Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

I am taking the liberty of appealing to be given the possibility of concentrating my work on tasks of the most immediate importance at the present time in my specialty— plant breeding . I could complete in six months the writing of a Practical Handbook for Selection of Varieties of Cereal Plants Resistant to Main Diseases . By intensive work over six or eight months I could complete a Practical Handbook for Selection of Cereal Plants for Conditions in Various Regions of the USSR .

I am also well acquainted with the problems of subtropical plant breeding, including plants of importance for the country’s defense , such as the tung-oil tree, the cinchona and others, as well as plants rich in vitamins.

All my experience in the field of plant breeding and all my knowledge and strength I would like to devote to the Soviet regime and my Motherland wherever I can be of maximum use.

When I think about this point in Vavilov’s life, I ask myself: Why was Vavilov not shot immediately after the conviction? Why was he allowed to appeal several times? I have a strong feeling that Stalin, Beria, Molotov, and others who were behind his case did not plan to kill Vavilov immediately but wanted at first to simply demoralize this proud scientist to the extent where he would beg his executioners for his life. It was a continuation of the confrontation of Russian subcultures that started at the moment of the Bolshevik Revolution—one side represented brutal, half-literate power-mongers (almost all Politburo members of the time had not even finished high school) who understood only ruthless Mafia-like methods, and the other represented humanistic values and education.

Of course, July 1941 was a period of Soviet military disasters, and Stalin, Beria and other Politburo members were busy restructuring the Red Army and economy. But Vavilov’s last appeal definitely attracted Beria’s attention. In the meantime, Pryanishnikov continued his efforts to save Vavilov. In 1942, he tried to submit Vavilov’s works for the highest civil award of the state, a Stalin Prize. 185This was an incredible gesture: After Vavilov’s arrest, people were afraid to even mention his name. Pryanishnikov also forced the president of the academy, Komarov, to talk with the academician and USSR general prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky, as well as with Molotov about Vavilov. 186The appeals had no success.

At the beginning of 1943, Pryanisnikov persuaded Komarov to write a letter to Stalin inquiring about Vavilov’s fate and his whereabouts. 187Independently, Vavilov’s brother, the physicist and academician Sergei Vavilov (who later replaced Komarov as academy president) approached Komarov with the same request. 188He even wrote a draft of the letter. No reply followed until the autumn, when Komarov asked his assistant to call Stalin’s personal secretary Aleksandr Poskrebyshev. This was the right man to get through to Stalin. “Stalin used to pace up and down while dictating,” recalled Khrushchev. “He couldn’t stay seated when he was thinking. He dictated while walking around…. He always dictated to Poskrebyshev, and then Poskrebyshev would read it back to him.” 189Poskrebyshev answered Komarov that the letter had been transferred to Beria.

At the end of 1943, Pryanishnikov tried again. He secured a second appointment with Beria at NKVD headquarters. According to Pryanishnikov’s daughter, Beria told the academician (pointing at the thick volumes of Vavilov’s case documents on his desk): “There he [Vavilov] writes in his own hand that he sold himself to the British intelligence service.” 190Evidently, Beria meant “My Attitude to Espionage Activity,” which Vavilov signed during the last days of the investigation. Probably, Beria also remembered that the order for arrest that he approved contained a long list of Vavilov’s alleged “spy contacts.” In the presence of Beria, Pryanishnikov looked through the volumes of the Vavilov case. He refused to admit that his pupil was a spy or a “wrecker.” “I shall believe it only if he [Vavilov] tells me it himself,” said Pryanishnikov to the commissar, and left. 191

What Commissar Beria did not tell Pryanishnikov was that his attempts to save Vavilov were too late. Nikolai Vavilov had already died of dystrophy in Saratov Prison hospital on January 26, 1943. 192The medical records gave a false cause of death: pneumonia. 193Beria also did not inform Pryanishnikov that in August 1941, he himself had petitioned the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet to commute Vavilov’s death sentence. The direct intervention of Beria (possibly, on Stalin’s order) in the fate of Vavilov became known from a letter written by Vavilov to Beria later, on April 25, 1942:

On August 1, 1941, i.e., three weeks after I was sentenced, I was informed in Butyrka Prison by your representative in your name that you had petitioned the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for the sentence in my case to be abolished and for my life to be spared.

On October 4, 1941, I was transferred on your order from Butyrka Prison to the NKVD Internal [Lubyanka] Prison and on October 5 and 15 I had conversations with your representative about my attitude to the war and to Fascism and about my employment as a scientist with long experience. I was informed on October 15 that I would be offered every possibility of carrying out scientific work as an Academician and that the matter would be settled finally in the course of the next two or three days. 194

It is clear from this letter that there was a plan to transfer Vavilov to a secret institute for imprisoned scientists, a sharashka. It may have been Pavel Sudoplatov who talked to Vavilov, because Sudoplatov was the next person to appear in the documents of the file. The events of the war interrupted these meetings. The evacuation of prominent prisoners from Sukhanovo and Lefortovo Prisons in Moscow started in May 1941. 195Contrary to Stalin, Beria definitely believed in the numerous reports from the NKVD agents abroad that Hitler would start a war against the Soviet Union in June 1941. Prisoners were moved to an old prison in the city of Orel and executed there on September 11, 1941, a month before the Nazi troops occupied Orel on October 8. 196

Vavilov was luckier: He was among the inhabitants of Lubyanka Prison who were put on trains on October 16 and transported to three other cities. The most important prisoners, including Vavilov, were brought to Saratov. Levitsky and Flyaksberger were moved to the city of Zlatoust. Vavilov arrived in Saratov Prison on October 29, 1941, and was put into Block 3, which was used for the most important political prisoners. He was kept in solitary confinement. 197There he got sick and was taken to the prison hospital.

After his release from the hospital, Vavilov was kept with another academician, the historian Ivan Luppol, and an engineer from Saratov, Ivan Filatov, in a cell for persons sentenced to death. Ivan Filatov was sentenced to death in 1942 after he signed false testimonies. Later, his death sentence was commuted to ten years in a labor camp, but he was so weak that he was sent home to die. After Filatov was released, the two academicians continued to share the same cell. There were no orders from Moscow regarding Vavilov. On April 25, 1942, after Vavilov’s many requests, the warden of the prison, Lieutenant Irashin, allowed Vavilov to send a letter to Beria. Vavilov ended his last appeal to the “deeply respected Beria” with the following words:

I am 54, with a vast experience and knowledge in the field of plant breeding, with a good command of the principal European languages, and I would be happy to devote myself entirely to the service of my country…. I would be glad at this difficult time to be used to improve the country’s defenses in my specialty as a plant breeder, increasing the output of plants, foodstuff and industrial crops…