Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

Unfortunately for Soviet science, the biologists arrested in the 1930s and those who lost their jobs in the late 1940s and early 1950s were replaced by people with low professional qualifications, such as the VASKhNIL academicians appointed in 1948 (including Mairanovsky’s colleague Muromtsev), Party functionaries (for example, Lepeshinskaya), or simply those who had low moral standards. Academician Oparin, who played a crucial role at the Academy of Sciences after the August 1948 Session, was a good example of the last group.

Together with Thomas Jukes, 482I strongly disagree with Stanley Miller and his colleagues, who justified Oparin’s behavior as the condition necessary for his survival: “It is clear that Oparin and many others went along with Lysenkoism and apparently supported it fully. However, even given the advantages of hindsight, it seems disingenuous to criticize these Soviet researchers for their accommodation with Lysenko, since their survival was dependent on it.” 483

In fact, nothing threatened Oparin’s survival. He was an academician and director of the Institute of Biochemistry, which then was not directly involved in the study of genetics or evolutionary theory. He was not attacked by Lysenko or Prezent in the press. He simply was an opportunist who saw his chance to advance his career in exchange for support of Lysenko. It was his choice and desire for power. Academician Schmalhausen, Professors Formozov and Sabinin, and 3,000 other biologists, victims of the August 1948 Session, lost their professional jobs because of their integrity and moral principles and because they would not make compromises with their consciences. Academician Orbeli, whom Oparin replaced as secretary academician, not only refused to fire two geneticists, Rose Manzing and Ivan Kanaev, from his Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Pathology of the Highest Nervous Activity within the Medical Academy after the August 1948 Session, but instead hired a third geneticist, Mikhail Lobashov, who had just been fired from Leningrad University as a “Mendelist-Morganist.” 484

The Lysenkoists needed to work much harder to destroy Academician Orbeli. To begin with, the joint Academy of Sciences and Medical Academy “Pavlov Session” was organized in 1950. It brought “Lysenko in physiology,” as Academician Konstantin Bykov was called, to power. After that a special Scientific Council on the Problems of Physiology Theory of Academician I. P. Pavlov (under Bykov’s chairmanship) was created in 1951. As secretary academician, Oparin cooperated closely with Bykov against Orbeli. Oparin definitely belonged to the same category of scientists as Grashchenkov, Speransky, Frank, and Blokhin, all of whom had no problem supporting Mairanovsky’s experiments.

To return to the comparison of the situation in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, it is evident that in Germany there were groups of people with basically two opposite types of behavior. There were rare German scientists who refused to replace their Jewish colleagues or those Germans who tried to save Jews or even joined the anti-Nazi underground. Most of them were executed by the Nazi regime or perished in concentration camps. These people had motivations similar to the Russian scientists who tried to save their colleagues and maintained their moral and professional integrity. There was also a rather numerous group of Nazi scientists who gained from taking over the positions of their Jewish colleagues or the SS doctors who profiteered from gold teeth and the belongings of the victims killed in extermination camps. For the most part, these people survived the war, became wealthy, and obtained good professional jobs. 485I can compare this type of German with the functionaries, including Oparin, who profiteered from the Party line in Soviet biology. I do not think that profiteering in critical circumstances should be considered a decent mode of survival.

It is worth mentioning that the other above-mentioned active and important supporter of Lysenko, Norair Sisakyan, was praised by the international scientific community and politicians even higher than Oparin. As well as being elected a member and vice president of the International Astronautical Academy, in 1964 Sisakyan was elected president of the Thirteenth UNESCO General Assembly (1964–1966) and a crater on the Moon was named after him. After Sisakyan’s death, a plaque in his memory was placed on the fourth UNESCO administrative building in Paris. 486

The dismissal of Oparin as a result of the appeal of hundreds of scientists was a unique event that had not been possible in Stalin’s years. It definitely showed a change in the mindset of Soviet scientists—the understanding by many of the necessity of civil actions against Party control of science. This change was later extended by the dissident movement to moral issues and human rights.

However, the introduction of Lysenkoism as the Party line in biology and biomedicine caused a selection of persons without moral integrity in these fields. Moreover, almost all Lysenkoists and their supporters kept their positions even after the fall of Lysenko in 1964–1965. Those real scientists who lost their jobs because they rejected Lysenkoism never had the opportunity to realize their scientific talents and potential. Such scientists of the highest moral determination and integrity as Drs. Rapoport and Efroimson wasted their talents during years of persecution without a professional job. The Soviet society that killed countless citizens in labor camps was not interested in talented scientists unless they were completely under the ideological control of the Party. Even when Rapoport and Efroimson were able to continue their work, they were dependent on more conformist scientists like Academician Semenov.

All these circumstances created a climate of tolerance and acceptance of any Party order, especially if it was connected with KGB work, by the academy functionaries without questioning the moral aspects of the issue. Academician Blokhin did not ask Mairanovsky about the source of his results when Mairanovsky appealed to him in 1964. In the meantime, it is evident for any professional that Mairanovsky’s data were obtained on humans. It does not seem that Academicians Speransky, Grashchenkov, Frank, and other opponents of Mairanovsky’s doctoral thesis, who knew about his experiments, ever had a problem with their conscience. In these terms, Academicians Zilber and Zdrodovsky’s refusal to accept Mairanovsky’s colleague, the Lysenko-devoted supporter and “academician” Muromtsev, as director of VIEM was unusual in the atmosphere of tolerance of immoral actions at the Academy of Science and Medical Academy. The lack of moral standards resulted later, from the 1970s–1990s, in the appearance of the next generation of scientists, such as the high-level functionary Academician Ovchinnikov, who had no doubts about the moral implications of the work on the development of biological weapons and poisons for the KGB.

But people such as Koltsov, his pupils Rapoport and Efroimson, and many others described in this chapter (as well as others not mentioned in this book) will remain forever examples of scientific integrity and human dignity. Very few of them became academicians or corresponding members of the academy because of their moral choice not to follow the Party line against their beliefs. It was impossible for them to make a compromise with their conscience, to accept Lysenkoism, or to betray and deliver another scientist into the hands of the ruthless NKVD/MGB interrogators.

A cytologist, Professor Vladimir Aleksandrov, wrote in his memoirs about the late 1940s: “Lysenko’s biology made an immense experiment in social psychology…. The experiment revealed the limits of moral firmness in various persons.” 487Dr. Aleksandrov, a Jew by origin, was one of the most uncompromising fighters against Lysenko. In 1949, Professor Boris Tokin of Leningrad University accused Aleksandrov of being an aide to the alleged Jewish Masonic Lodge’s “Grand Master,” Professor Aleksandr Gurvich, director of the Institute of Experimental Biology (IEB) within the Medical Academy of Sciences. 488All the accusations were complete nonsense. But the accusations even worked against the Institute’s next director, cytologist Dmitrii Nasonov, a Russian noble by origin. 489In July 1950, after a special commission from the Medical Academy investigated the “anti-Lysenkoist activity” at the IEB, Professor Aleksandrov and twenty of his colleagues were fired, and Professor Nasonov’s laboratory was closed. 490In 1955, Professor Aleksandrov and two other biologists from Leningrad, Dmitrii Lebedev and Yurii Olenov, wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party protesting Lysenko’s monopoly in biology based on the Party’s support for Lysenko. This letter was signed by 300 biologists, and it was the first collective protest by numerous scientists against the policy of the Communist Party in Soviet history.