Stalin and the Scientists

by Simon Ings

  When the Ministry of Agriculture wanted to breed a new variety of rubber-bearing plant, kok-sagyz, invented by the well-known cytogeneticist Mikhail Navashin, Lysenko used every means to stop ‘this genetic monster’ from being put into production – this in spite of the fact that its great champion was Yuri Zhdanov, Andrei’s son and suitor to Stalin’s daughter Svetlana.

  In February 1948 Yuri Zhdanov sent a long memorandum to Stalin, accusing Lysenko of ‘sabotage’: ‘From the very beginning, instead of objectively studying the new breed … [Lysenko] has created a poisonous atmosphere of hostility and mistrust.’20

  Yuri, though only twenty-nine, was already head of the Central Committee’s science section. Nepotism undoubtedly had a role in this: Stalin liked Yuri. Increasingly lonely, he found that Yuri and Svetlana were the only people with whom he got along. At the same time, Yuri was no fool. He had a degree in chemistry from Moscow, and a brief internship in genetics had made him a convinced Mendelian. In a speech entitled ‘On Issues of Contemporary Darwinism’, delivered on 10 April at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum, Yuri made it crystal clear exactly what he thought of Lysenko’s opposition to genetics.

  Yes, chromosomal genetics lacked practical results, and generally suffered from a divorce of theory from practice. Once these rote criticisms were out of the way, though, Zhdanov turned to the alternative offered by Lysenko – and launched into a series of devastating criticisms. Lysenko had rejected the use of hybrid maize. He had not fulfilled the promise of new useful varieties of cereals in two to three years. He had suppressed other schools of thought in ways that were intellectually and morally bankrupt. And Party philosophers who should have known better had backed him.

  As they sat in Mark Mitin’s office, eavesdropping on the speech through the public address system, it would have been hard to say who was the more outraged: the philosopher Mitin or his guest, Trofim Lysenko. When a man of Yuri Zhdanov’s standing spoke such things, some apparatchik was bound to turn it into an official directive. Lysenko needed to act, and act fast.

  It took him a week to formulate his complaint, addressing his letter both to Stalin and Yuri’s father Andrei Zhdanov. A month went by without a response, so Lysenko upped the ante. On 11 May he wrote to the Minister of Agriculture, Ivan Benediktov, offering his resignation as President of the Lenin Academy.

  It was a clever ploy. Because the post of Lenin Academy president was in the nomenklatura of the Politburo, Benediktov could neither accept nor reject his resignation. All he could do was pass the news on to Malenkov (Lysenko’s ally) and to Stalin himself. Lysenko had ensured that Yuri Zhdanov’s speech could not be glossed over: one way or another, Stalin was going to have to express an opinion.

  In late May or early June, the text of Yuri Zhdanov’s lecture finally reached Stalin’s desk. Stalin read the transcript carefully. ‘Ha-ha-ha,’ he wrote in the margin. ‘Nonsense.’ In one place: ‘Get out!’

  The amateur Lamarckian gave no quarter to Yuri’s new-fangled genetics. At one point Yuri had written,

  We Communists are by nature more sympathetic to a doctrine that establishes the possibility of the reconstruction … of the organic world, without waiting for sudden, incomprehensible, accidental changes of some mysterious hereditary plasma. It is this aspect in the neo-Lamarckian doctrine that was emphasised and valued by Comrade Stalin in ‘Anarchism or Socialism?’

  Stalin boldly underlined in pencil the words ‘It is this aspect’ and commented in the margin: ‘Not only “this aspect”, mister.’21

  On 28 May Stalin called Malenkov, both Zhdanovs and other Party leaders into his Kremlin office. The government’s chief propagandist Dmitry Shepilov was there: ‘Pipe in hand and puffing on it frequently, Stalin paced the room from end to end, repeating practically the same phrases over and over: “How did anyone dare insult Comrade Lysenko?” “Who dared to raise his hand to vilify Comrade Lysenko?”’

  Shepilov had in fact approved Yuri Zhdanov’s speech. He defended it now, and quite openly criticised Lysenko, the trouble-making underachiever who was now, to top it all, disrupting rubber plant production. Shepilov had long since come to the conclusion that Lysenko’s theories ‘were a joke among real scientists throughout the world, including those who were well-disposed to the Soviet Union’.

  Stalin paid him no mind. ‘He went up to his desk, took a cigarette, shook the tobacco out into his pipe and slowly walked along the table where everyone was sitting. Then he said very quietly, but I could hear the ominous tone in his voice: “No, it can’t be left like this. There has to be a special commission to look into it. The guilty must be punished as an example. Not Yuri Zhdanov, he’s still young and inexperienced. It’s necessary to punish the ‘fathers’.”’22

  *

  From the very start, and at the highest level, Stalin’s decision to reject genetics, and rehabilitate Lysenko, evoked either bemusement or dismay. Historians have had no easy time of it either. Superhuman efforts have been made to show the strategy, the Realpolitik behind Stalin’s decision. These efforts are not so much wrong as insufficient. Yes, Lysenko was Michurin’s great champion, and was identified as such in the public mind. An attack on Lysenko was therefore an attack on one of the nation’s founding fathers. But it is hard to imagine that the nation’s psyche would have been irredeemably scarred had Lysenko – or even Michurin, for that matter – been quietly dropped from the news cycle.

  And, yes, it is true that Lysenko represented home-grown science, while Mendelian genetics prided itself on being international. In the developing chill of the Cold War, it was necessary to champion Lysenko, the patriot, and vilify genetics as a nest of ‘cosmopolitanism’. But here again, this is not nearly enough of an explanation. Genetics was not alone in being the brainchild of an international community. Nuclear physics was an international, cosmopolitan effort – but no one now felt a burning need to contradict Einstein. The state took physics seriously, and wanted to lead the field by any means necessary, including the use of prison camps for intellectuals. It did not attempt to replace physics with some antiquated, homespun variant.

  The sheer peculiarity of Stalin’s decision raises a possibility of the sort historians try very hard to avoid. Is it possible, even likely, that the foibles and prejudices of one man, and one man alone, had enormous consequences for the whole of the science base of the Soviet Union? Did Stalin singlehandedly destroy genetic science in his own country, for no better reason than that he was a keen gardener with ambitions for lemon trees and set views about how plants grew?

  Unlikely as this sounds, there’s evidence for it. Stalin, while in some ways a very modern ruler, was also the last in a long line of European philosopher kings. He shared with his fellow Bolsheviks the idea that they had to be philosophers in order to deserve their mandate. And by 1946, when Stalin was sixty-seven and exhausted from the war, this conviction was manifesting itself more and more as a determined effort to reshape reality in his own image. He schooled the USSR’s most prominent philosopher, Georgy Aleksandrov, on Hegel’s role in the history of Marxism. He told the composer Dmitry Shostakovich how to change the orchestration for the new national anthem. He set the celebrated war poet Konstantin Simonov the task of writing a play about the Kliueva and Roskin case, treated him to an hour of literary criticism, and then rewrote the closing scenes himself. Eisenstein and his scriptwriter on Ivan the Terrible Part Two were treated to a film-making masterclass by Stalin and Zhdanov both. 1950 saw Stalin negotiating a pact with the People’s Republic of China, discussing how to invade South Korea with Kim Il Sung, writing a combative article about linguistics, and meeting with economists three times to discuss a textbook.

  As for the rout in genetics itself, it had Stalin’s personal thumbprint all over it. In spite of the fact that President Harry Truman had dispatched B-29 bombers to Europe, and the ambassadors of France, Britain and the USA were all awaiting a lengthy discussion of the Berlin crisis, Stalin still found time to edit speeches by Lysenko extensivel
y, checking them for scientific mistakes as well as political gaffes. No one then or since has ever been able to explain why Stalin was more concerned with the evils of genetics than with the collapse in trust between wartime allies that was even then threatening to bring the USSR and NATO to the brink of war.

  Stalin’s ‘special committee’ examining the state of Soviet genetics was a fudge. Andrei Zhdanov and Georgy Malenkov had to co-chair it. The report they wrote, and rewrote, and rewrote, was titled ‘On the Situation in Soviet Biology’. Zhdanov repeatedly removed references to his son’s faux pas in trying to reconcile the two trends in biology. Finally, the report declared that ‘the discussion of this question is considered finished’.

  And so it would have been, if the Party had simply banished genetics by means of a simple resolution. It had got rid of pedology by that method, after all, in 1936.

  But it was Stalin’s conceit to play the matter out in public, in as ‘scientific’ a manner as possible, by means of a special session of the Lenin Academy. On 15 July the Council of Ministers changed the nomenklatura so that Lysenko’s allies would fill the Lenin Academy come the scheduled elections. Next, Lysenko was told to prepare a report on the controversy in genetics. Eight days later, on 23 July, Lysenko sent ‘On the Situation in Soviet Biological Science’ to Stalin, and at 10 p.m. on the 27th, Stalin and Malenkov sat down with Lysenko in the Kremlin to discuss the speech in private.23

  Lysenko’s initial address had separated biology into two camps along class lines. The followers of Mendel were bourgeois. Michurinists came from the proletariat. This was classic Lysenko, but it would not serve the new conditions. Stalin took out all references to class, and replaced these with code-words that opposed ‘idealist’ (Western) with ‘materialist’ (homegrown Soviet) science. (Of course there was no time to brief every ally, and come the session, which ran from 31 July to 7 August, Lysenko’s supporters continued to fling at their opponents class-war insults that were already more than a decade old.)

  Stalin not only changed the political emphasis of Lysenko’s opening speech; he actually made it less political, much more like a piece of genuine and objective science. He took out an egregious reference to himself, and deleted the word ‘Soviet’ in the title so that the paper became something of more international consequence: a view ‘On the Situation in Biological Science’.

  Ensuring the ‘scientific’ character of the Lenin Academy’s August session had its risks. In particular, the Lenin Academy was not the only authority that could decide biological questions. If members in the Academy of Sciences got to hear about the session, they might throw the whole scenario into disarray. So Lysenko kept the session as secret as he could; most of his critics did not attend the session, because they did not know about it.

  On Saturday, the first day, Lysenko delivered ‘On the Situation in Biological Science’. It was, clearly, a declaration of war, and on the next day, Sunday, an excursion to Lysenko’s model farm in the Lenin Hills near Moscow gave participants a chance to absorb it.

  The agricultural economist and statesman Pavel Lobanov, who was presiding, expected no counter-attack when he invited formal geneticists to take the floor and respond to Lysenko’s paper. But Lysenko’s secret preparation had not been watertight, and one man stood to speak. Iosif Rapoport had learned about the meeting only by chance and at the last moment. An acquaintance had given him his ticket, but he had still had difficulty getting into the building. Journalist Mark Popovsky recorded the sensation that greeted Rapoport’s appearance:

  … with his black curls and boyish expression. He looked very handsome in his military tunic without shoulder boards but with rows of medal ribbons on his chest. Even the black bandage over an empty eye socket did not disfigure him, but lent a keener expression to his pale nervous face. His address too – he was a candidate of science at the time – was nervous but firm in tone.24

  In 1941 Iosif Rapoport had volunteered for the Moscow People’s Militia – a force made up of volunteers who were too old or were otherwise unqualified for the draft – and had returned to the front even after he was wounded and lost an eye. Made an officer, he had become a legend among his men, and was nominated three times for the title Hero of the Soviet Union. He had been rejected each time because he could never stop criticising his superiors – a flaw in his character which now came splendidly to light as, with fine sarcasm, he stripped the emperor Lysenko of every shred of intellectual clothing. ‘The transformation of animals and plants’, he concluded, witheringly, ‘cannot be achieved merely as a result of our wish.’ The stenographers were so frightened they edited the sharpest of Rapoport’s comments on the fly (although they did allow him to scream ‘Obscurantists!’ in the middle of another, Lysenkoist speech).

  Open opposition to Lysenko on matters of fact was unfortunate, but of no lasting consequence. What really mattered was that the Central Committee’s involvement in the session be kept under wraps. This was supposed to be a scientific discussion, not a political one.

  On Wednesday, however, Boris Zavadovsky, a Party member of very good standing, founding member of VARNITSO and a celebrated scourge of bourgeois biology, stood up to ask a question. More in sorrow than in anger, he wanted to know why he had not been invited to the meeting. Why had he had to hear about it by accident? Why, above all, were Lysenko’s colleagues bad-mouthing his Party reputation in their speeches?

  There was, Zavadovsky reckoned, something unconstitutional in all this, and old as he was, sick as he was – his life reduced to a tour of government sanatoriums – Zavadovsky demanded to know why Lysenko was not responding to his critics with due diligence and self-criticism. ‘Hence, as I understand it, this conference is obviously taking place not in accordance with, or at least without the participation of, the Central Committee’s Science Department.’25

  Lysenko and Prezent, appalled that Zavadovsky had stumbled on the real nature of the session, heckled him constantly in a desperate bid to shut him up. But forms were there to be followed: Zavadovsky was allowed seven extra minutes. He said in his closing remarks:

  To whom and by whom was it necessary to include me among the Weismannists and formal geneticists? Only because I have constantly come forward and will continue to come forward to point out the mistakes of Comrade Lysenko’s works, only because I have constantly pointed out that Comrade Lysenko while being an innovator in one sphere has in other spheres become a heavy brake on many necessary and useful trends. I have frequently said this both at sessions of the Academy and in front of Comrade Lysenko. I do not conceal it. But is that a reason to defame me and stick labels on me?26

  With the room stuffed with Lysenko’s supporters, turning the tables on the session was out of the question. Still, what few opponents there were took strength and made their voices heard. Peter Zhukovsky, a member of the Lenin Academy, refused to be interrupted by Lysenko and even went so far as to declare that ‘one should worship’ at Mendel’s grave. Zhukovsky could not understand why there was a ‘veritable craze’ at the meeting to defame Mendel when all he had done was make some very sound observations about the laws of heredity in peas. Mendel had never written about evolution, nor had he excluded external factors from influencing heredity. There was no need to assume that Mendelism and Michurinism were in contradiction. Zhukovsky called for unity: ‘We are all Soviet citizens, and we are all patriots. Some of us went personally and others sent their sons to the front. We all fought for our country, and should we really allow things to reach the point where people refuse to greet Professor Zhukovsky when they meet him?’27

  His speech won applause, though of course he had missed the point: unity was the very last thing the session had been convened to establish.

  With the cat out of the bag, and voices – few in number, but difficult to silence – questioning the legitimacy of the August session, the Central Committee had no choice now but to act. Stealth and subtlety were out of the question. The decision to extinguish Mendelian genetics in the Sovie
t Union would have to be made openly, and Stalin’s personal role be revealed.

  A letter from Yuri Zhdanov to Stalin, apologising for his criticisms of Lysenko, was prepared for publication in Pravda, and on the evening of 6 August, the night before the last day of the session, Stalin met Lysenko again and dictated the opening paragraph of Lysenko’s closing speech.

  ‘Before I pass on to my concluding remarks,’ Lysenko announced, the next day, ‘I consider it my duty to make the following statement. The question is asked in one of the notes handed to me, What is the attitude of the Central Committee of the Party to my report? I answer: The Central Committee of the Party has examined my report and approved it.’

  This was, and remains, says the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, ‘the most chilling passage in all the literature of 20th century science’.28

  The transcript concludes: ‘Stormy applause. Ovation. All rise.’

  Notes

  1. Quoted in Pringle, The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov, p. 290, from N. S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (André Deutsch, 1971), pp. 200–15.

  2. Ashby, Scientist in Russia, p. 129.

  3. Raissa Berg, On the History of Genetics in the Soviet Union: Science and Politics: The Insight of a Witness: Final Report, pp. 28–9.

  4. Robert C. Cook, ‘Lysenko’s Marxist Genetics: Science or Religion?’, Journal of Heredity 40, no. 7 (1949).

  5. Nikolai Krementsov, ‘A “Second Front” in Soviet Genetics: The International Dimension of the Lysenko Controversy, 1944–1947’, Journal of the History of Biology 29, no. 2 (1 June 1996), p. 239.

  6. The most succinct summation of Heredity and Its Variability, and the funniest, was Eric Ashby’s: ‘When it is stated on the dust jacket of the book that “a careful study of these papers will amply reward every serious student of biology” we can only utter a startled assent.’