3. MICHURIN BIOLOGY
The definition of heredity given by Lysenko as “the property of a living body to require definite conditions for its life, and to respond in a definite way to various conditions” is accurate and complete.10 With this conception it is possible to define the ways in which heredity may be changed.11 For Soviet biology those conditions may be explained in the following way.
Changes in the heredity of an organism are made by influencing the germ cells it will later shed. Those may be influenced by fundamental changes in the function of the organism caused by its adaptation to its environment. Not all such changes are inherited . . . only those which affect processes involved in the formation and life of the germ cells. The influence of the environment is thus for Soviet biology creative, not as for the Mendelians destructive.12 Soviet biology accepts the Darwinian conception of selection as positive and creative, a conception which owes something to Lamarck but is free from the crude Lamarckian proposition that all acquired characters are inherited.
The conception of creative selection, of the important contribution to the heredity of an organism made by its relations with its environment, is full of hope for man’s control of evolutionary processes. Furthermore, unlike Mendelian theory, it declares that the possibilities of mastering the heredity of organisms are limited by knowledge of the laws of their development and function. It thus demands ever greater study of every aspect of living function and promises that such study will be rewarded by the possibility of evolutionary advance. The pitiful philosophy of the unknowability of organic variation is replaced by a great incentive to biological study.
The methods used by Soviet biologists in applying Michurin concepts are
(1)Study of an organism’s requirements in order to offer it those which best suit its potentialities.
(2)Change of the organism’s environment as a means of inducing heritable variation.
(3)Study of the new requirements of organisms thus subject to change, to discover their new potentialities.
(4)Selection of organisms best able to realise the potentialities of new environments.
(5)Physiological treatment of the organism (graft hybridisation, partial vernalisation, distant hybridisation etc.) designed to increase its variability and thus form new material for the method of creative selection.
These methods have been productive of positive results unthinkable in terms of Mendelian theory.13
One tenet of Soviet biology which also has important theoretical consequences and a positive practical outcome, is its rejection of the Malthusian doctrine of competition within the species. Malthusians hold that limited food supplies are an actual limitation on the increase in the population of a species. From this the doctrine that competition within a species generally prevails is derived. Engels pointed out the absurdity of this conception and modern biology confirms his view. Long before the available food supply of a species is exhausted its numbers have been drastically reduced by other means.14 Competition within the species is thus exceptional and of little evolutionary significance. On the other hand co-operation between members of a species is an important and general fact. The application of the understanding of this fact to agronomy has led to improved methods of sowing and higher yields in the U.S.S.R.
Soviet biology teaches the oppressed that in the achievement of better conditions by the overthrow of imperialism lies the possibility of unlimited improvement of their minds and bodies and those of their children.
4. THE PRACTICAL SUCCESS OF MICHURIN BIOLOGY
Mendelian genetics has to its credit a number of practical successes. This does not prevent some biologists claiming for Mendelism results which are in no way to be attributed to it. Thus selection practices that are a continuation of methods employed before Mendel was born are sometimes claimed to owe their success to the Mendelian explanation of them. For the rest Mendelian genetics has provided a partial explanation of many existing facts, but has proved of small value in controlling and moulding the heredity of organisms.15
The successes of Michurin in the field of horticulture have been repeated and extended in all spheres of agriculture by Lysenko and other Soviet biologists. In particular the past fifteen years has seen the adoption by the collective farms of many new and improved varieties of wheat. Michurinists have been able to claim successes also in the culture of tomatoes, fruit, potatoes, and in the rearing of sheep, pigs, and cows.
Before the increased yields over millions of acres obtained by Soviet biologists the complaints of Mendelians that these results lack “statistical validity” must inevitably fall down. It is significant that one objection raised by Mendelians to Michurin biology is precisely that the practical successes of Michurinists are impossible. This objection is a tribute to the achievements of Soviet biology.
5. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM AND HEREDITY
Marxist theory correctly rejects a dominating role for chance in any process. While recognising that in the development of science chance must always appear to govern aspects of a process, it demands the further investigation of apparently chance governed phenomena to disclose their real, inevitable, dialectical development. Mendelian theory, by accepting the chance origin of variation, has ignored the very possibility of a real investigation of material interactions within the organism as the basis for understanding heredity.16 It is thus self-condemned to relative sterility.
Soviet biology, based on Leninist theory and advanced practice,17 rightly finds it unthinkable that material changes within the organism should be incapable of being impressed upon any part of its living substance. In studying heredity it recognises not only the separation of successive generations and their relative independence, but also their continuity and absolute connection. Thus dialectical materialism seeks the understanding of both the relative stability and absolute change in the history of a species not in terms of chance mutations in part of the organism alone, but in terms of the material expression of the contradiction between conservatism and variability in all aspects of the function of the organism. One-sided, aspectal, approaches to natural processes can never be true, and in their falsity lies the basis for philosophical idealism, the ideology of reaction.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1.MI5 Personal File, J. B. S. Haldane, National Archives, KV 2-1832/264b. The text in the MI5 notes has been reformatted throughout for clarity.
2.Clark (1968).
3.Montagu (1969).
4.Haldane (1939b). See Appendix 1.
5.Charlotte’s defection is barely mentioned in Clark’s biography, and her revealing autobiography, Truth Will Out (1949), is mostly ignored.
1. EARLY DAYS
1.Haldane (1932a), p. 242.
2.According to his mother, Louisa, JBS fagged for Julian’s younger brother, Noel Trevelyan (“Trev”) Huxley (1889–1914), who hanged himself in 1914. But his sister, Naomi, states several times that it was Julian. See Louisa Kathleen Haldane (1961), p. 223; Mitchison (1968), p. 300; and Mitchison (1973), p. 77.
3.Haldane (1939b). See Appendix 1.
4.Haldane (1939b). The phrase “Pop bitch” appears frequently in Eton memoirs, e.g., Cyril Connolly (1938), p. 242.
5.Quoted in Charles Williams (2010). Note, though, that Williams suspects that malice on the part of JBS may have been involved in the accusation.
6.Julian Huxley (1965).
7.Haldane (1939b).
8.Eton Chronicle, November 12, 1908, p. 370.
9.Eton Chronicle, November 7, 1907, p. 162.
10.Eton Chronicle, July 22, 1909, p. 526; January 5, 1909, p. 406.
11.Eton Chronicle, December 3, 1910, p. 810.
12.Eton Chronicle, October 20, 1910, p. 782.
13.Haldane (1939b).
14.Eton Chronicle, July 27, 1908, p. 316.
15.Haldane (1939b).
16.Haldane (1939b). See also https://grangehill1922.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/alec-rowan-herron/.
17.“My heart doth take in hand some g
odly song to sing; The praise that I shall show therein pertaineth to the King . . .”.
18.Haldane (1939b).
19.“The Disturbance at Oxford,” The Times (London, England), issue 40213, Friday, May 16, 1913, p. 10.
20.Hollis (1976), p. 24. Hollis wrongly states that Haldane was a Fellow of New College at this stage.
21.M. Newman (1993), p. 26.
22.J. B. S. Haldane, letter to Kingsley Martin, May 3, 1952, Haldane Papers, University College London. HALDANE/5/1/4/172.
23.G. R. Searle (1976), p. 13.
24.The Haldane family home was at the end of Linton Road. It was later demolished so that Woolfson College could be built there.
25.Aldous Huxley to Leonard Huxley, November 11, 1913, in Grover Smith (1969), pp. 55–56. Brackets inserted by Grover Smith.
26.Haldane (1915).
27.Alexander Dalzell Sprunt was born at Hampstead, London, in 1891. The son of John D. Sprunt and Jane Naismith Sprunt, of Montgomerie, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, he took a B.A. at Oxford and served in the 4th Bedfordshire as a 2nd lieutenant. He is buried in Lillers Communal Cemetery in France. Sprunt’s brothers Gerald Harper and Edward Lawrence were both killed in later actions.
28.J. B. S. Haldane to William Bateson, March 18, 1915, Darlington Papers, Special Collections, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, CSAC106.3.85/J.86. Quoted in Clark (1968), p. 39.
29.Haldane (1939b).
30.Aldous Huxley to Leonard Huxley, April 26, 1915, in Grover Smith (1969), p. 69.
31.Naomi Mitchison (1975a). In this letter Naomi incorrectly claims that Haldane missed the battle of Aubers Ridge.
32.Haldane (1939b).
33.The Times (London), issue 40854, Friday, May 14, 1915, p. 5.
34.Haldane (1939b).
35.Blampied (1918), p. 54.
36.Haldane (1939b).
37.Haldane (1939b).
38.Haldane (1939b).
39.Haldane (1932a), p. 237.
40.Haldane (1939b).
41.Julian Huxley (1970), p. 137.
42.Julian Huxley (1965), p. 60.
43.Julian Huxley (1970), p. 114.
44.Aldous Huxley (1923), p. 68.
45.Aldous Huxley (1922), p. 50.
46.Haldane (1939b).
47.Mitchison (1979), p. 62.
48.Montagu (1970), p. 233.
49.May 10, 1926, MI5 Personal File, Ivor Montagu, National Archives KV 2-598/OYA and 1A.
50.For Willi Münzenberg’s web of companies, see McMeekin (2003).
51.November 8, 1932, MI5 Personal File, Ivor Montagu, National Archives, KV 2-598/7B.
52.Daily Express, December 29, 1931.
53.Leon Trotsky, letter to Reginald Percy Groves (1908–1988), July 13, 1932, MI5 Personal File, Ivor Montagu, National Archives, KV 2-598/0B.
54.MI5 Personal File, Ivor Montagu, National Archives, KV 2-598/35B. For the complicated espionage career of Otto Katz, see Miles (2010).
55.MI5 Personal File, Ivor Montagu, National Archives, KV 2-598/31A.
56.Montagu (1937).
57.Russell (1975), p. 182.
58.Charlotte Haldane (1949), p. 30.
59.Bowker (1993), pp. 101–102, citing a conversation he had with Dr. Ralph Case, a brother of Haldane’s former student and friend Martin Case.
60.Adamson (1998), pp. 62, 205, citing her own interview of Betty Burghes, February 4, 1992.
61.Charlotte Haldane (1965), quoted in Adamson (1998), p. 68.
62.Charlotte Haldane (1949), p. 37.
63.Howarth (1978), p. 216.
64.Woolf is misidentified by several sources as either William Jackson or Jack “Bugsy” Wolfe; e.g., in Costello (1988), pp. 216, 648. Haldane called him “Doggy.” Apparently the nickname referred to a song Woolf performed.
65.Montagu (1970), p. 196.
66.Charlotte Haldane (1949), p. 54.
67.Haldane (1938c), p. 80.
68.Luck (1999), pp. 23–24.
69.Pirie (1966).
70.Winchester (2009), pp. 200–216.
71.Harland (2001), p. 131. It is possible, though, that the anecdote may refer to the 1950s, when Haldane was married to Helen Spurway, known for her loud and shrill voice.
2. WITH VAVILOV IN THE SOVIET UNION
1.Vavilov’s brother Sergei (1891–1951) became a leading physicist and was involved with the Soviet atomic bomb project.
2.Charlotte Haldane (1949), p. 42.
3.Krementsov (1997), p. 22.
4.Charlotte Haldane (1949), p. 46.
5.Charlotte Haldane (1949), p. 49. For the O.G.P.U. (Secret Police), see the Glossary.
6.Keynes (1925), p. 258.
7.Charlotte refers to Levit as a “colleague” of Haldane’s, but she appears to have meant only that he was a fellow geneticist. His date of birth is sometimes given as 1894.
8.Charlotte Haldane (1949), p. 51.
9.J. B. S. Haldane, address to the Fabian Society, Thursday, October 25, 1928. Reprinted in Haldane (1932a), pp. 126, 134–135.
10.Douglas Smith (2012).
11.Charlotte Haldane (1949), p. 47.
12.Volkogonov (1994), p. 361.
13.Birstein (2001), p. 42.
14.Haldane (1932a), p. 135.
15.Taylor (1990), p. 152.
16.Mitchison (1974), p. 17.
3. THE THIRTIES
1.Haldane described himself as unmusical. See Haldane (1939b) and Appendix 1.
2.Haldane (1931).
3.Rajani Palme Dutt was born in Cambridge and, like Haldane, read Greats at Oxford. His father was an Indian physician who practiced in the town, but his mother was Swedish, a relative of the future Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. His elder brother, Clemens Palme Dutt, was also active in the Communist Party.
4.MI5 Personal File, J. B. S. Haldane, National Archives, KV 2-1832/2A. See also the Andrew Rothstein file, KV 2-1579, National Archives at Kew, quoted in McIlroy (2006).
5.MI5 Personal File, J. B. S. Haldane, National Archives, KV 2-1832/3A. Reported in the Star, March 2, 1932.
6.“The Gold-Makers,” The Strand Magazine 82 (491) (November 1931). The story is reprinted in Haldane (1932a), pp. 271–295.
7.Wiener (1956), pp. 160–162.
8.Howarth (1978), pp. 54, 105, 177–178.
9.Morison (1997), p. 312.
10.For a comprehensive scientific bibliography, see http://jbshaldane.org.
11.Haldane (1924).
12.Haldane (1939b). See Appendix 1.
13.Julian Huxley (1942).
14.Charlotte Haldane (1949), pp. 54–56.
15.Russell (1975), p. 225.
16.Darlington (1978), p. 17. See also Darlington (1962) and Darlington (1969b).
17.Darlington (1968), p. 934.
18.Haldane (1939b). See Appendix 1 for Drs. Grüneberg and Philip.
19.Ernst Boris Chain (1906–1979).
20.Howard Walter Florey (1898–1968).
21.Haldane (1964a).
22.McMeekin (2003). See also Miles (2010).
23.Otto Katz to Harry Pollitt, July 4, 1933, in MI5 Personal File, J. B. S. Haldane, National Archives, KV 2-1832/13A.
24.Charlotte Haldane (1969).
25.Daily Herald, November 3, 1934. Reprinted in Haldane (1946a), pp. 18–25.
26.William Ralph Inge (1860–1954), an Anglican priest who appeared regularly in the media.
27.Haldane (1946a), pp. 20–24.
28.Haldane (1946a), p. 19.
29.Haldane (1934).
30.Mitchison (1979), p. 212.
31.Haldane (1964a). See Appendix 3.
32.Mitchison (1979), pp. 191, 211–212.
33.MI5 Personal File, J. B. S. Haldane, National Archives KV 2-1832/19A.
34.Clark (1968), p. 137.
35.Charlotte Haldane (1969).
36.Daily Worker, December 24, 1936. Cutting in MI5 Personal File, J. B. S. Haldane, National Archives, KV 2-1832/21A.
37.Letter from unknown person to C. P. Dutt in Paris, January 4, 1937, MI5 Personal File, J. B. S.
Haldane, National Archives, KV 2-1832/22A.
38.Cowles (1941), pp. 21–25.
39.Vera Elkan interview, September 11, 1996, Imperial War Museum, Oral History Sound Archive, item 16900, reel 3, 20′53″ onward.
40.Haldane (1939a), p. 189.
41.Stewart and Stewart (2011), pp. 173, 415. However, Lethbridge (2013), pp. 115–116, suggests that the Austrian Hermann Hartung “somehow avoided execution.”
42.Clark (1968), p. 135, places this incident later, on Haldane’s second visit, but does not cite sources. It is also possible, but not very likely, that Clark is referring to some other incident where Haldane was arrested. Clark generally adds considerable confusion to the order of the Spanish incidents.
43.Vera Elkan interview, September 11, 1996, Imperial War Museum, Oral History Sound Archive, item 16900, reel 3, 20′53″ onward.
44.MI5 Personal File, J. B. S. Haldane, National Archives, KV 2-1832/31A.
45.Carlson (1981), p. 237.
46.H. J. Muller, letters to Julian Huxley, March 9 and 11, 1937, Lilly Archive of H. J. Muller Papers; cited in Adams (1990), p. 197.
47.Daily Worker, April 5, 1937.
48.Foote (1949), p. 11.
49.Fred Copeman interview, 1978, Imperial War Museum, Oral History Sound Archive, item 794, reel 3, 2′54″ onward.
50.Haldane (1939b).
51.Fred Copeman interview, 1978, Imperial War Museum, Oral History Sound Archive, item 794, reel 6, 14′44″ onward.
52.Walter Krivitsky is now definitely known to have been assassinated by the NKVD in 1941 in his Washington, D.C., hotel room. See Kern (2004).
53.Howson (1998).
54.Vaill (2014), p. 157.
55.Cowles (1941), pp. 33–34.
56.It is not clear within which organization this rank operated. Some MI5 sources cast doubt on it. MI5 Personal File, Hans Kahle, KV 2-1562/57b and 58a.
57.These early details appear in Werner (1991), pp. 312–313.
58.Oddly, MI5 in several places lists 1923 as Gertrude’s date of birth. She was surely older than ten when she married Hans.
59.Hemingway (1940).
60.It is reproduced in Radosh, Habeck, and Sevostianov (2001), p. 204.
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