Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

6. Cossacks (the most devoted of the Tsar’s troops) were used before 1917 against any civilian unrest. These troops were infamous for their cruelty.

7. Koltsov, Nikolai K., Pamyati pavshikh: Zhertvy iz sredy moskovskogo studentchestva v oktyabr’skie i dekabr’skie dni [In Memory of the Fallen: Students—Victims of October and December Days] (Moscow: Burche, 1906) (in Russian).

8. See, for instance, memoirs of the geneticist Nikolai Timofeev-Ressovsky: Timofeev-Ressovsky, N. V., “O prozhitom (iz vospominanii, zapisannykh v 1977 g. M. Adamsom” [Memories of the past (noted by M. Adams in 1977)], in Vorontsov, Nikolai N., ed., Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Ressovsky (Moscow: Nauka, 1993), pp. 18–50 (in Russian).

9. Babkov, “N. K. Koltsov,” p. 5.

10. Krasnaya kniga VCheKa , vol. 2, p. 50.

11. Ibid., pp. 49–50, 377.

12. Koltsov, N. K., “Ob izmenenii vesa cheloveka pri nestabil’nom balanse” [On the change of a human’s weight under unstable balance], Izvestiya Instituta Eksperimental’noi Biologii 1 (1921): 25–30 (in Russian).

13. For instance, Adams, “Science, Ideology, and Structure.”

14. Koltsov, Nikolai K., Fiziko-Khimicheskie osnovy morfologii [The Physical-Chemical Basis of Morphology. A speech given at the 3rd All-Union Meeting of Zoologists, Anatomists, and Histologists, Leningrad, December 12, 1927] (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1929) (in Russian); Koltsov, N. K., “Molekuly nasledstvennosti (stat’ya, datirovannaya 1935 i soprovozhdaemaya redaktorskimi zamechaniyami)” [Molecules of inheritance (paper dated 1935 and supplied with the editorial notes)], Bulletin Moskovskogo Obshchestva Ispytatelei Prirody, Otdelenie Biologicheskoe 70 (4) (1965): 75–114 (in Russian). On the transmission of Koltsov’s ideas among German physicists through his pupil, Nikolai Timofeev-Ressovsky, see Perutz, M. F., “Physics and the Riddle of Life,” Nature 326 (1987): 555–558; also, Olby, Robert, The Path to the Double Helix (New York: Dover Publications, 1994), p. 17.

15. On Chetverikov, see Dobzhansky, Th., “Sergei Sergeevich Tschetverikov, 1880–1959,” Genetics 55 (1967): 1–3; Astaurov, B. L., “Zhizn’ S. S. Chetverikova” [The life of S. S. Chetverikov], Priroda 2 (1974): 57–67 (in Russian); Adams, M. B., “Sergei Chetverikov, the Kol’tsov Institute, and the Evolutionary Synthesis,” in Mayr, E., and W. B. Provine, eds., The Evolutionary Synthesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 242–278; Babkov, V. V., “Uchenyi ob uchenom” [A scientist speaks about another scientist], Priroda 10 (1991): 96–97 (in Russian).

16. Golubovsky, Mikhail D., “Vvedenie” [Introduction], in Efroimson, V. P., Genetika etiki i estetiki [Genetics of Ethics and Esthetics] (St. Petersburg: Talisman, 1995) (in Russian).

17. Babkov, “N. K. Koltsov.”

18. The text of the speech is given in Soloviev, Yu. I., “Zabytaya discussiya o genetike” [The forgotten discussion on genetics], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 64 (1) (1994): 46–55 (in Russian).

19. Parkhomenko, “Akademik N. P. Gorbunov.” The execution was sanctioned by Stalin himself (Volkogonov, Stalin , p. 292).

20. Adams, M. B., “Levit, Solomon Grigorevich,” in Gillispie, C. C., ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biographies (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990), vol. 18, supp. 2, pp. 546–549.

21. Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge , pp. 81–90; Soyfer, Lysenko , pp. 317–318.

22. More details about Levit, Agol, and the Medical Genetics Institute are in Adams, M. B., “The Politics of Human Heredity in the USSR, 1920–1940,” Genome 31 (2) (1989): 879–884; Adams, Mark B., “Eugenics in Russia,” in Adams, Mark B., ed., The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 153–229.

23. On Berg, see Sokolov, N. N., “Lev Semenovich Berg,” in Pavlovskii, E. N., ed., Pamyati akademika L. S. Berga [In Memory of Academician L. S. Berg] (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1955), pp. 18–60 (in Russian); Birstein, V. J., and W. E. Bemis, “Leo Semenovich Berg and the Biology of Acipenseriformes: A dedication,” in Birstein, Vadim J., John R. Waldman, and William E. Bemis, eds., Sturgeon Biodiversity and Conservation (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 15–22.

24. Pravda , January 11, 1939.

25. Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair , pp. 379–380 and 382.

26. Bolotovsky, “Ugolovnoe delo” [A criminal case], Priroda 8 (1990): 114–118 (in Russian). On Engelhardt, see Engelhardt, V. A., “Life and Sscience,” Annual Review of Biochemistry 51 (1982): 1–19; Gottih, B. P., “Organizator nauki” [An organizer of scientific research], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 64 (12) (1994): 1120–1127 (in Russian).

27. Sakharov, Memoirs , p. 233–236.

28. Bolotovsky, B. M., “Ugolovnoe delo.”

29. Roberg, Soviet Science Under Control , pp. 41–42.

30. Yurieva, M., and D. Rezlina, “M. N. Pokrovskii: K otchyotu o deyatel’nosti Akademii Nauk za 1926 g.” [M. N. Pokrovskii: On the report of the Academy of Sciences for 1926], in Dobkin and Roginsky, Zven’ya , vol. 2, pp. 580–599.

31. Bolotovsky, “Ugolovnoe delo.”

32. Afiani, V. Yu., and S. S. Ilizarov, “…‘My razgonim k chertovoi materi Akademiyu Nauk,’ zayavil 11 iyulya 1964 goda pervyi secretar’ TsK KPSS N. S. Khrushchev” [“We will disband the Academy of Sciences to hell,” the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party N. S. Khrushchev declared on July 11, 1964], Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniya i Tekhniki 1 (1999): 167–173 (in Russian).

33. Sakharov, Memoirs , p. 233–236.

34. Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair , pp. 81–82, 160.

35. Resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers and Central Committee of the Communist Party on March 28, 1947. See Kostyrchenko, Out of the Red Shadows , p. 70; Murin, Yu., “Sudy chesti” [Courts of honor], Izvestiya TsK KPSS 11 (1990): 135–137 (in Russian).

36. Soyfer, Lysenko , pp. 166–167.

37. The letter was reproduced in Andreev, L. N., “Neizvestnyi dokument akademika N. V. Tsitsina” [An unknown document written by Academician N. V. Tsitsin], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 68 (12) (1998): 1096–1108 (in Russian).

38. This telegram, Molotov’s reply, and others that followed are kept in the President’s Archive in Moscow (Radzinsky, Stalin , p. 527).

39. Koltsov’s letter to Stalin, in Gaisinovich and Rossianov, “‘Ya gluboko ubezhden chto ya prav.’”

40. Dubinin, Nikolai P., Vechnoe dvizhenie [The Movement Forever] (Moscow: Politicheskaya Literatura, 1973), p. 71 (in Russian).

41. Detlaff, T. A., “Institut experimentalnoi biologii” [Institute of Experimental Biology], Ontogenez 19 (1) (1988): 94–112 (in Russian).

42. The letter was given in Grigoryan, N. A., “N. K. Koltsov i experimental’naya genetika vysshei nervnoi deyatel’nosti” [N. K. Koltsov and the genetics of high nervous activity], Priroda 6 (1992): 93–97 (in Russian). On Orbeli, see Grigorian, N. A., “Uchenyi i vlast’” [A scientist and state power], Vestnik Akademii Nauk SSSR 4 (1991): 60–70 (in Russian).

43. Babkov, “N. K. Koltsov.”

44. Berg, Acquired Traits , p. 283.

45. Academician Mikhail Mitin’s speech at the August Session (1948) of the Agricultural Academy (VASKhNIL) (see Zirkle, Conway (ed.), Death of a Science in Russia. The Fate of Genetics as Described in Pravda and Elsewhere (Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Press: 1949), p. 151).