The struggle between Vavilov and Lysenko is much cited but little understood. This extract from Phillip Boobbyer’s The Stalin Era reprints just one exchange. Reading it today, one finds it hard to credit the level of argument. The failure of collectivization to deliver the harvests that theory predicted clearly could not be laid at the door of that theory. The persecution of Vavilov, and many others, was just one consequence.
In the field of genetics, political interference in science had disastrous consequences for research. In the late 1930s, the Soviet agricultural sciences came to be dominated by the biologist Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko argued that it would be possible to shorten the lifespan of winter wheat [1] by soaking grain for a certain period of time before sowing — a process termed ‘vernalisation’. He believed that useful traits in plants are not genetically transmitted but arise anew in each generation under the influence of the environment: ennvironmental rather than genetic factors were the key to improved agricultural outputs. He called his own doctrine Michurinism, after an earlier Russian scientist. [2] Lysenko clashed with the most prominent Soviet geneticist, N.I. Vavilov, who was the director of the Institute of Plant Breeding, and an admirer of Darwin and Mendel. Vavilov took the view that the genetic system of an organism provides the mechanism for transmission of traits from generation to generation. Lysenko became President of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1938. The following document is from the stenographic report of a debate at a meeting of the presidium of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences on 23 May 1939, between Vavilov, Lysenko and Lukyanenko, Lysenko’s Acting Vice-President, and it illustrates the way in which ideological judgments were being make about scientific research.
Vavilov: … The Institute bases its selection work wholly on Darwin’s evolutionary teaching …
Lukyanenko: Why do you speak of Darwin? Why don’t you choose examples from Marx and Engels?
Vavilov: Darwin worked on evolution of species earlier. Engels and Marx held Darwin in high regard. Darwin is not all, but he is the greatest biologist, who proved the evolution of organisms.
Lukyanenko: It turns out that man originated in one place. I don’t believe that he originated in one place.
Vavilov: I have already told you, not in one place, but in the Old World, and that only 20 to 25 thousand years ago did man appear in the New World. Before then there was no man in America, and though this may be curious, it nevertheless is well known.
Lukyanenko: This is connected with your views on domesticated plants?
Vavilov: … my basic idea .. is that … one and the same species of plant does not arise independently in different places, but spreads through the continents from some one region.
Lukyanenko: Everybody says that the potato came from America. I don’t believe this. Do you know what Lenin said?
Vavilov: … we know very well that potatoes appeared in our country under Peter the First …
Lysenko: Potatoes were brought into the old Russia. This is a fact. One cannot go against facts. But that’s not the point … Can new varieties [of potato] arise in Moscow, Leningrad, any place? I think they can. And, then, how does one view your theory of the centers of origin?
Vavilov: … We have worked out methods of studying plant life, but to understand each other we must first learn the vocabulary. We Soviet geneticists … are doing much, but dumplings don’t fall into one’s mouth that easily. Perennial wheat is a fine thing, yet it was destroyed by frost this severe winter. … You can imagine how difficult and complex it is to guide students, when all the time one is told that one does not share Lysenko’s views …
Lysenko: I understood from what you wrote that you came to agree with your teacher, Bateson, that evolution must be viewed as a process of simplification. Yet in chapter 4 of the history of the party is says evolution is increase in complexity.
Vavilov: … in short, there is also reduction …
Lukyanenko: Couldn’t you learn from Marx? …
Vavilov: I am a great lover of Marxist literature …
Lukyanenko: Marxism is the only science. Darwinism is only a part; the real theory of knowledge of the world was given by Marx, Engels, and Lenin …
Lysenko: I agree with you, Nikolay Ivanovich [Vavilov], it is somewhat difficult for you to carry on your work. … But you see, your being insubordinate toward me … we cannot go on this way … we shall have to … take another line, a line of administrative subordination.
Source: Zhores Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko, 1969, pp 60-3.
Notes:
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In the context of that harrowing dialog, this point is perhaps not worth making, but vernalization normally refers to plant development in response to low temperatures. It can indeed by artificially used, like in the 5 graden tulpen, or “5 degree tulips” in the Netherlands. The bulbs are put in cold chambers of that temperature before planting them in hothouses to produce (unseasonally early) tulips flowers for the Christmas season. Now this type of early flowering is not heritable, of course. And why in Karl’s name did Lysenko care to try with winter wheat? He must have known of spring wheat; or was that against doctrine?
@Robert – I’m not competent to comment on the Russian word that was translated as vernalization, but of course you are right, it is an important aspect of many aspects of plant dormancy. As to why the focus on winter wheats, I simply don’t know.
Given Lysenko’s interest in vernalization (wikipedia), I suspect that the word “soaking” is an incorrect translation.
@Robert – I’m not sure soaking is incorrect. There are examples from modern practise of soaking seeds as a form of pre-germination that results in more uniform emergence, among other things. I suspect that something like this may have been responsible for the results Lysenko claimed, although these could often not be replicated.
I wish I had the time and skills to be clearer on this. Maybe in a little while.
I believe I read in a respectable book that Lysenko would sow wheat (or barley?) directly in the snow. Perhaps The Gulag Archipelago. Would that book one of the troublemakers adding to the confusion about the Lysenko vs. Vavilov “debate”? All my books except two are in boxes at this very moment, so perhaps someone can help out.
In crop trials, soaking can be used to identify non-germinating seed and thus reduce the need of resowing to ensure synchrony and uniform density. An alternative is oversowing followed by thinning. Is that what you mean, Jeremy?
Lysenko’s pseudo-science seems superficially similar to Waddington’s “genetic assimilation”. That is about heat shocks and fruit flies instead of cold shocks and wheat. Waddington’s classic paper on it was published in 1953, too late to educate Lysenko.
I’ve just come across a website that has some source material relevant to this discussion. Check it out
http://www.marxistsfr.org/subject/science/index.htm
A new lecture on Lysenko and the genetics in the Soviet Union here:
http://www.ucm.es/info/nomadas/trip/lysenko.html