Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. At the back left to right are Stanislav Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreev and Joseph Stalin.

Lysenkoism was a campaign against genetics and geneticists which happened in the Soviet Union from the middle of the 1930s to the middle of the 1960s, centered around the figure of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Lysenkoism has also been known as Michurinism or Lysenko-Michurinism. from Nature Reviews Genetics 2, 723-729 (2001); doi:10. ... from Nature Reviews Genetics 2, 723-729 (2001); doi:10. ... The Moscow Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin ( Russian: Московский Кремль) is the best known kremlin ( Russian citadel). ... Trofim Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. ... Anastas Mikoyan Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (Ô±Õ¶Õ¡Õ½Õ¿Õ¡Õ½ Õ€Õ¸Õ¾Õ°Õ¡Õ¶Õ¶Õ¥Õ½Õ« Õ„Õ«Õ¯Õ¸ÕµÕ¡Õ¶ in Armenian; Анаста́с Ива́нович Микоя́н in Russian) (November 25, 1895 - October 21, 1978) was an Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the Stalin and Khrushchev years. ... (Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Ста́лин, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin; December 18 [O.S. December 6] 1878[1] – March 5, 1953), also spelled Josef Stalin, was the leader (Premier) of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s to his death in 1953 and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet... Genetics (from the Greek genno γεννώ= give birth) is the science of genes, heredity, and the variation of organisms. ... Trofim Lysenko Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (Russian: Трофи́м Дени́сович Лысе́нко) (September 29, 1898–November 20, 1976) was a Soviet biologist who, during the 1930s, led a campaign of agricultural science, now known as Lysenkoism, which went explicitly against contemporary agricultural genetics and lasted until the mid-1960s in the USSR. // Biography Lysenko, the son...

In a broader context, Lysenkoism is often invoked to imply the overt subversion of science by political forces.^{[citation needed]}

Lysenko's work in agriculture

When Lysenko began his fieldwork in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, the agriculture of the Soviet Union was in a massive crisis due to the forced collectivization movement. Collectivization attempts had been very violent, involving the deportation and eventual deaths in camps of hundreds of thousands of peasants, and were followed by a famine in Ukraine which killed millions. Agriculture in the Soviet Union was organized into a system of state and collective farms, known as sovkhozes and kolkhozes, respectively. ... Collective farming is an organizational unit in agriculture in which peasants are not paid wages, but rather receive a share of the farms net output. ... Categories: 1911 Britannica | Historical stubs | Feudalism ... Child victim of the Holodomor The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор) was a famine in the territory of Soviet Ukraine in the years 1932–1933. ...

At the same time, there were few agricultural specialists who were willing to work committedly towards the success of the new and troubled collective farms. Many agronomists were educated before the revolution, and even many of those educated afterwards did not agree with the collectivization policies. Furthermore, among biologists of the day, the most popular topic was not agriculture at all but the new genetics that was emerging out of studies of Drosophila melanogaster, fruit flies with a relatively simple genetic code which allowed for easy studying of Mendelian ratios and heritability. Only much later would this research have obvious application to the problem of agriculture, and during the 1920s and 1930s it was easy for a radical like Lysenko to castigate these theoretical biologists for spending their time bent over trays of fruit flies while famine raged on around them. Agronomy is a branch of agricultural science that deals with the study of crops and the soils in which they grow. ... The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a series of political events in Russia, which, after the elimination of the Russian autocracy system, and the Provisional Government (Duma), resulted in the establishment of the Soviet power under the control of the Bolshevik party. ... A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of organisms. ... Genetics (from the Greek genno γεννώ= give birth) is the science of genes, heredity, and the variation of organisms. ... Binomial name Drosophila melanogaster Meigen, 1830 Drosophila melanogaster (from the Greek for black-bellied dew-lover) is a dipteran (two-winged) insect, and is the species of fruit fly that is most commonly used in genetic experiments; it is among the most important model organisms. ... [[|Diversity]] Binomial name Trinomial name Type Species [[Image: ]] Synonyms Drosophilidae compound eye Drosophilidae (Order: Diptera) is a diverse, cosmopolitan family of flies, including the genus Drosophila, which includes the species fruit fly, vinegar flies, wine flies, pomace flies, grape flies, and picked fruit-flies. ... Gregor Johann Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20[1], 1822 – January 6, 1884) was an Augustinian abbot who is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. ... Heritability, as used professionally in genetics, has a very precise definition. ... Species Drosophila melanogaster Drosophila subobscura Drosophila is a genus of small flies whose members are often called fruit flies or more appropriately vinegar flies, wine flies, pomace flies, grape flies, and picked fruit-flies. ...

In 1928, a previously unknown agronomist, Trofim Lysenko "invented" a new agricultural technique, vernalization (using humidity and low temperatures to make wheat grow in spring). He promised to triple or quadruple yields using his technique. In reality, the technique was neither new (it was known since 1854, and was extensively studied during the previous twenty years) nor useful. 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... This article contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ...

Soviet mass-media presented him as a genius who had developed a new, revolutionary technique. At the time, Soviet propaganda had a tendency to focus upon stories of peasants who, through their own canny ability and intelligence, came up with solutions to practical problems. Lysenko milked the attention, denouncing geneticists and promoting his own ideas of how agriculture works. He was, in turn, supported by the Soviet propaganda machine, which overstated his successes and omitted mention of his failures. Instead of making controlled experiments, Lysenko relied upon questionnaires from farmers, using them to "prove" that vernalization increases wheat yields by 15%. Soviet redirects here. ... Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). ...

Political rise of Lysenkoism

Lysenko's political success was in part because of his striking differences from most biologists at the time, being both from a peasant family as well as an enthusiastic advocate of the Soviet Union and Leninism. He was also extremely fast in responding to problems, although not with real solutions. Whenever the Party would announce plans to plant a new crop or cultivate a new area, Lysenko would come up with immediate and practical suggestions on how to proceed. So quickly did he develop his prescriptions—from the cold treatment of grain, to the plucking of leaves from cotton plants, to the cluster planting of trees, to odd and unusual fertilizer mixes—that academic biologists could not keep up and did not have time to demonstrate that one technique was valueless or harmful before a new one was adopted. The Party-controlled newspapers inevitably applauded Lysenko's "practical" efforts and questioned the motives of his critics. Lysenko's "revolution in agriculture" had a powerful propaganda advantage over the academics who urged the patience and observation required for science. Lysenko was admitted into the Communist Party hierarchy and put in charge of agricultural affairs. Lysenko used his position to denounce biologists as "fly-lovers and people haters," and to decry the "wreckers" in biology who he claimed were trying to purposely disable the Soviet economy and cause it to fail. He furthermore denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology. Vladimir Lenin in 1920 Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism; it is therefore a branch of Marxism. ... Wrecking, or vreditelstvo (вредительство), was a crime specified in the criminal code of the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. ...

Additionally, during the 1930s the greatest agricultural problem in the USSR was the fact that many peasants were thoroughly unhappy with the Soviet collectivization policies. Lysenko's "new" methods provided a way in which the peasant could feel positively involved in an "agricultural revolution," and as far as party officials were concerned, a peasant planting grain—for whatever reason—was a step in the correct direction (and certainly a step away from the days when peasants would destroy grain to keep it from the Soviet government). Academic geneticists could not hope to provide such simple and immediately tangible results with their work, and so were seen as being politically less useful than the charlatanism of Lysenko.

Lysenko's actual "science" was nonexistent. He was a proponent of the ideas of Ivan Michurin, and practiced a form of Lamarckism, insisting on the change in species among plants through hybridization and grafting, as well as a variety of other non-genetic techniques. It is often asserted that Lysenko's success came from the desire in the Soviet Union to assert that heredity had no role in human development, that even the most lowly peasant could rise up to great success. This is not accurate: Lysenko never purported that his views could be applied to human biology; they were relegated strictly to agriculture. He indeed attacked reductionist views of heredity like eugenics, but only as bourgeois influences on science. All major scholarly works on Lysenkoism agree it was not based on human genetics at all. It is also a persistent myth about Lysenkoism that its success was wholly ideological—that is, that it followed from either Marxist or Leninist philosophies. In reality, as historians such as Loren Graham, David Joravsky, and others have argued, the success of Lysenkoism was more related to internal Soviet political maneuverings at the time than anything else. Despite the large amounts of evidence for these interpretations, among non-historians "Lysenkoism" is often crudely construed to be a version of "Marxist science" that supposedly rejected certain ideas about human determinism on ideological grounds. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that rival views were rejected because they were seen as "bourgeois" or "fascist", and analogous "non-bourgeois" theories also flourished in other fields within the Soviet academy at this time (see Japhetic theory; socialist realism). Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (Иван Владимирович Мичурин in Russian) (October 27 (or October 15, O.S.), 1855–June 7, 1935), a Russian practicioner selectionist, Honorable Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1935), academician of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agriculture (1935). ... Lamarckism is a term used for Lamarckian evolution, a theory put forward by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, based on heritability of acquired characteristics, the once widely accepted idea that an organism can acquire characteristics during its lifetime and pass them on to... In genetics, hybridisation is the process of mixing different species or varieties of organisms. ... Grafted apple tree Grafting is a method of plant propagation widely used in horticulture, where the tissues of one plant are encouraged to fuse with those of another. ... Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... Bourgeois at the end of the thirteenth century. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Japhetic theory is a term used to describe a linguistic theory developed by the Soviet linguist Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr (1864-1934). ... Roses for Stalin, Boris Vladimirski, 1949 Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style of realistic art which has as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism. ...

Political repurcussions of Lysenkoism

Between 1934 and 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's blessings, many geneticists were executed (including Agol, Levit, and Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943. Genetics was stigmatized as a "bourgeois science" or "fascist science" (due to the fact that fascists - particularly the Nazis in Germany - embraced genetics and attempted to use it to justify their theories on eugenics and the master race). Some Soviet geneticists, however, survived and continued to work in genetics, dangerous as it was. A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in penal labour. ... Nikolai Vavilov Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (Николай Иванович Вавилов, November 25/(November 13), 1887— January 26, 1943) was a prominent Russian botanist and geneticist. ... Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. ... National Socialism redirects here. ... Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... The master race (German: Herrenrasse, ) is a concept in Nazi ideology, which holds that the Germanic and Nordic people represent an ideal and pure race.The pure race is generally pictured as a person with blonde hair and blue eyes in this concept. ...

In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience"; all geneticists were fired from work (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. Nikita Khrushchev also valued Lysenko as a great scientist, and the taboo on genetics continued (but all geneticists were released or rehabilitated posthumously). Only in the middle of the 1960s was it waived. As a consequence, Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to find real solutions to agricultural problems, allowing their system to be hijacked by a charlatan—at the expense of many human lives. Lysenkoism also spread to China, where it continued long after it was eventually denounced by the Soviets. Bourgeois pseudoscience (Буржуазная лженаука) was a cliche in the Soviet Union of certain scientific disciplines that were deemed inadmissible from the ideological point of view. ... (Russian: , Nikita Sergeevič Hruščëv; surname commonly romanized as Khrushchev, IPA: ; April 17, 1894 – September 11, 1971) was the leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin. ...

Why John Desmond Bernal, Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society, almost alone among Western scientists, chose to make an aggressive public defense of Lysenko and some years later give an implausible obituary of ‘Stalin as a Scientist’ is still not clear. John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was an Irish-born scientist (from Nenagh, County Tipperary), known as a scientist who pioneered X-ray crystallography, and also as a communist activist. ... Physics (from the Greek, φυσικός (physikos), natural, and φύσις (physis), nature) is the Science of Nature. ... The façade of the main building of Birkbeck, University of London (formerly Birkbeck College). ... The Fellowship of the Royal Society was founded in 1660. ... Iosif (usually anglicized as Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин), original name Ioseb Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი; see Other names section) (December 21, 1879[1] – March 5, 1953) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union. ...

Sources

When interpreting sources about Lysenkoism, it is important to distinguish between those produced in the Soviet era (1917–1991) and those produced in the post-Soviet era. The former tend to interpret Lysenkoism as a scientific argument intrinsic to Soviet political ideology, while the latter tend to see it as a more nuanced culmination of various political forces and alliances. A particular exception to this is David Joravsky's The Lysenko Affair, a work whose accuracy has more or less persisted in the face of documents only released in the post-Soviet period.

References

• Ronald Fisher, "What Sort of Man is Lysenko?" Listener, 40 (1948): 874–875 — contemporary commentary by a British evolutionary biologist (pdf format)
• Martin Gardner, "Lysenkoism" in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (New York: Dover Books, 1957).
• Loren Graham, "Stalinist Ideology and the Lysenko Affair," in Science in Russia and the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
• Loren Graham, What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1998).
• David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
• Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, "Lysenkoism," in The Dialectical Biologist (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1985).
• Valery N. Soyfer Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994).

Sir Ronald Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, FRS (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British eugenicist, evolutionary biologist, geneticist and statistician. ... Martin Gardner (born October 21, 1914) is an American recreational mathematician, magician, skeptic, and author of the long-running but now discontinued Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. ... Richard Lewontin Richard Charles Dick Lewontin (born March 29, 1929) is an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. ...

External links

• Lysenkoism from The Skeptic's Dictionary