Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

Bourgeois biology, by its essence, because it is bourgeois, neither could nor can make any discoveries that have to be based on the absence of intraspecies competition, a principle it does not recognize…. By means of the fabricated intraspecies competition, “the eternal laws of nature,” they [American scientists] are attempting to justify the class struggle and the oppression, by white Americans, of Negroes. How can they admit absence of competition within a species? 273

This was enough for some biologists. On November 4, 1947, at the open meeting of the Scientific Council of the Biological Faculty of Moscow University, three prominent scientists—Academician Ivan Schmalhauzen, the zoologist Aleksandr Formozov, and the botanist Dmitrii Sabinin—gave detailed presentations on the problem of intraspecies competition. 274They showed that Lysenko’s own examples of the hare and kok-saghyz were excellent for understanding intraspecies competition. Lysenko simply did not know the scientific facts. 275

The Scientific Council sent the resolution of the meeting, signed by its twenty-four members, to Literaturnaya Gazeta for publication. However, it was published two weeks later, as an article entitled, “Our Objections to Academician Lysenko,” with the signatures of only Schmalhauzen, Formozov, Sabinin, and the dean of the biology faculty, Sergei Yudintsev. 276For Yudintsev, who was a Party member, the inclusion of his signature was especially dangerous. The same issue of Literaturnaya Gazeta included an article, “For Creative Darwinism, Against Malthusianism,” by five ardent Lysenkoists, Artavazad Avakian, Donat Dolgushin, Neo Belen’ky, Ivan Glushchenko, and Fyodor Dvoryankin. Two weeks later, the newspaper published three more articles written by the Lysenkoists. The editorial board of Literaturnaya Gazeta was clearly on Lysenko’s side.

The academy also tried to stop Lysenko. On December 11, 1947, the Bureau of the Biological Division held a meeting presided over by Academician Orbeli. 277Besides Orbeli, Lysenko’s enemies were represented by Academicians Schmalhausen, Vladimir Sukachev (director of the Institute of Forestry), Pavel Baranov (deputy director of the Institute of Botany), and Yevgenii Pavlovsky (director of the Institute of Zoology). Lysenko and his crony Artavazad Avakian represented the opposite side. Also, there was the philosopher Mark Mitin, who, like Vyshinsky and Stalin, was appointed an academician in 1939. Mitin had already been involved in biological “discussions” between the geneticists and Lysenkoists in the late 1930s. The bureau’s resolution confirmed the existence of intraspecies competition and denounced the Lysenkoists’ accusation of Malthusianism. It was a usual trick of Lysenkoists to say that geneticists and evolutionists followed the “bourgeois” theory of Thomas R. Malthus (1766–1834). This English economist stated at the beginning of the nineteenth century that human population tends to increase faster, at a geometrical ratio, than the means of supply, which increases at an arithmetical ratio. This social theory was quite simple and was introduced long before Darwin’s theory of evolution, but it definitely influenced the formulation of Darwin’s natural selection theory. 278However, it had nothing in common with genetics. A report about the bureau’s meeting was sent to the Party Central Committee.

From February 3–8, 1948, a wider conference on evolutionary problems took place at Moscow University. 279Academician Schmalhausen opened the conference, and more than thirty-six specialists in genetics and evolution presented their data. Among others, my father gave a talk, “The Evolutionary Rates of Marine and Freshwater Fauna,” in which he outlined the conclusions of his doctoral dissertation. He was lucky: He defended the dissertation at the end of 1947 and Academician Schmalhausen was his main thesis opponent. A year later, the defense of such a dissertation and this opponent would have been impossible. Academician Sukachev stated: “The existence of intraspecies competition in nature was not invented by scientists, but it is a conclusion based on a hundred years of observations by botanists and forestry specialists.” 280

After the February 1948 conference, the newly appointed head of the Science Department of the Central Committee, the twenty-eight-year-old Yurii Zhdanov, son of the Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov and husband of Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, invited Academician Schmalhausen to the Kremlin and told him that the discussion around the problem on intraspecies competition would be “archived.” 281On April 10, 1948, Yurii Zhdanov even delivered a lecture, “On Issues of Modern Darwinism,” at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum in support of Lysenko’s opponents. 282

Lysenko did not participate in the conferences at Moscow University. He was waiting for Stalin’s reaction, and he knew “The Master” (an epithet for Stalin in the 1940s–1950s in common conversation) much better than young Zhdanov. After a series of Kremlin intrigues, the text of Yurii Zhdanov’s lecture was given to Stalin. Dr. Nikolai Krementsov, who saw this document at the Party Archive, writes that there are “numerous remarks in the margins. The essence and style of these remarks strongly suggest that they were Stalin’s: ‘Ha-ha-ha,’ ‘Nonsense,’ ‘Get out!’ and similar comments mark numerous pages of the text.” 283The involvement of Stalin personally in the issue had crucial consequences for Soviet biology.

On July 10, 1948, a draft of the Central Committee resolution entitled “On the Situation in Soviet Biological Science,” prepared by a special commission (Dmitrii Shepilov, the Central Committee member, and Mitin), was sent to all members of the Politburo for editing. 284This resolution was not published in the media. Instead, the Politburo decided to hold a meeting of the Agricultural Academy, VASKhNIL, with Lysenko’s report on the same subject.

On July 12, Lysenko sent a list of his most devoted supporters, the “leading representatives of the Michurinist trend” as he wrote, to Georgii Malenkov, a member of the Politburo. 285On July 15, Stalin signed a decree of the Council of Ministers that appointed thirty-five new academicians to VASKhNIL. Eleven names were taken from Lysenko’s list, including his chief ideologist, Isaak Prezent. On July 28, Pravda published this list of the new “Academicians.” Mairanovsky’s colleague, the MGB officer Sergei Muromtsev, was among them. A pseudotheory that some microorganisms can change into others was his main “scientific achievement,” besides his secret work on poisons for the execution of the “enemies” of the Soviet Union.

On July 31, the August 1948 Session of VASKhNIL began. It continued until August 7. I will not go into a detailed description of the session; this has been done by many authors. 286Instead, I want to follow the fate of those scientists whom I mentioned above.

Lysenko opened the session with the speech, “On the Situation in Soviet Biological Science.” The text was edited by Stalin himself and had Stalin’s numerous notes in the margins. 287Stalin deleted seven pages of the original Lysenko manuscript. Some of the deleted phrases indicated that Stalin considered Lysenko’s statements stupid. He underlined the phrase “any science is class-oriented by its very nature” and wrote in the margin: “Ha-ha-ha!!! And what about mathematics? And what about Darwinism?” Through the whole text, Stalin changed “bourgeois” to “reactionary” and “the Soviet” to “scientific” biology or genetics. 288

Lysenko’s speech targeted basically “Mendelist-Morganist genetics.” However, Lysenko did not forget the evolutionists who dared to confront him. He condemned those scientists who followed Darwin’s view on Malthusian theory: