opponents.

Arrests, prisons, expulsions from work, persecution, “courts of honor” - this is the path our geneticists went through in the fight against Lysenkoism. For many, this struggle cost their lives. Now the words of N.I. Vavilov have become famous: “We will go to the stake, we will burn, but we will not give up our convictions!”

Only in 1964, after the fall of Khrushchev, Lysenko was exposed, but so far domestic genetics has not regained its lost positions. Traditions have been destroyed, the connection between generations has been interrupted... Lysenko’s followers are still alive, having firmly grasped his “principles” in science.

“...It is naive to believe that Lysenkoism has fallen,” writes Valery Soifer in his fundamental work “Power and Science. The history of the defeat of genetics in the USSR." - As a phenomenon, it has not disappeared; some mimicry has occurred, but that’s all. The roots of Lysenkoism are preserved and not only in biology. The methods of “doing” science that arose during the formation of Lysenkoism, the largest leaders of science, continue to be used are still carried away by empty projections, resorting to juggling empty projections, manipulating bluffs in an attempt to keep power in their hands. If these methods have been preserved, can we say that Lysenkoism has disappeared with the death of Lysenko?”

Speeches by I.A. Rapoport and V.S. Nemchinov at the August session of VASKhNIL 1948 (

I.A. Rapoport and V.S. Nemchinov were not the only scientists who spoke out against the profanation of science at this session. But only they had the honor, courage and endurance not to renege on their words in anticipation of dire consequences)

P.S.- Dudintsev "White Clothes", film "White Clothes" Read the book: White ClothesDownload a book: fb2.zip | rtf.zip |

Cartoons from Krokodil magazine, 1948

THE DEFEAT OF “FORMAL GENETICS”

How Trofim Lysenko deceived Stalin

NOW, when the availability of food is limited only by the amount of money in your pocket, queues for sausage are remembered as a nightmare. It was not for nothing that the Soviet era was called the seventieth anniversary of the struggle against agriculture. The most persistent and inventive fighter was, perhaps, academician Trofim Lysenko, who died 24 years ago - on November 20, 1976. In terms of damage caused to agriculture, few can compare with him. An adventurer by nature, Lysenko did the almost impossible: he deceived not only biological science, not only the entire Soviet people, but also Comrade Stalin himself!

TROFIM Lysenko was born on September 30, 1898 in the family of a fairly wealthy peasant. He graduated from the Poltava Gardening School, and from 1917 to 1920 he studied at the School of Agriculture and Horticulture in Uman, which was considered the best in the country. In 1925 he graduated from the Kyiv Agricultural Institute in absentia. Little foreshadowed a rapid career. What happened next still puzzles Lysenko’s biographers, and he himself would hardly be able to clearly explain why his experiments suddenly attracted the attention of the whole country, why in 1929 he became an employee of the Ukrainian Institute of Selection and Genetics, and from 1934 - its director.

In 1933, N.I. Vavilov himself nominated him for the State Prize, in 1934 he petitioned for Lysenko’s election to the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and a year later - to the USSR Academy of Sciences.

The year 1935 was a turning point in Lysenko’s career - at the congress of agricultural shock workers in the Kremlin, he received praise from Stalin, who was not stingy with exclamations of “bravo.” Since then, the “chief agronomist of the country” managed to maintain the leader’s goodwill in all the most difficult moments of his career. During the war, Lysenko’s brother went into service with the occupiers and fled with the Germans. This could have ruined anyone's career, but the academician survived. Not for the first time and not for the last.

“Black PR?” in biology

In 1948, when the fate of the “Michurinites” hung in the balance, when the authorities almost supported the geneticists, Trofim Lysenko made a strong response move. Stalin was brought a new variety of wheat, in an ear of which up to one hundred grains could be counted. Playing on the leader’s love for the Caucasus, she was called “Kakheti branchy.” A mighty, tight spikelet was placed next to ordinary spikelets: a brilliant effect that was impossible not to buy. All scientists were well aware that the new variety would not provide an increase in yield - due to the branching, the ears grow less frequently. But scientists were not invited to the Kremlin.

Lysenko was one of the first in our country to understand what Russian politicians know well today - you can promise anything, most importantly, loudly and with a smart look. It is unlikely that you will have to pay for promises. And he excitedly promised... He promised to increase the yield by 4-5 times, to develop new varieties of wheat in 2 years, new breeds of cattle with super productivity... Advice on the strategy and tactics of public speaking, working with the press and the public was given by I. Prezent. He was an extremely talented and unprincipled man - a real image maker!

The authorities, of course, suspected that Lysenko was a charlatan. But he was a complete charlatan, from the plow. Lysenko’s main idea about the inheritance of acquired characteristics perfectly corresponded to the postulates of Soviet propaganda, which declared the education of a “new man” and that this process was possible within one or two generations. Lysenko - willingly or unwillingly - deceived the leaders, but the leaders were so happy to be deceived!

Who are you, academician?

MOST likely, the personality of Trofim Denisovich did not play a decisive role in the defeat of the Soviet genetic school in 1948. He turned out to be just a pawn (queen? rook?) in a major political game.

At the end of the 1920s. the future head of biology of the USSR gave the impression of a timid young man, modestly doing his job for the benefit of science. But already in 1932, at a conference in Odessa, Lysenko was striking in the categoricalness of his statements, declaring the chromosomal theory of heredity nonsense, the gene theory completely false, etc. He will retain this ability to change according to circumstances for the rest of his life. But - a paradox - he did not renounce most of his ideas until his death.

Even his opponents recognized the magical influence that Lysenko’s speeches had on the audience listening to him, the “vibes emanating from him.” Well, Lysenko’s ability to communicate with the “ordinary Soviet people” was head and shoulders above his opponents. Collective farmers and leaders loved the “simple agronomist”, who did not swear with the incomprehensible word “drosophila”, but preferred native swearing.

The duplicitous position taken by Lysenko during the period of persecution and subsequent arrest of his teacher Vavilov is well known. But this is almost the only really black spot in Lysenko’s entire biography. Another of his talents was the amazing ability to skillfully go into the shadows when people around him disappeared. But there are also cases when he stood up for someone. It is also surprising that, despite his emphasized admiration for the party line, Lysenko was never a member of the CPSU(b) and CPSU!

Or another unexpected turn in the character of the “people's academician”. During his work at Gorki Leninskie, Lysenko, who never spared people, forbade the killing of former record-breaking cows, believing that they “deserve a monument.” The elderly animal remained on the balance sheet of his farm until Lysenko’s death.

Lysenko’s ideas, which were repeatedly and rightly called anti-scientific, dominated the agriculture of the USSR from the late 30s to the early 50s and did not bring anything good to the country. But in fairness, it should be said that throughout the previous decade, biology was led by geneticists, and this also did not lead to the rise of agriculture. Khrushchev's reforms could not do this either. By the way, Lysenko was against the conquest of virgin lands and excessive enthusiasm for corn. Ironically, in those moments when the “people's academician” said sensible things, no one wanted to listen to him.

Maxim ORYSHAK http://gazeta.aif.ru/online/aif/1050/18_01

sources - http://www.moscvichka.ru/article/2007_45/7.html http://belolibrary.imwerden.de/books/Reznik/reznik_vavilov.htm

Background

Assessing the vernalization experiments, Maksimov, however, expressed the wish “that the excessive expectations placed on them now by some enthusiastic circles would not then interfere with a sober business assessment of the results of these important experiments.”

Also in 1929, Lysenko spoke at the Collegium of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, where Lysenko's contribution to solving the food problem was highly appreciated by People's Commissar Yakovlev, and vernalization was officially approved.

In his report to the Collegium of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture on September 13, Lysenko expanded the topic of vernalization from the fruiting of winter grains during spring sowing, proposing to influence cold not only on wheat, and to find the most suitable varieties for this, spoke about the distinction between the processes of growth and development, and argued that he managed to increase the yield of Azerbaijani wheat sown in Odessa by 40%. There he stated that “there should be no vernalization without genetics and selection.”

At the end of October and beginning of November 1931 All-Union Conference on Combating Drought, held in Moscow, at which Molotov and Kalinin spoke, along with major scientists (Talanov, Kuleshov, Maksimov, Konstantinov, Drozdov), Lysenko also spoke. The newspaper “Pravda” dated October 30, 1931 reported that “At the suggestion of the People’s Commissar of Land Comrade. Yakovleva... the conference outlined a commission..., comrade. Yakovlev especially emphasized the importance of the work of agronomist Lysenko.”

After the conference on combating drought in 1931, the USSR government awarded Lysenko the Order of the Red Banner of Labor “for his work on vernalization.”

Struggle in biology during the period of Stalinist repressions

Nevertheless, many managed to escape repression, and they even continued to engage in genetic research. S. S. Chetverikov was arrested in 1929 and was exiled for 5 years to Sverdlovsk, followed by a ban on settling in Moscow, Leningrad and several other central cities; V.P. Efroimson was twice sentenced to long terms and served his sentence in prisons and camps. It is interesting that the Lysenkoites declared themselves supporters of “genetics,” but by this term they understood exclusively their “Michurin method,” while classical genetics was called “Weismannism-Morganism.”

After 1945, despite the severe consequences of repression, genetics in the USSR continued to develop and went on the offensive against “Michurin biology”, using international connections (A. R. Zhebrak, N. N. Dubinin):

The Soviet scientific community was not simply a passive tool of politicians. Various groups within the scientific community actively exploited every turn of the state's foreign policy, trying to achieve their own goals through the party apparatus. During the peak of scientific cooperation in 1945-1946. Soviet geneticists skillfully used their international contacts to organize a “second front” in the West in order to support their attack on the institutional positions of T. D. Lysenko and strengthen Soviet genetics.

After 1948

As a result of Lysenko’s experiments, with the active support of “ideologists from science” who received high ranks and corresponding salaries, significant damage was caused to the Soviet economy (for example, on his initiative, the crossing of pedigree breeds of cattle with non-pedigree ones was carried out on a large scale).

Despite official support for Lysenko, it became possible to express views different from his point of view. At the initiative of the Minister of Education of the RSFSR V.N. Stoletov, a discussion was initiated between Lysenko’s supporters and his opponents, as a result of which Lysenko’s opponents quickly gained support in the biological press.

The end of the period of “Lysenkoism”

Phraseology of Lysenkoites

“The teaching of dialectical materialism about interdependence and interdependence, about continuous movement and change in nature, where something always arises and develops, something becomes obsolete and is destroyed, armed Michurin and Lysenko ideologically and gave them the opportunity to emerge victorious from the struggle with metaphysicians and idealists , with the followers of Weismann, Mendel and Morgan."

“Persons who defend the principles of formal genetics are unable to understand Lenin’s brilliant instruction that “the knowledge of man is not ... a straight line, but a curved line, infinitely approaching a series of circles, a spiral.” Any fragment, fragment, piece in this curved line can be turned (one-sidedly transformed) into an independent, whole, straight line, which (if you can’t see the forest for the trees) then leads into a swamp, into clericalism...”

Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences P. V. Makarov:

“The set of genes in the chromosomes, according to the Weismann-Morganists, determines all the characteristics of the organism, its appearance, behavior, character, etc. Genes exist from the beginning of life, they are unchangeable and unknowable, and can only be lost over time. Morganists prophesy that the imminent death of the living is inevitable due to the waste of “gene wealth”, or gene pool. In their opinion, all the properties of any organism, including humans, are fatally, fatally predetermined by the genes that it receives from its parents when the egg merges with the living creature, that is, at the moment of fertilization. In order to prevent the spread of harmful genes, it is necessary to regulate marriages, depriving people with “inferior” heredity of the opportunity to have offspring. Having suffered a complete failure in agricultural practice, in breeding new breeds of animals and new varieties of plants, the Weismann-Morganists, with the blessing of their bosses, are intensively engaged in human breeding, performing the dirtiest, reactionary role. They provide a theoretical “foundation” for the racist fabrications of the imperialists and seek to justify the policy of extermination of peoples, colonial oppression, and incredible exploitation of the working people. Weismann-Morganists justify the division of people into a race of masters and a race of slaves. The former have concentrated in themselves full-fledged genes, the latter are second-rate and by nature itself are forever doomed to be in the position of being exploited. Morganists express regret that their “science” was not known earlier, then it would have been possible to promptly breed a breed of people devoid of such characteristics that are so painful for exploiters, such as the desire for freedom, human existence, and socialism.”

In works of art

• Vladimir Dudintsev’s novel “White Clothes” (1967)
• TV movie “Nikolai Vavilov” (1990)
• Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel “The Kukotsky Case” (2001) and the television series of the same name (2005)

see also

• Persecution of science in the USSR

Notes

1. Popular scientific publication “In Defense of Science”, Bulletin No. 3, “Neolysenkoism in modern biology”, P. 115
2. Academician Ginzburg V.L. About pseudoscience and the need to combat it // Science and life: magazine. - M., 2000, No. 11. - P. 75.
3. Maksimov Nikolay Alexandrovich- article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (3rd edition)
4. “Leningradskaya Pravda”, January 16, 1929, No. 13, p. 3, “All-Union Congress on Genetics, Selection and Seed Production - Advances of Soviet science - German scientists use our experience - It is possible to turn winter grain into spring grain”
5. Valery Soifer."Power and Science". - Washington, 2001.
6. Vl. Grigoriev. Discovery of agronomist Lysenko. Lysenko’s method will be applied in practice on state and collective farms in Ukraine // Is it true: newspaper. - 1929. - No. 165 (4299), Sunday July 21. - P. 4.
7. A. Schlichter. About sowing winter crops in spring (Discovery of agronomist Lysenko) // Is it true: newspaper. - 1929. - No. 232 (4366), October 8. - P. 3.
8. E. S. Levina.“Trouble or guilt of Academician Vavilov?” // Nature: magazine. - 1992. - No. 8. - P. 121-124.
9. Vernalization of winter - a new achievement in the struggle for the harvest // Agricultural newspaper: newspaper. - 1929. - No. 217 (Tuesday, November 19). - P. 3-4.
10. "Vernalization Bulletin", No. 1 and 2 for 1932.
11. Lysenko T. D. Preliminary report on vernalized wheat crops on state and collective farms in 1932 // Vernalization Bulletin: magazine. - Odessa, 1932. - No. 2-3 (September). - P. 3-4.
12. Resolution of the Board of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR dated July 9, 1931, protocol No. 33. Published in the journal “Vernalization Bulletin”, 1932, issue. 1, pp. 71-72.
13. Newspaper “Socialist Agriculture”, September 13, 1931, No. 253 (815)
14. journal "Vernalization Bulletin". 1932, no. 1, pp. 71-72.
15. Pravda newspaper, October 30, 1931, No. 300 (5105), p. 2.
16. “Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the USSR,” October 29, 1931, No. 299 (4506), p. 3.
17. Lysenko and Lysenkoism: features of the development of domestic genetics // Vladimir Strunnikov, Alexey Shamin
18. Krementsov N. L. The principle of competitive exclusion // At the turning point: Soviet biology in the 20s - 30s. Vol. 1. / Ed. E.I. Kolchinsky. St. Petersburg, 1997. pp. 107-164.