Lysenkoism

thumb|upright=1.35 |[[Trofim Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935; behind him are (left to right) Stanislav Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreev and Joseph Stalin]]

Lysenkoism was a pseudoscientific political campaign led by the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century, rejecting natural selection in favour of a form of Lamarckism, as well as expanding upon the techniques of vernalization and grafting.

More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents.]]

Mendelian genetics, the science of heredity, developed into an experimentally based field of biology at the start of the 20th century through the work of August Weismann, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and others, building on the rediscovered work of Gregor Mendel. They showed that the characteristics of an organism are carried by inherited genes, which were located on chromosomes in each cell's nucleus. Genes can be affected by random changes (mutations), and can be shuffled and recombined during sexual reproduction, but are otherwise passed on unchanged from parent to offspring. Beneficial changes can propagate through a population by natural selection or, in agriculture, by plant breeding.

The Marxist principle of partiinost (party spirit) held that science is tied to class interests: scientists had a duty to serve the working class. This caused scientific findings to be judged by their economic and political utility, and allowed for questionable work. Marxist revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin downplayed realist interpretations of nature. He said that science had to show how to manipulate natural phenomena to serve the interests of the proletarian class. Because genetics was linked to eugenics and Social Darwinism, it was rejected as bourgeois, regardless of the evidence for it.

Marxism–Leninism, which became the official ideology in Stalin's USSR, incorporated Darwinian evolution as a foundational doctrine, providing a scientific basis for its state atheism. Initially, the Lamarckian principle of inheritance of acquired traits was considered a legitimate part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin himself supported it. Although the Mendelian view had largely replaced Lamarckism in western biology by 1925, that it can be inherited in mice; Michurin advocated directed plant breeding by environmental control: "We cannot wait for favors from nature: we must wrest them from her".

Kliment Timiryazev, a popularizer of science in Russia, had sympathies with communism, and allied with the new Soviet republic. This made his views more orthodox and widely known. When gene theory rose in early 1900s, some gene theorists promoted saltative mutationism as an alternative to gradualist Darwinism, and Timiryazev vigorously argued against it. Timiryazev's views influenced many, including Michurin.

Soviet agriculture around 1930 was in a crisis due to Stalin's forced collectivisation of farms and extermination of kulak farmers. The resulting Soviet famine of 1932–1933 provoked the government to search for a technical solution which would maintain their central political control.

In the Soviet Union

Lysenko's claims

thumb|upright|left|Lysenko in 1938

In 1928, rejecting natural selection and Mendelian genetics, Trofim Lysenko claimed to have developed agricultural techniques which could radically increase crop yields. These included vernalization, species transformation (one species turning into another), inheritance of acquired characteristics, and vegetative hybridization (see below). He claimed in particular that vernalization, exposing wheat seeds to humidity and low temperature, could greatly increase crop yield. He claimed further that he could transform one species, Triticum durum (durum spring wheat), into Triticum vulgare (common autumn wheat), through 2 to 4 years of autumn planting. This species transition he claimed to occur without an intermediate form. However, this was already known to be impossible since T. durum is a tetraploid with 28 chromosomes (4 sets of 7), while T. vulgare is hexaploid with 42 chromosomes (6 sets).

thumb|Lysenkoist vegetative hybridisation implying an effect of scion on stock when a fruit tree is [[Grafting|grafted. Lysenko's Lamarckian conception could imaginably be achieved by horizontal gene transfer, though there is no evidence for this. He also claimed that when a tree is grafted, the scion permanently changes the heritable characteristics of the stock. In modern biological theory, such a change is theoretically possible through horizontal gene transfer; however, there is no evidence that this actually occurs, and Lysenko rejected the mechanism of genes entirely. State media published enthusiastic articles such as "Siberia is transformed into a land of orchards and gardens" and "Soviet people change nature", while anyone opposing Lysenko was presented as a defender of "mysticism, obscurantism and backwardness."

Lysenko's political success was mostly due to his appeal to the Communist Party and Soviet ideology. His attack on the "bourgeois pseudoscience" of modern genetics and the proposal that plants can rapidly adjust to a changed environment suited the ideological battle in both agriculture and Soviet society. The Party-controlled newspapers applauded Lysenko's practical "success" and questioned the motives of his critics, ridiculing the timidity of academics who urged the patient, impartial observation required for science. and to decry traditional biologists as "wreckers" working to sabotage the Soviet economy. He denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology, and rejected general methods such as control groups and statistics:

Lysenko presented himself as a follower of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, a well-known and well-liked Soviet horticulturist, but unlike Michurin, Lysenko insisted on using only non-genetic techniques such as hybridization and grafting. Stalin personally made encouraging edits to a speech by Lysenko, despite the dictator's skepticism toward Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-orientated. The official support emboldened Lysenko and gave him and Prezent free rein to slander any geneticists who still spoke out against him. After Lysenko became head of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences, classical genetics began to be called "fascist science" and many of Lysenkoism's opponents, such as his former mentor Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, were imprisoned or executed, although not on Lysenko's personal orders. organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin. At the end of it, Lysenkoism was declared as "the only correct theory." As Lysenko performatively spoke at the end, "the Central Committee of the Communist Party has examined my report and approved it". Attendants recognized this as the birth of a new orthodoxy. Of the 8 scientists who advocated genetics during the session, 3 immediately announced repentance. and criticism was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist". The Ministry of Higher Education commanded all biological institutes to immediately follow the Lysenko orthodoxy:<blockquote>The Central University Administration and the Administration of Cadres are directed to review within two months all departments of biological faculties to free them from all opposed to Michurinist biology and to strengthen them by appointing Michurinists to them.

Point 6 of the Order No. 1208 (August 23, 1948)</blockquote>For several months, similar central directives dismissed scientists, withdrew textbooks, and required the removal of any references to heredity in higher education. There was also an order to destroy all stocks of Drosophila, a common model organism for research in genetics.

Perhaps the only opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to escape liquidation were from the small community of Soviet nuclear physicists: according to Tony Judt, "it is significant that Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone and never presumed to second guess their calculations. Stalin may well have been mad but he was not stupid."

Effects on scientists

Genetics was eventually banned in the Soviet Union. for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism, and genetics research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953. Secret research facilities such as sharashka were where numerous scientists ended up imprisoned.

From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Izrail Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist and president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943. In 1936, the American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller, who had moved to the Leningrad Institute of Genetics with his Drosophila fruit flies, was criticized as bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, and a promoter of fascism, and he returned to America via Republican Spain. Iosif Rapoport, who worked on mutagens, refused to publicly repudiate chromosome theory of heredity, and suffered several years as a geological lab assistant. Dmitry Sabinin's book on plant physiology was abruptly withdrawn from publication in 1948. He died by suicide in 1951.

Those who supported Lysenkoism were favored. Alexander Oparin vigorously defended Lysenkoism and was politically favored, although he may have been genuine in his belief, as he continued to defend it even in 1955, after its fall.

Lysenkoism became entrenched not just in academia but in Soviet schools, displacing Darwinism from natural sciences curricula.

Inspired by the success of Lysenkoism and the 1948 VASKhNIL session, other fields of Soviet science experienced brief revolutions, albeit with less success: against "Pavlovians" in medicine, against "reactionary Einsteinism" in physics and quantum mechanics, and against Pauling resonance theory in chemistry.

In addition to the biological sciences, Lysenkoism had an impact on geological sciences, especially paleontology and biostratigraphy in the USSR.

Fall

At the end of 1952, the situation started to change, and newspapers published articles criticizing Lysenkoism. However, the return to regular genetics slowed down in Nikita Khrushchev's time, when Lysenko showed him the supposed successes of an experimental agricultural complex. It was once again forbidden to criticize Lysenkoism, though it was now possible to express different views, and the geneticists imprisoned under Stalin were released or rehabilitated posthumously. The ban was finally lifted in the mid-1960s. Soviet scientists noticed the great advance in molecular biology, such as the characterization of DNA, and even hold-out Lysenkoists were starting to accept DNA as the material basis for heredity (though they still rejected gene theory). Discoveries in the field of epigenetics are sometimes raised as alleged late confirmation of Lysenko's theories, but in spite of the apparent high-level similarity (heritable traits passed on without DNA alteration), Lysenko believed that environment-induced changes are the primary mechanism of heritability. Heritable epigenetic effects have been found, but are minor and unstable compared to genetic inheritance.

Scientific content

Heredity was reformulated as "the property of the living body to demand certain environmental conditions and to react in a certain way to them". Michurin attempted to explain Lamarckian heredity by theorizing that some sort of "heredity" is present all throughout an organism, which reacts to environmental influence. This is incompatible with the Weismann barrier, which leads Lysenkoists to denounce Weismann. Instead, they proposed a "physiological" theory, that the heredity diffused throughout the body is somehow collected in the germ cells, which are "built from molecules, granules, of various organs and parts of the organism", i.e. the pangenesis theory. Lysenko also denied that intraspecific competition occurred in nature because the reality of competition between individuals validated that overpopulation and limited resources were real phenomena. Lysenko claimed that the only biological competition that occurs is competition between species, not within one.

In other countries

Other countries of the Eastern Bloc accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees.

Poland

In Communist Poland, Lysenkoism was aggressively pushed by state propaganda, signalling the newly founded Polish state's loyalty to the Soviet Union. State newspapers attacked "damage caused by bourgeois Mendelism-Morganism" and "imperialist genetics", comparing it to Mein Kampf. For example, Trybuna Ludu published an article titled "French scientists recognize superiority of Soviet science" by Pierre Daix, repeating Soviet propaganda claims. While some academics accepted Lysenkoism for political reasons, Polish scientists largely opposed it. A notable opponent was Wacław Gajewski: in retaliation, he was denied contact with students, though not dismissed from the Warsaw botanical garden. Lysenkoism was rejected from 1956, and in 1958 Gajewski founded Poland's first department of genetics, at the University of Warsaw.

East Germany

In East Germany, although Lysenkoism was taught at some universities, it had very little impact on science due to the actions of a few scientists, such as the geneticist Hans Stubbe, and scientific contact with West Berlin research institutions. Nonetheless, Lysenkoist theories were found in schoolbooks as late as the dismissal of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.

China

Lysenkoism dominated Chinese science from 1949 until 1956, during which open discussion of alternative theories like classical Mendelian genetics was forbidden. Only in 1956 during a genetics symposium opponents of Lysenkoism were permitted to freely criticize it and argue for Mendelian genetics. In the proceedings from the symposium, Tan Jiazhen is quoted as saying "Since [the] USSR started to criticize Lysenko, we have dared to criticize him too".

Non-communist countries

Almost alone among Western scientists, John Desmond Bernal, Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, London, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a communist, made an aggressive public defence of Lysenko. Australian biochemist and fellow communist Jack Legge tried to find a middle ground between Lysenkoism and conventional genetics by using Lysenkoist ideas to explain phenomena which conventional genetics at the time could not satisfactorily explain, while teaching other communists about conventional genetics.

Notes

References

External links

SkepDic.com – 'Lysenkoism', The Skeptic's Dictionary
Lysenkoism, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Robert Service, Steve Jones & Catherine Merridale (In Our Time, June 5, 2008)