The hysteria that happened in Soviet science in the 1930s and 1950s is difficult to understand. It is difficult to assess all its consequences. Genetics came under pressure, cybernetics and sociology were called "pseudoscience", in physiology the doctrine of the Nobel laureate Ivan Pavlov was declared the only true and scientific, and in psychiatry they did not want to know about Freud's theory. The ground was set for an attack on the "idealistic" and "anti-Marxist" quantum theory of Niels Bohr and the theory of relativity of Albert Einstein. It was necessary at all costs to condemn the "monopoly of Jewish physicists", but they changed their minds in time, since such idiocy jeopardized the atomic project of the USSR!
However, genetics was not tied to the country's defense in any way, so it could be sent under the knife. A whole generation in schools and universities absorbed a lot of pseudoscientific truths that have been ingrained in the minds of ordinary people for a long time. For example, the “gene” in the second volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia was characterized as “a pseudoscientific idealistic particle”. This outstanding event in Russian science dates back to the late 40s - early 50s, and already in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA on the basis of an X-ray diffraction pattern.
Nikolay Vavilov
Trofim Lysenko
The main culprits of this situation in genetics (and in the entire biological science of the USSR) are the omnipotent Joseph Stalin and the ambitious dropout agronomist Trofim Lysenko. The countdown in the defeat of genetics should start with these individuals.
"Michurin biology", which Lysenko proclaimed the only true one, has cardinal differences from classical genetics. The gene in this pseudo-scientific was rejected as a concept, and all hereditary information, in the opinion of Lysenko's people, was preserved in the structure of the cell. What exactly was not specified. Chromosomes in the cell nucleus, according to biologists from Michurin and Lysenko, were out of the game. Further, "Michurin biology" said that the body is able to change under the influence of the external environment, while transmitting new features to the next generations. Lysenko and his followers did not come up with anything new here - Jean-Baptiste Lamarck put forward such an idea at the beginning of the 19th century. Actually, the whole theory of Lysenko can be described with the term "neo-Lamarckism". Lysenko did not want to hear that there are mutations that are not an adequate response of the body to external stimuli (adaptations), but are inherited. Obviously, it was too difficult for an academic with two grades of schooling and learned to read and write at the age of 13. Also, Lysenko did not act on the arguments of Darwin's evolutionary theory, which he actually rejected.
By the 30s, it was known all over the world for a long time (and experimentally proved) that Lamarck's views were a delusion, but not in the USSR. Lysenko's thoughts about intraspecific struggle, which he categorically denied, are very characteristic. The academician wrote on this occasion:
“No one has yet succeeded and will never be able to see either himself or others to show in nature a picture of the highest competition within a species … There is no intraspecific struggle in nature, and there is nothing to invent it … A wolf eats a hare, but a hare does not eat a hare, it eats grass …"
Testimony of the infamous VASKhNIL session in August 1948
First victims
Nikolai Vavilov, one of the greatest geneticists, was arrested in 1940 for his statements about the utopianism of Lysenko's ideas. The authorities did not have the courage to immediately shoot the world famous scientist (they were given only 20 years), and he died in a Saratov prison in 1943 from the terrible conditions of detention. Together with him, several of his followers were arrested, some of them were shot immediately, and some died in the camps.
Inspired by the elimination of the main competitor, Lysenko in August 1948, with the approval of Stalin, organized a session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after V. I. Lenin. On it, the hated "Weismanists, Mendelists and Morganists" fell under the rink of the regime, who were leading the entire Russian biology into the abyss. And the victory was celebrated by Michurin biology, developing on the basis of the teachings of Marx - Engels - Lenin - Stalin. This is despite the objections of Yuri Zhdanov himself, Stalin's son-in-law and head of the science department of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), who was the first at such a high level to raise the issue of the depravity of Lysenko's theory. At this session, the voices of other protesters from science were heard for the last time - MSU associate professor Sos Alikhanyan, employee of the Institute of Cytology, Histology and Embryology of the USSR Academy of Sciences Iosif Rapoport, as well as the president of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences Anton Zhebrak. They tried to prove that genetics should become a powerful tool in the hands of Soviet agriculture, relying on the achievements of world and domestic science. As a result, participants in the Great Patriotic War, Sos Alikhanyan and Joseph Rapoport, were fired from their jobs and called on to publicly repent. Zhebrak was also removed from the post of President of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR. Alikhanyan and Zhebrak later nevertheless recognized the correctness of Trofim Lysenko's teachings, for which they were able to study biology (but not genetics!).
War hero and outstanding geneticist Joseph Rapoport
But Joseph Rapoport was consistent, did not give up his words, was expelled from the party and from 1949 to 1957 was forced to work in geological exploration. After the session of the All-Union Agricultural Academy, several hundred scientists from the Academy of Sciences and leading universities of the country were fired, and books and textbooks on classical genetics were destroyed throughout the Union. It was allowed to return to work only not in the specialty; former geneticists retrained into botanists, chemists, pharmacists. Moreover, many were expelled from Moscow to the periphery of the country, right up to Yakutia. VASKHNIL, on the other hand, was now almost 100% filled with Trofim Lysenko's henchmen.
Effects
The August session of VASKhNIL blocked all studies on classical genetics in the country for 8 years. A little later, work was resumed under the wing of Igor Kurchatov in the framework of the atomic project, but this was semi-clandestine research on radiation mutagenesis. Certain hopes were pinned on the new General Secretary Khrushchev, but he also turned out to be a follower of Lysenko. Until 1965, genetics in the USSR was publicly condemned, and research was carried out in a few islands of common sense.
In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule. In total, according to Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Biological Sciences Ilya Artemyevich Zakharov-Gezehus, the Soviet Union lagged behind world genetics by at least 15-20 years. The country turned out to be isolated from world science, missed the birth of biotechnology and molecular biology. They woke up only in the 80s, when the state program to support domestic genetics was adopted, but with the onset of the dashing 90s, the initiative, as expected, stalled.
[center] Commemorative plaque in one of the schools of modern Russia
It is noteworthy and sad that in modern Russia "Lysenkoism" has not been completely eradicated. In schools, you can find photographs of Trofim Lysenko in the most honorable places, and books are published that rehabilitate the "outstanding agronomist". For example, V. I. Pyzhenkov wrote the work "Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov - Botanist, Academician, Citizen of the World", in which he openly belittles the merits of the great geneticist. You can find in the public domain the book "Trofim Denisovich Lysenko - Soviet agronomist, biologist, breeder" (main author N. V. Ovchinnikov), which is a collection of laudatory articles addressed to the main character. In particular, you can find in this booklet material about geneticists under the name "Fly-lovers-misanthropists" authored by Alexander Studitsky from 1949. Yuri Mukhin published "The Corrupt Girl Genetics: Cognition of the World or a Feeder?" with a circulation of 4,000 copies. And already quite paradoxical looks the brochure of the publishing house "Samobrazovanie" under the title "Contribution of T. D. Lysenko to the victory in the Great Patriotic War", published in a tiny circulation of 250 copies in 2010.
It is obvious that the drama that played out in the 1930s-1940s in our country has been consigned to oblivion, and the historic verdict handed down to Trofim Lysenko seems unfair to many.
