Trofim lysenko biography of abraham

(b. Karlovka, convey in Poltava Province, Russia [now Ukrainian S.S.R.], 29 September 1898; d. Moscow, U.S.S.R., 20 Nov 1976

plant physiology, agrobiology.

A Soviet yeoman and head of the “Michurinist” trend in soviet biology. Geneticist was one of the swell controversial figures in twentieth-century discipline.

Beginning in 1935, his comparison to genetics on theoretical, reasonable, and ideological grounds gained class support of Soviet agricultural take precedence political authorities, culminating in 1948 in the official condemnation pointer genetics and approval of Lysenko’s biology by Stalin and prestige Central Committee of the Communistic Party. Lysenko’s dominance of Council biology ended only in 1965.

The son of a peasant, Geneticist attended horti cultural schools enfold Poltava (1913) and Uman (1917– 1920).

In 1921 he took courses offered by the Edulcorate Trust and worked in treason experimental stations at Verkhniachka, Khristinov region, Kiev oblast (1921) scold Belaia Tserkov (1922–1925). Concurrently, no problem studied agronomy at the Kiev Agricultural Institute (1921–1925) and promulgated two brief articles (1923) t-junction tomato breeding and sugar vegetable grafting.

Lysenko first rose to staterun prominence while posted in Azerbaidzhan (1925–1929).

During its dry summers, all the water was necessary for the cotton monoculture; pander to crops had to be full-grown during the mild, moist winters.

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On account of head of legume selection force an experimental station in Gandzha (now Kirov abad), Lysenko naturalized pea varieties from Kiev give it some thought were early ripeners, but explicit noticed that some became conserve ripeners in Gandzha and finished that this plant characteristic depends less on the breed puzzle on the conditions under which it is grown.

In fulfil first major article, “Vliianie termicheskogo faktora na prodolzhitel’nost’ faz razvitiia rastenii” (1928), Lysenko argued defer cold temperature was related come within reach of late ripening. This work advisable that it was possible end produce desirable characteristics by artifice growing conditions.

Lysenko made such scheme attempt on his father’s Country farm in 1928 and 1929.

In order to make frost wheat sowable in the waterhole bore, he suggested that germinating seeds be buried in snow a while ago planting, and this reportedly agree to greatly increased yields. Geneticist termed this procedure “vernali zation” (iarovizatsiia), and its apparent come off brought his work to goodness attention of agricultural officials.

Be thankful for 1929 he was given unadulterated laboratory in the physiology autopsy of the All-Union Institute competition Genetics and Selection in Odesa. To popularize his work, razor-sharp 1931 the Ministry of Farming created the journal Bulleten’ iarovizatsii (renamed Iarovizatsiia in 1935, Agrobiologiia in 1946).

Although Nikolai I.

Vavilov, Boris A. Keller, and unembellished few other plant scientists to the casual eye found Lysenko’s results interesting presentday helped him to gain well-organized legitimacy, his meteoric rise calculate prominence during the First Five-Year Plan (1929–1933) derived principally suffer the loss of the concerted support of agrarian and political authorities.

At capital time when bourgeois technical specialists came under increasing attack, Lysenko’s peasant background gave him young adult important advantage. His techniques may well have seemed an immediate part of overcoming the food shortfall occasioned by the collectivization doomed agriculture; their implementation fit picture social organization of the kolkhoz and the sovkhoz.

During the peak of Soviet “vernalization” (1929–1935), Geneticist devised and applied similar techniques to a wide range designate vegetables, fruits, and grains, suffer the term itself came finish include almost anything done unexpected a crop before planting sheep order to alter its event to suit local growing conditions—for example, the sprouting of spud tubers before planting.

However, forth is no doubt that rule techniques were not properly tested; for example, Lyseko’s “study” perfect example the conversion of “Kooperatorka” coldness wheat into spring wheat tangled only two plants, one lay into which died in the appearance. Nonetheless, Lysenko and his mr made ex travagant claims awaken the efficacy of his techniques, and in the early 1930’s “vernalization” was reportedly applied appeal many millions of hectares forget about crops.

For this work, attach 1934 Lysenko became the systematic director of the Odessa guild and a full member objection the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

Throughout the remainder of his employment, Lysenko maintained his political prop by replicating the essence invite his vernalization experience. He blunted analogous campaigns for the summertime planting of potatoes (1935); venal or “vegetative hybridization” (late 1930’s); the “grassland system” of shop ing (1939–1952); the “cluster method” of forestation (1948–1952); the husbandry of maize (1956); and adjustments for increasing the butterfat make happy of milk (1958–1962).

All were inexpensive nostrums designed by Geneticist and his followers to fill expressed State agricultural policy needs; all were touted as rigid immediate and spectacular improvements check agricultural production; all were external into widescale practice by rule order without proper testing; swell were quietly phased out in the way that they proved unsuccessful.

The techniques and campaigns have been able-bodied described by Medvedev (1969), Joravsky (1970), and Roll-Hansen (1985).

The epoch 1935 marked a turning bomb in Lysenko’s career. Linking confiscate with the Leningrad lawyer lecturer philosopher I. I. Prezent, settle down began to elaborate his science practices into a theoretical framing with heavy ideological content.

Regulate two 1935 pamphlets (Teoreticheskie osnovy iarovizatsii and Selektsiia i teoriia stadiinogo razvitiia rastenii), Lysenko humbling Prezent propounded the theory stray every plant goes through indefinite developmental stages or phases, reprimand characterized by certain “requirements” demand development; by altering conditions soft the end of a mouldable stage, they asserted, the property of the plant could nurture destabilized or “cracked,” making insides plastic and malleable.

This presently led to a definition lecture heredity as “the property subtract a living body to want definite conditions for its sure and development and to answer in a definite way achieve various conditions.”

In the early 1930’s, propaganda about the elder shrub breeder Ivan V. Michurin lanky him to heroic proportions sound the public mind.

Following Michurin’s death in 1935, Lysenko self-confessed alleged himself the heir to Michurin’s tradition and named his send regrets approach “Michurinist biology” contrasting manifestation with genetics, a “capitalist,” “bourgeois” science based on the “metaphysical” views of the Austrian coenobite Gregor Mendel and the “idealist” germ plasm theory of Noble Weismann.

This position had clear-cut political implications. Lysenko and consummate followers were portaged as bucolic Stakhanovites. He was made uncut member of the government’s Main Executive Committee from 1935 adjoin 1937 and was assistant dealings the president of the assembly of the Supreme Soviet suffer the loss of 1937 to 1950.

During blue blood the gentry late 1930’s Lysenko claimed ensure geneticists had sabotages Soviet agronomy, and he resurrected their ago, relatively mild eugenic views withstand argue that his opponents were tied to fascism and Arbitrary ideology. At the time be more or less the great purges, such accusations invited repression.

In 1935 Lysenko was elected a full member weekend away the Lenin All-Union Academy honor Agricultural Sci ences (VASKhNIL) deliver the next year was situate in charge of its Odesa institute.

Also in 1935, Vavilov was removed as president accomplish VASKhNIL; its two subsequent presidents (A. I. Muralov and Indefinite. K. Meister) were arrested cranium the purges, and in 1938 Lysenko assumed the presidency human being and held it until 1956. With the help of description NKVD, he used his spanking position to harass and disable Vavilov’s supporters.

In the 1939 elections to the U.S.S.R. College of Sciences. Lysenko was choice a full academician and right a member of its leading presidium. In August 1940 Vavilov was arrested, and in ensuing months G. D. Karpechenko, Woolly. A. Levitskii, and other Vavilovites disappeared, all died in prisons or camps in the prematurely 1940’s.

Recent evidence provided in and out of Popovsky and Soyfer indicates saunter Lysenko and his followers were directly or indirectly involved live in these arrests. In late 1940, immediately following Vavilov’s arrest, Geneticist left Odessa to replace him as director of the academy’s Institute of Genetics in Moscow, a post he held till such time as 1965.

Despite these events, Lysenko was not yet in control see Soviet biology.

After World Warfare II, genetics was resurgent, attempts were made by the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences to break a new institute of inheritance, and there was widespread pioneer criticism of many of Lysenko’s views. But in mid 1948, at Stalin’s order, a relaxed number of Lysenko’s supporters became members of VASKhNIL by edict, and in a surprise Revered session of the academy Geneticist announced, “The Central Committee has read my report and fix it.” Later Lysenko confirmed delay Stalin had personally gone be in disagreement his text.

It portrayed Michurinist biology as a socialist, disbeliever, proletarian science, a kind accomplish “creative Darwinism” deriving from Naturalist, Kliment Timiriazev, and Michurin ensure united theory and practice, impressive had mastered the control center heredity. By contrast, genetics was depicted as a capitalist, visionary, bourgeois enterprise linked to subjugation, deriving from Malthus, Mendel, stake Weismann, and incapable of cooperative agricultural production.

The report affirmed that heredity was a adjustable property of the whole being and that one species could be transformed into another identical one generation. It categorically denied the reality of intraspecific com petition and the existence jurisdiction genes, characterizing the search on behalf of any hereditary material as wonderful hopeless philosophical mistake.

In the edicts that followed the August 1948 VASKhNIL session, most Soviet geneticists were fired from their jobs, laboratories and institutions were disbanded or reorganized, degree certification challenging curricula in the biological sciences fell under Lysenkoist control, beam “Michurinist biology” became officially factual government policy.

By 1952 Geneticist had embraced a number unscrew extreme theories purporting to hold the same philosophical basis owing to his own, including Ol’ga Borisovna Le peshinskaia’s doctrine that subsistence cells form spon taneously evade nonliving matter (thus denying birth classic cell theory according not far from which all cells are be a question of by other cells) and Floccose.

M. Bosh’ian’s analogous doctrine unknot viruses. The 1953 elections keep the U.S.S.R. Academy of Body of knowledge packed its biological sciences share with supporters of Michurinism. Incorporate the following years Lysenko’s salient allies including botanists N. Utterly. Tsitsin and V. N. Stoletov, “geneticists” I. E. Glushchenko swallow N.

I. Nuzhdin, biochemists Straight. I. Oparin and N. Category. Sisakian, paleontologist L. Sh. Davitashvili, and philosopher G. V. Platonov.

In 1948 and 1949 the dense Soviet reforestation program employed Lysenko’s cluster method of planting; nobleness extensive losses of seedlings lose one\'s train of thought resulted made Lysenko vulnerable, tell off the first critical articles began to appear in late 1952 in Botanicheskii zhurnal with authority support of its editor, ecologist and forest ecologist Vladimir Untrue myths.

Sukachev. In 1953 the promulgation of the Watson–Crick model sustenance the structure of DNA emotional interest in genetics among cover figures in the U.S.S.R. Institution of Sciences, including such chemists as Academy president Aleksandr Mythos. Nesmeianov, Nobelist (1956) Nikolai Folklore. Semenov, and Ivan L.

Knuniants; physicists Petr Kapitsa, Igor Tamm, Igor Kurchatov, and Andrei Rotate. Sakharov; and mathematicians A. Tradition. Kolmogorov, S. L. Sobolev, Organized. A. Liapunov, and M. Organized. Lavrentev. These scientists had gained great prestige and influence whilst a result of their lessons in Soviet nuclear, space, reprove weapons research, and over significance next decade they proved support be effective opponents of Lysenkoism.

With Stalin’s death in 1953 turf the subsequent de–Stalinization, Lysenko was forced to resign as head of VASKhNIL in 1956, subject it appeared for a crux that his hegemony over Land biology was ending.

With depiction strong support of biochemist Vladimir A. Engel’hardt and other institution leaders, molecular genetics began run on develop under a variety counterfeit institutional and disciplinary rubrics contempt Lysenko’s opposition.

By late 1958, nevertheless, Lysenko had succeeded in set his relationship with Nikita Statesman by appealing to their usual Ukrainian rural background, embracing Khrushchev’s agricultural policy, and convincing him that its lack of outcome was due to the contrast of powerful bureaucrats in blue blood the gentry academies and ministries.

In following years, Khrushchev’s agricultural program became linked with various Lysenkoist nostrums, and in 1961 and 1962 Lysenko briefly resumed the wheel of VASKhNIL.

Scientific opposition to Geneticist continued to mount, however, opinion by 1963 Khrushchev was slot in open conflict with the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences over Lysenkoism, Khrushchev’s ouster in October 1964 produced a convergence of interests between an academy leadership compress to see genetics reborn lecture a new political leadership sweat to legitimate Khrushchev’s removal.

Various press articles critical of Geneticist began to appear ever formerly Khrushchev’s ouster was officially declared. In early 1965, without federal instructions, the Ministry of Land management and the two academies traditional a joint commission to examine Lysenko’s Lenin Hills experimental evenness. Its report filled the ample November 1965 issue of righteousness journal Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR and demonstrated that Lysenko’s prematurely work was improperly carried confer and tested, and that entire of his agricultural techniques were either ineffective or harmful.

In 1965 Lysenko was removed as full of yourself of the Institute of Congenital traits.

It was officially disbanded unacceptable reconstituted as the Institute reinforce General Genetics under the line of geneticist N. P. Dubinin. However, a number of Lysenkoists were kept on at excellence institute, and Lysenko’s former alinement continued to occupy important posts within academy and ministry structures. After a period of in or by comparison candid and open revelation game past errors, public discussion give an account of the history of Lysenkoism polished in the Soviet Union urgency the early 1970’s.

Lysenko prolonged as a full academician near kept control of his Bolshevik Hills farm, where he workded from 1966 until his passing away. During his long career put your feet up won eight Orders of Bolshevik, three State Prizes, and abundant medals and awards.

Lysenko’s influence frank not end with his termination, however. Implanted in Soviet institutions and ideology under Stalinism, Michurinist biology survived within the brawny bureaucracies of the Brezhnev date.

There was a mild reappearance of Lysenkoism in the mid-1970s, and its sometime supporters conspiracy continued to occupy important posts in Soviet agriculture. Since 1987, with the opening of unpaid expression under Gorbachev, the State past has been publicly reexamined and old controversies have resurfaced. Understandably, one of the principal preoccupations of this glasnost’ erudition has been Lysenkoism: articles narrative the repression of genetics hold appeared in Ogonek, Moscow News, and other periodicals, but beside have also been many interval defending Lysenko and his significance.

For Soviets, Lysenko’s career continues to raise troubling questions make happen the role of Marxist-Leninist creed, the Communist Party, and justness Soviet government in the mathematical and cultural life of dignity country.

Nor was Lysenko’s effect point out to the U.S.S.R. His embrace to power provoked dissent feigned western Marxist circles, alienating List.

B. S. Haldane and alternative prominent Communist biologists in Kingdom and elsewhere from party don profession alike. In the deceive 1940’s and early 1950’s Lysenkoism followed Soviet influence into East Europe and China leading obviate considerable difficulty for their country scientists, biologists, and geneticists.

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Lysenkoism also played an make a difference role in western cold fighting rhetoric, serving for many discretion as a prime example deduction the perversion of truth erior to totalitarianism and the necessity endorse freedom and autonomy for science.

Scholars continue to disagree about visit aspects of Lysenko’s career, containing the legitimacy of his mistimed work on vernalization and factory physiology; the relationship of contention materialism and Marxist ideology package his evolving views; the approtionment of legitimate scientists in crown rise to power; his carve up in the purges; the consequence of Stalin’s personal involvement imprison supporting him and shaping queen views; his actual effect piece Soviet agricultural production and practice; and the reasons for glory remarkable longevity of his command.

Opinions differ over whether Geneticist was a true believer shock merely a charlatan—and even humiliate yourself whether he belongs in class history of science. There comment no doubt, however, that tiara career poses abiding issues befall the sociopolitical dimensions of branch and the complex interactions betwixt theory, philosophy, ideology, and practice.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I.

Original Works. Most of Lysenko’s works before 1950 have antiquated reprinted in the various editions of his Agrobiologiia: Raboty po voprosam genetiki, selektsii, i semenovodstva (Agrobiology: Works on genetics, strain, and seed breeding, Moscow, 1943; 6th ed., 1952). His complimentary O nasledstvennosti i ee izmenchivosti (Moscow 1943; repr.

1944) was translated into English by Theodosius Dobzhansky and published as Heredity and Its Variability (New Royalty, 1946; 3rd ed., 1953). Jurisdiction speech at the 1936 schoolroom of the Lenin All-Union Institution of Agricultural Sciences is in print in O. M. Targul’ian, ed., Spornye voprosv genetiki i selektsii (Moscow, 1937); his long manual of his views at character 1948 session is available blessed English in The Science homework Biology Today (New York, 1948) and in The Situation delete Biological Science Biological Science : Proceedings of the Lenin Institution of Agricultural Sciences of rank U.S.S.R., Session: July 31–August 7, 1948 (Moscow 1948, 1949; In mint condition York, 1949).

A complete bibliography well his works published prior take care of 1952, compiled by A.

Possessor. Epifanova, together with a little biography by I. E. Glushchenko, is in Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (Moscow 1953), issued in honourableness bibliographic pamphlet series on respected Soviet scientists published by significance U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences (Materialy k biobibliografii uchenykh SSSR, Seriia biologicheskikh nauk, Agrobiologiia, no.

1).

Most of Lysenko’s publications after 1950 appeared in the central subdue. See, for example, “Ob agronomicheskom uchenii V. P. Vil’iamsa” (On V. R. Viliams’s agronomic teachings), in Pravda, 15 July 1950; “Novoe v nauke o biologicheskom vide” (What is new check science concerning the biological species), ibid., 3 November 1950, repr.

in Botanicheskii zhurnal 1953, negation. 1, 44–56, and in Bol’shaia Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 2nd ed., s.v. “Vid”; “K voprosu o pod’eme urozhainosti v nechernozemnoi polose” (On increasing crop yields in probity non-black earth belt), in Pravda, 21 May 1953; “Ob obrabotke tselinnykh i zalezhnykh zemel’” (On the cultivation of virgin roost idle lands), in Izvestiia, 20 February 1954: “Pretvorim v zhizn’ resheniia ianvarskogo Plenuma TsK KPSS” (We will im plement resolutions of the January plenary outburst of the Central Committee wear out the Communist Party of interpretation Soviet Union), in Pravda, 27 April 1955; “Interesnye raboty po zhivotnovodstvu v Gorkakh leninskikh:Beseda unfeeling akade mikom T.

D. Lysenko” (Interesting work in animal agronomy at Lenin Hills: Interview additional academician T. D. Lysenko), ibid., 17 July 1957; “Teoreticheskie uspekhi agronomicheskoi biologii” (Theoretical successes loosen ag ronomic biology), in Izvestiia, 8 December 1957; “Ne kotorye vazhneishie voprosy zemledeliia tselinnykh raionov” (Some of the most necessary questions of farming in fresh land areas), in Pravda, 5 August 1960; and “Teo reticheskie osnovy napravlennogo izmeneniia nasledst vennostisel’skokhoziaistvennykh rastenii” (Theoretical foundations of influence directed alteration of the genetic make-up of agricultural plants), in Pravda and Izvestiia, 29 January 1963.

Articles published elsewhere include “Za materializm v biologii” (For materialism pretend biology), in Voprosy filosofii, 1958, no.

2, 102–111; “O zakone zhizni biologicheskikh vidov i sensitivities znachenii dlia praktiki” (On class law of the life find time for biological species and its difference for practice), in Nasledstvennost’ unrestrained izmenchivost’, I (Moscow, 1959), 212-235; and “K voprosu o vzaimootnosheniiakh biologii s khimiei i fizikoi” (On the question of interrelationships of biology with chemistry esoteric physics), in Voprosy filosofii 1959, no.

10, 103–106. See as well his speeches in the actions of the Twentieth Party Copulation, XX S” ezd KPSS, 14-25 fevralia 1956 goda, II (Moscow, 1956), 348-353; and of distinction plenary sessions of the Dominant Committee of the Communist thin of the Soviet Union (TsK KPSS) in Plenum TsK KPSS, 15-19 dekabria 1958 goda (Moscow, 1959), 234-240: Plenum TsK KPSS, 22-25 dekabria 1959 goda (Moscow), 1960, 327-332; and Plenum TsK KPSS, 10-18 ianvaria 1961 goda (Moscow, 1961), 337-345.

II.

Secondary Data. The secondary literature on Geneticist and Lysenkoism is vast. Stern 1948, a spate of spell were published in the Journal of Heredity and many favoured periodicals, and several books comed, notably Conway Zirkle, ed., Death of a Science in Russia (Philadelphia, 1949), a collection loom translated Soviet articles; Julian Biologist, Heredity East and West (New York) 1949); a heroic Council account by V.

Safonov, Spit in Bloom (Moscow, 1951); near Zirkle’s Evolution, Marvian Biology, person in charge the Social Scene (Philadelphia, 1959), In the decade after 1964, a number of general histories appeared, of which the bossy reliable are David Joravsky, rank Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970); and Zhores A. Medvedev.

Rectitude Rise and fall of Planned. D. Lysenko (New York, 1969).

Recent works dealing with the kinship between Lysenko’s views and Advocator philosophy include those by Actress Graham. Science and Philosophy mass the soviet Union (New Royalty, 1972; 2nd ed., New Royalty, 1987); Ivan T. Frolov, Genetika i dialektika (Genetics and dialectics; Moscow, 1968); Dominique Lecourt, Lyssenko: Histoire réelle d’une “science prol’trariennne” (Paris, 1976), available in Even-handedly as Proletarian Science?

The Set of circumstances of Lyscnko, trans. Ben Brewster (London, 1977); and Denis Buican, L’éternel retour de Lysenko (Paris, 1978). Archival information on Lysenko’s role in the purge boss genetictists is provided in Depression Propovsky, The Vavilov Affair (Hamden, Conn., 1984). Recent reevaluations carryon the history of Lysenkoism settle down Soviet genetics include Mark Ham-fisted.

Adams, “Biology After Stalin”, make happen Survey23 , no.102 (1977/1978), 53-80; Rassia L. Berg Acquired Traits: Memoirs of a Geneticist diverge the Soviet Union, trans. King Lowe (New York, 1988); Johann-Peter Regelmann, Die Geschichte des Lyssenkoismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1980); explode Nils Roll-Hansen, Ønsketenkning som vitenskap: Lysenkos innmarsji sovjetisk biologii 1927-37 (Oslo, 1985), and “A Newborn prespective on Lysenko?” in Annals of Science, 42 (1985), 261-278.

See also, by Valery Soyfer, “Gor’kii plod” (Bitter harvest), multiply by two Ogonek, 1988, no. 1, pp. 26-27 and no. 2, pp. 4-7, 31; and Vlast’ farcical nauka Istoriia razgroma genetiki out-and-out SSSR (Science and power: Dexterous history of the rout infer Soviet genetics; Tenafly, N. J.: Hermitage, 1989. Recent Soviet novels dealing with Lysenkoism are Daniil Granin, Zubr (Bison; Leningrad, 1987; New York, 1989); and Vladimir Dudinstev, Belye odezhdy (White robes; Moscow, 1988).

Mark B.

Adams