The career of a future geneticist started on August 26, 1906, when Nikolai Vavilov entered the Moscow Agricultural Institute, and already in 1926 the scientist was one of the first to receive the Lenin Prize. At the age of 36, Vavilov became a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and after 6 years he became a full member. In fact, on the initiative of the scientist, in 1929, the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences was formed, the first president of which was Nikolai Ivanovich. It is worth separately listing the honorary titles that were awarded to the researcher abroad. This membership in the London and Edinburgh Royal Societies, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldina", as well as the London Linnaean Society.
An important aspect of the work of any scientist is the exchange of experience and internships with colleagues around the world. Vavilov was lucky: in 1913 he was sent to Europe to work in key centers of biology and agronomy. The scientist received genetics first-hand from William Batson himself, who, in fact, gave the name to the new science, as well as from Reginald Pennett. The latter is remembered by many for the classic school "Punnett grid". The First World War interrupted Vavilov's work, and he hastily returned to Russia in order to go on a business trip to Persia two years later in 1916. Here, his scientific competence faced army problems: the soldiers of the Russian army suffered from intestinal diseases. Vavilov quickly found out that the cause was in the seeds of poisonous chaff in bags of wheat grain. On the same trip, the scientist became infected with an idea that made him famous all over the world: the study of the centers of origin of cultivated plants. Then there were expeditions to Central Asia, the Pamirs and Iran, which made it possible to collect unique material, which was later expressed in the material "On the origin of cultivated plants." In 1920, Nikolai Vavilov reported at the All-Russian Congress of Breeders on the formulation of the law of homologous series, which the delegates of the congress characterized by the following telegram to the Council of People's Commissars:
"This law represents the largest event in the world of biological science, in line with the discoveries of Mendeleev in chemistry, and opens up the broadest prospects for practice …"
In the first half of the 1920s, Nikolai Vavilov was treated kindly by the Soviet regime. The scientist takes the helm of the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Cultures, which later transformed into the famous All-Union Institute of Plant Industry (VIR). Vavilov is released on all kinds of business trips around the world. He was not only in Antarctica and Australia. By 1934, the collection of plants collected during these expeditions became the largest in the world - more than 200 thousand images of the plant gene pool. During Vavilov's lifetime, VIR sent to various consumers about 5 million seed packages and over 1 million cuttings for grafting fruit plants. This is to the question that the work of the scientist allegedly had exclusively theoretical significance for the country and was not converted into practical use in any way.
British scientists in 1934, in a report to the British government, assessed the work of Vavilov and his colleagues as follows:
“In no country, except Russia, is work being carried out on such a large scale to study and mobilize cultivated and wild plants from all over the world for practical use in breeding. If the Russians even partially implement their grandiose plans, then they will also make a huge contribution to world crop production."
And two years earlier, Nikolai Vavilov was elected vice-president of the VI International Congress of Genetics in the American Ithaca. This was the peak of the scientific career of the great geneticist-breeder.
Meetings with Stalin
In fact, until the end of the 1920s, the Soviet government did not particularly interfere in scientific work in the country. Either the hands did not reach, or they simply took an observant position. But since 1928, the pressure has increased. A particular example is the case at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, when the scientist A. G. Doyarenko was accused of religiosity:
"It is reported that at the Timiryazev Academy Professor Doyarenko sings in the choir that a number of other professors take part in spiritual activity in one way or another."
The "Cultural Revolution" of 1929 and the ensuing advance of socialism on all fronts seriously tinted scientific discussions with sharp political tones.
Nikolai Vavilov, realizing his weight in world science, and also because of his uncompromising character, being already the director of the Institute of Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, remained non-partisan. In the new realities, this could not go unnoticed, and the party leadership invited the scientist to join the "ranks". Vavilov, who did not share the views of the communists, refused.
From the beginning of the 30s, surveillance was established for him, and later he was banned from traveling abroad. The country's leadership did not understand many things that scientists in general and Vavilov in particular were doing. So, in 1929, Nikolai Ivanovich spoke at two conferences solving the problems of providing the state with food. It would seem that you are dealing with these issues at home, poking around in experimental farms. But no - Vavilov travels with scientific expeditions to Japan, Korea and China, and later publishes the work "Agricultural Afghanistan" in general. Also at this time in the midst of the Soviet establishment became a fashionable book by the English agronomist Garwood "Renewed Land", which expressed the idea of the possibility of a quick and effective restructuring of the country's agriculture. Collectivization was unsuccessful, famine came, and Stalin decided that a revolution was also possible in agriculture.
On March 15, 1929, Stalin brought together leading Soviet agrobiologists, among whom was Nikolai Vavilov, to "exchange views" on the future of the country's agriculture. Vavilov in his speech revealed many shortcomings of the existing system of work. First of all, there is a lack of new experienced agricultural establishments and a chronic lack of resources. The scientist mentioned that the Soviet Union spends 1 million rubles a year for all experimental work in agriculture, with the required 50 million. Inadvertently Vavilov pointed out to Stalin in Germany, where 4 million gold marks were spent on just one institute in 10 months. Vavilov generally had something to compare the state of affairs in the USSR with, which irritated the leadership a lot. Nikolai Ivanovich also pointed out the need to deploy the All-Union Academy of Agriculture, to which they listened, and it appeared already in May 1929.
Stalin's meeting with Vavilov and his colleagues left a bad feeling. The leader of the state believed that the long and painstaking scientific work with high financial costs, which the scientists proposed, would not lead to a rise in agriculture. It is much easier and faster to find a miracle cure for a quick and radical solution to the country's food problem. In addition, Stalin even then treated Vavilov with irritation - the scientist was openly sympathetic to Bukharin, Rykov and almost the entire October elite, whom the secretary general later destroyed. Just as he destroyed Nikolai Vavilov in 1943 (and earlier, in 1938, Academician Nikolai Tulaykov, a participant in that March meeting with Stalin, died in the camps). Obviously, none of these scientists coped with the tasks that Stalin set for them.
Viktor Sergeevich Vavilov, Nikolai Vavilov's nephew, recalls another meeting between the scientist and Stalin, which actually did not take place:
“In the Kremlin corridor, Uncle Kolya stopped and bent down, opening his large briefcase (usually it was filled with magazines and books). He was going to get a document from his portfolio that was necessary for a conversation with one of the Kremlin leaders. Uncle Kolya saw Stalin approaching him. Suddenly, Uncle Kolya realized that Stalin recognized him by intercepting his gaze. Uncle Kolya wanted to say hello to Stalin and tell him something. However, Stalin, seeing him, quickly disappeared, entering one of the doors in the corridor. Uncle Kolya waited for him for a while, but Stalin never left the room. Uncle Kolya had an unpleasant sensation. He felt that Stalin was afraid of him."
This was in 1935.
The last meeting between Vavilov and the leader of the USSR took place in November 1939, when the fight against genetics and the All-Russian Institute of Plant Industry was at the very beginning. The scientist made a whole speech for Stalin about the importance of genetic research at VIR, but upon meeting he heard:
"Are you Vavilov, who deals with flowers, leaves, cuttings and all kinds of botanical nonsense, and does not help agriculture, as does Academician Lysenko Trofim Denisovich?"
Vavilov, who was taken aback and tried to justify himself, was finally cut off by Stalin:
"You are free, Mr. Vavilov."
"Babylon must be destroyed!" - such a slogan of the ideologist of Lysenkoism Isaak Izrailevich Prezent, proclaimed by him in 1939, just ideally coincided with the opinion of the most powerful man in the country. Vavilov's fate was a foregone conclusion.
