Stalinia on lännessä väitetty "lysenkolaiseksi".Trofim Lysenkon on väitetty "kusetta-neen häntä" ja akateemisellakin tasolla on väitetty jopa "uuslamarkistisen sosiolobio-logismin" olleen "Neuvostoliiton valtiollinen ideologia".Tämä on puutaheinää: esimer- kiksi Lysenko ei ollut tiettävästi koskaan edes hakenut NKP:n jäsenyyttä, eikä häntä olisi huolittukaan jäseneksi,sillä Stalin ei pitänyt häntä marxilaisena. Lamarkismi ei myöskään ollut sellaista kuin lännen uusdarwinistit väittivät - että muka vanhempien miten hyvänsä hankkimat ominaisuudet periytyisivät,vaan hän väitti, että jatkuvasti ja systemaattisesti paljon käytetyt ominaisuudet voimistuvat, ja periytyneet mutta käyt-tämättömät ominaisuudet heikkenevät,myös perimässä. Hänen usein käyttämä pa-raatiesimerkkinsä oli oli kirahvin kaula:kirahviyksilön kaula ei pätkääkään pitene siitä, että sitä käytetään paljon ja monipuolisesti, mutta evoluutiossa se hänen mukaansa seuraavassa polvessa on todenneäöisesti jonkin verran todennäköisemmin entistäkin voimakkaampi - ja myös pitempi - kuin lyhempi.
Yhteiskuntatieteiden biologisten kytkentöjen auktoriteetti oli aivan muu henkilö - ja hänet oli Lenin kirjaanut koulukuntineen tuossa ominaisuudessa jopa NL:n lakiinkin. Hän oli tietysti Ivan Pavlov.
https://www.hs.fi/tiede/art-2000003913581.html
Tiede|TIEDON JYVÄT
Stalin itsekin nauroi Lysenkolle
Tilaajille
23.9.2000 3:00
"Hah-hah-hah! Matematiikkakin (on muka luokkakantaista)? Ja darwinismi?" Porvari ei tuossa naureskele aikansa Neuvostoliiton jämähtäneille marxilaisille tiedeopeille - itse Josef Stalin siinä pilkkaa
Russian History, 21, No. 1 (1994), 49-63.
KIRILL O. ROSSIANOV (Moscow, Russia)
STALIN AS LYSENKO'S
EDITOR: RESHAPING
POLITICAL DISCOURSE
IN SOVIET SCIENCE*
Introduction:
This article is devoted to the background of the session of the Lenin Academy of Ag-ricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) that was held from July 31 through August 7, 1948. This session ended in the rout of genetics in the USSR and triggered similar cam-paigns in other sciences. Following the meeting, the Soviet system undertook the creation of its own, "new" kind of science which differed radically from world science.
The possible reasons for the intervention by Soviet authorities in science have been repeatedly discussed in both Western and Soviet historical and scientific works.1 But one question has remained unclear: to what extent were Stalin and other prominent Soviet political leaders personally involved in the organization of these campaigns?
The VASKhNIL session was convened quite suddenly and without the prior know-ledge of most of its members. Evidently Trofim Lysenko — the president of the agri-culture academy, the principal opponent of genetics, and the leader of the so-called new, "Michurinist" biology — had got some support from some political source.
* I gratefully acknowledge the criticisms and comments on early drafts of this paper provided by Mark Adams. His editorial advice was invaluable. I am also indebted to Daniel Alexandrow, Chris Feudtner, Douglas Weiner, and Alexander Weisberg for advice and many useful conerstions.
1. P. S. Hudson and R. H. Richens, The New Genetics in the Soviet Union (Cam-bridge, Eng.: School of Agriculture,1946);Conway Zirkle,Death of a Science in Russia:The Fate of Genetics as Described in Pravda and Elsewhere (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press,1949); Julian S. Huxley, Soviet Genetics and World Science: Lysenko and the Meaning of Heredity (London: Chatto and Windus,1949); idem., He- redity. East and West: Lysenko and World Science (New York: H. Schuman, 1949); Zhores A. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1969) ; David Joravsky, Lysenko Affair (Chicago & London : Univ. of Chi-cago Press, 1970); Dominique Lecourt,LYSSENKO: Histoire réelle d'une "science Prolétarienne" (Paris;François Maspero,1976); Johann-Peter Regelmann, Die Geschichte des Lyssenkoismus (Frankfurt am Main:Rita G.Fischer Verlag,1980);Valéry N. Soifer, Vlast' i Nauka:Istoriia Razgro-ma Genetiki v SSSR (Power and Science.History of the Crash of Soviet Genetics) (Tenafly, N .J.: Hermitage, 1989
50 Russian History/Histoire Russe
In his concluding remarks at the session, he declared his paper had been approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. 2 But there was no nist Party. But there was no corroboration of this claim from the Party itself.A few days after Stalin's death, in March 1953Lysenko declared in a newspaper article in Pravda that it had been Stalin himself who had read and edited the original text of his talk at the 1948 session. 3 But this claim was suspect: a critical campaign against Lysenko was un-leashed during the last months of Stalin's life, so it is not clear whether Stain´s sup-port of Lysenko was so absolute as Lysenko had claimed — all the more so since the other witness had died. This specific question raises the larger extent to which these campaigns were actually controlled by political authorities.
For example, it might well have been not Stalin but some other of members of the Politburo or the top Kremlin bureaucracy who may have orchestrated these cam-paigns. It has been well known for a long time that Andrei Zhdanov — the number two man in the Party in the postwar years and the offical in charge of Soviet science, ideology and culture – had launched a major campaign against Western trends in Soviet Art, music and literature beginning in 1946 (a cultural "pogrom", known in Russia and the West by his name, "Zhdanovshchina"). So we know that such cam-paigns could be led by other Party leaders, and there has been great curosity about Zhdanov´s role in genetics, as well as the possible relation of the Lysenko campaign to other contemporary attacks on culture.His role is especially problematic, however: as David Joravsky (and Zirkle before him) noted, Zhdanov certainly did not support Lysenko. 4 These complication of Stalin´s possible role even more important.
This article presents some archival finds that go a long way to settling these questions.
Opening the Soviet Archives:
The discovery is best understood in the context of what was happening among younger historians of science in the USSR and in the Soviet archives after the initiation of glasnost'. Around 1988 an informal group of young researchers and graduate students associated with the Institute of History of Natural Science and Technology in Moscow and Leningrad began to organize itself. 5
2. "Concluding Remarks by Academician T. D. Lysenko," in The Situation in Biological Science: Proceedings of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the USSR. July 31-August 7,1948. Complete Stenographic Report (New York: International Publishers, 1949), 51. (Hereafter cited as The Situation in Biological Science.)
3. T. D. Lysenko, "Korifei nauki," Pravda, March 8, 1953.
4. Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair, Zirkle, Death of a Science in Russia.
5. Some of its members' findings and activities are summarized in the Abstracts of the Second Conference on the Social Hisotry of Soviet Science. See Tezisy vtoroi konferentsii po sozial'noi istorii sovetskoi nauki. 21-24 maia 1990 (Moscow: Institut istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki AN SSSR, 19
Stalin as Lysenko's Editor 51
At this time, popular periodicals became preoccupied, even fixated,on telling the real story of Soviet history under Stalin, particularly things that had been hidden or lied about. At that time it was especially common for virtually all Soviet scientists to be portrayed as morally pure victims of the Stalinist oppression — this was certainly the way all the scientists wrote about their history. But for this group of younger historians, the story dis not seem quite so simple. We all were fascinated less by the history of ideas than by what might be called the "political" dimension of thee history of Soviet science, but we suspected, that some some scientist had supported the regime scientists, for ideolical and other reasons. Most important, we realized that rich history of the events depended first and foremost on getting into the archives, especially archives that had been closed even to most Soviets.
I myself started doing research on Lysenkoism in the spring of 1989. From the be-ginning, I understood that the archives of the Communist Party and the Soviet go-vernment would be absolutely inacessible to me. Although glasnost and perestroika were underway, the archives were the most conservative part of the government bureaucracy, and had been ever since the days when they were under the control of the secret police. That is why I worked, instead, in the archives of the agriculture academy.
First of all, I ordered the files of Lysenko's correspondence with Central Committee of the Communist Party. I found numerous letters from Lysenko to top Party leaders, including Malenkov, Poskrebyshev (Stalin's person secretary), and Stalin 6 — but I found absolutely no replies to these letters in the files.
It made things especially difficult, but understandable: it was very characteristic of Stalinist bureaucratic style that the leaders gave their orders exclusively by phone. (In the Soviet bureaucracy, people wrote letters to their superiors, but gave orders to their inferiors by phone. Even before the revolution, Leo Tostoy had refered to the Tsarist system as "Genghis Khan with a telegraph" 7; in the 1930s, Bukharin referred to Stalin as "Genghis Khan with a telephone.") In any case, such letters, had they existed, would still have been regarded as top secret and would not have been shown to me.
Nonetheless, there were a lot of interesting things that could be learned from these letters. For example, sometimes the political leadership under Stalin is treated as nothing but "Yes Men," monolithic and uniform in theirpolitics and ideology. But these letters demonstrated that there were a lot of different attitudes towards genetics and Lysenko among various to Party leaders.
6. Tsentralnyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Narodnogo Khoziaistva (hereafter TsGANKh), fund 8390, dossier I, files 2127,2283- 85. Some of these letters were located by Alexander Weisberg who quoted them in his talk at the meeting organized in memory of Soviet geneticists repressed un-der Stalin (Moscow, January 24, 1989). One of Lysenko's letters to Stalin, dated April 17, 1948, was located and published by Valéry N. Soifer. See Valéry N. Soifer, "Gor'kii plod," Ogonok, No. 1 (1998); see also Soifer, Vlast' i nauka, 390 - 93.
7. See L. N. Tolstoi, Chingis-khan s telegrafom. (O russkom pravitelstve) (Paris: tipografiia
"Soiuz," 1910).
52 Russian History/Histoire Russe
Lysenko's letters often reiterated instruction he had been given by these leaders (presumably by phone), and from them it is clear that some of them disagreed with Lysenko. The main case in point is Iurii Zhdanov – the head of the science depart-ment of the Party Central Committé,the son of Andrei Zhdanov,Stalin's "culture tsar," and also the husband of Svetlana Alliluieva and therefore Stalin's son-in-law. The younger Zhdanov, for example, had given vigorous backing to classical geneticists and on various particular issues had been outspokenly critical of Lysenko. By cont-rast, judging from Lysenko´s letters, Stalin was enthusiastic about some of Lysenko´s plans and promises.
The letters are also very interesting from the point of view Kremlin politics. Andrei Zhdanov's chief rival in the Politburo was Malenkov;Malenkov´s ally was Beria, head of the secret police According to some evidence, in late May or early June, 1948, du-ring a Politburo meeting, Stalin sharply critisized the Zhadanovs -— both father and son – because they had attacked Lysenko, even though Stalin had not sanctioned such an attack. From this point of view,the eight or so letters from Lysenko to Malen- kov are interesting, since they complain about lurii Zhdanov and give evidence that Malenkov may have been involved in planning the 1948 session. As it happened, Andrei Zhdanov died under mysterious circumstanccs within a month after the 1948 Lysenko session (he was only fifty-two years old at the time.)
In the back of my mind, I knew that most striking evidence of the relation between Lysenko and Stalin woud be a text of Lysenko´s speech edited by Stalin. There were rumors and some indirect evidence concerning its existence.For example, some had said that Lysenko kept this text in special safe in his office and showed it to selected visitors in order to emphasize this closeness to Stalin. 8
From the letters, for the first time, I found solid evidence that such a text existed. In a letter dated 23 July 1948, Lysenko wrote to Stalin that he was sending the original version of the speech he was to give so that Stalin could read it and make the necessary corrections. 9
In a letter dated seven days later, 30 July 1948, Lysenko informed Malenkov that he had finished revising his speech, and asked Malenkov to show the final version to Stalin. 10
Furthermore, there were two letters from the Party archives in 1954, one asking that Lysenko give them the text that Stalin had edited (since everything Stalin had written was being collected following his death as a classic of Marxism-Leninism); and a second letter confirming that the text had been received."
8. See Medvedev, The Rise and Fall ofT. D. Lysenko, 117; see also Soifer, "Gor'kii plod: Iz istorii sovremennosti," Ogonok, No. 2 (1988): 5.
9. TsGANKh, fund 8390, dossier 1, file 2285, p. 7. This letter was delivered to the CC CPSU at 7:20 PM on July 23, 1948 — See the receipt from the CC CPSU — ibid, 57.
10. Ibid., 60. The letter was delivered to the CC CPSU at 5:05 PM on July 30, 1948. See the receipt — ibid., 120.
11. Ibid., 58, 59, 59a, 59b
Stalin as Lysenko's Editor 53
It was clear that Stalin had read Lysenko´s text and made revisions sometime between the 23rd and 30th of July, and the original was in the Party archives, where I felt I had no change of seeing it. But it was also evident that a photographic copy of the original was made for Lysenko by the Party archives.12 My next hope was that perhaps the photocopy was still somewhwre where I could get my hands on it.
I tried to find it in other archives. Perhaps it was in the archive of the Academy of Sciences, I thought; after all Lysenko had been full member since 1939. Lysenko's son had conveyed to them some of his father´s papers in the early 1980s.13 But my search there was unsuccessful.However,from a younger archivist I learned a lamen-table fact: Lysenko´s son wanted to give the the archives a copy, but the director of the archives refused to take it! The reasons were related to the question of "subver-versive literature”. Each large library,and many archives,has a special closed section – in Soviet newsspeak, sptskhran.Lots of different things got put there – the works of Nietzsche,for example; prerevolutionary Russian religious philosophy; Playboys; and many issues of Isis and Journal of the History of Biology.You may have forgotten, but even at the beginning of perestroika, Gorbatchev classified anything that used the word "Stalinism" as "deffamation of Soviet Union and of socialism as a whole", 14 which meant spetskhran. But the Academy of Sciences archives did not have such a spetskhran division, and the director apparently feared that if he took the proffered text he might have to create one.
This made me wonder: perhaps I could obtain the text from Lysenko's son. But this turned out to be impossible: as it happened, he was hostile to all historians because he regarded his father as a great scientist whom they were vilifying.So, another blind alley. Having come to the conclusion that my hopes to find the text were absolutely unrealistic, I resumed my former work in the Agricultural Academy archives.
One day, while I was going over Lysenko's letters again, I came across a curious document.15 Stuck in a file between letters was a third copy of a preliminary version of Lysenko's speech with revisions and notations written in ink. The most remarkable thing was that some of the remarks in ink were laconic and impolite. For example, the unknown editor severely criticized Lysenko's discourse on the class character of science,and next to the phrase " ... any science is class oriented by its very nature" appeared this comment: "Ha ha ha!!! And what about mathematics? And what about Darwinism?"
12. Ibid., 59.
13. See Arkhiv Akademii nauk SSSR (AAN), fund 1521.
14. M. S. Gorbachev, "Otvety na voprosy gazety iumanite'. 4 fevralia 1986 g." in M. S.
Gorbachev, lzbrannye rechi i stat'i, vol. 3 (Moscow: Izdatei'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1984),
154-70,onp. 162.
15. TsGANKh, fund 8390, dossier I, file 2285, pp.
54 Russian History/Histoire Russe
At first it seemed to me that one of Lysenko´s close associates might have felt free to make such remarks. But then I realized this would contradict the strictly hierarchi-cal spirit which dominated Soviet society then. Lysenko was a VIP — president of an academy, hero of socialist labor, deputy of the supreme soviet. And only someone who was even MORE important than he was could have afforded to be so impolite.In retrospect, I am amazed that the truth didn't hit me. But,psychologically,I had already decided that I would never see the text; I wasn't expecting to find it in the file where it was located;a colleague of mine had already been through the file and had not noted anything of interest.
So, I assumed that this text, whatever it was, was not going to be useful, and in any case had been misfiled. So I put it aside and went on with my routine work. Some nine or ten months later, I was looking at this file again, and decided to have another look at the bizarre text. The letter from the Party archives acknowledging the receipt of the text edited by Stalin, as it happened, had included, in good clerical form, the total number of pages they had received, and page numbers where Stalin's correction and editorial remarks had been made.
I suddenly thought I should check those numbers against the text. All the numbers coincided — both the total number of pages, and the page numbers where the re-marks appeared. So this was some sort of copy of the missing manuscript — maybe a working, in-house copy that Lysenko used when reworking his text. Even so, it seemed incomprehensible to me why Lysenko would have hand-copied Stalin's derisive "Ha-ha-ha! ! !"
But how close was this copy to the original? To answer that question, I really needed to get into those Party archives. But I understood once more the impossibility of this. To get into those archives, as a rule, it was necessary BOTH to be a Party member (I wasn't), AND to have the necessary certification and papers. The second would have been possible in principle; but the first defeated me.
So I spent about two weeks trying to create a complicated system of indirect evidence. I don't want to bore you with too many details, but it might serve as an example of what we had to do when we couldn't get in archives. First, this version had two dates on the last page: July 23 and July 28.16
I knew that Stalin had made his remarks sometime between July 23 and July 30, so these notes were made at roughly the same time as Stalin was making his. Second, I decided that, at the very least, the DELETIONS marked on the MS could not have been made BEFORE he sent the text originally to Stalin: both the manuscript I saw, and the one in the Party archives that Stalin had annotated, were exactly 49 pages long.
(If Lysenko had crossed out the passages before he sent the MS to Stalin, it would have to have been retyped, producing a shorter text — UNLESS Lysenko had also added compensatory insertions.
16. Ibid., 56.
Stalin as Lysenko's Editor 55
But I found at the end of the file the typewritten text of insertions, with a note on the backside of the last page: "Additions made to the third copy of the first variant of the speech after the copy of the speech was returned from Comerade Stalin … ” 17)
The insertions and the deletions, could only have been made AFTER Stalin had seen the text, and evidently reflected Stalin's work on the text. Furtehrmore, the insertions were semantically associated with the remarks in the margins. Thus, indirectly, I had grounds for arguing logically that those remarks ALSO came from Stalin. Nevertheless, I couldn't be absolutely sure of the authenticity of the remarks.
I presented the evidence, such as it was,in a paper at the Second Conference on the Social History of Soviet Science in Moscow,May 1990 18 As it happened, happened, one of those attending – Professor Esakov from the Institute of History — had been admitted to the Party archives. Only AFTER I gave my talk did he tell me that he had read the original in the Party archives, and confirmed the identity of the the two texts. I had, understandably, two contradictory reactions: first I was delighted that my hypo-thesis was confirmed; second, I regretted all the time I had had to waste because I had not been able tosee the original.
Professor Esaskov told me that his admission to the Party archives was a result of a special decision by the Politburo. But as a result of perestroika, even archival regu-lation became more liberal, and one year later I got access to the Party archives.
Most of the Party archives remained unavailable and were kept in a special, secret division there. Stalin's papers included a very small number of manuscripts largely unrelated to politics.
Stalin's Editorial Changes:
Among these miscellaneous papers, I found photocopies of Lysenko's speech with Stalin's editorial remarks,19 as well as the handwritten texts of Stalin's articles on linguistics, published in 1950. 20 The texts from the Party vs. the VASKhNIL archives turned out to be semantically identical.
When I was looking for Lysenko's original text in various Moscow archives, I couldn't even imagine that Stalin's corrections and remarks would be so numerous. And it was especially amazing because Stalin's editing was kept secret for many years, even after his death.
17. Ibid., 306-20.
18. Kirill Rossianov, "Stalin kak redaktor Lysenko (k predystorii avgustovsköi (1948) sessi
VASKhNIL)," in Tezisy vtoroi konferentsii po sozialnoi istorii sovetskoi nauki, 51. See also Kirill Rossianov, Stalin kak redaktor Lysenko (k predystorii avgustovskoi (1948) sessii VASKhNIL) (Preprint, Moscow: Institut istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki AN SSSR, 1991).
19. Tsentralnyi Partiinyi Arkhiv (hereafter TsPA), fund 558, dossier 1, file 5285, pp. I -49.
20. TsPA,fund 558, dossier I, file 5301; I.Stalin, "Otnositelno marxizma v iazykoznanii," Pravda, June 20, 1950: 1. Stalin, "K nekotorym voprosam iazykoznaniia (Otvet tovarishchu E. Krasheninnikovoi)," Pravda, July 4, 1950; 1. Stalin, "Otvet tovarishcham," Pravda, Aug. 2, 1950
56 Russian History / Hi stoire Russe
Stalin´s corrections included substitutions of single words; insertions and deletions on almost half of the pages; and comments in the margins suggesting that Lysenko Change some of his discussion.
The same file in the Party archives also included the text of the opening paragraph of the concluding remarks that Lysenko was to give on the morning of August 7, the last day of the meeting. This text,written in Lysenko's hand,had not been retyped be- fore it was read and edited by Stalin and some words were abbreviated. This could support the version that it was written by Lysenko at Stalin's suggestion during a possible face-to-face meeting between them sometime before August 7. 21 Editing these, perhaps the most famous lines of the meeting, Stalin only improved Lysenko's style. He replaced the word "which" ("kakoe") originally used by Lysenko with the word "what" ("kakovo"). "The question is asked in one of the notes handed to me," Lysenko was to say,at the closing session, "WHAT is the attitude of the Central Com- mittee of the Party to my report? I answer:the Central Committee of the Party exami- ned my report and approved it." 22 But Stalin didn't permit his name to be used, and may have wanted to omit any language declaring his personal support for Lysenko.
Stalin's corrections in the text of Lysenko's speech dealt not only with the political di-mension of the debate, but also, and most strikingly, with problems of the philosophy of science. Stalin clearly expressed his positive attitude toward the idea of the inheri-tance of acquired characteristics. And they give a new insight into one of the most debatable issues concerning the 1948 session.
It has often been assumed that certain elements of Soviet ideology predisposed the Soviet regime toward Lamarkism. Conway Zirkle in his 1959 book on "Marxian Bio-logy" explained the dominance of Lamarkian ideas in the Soviet Union as a result of the influence of the biological views of Marx and Engels. He identified Lysenko's La-marckism with what he called "Marxian Biology.""...Marxian biology",he wrote, "exists as a destructive, threatening, and well-organized cult It has contributed to other present ideologies much more than appears on the surface." 23
I do not agree with Zirkle's general point; subsequent works by Joravsky 24 and many others have shown that his thesis is dubious. Others have argued that the very nature of the Stalinist system required Lamarckism to support the concept of human nature as plastic and to make possible the social creation of the "New Soviet Man." Such general views I find rather dubious, intuitive and difficult to support historically.
21.The typewritten unsigned copy of this paragraph in the VASKhNIL archives is dated August 6, 1948. See TsGANKh, fund 8390, dossier 1, file 2285, p. 121.
22. TsPA, fund 558, dossier 1, file 5285, p. 50; The Situation in Biological Science, 51.
23. Conway Zirkle, Evolution, Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1959), 7-8.
24. David Joravsky, "Soviet Marxism and Biology Before Lysenko,"in Journal of the History of Ideas 20 ( 1959): 85-104; Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair.
Stalin as Lysenko's Editor 57
But there is good evidence that STALIN supported Lamrckian ideas and believed in them. In his 1906 article ”Anarchism and Socialism” Stalin analyzed the late nine-teenth century debates between neo-Lamarckians (probably he had Herbert Spen-cer in mind) and the so-called neo-Darwinians (Weismann and others). Stalin sided with the neo-Lamarckians. This 1906 article was republished in 1946, in Stalin's collected works. 25
In Lysenko's original 1948 text, it is perhaps not surprising that he cited Stalin's ar-ticle as an authority. But in editing Lysenko´s text, although Stalin added the remark that the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics was "entirely scientific” (p. 11 [19]) 36 Stalin didn´t allow Lysenko to cite his 1906 article. In Stalin´s view Lysenko´s doctrine naturally settled the contradictions between neo-Lamarckians and the Weismannists.
Stalin inserted several sentences in Lysenko's speech. Lysenko wrote in his original text: "... The Michurin trend is not Lamarckian. It is creative Soviet Darwinism." Stalin transformed this passage into the following: "... The Michurin trend cannot be called either neo-Lamarckian or neo-Darwinian. It is creative Soviet Darwinism, rejecting the errors of both and free from the defects of Darwinian theory insofar as it included Malthus' erroneous ideas." (p. 11 [ 19]) Although Stalin didn' t refer to his old article, he inserted several sentences asserting the correctness of its views: "Furthermore, it cannot be denied that in the controversy that flared up between the Weismannists and Lamarckians in the beginning of the twentieth century, the Lamarckians were closer to the truth; for they defended the interests of science, whereas the Weisman-nists were at loggerheads with science and prone to indulge in mysticism".(p.11 [19 - 20]) Evidently,it was the influence of the tradition of neo-Lamarckism,and not of Marx and Engels, as Zirkle supposed, that had some effects on Stalin's views.
In Stalin's view,Lysenko had to sharpen his criticism of Weismann and his theory. He wrote in the margins: "And Weismann?" (p. 8) As a result, Lysenko added several paragraphs to his speech criticizing Weismannism. (pp. [15 - 17])
As is evident from Stalin's remarks, he regarded the conflict between geneticists and Lysenkoists as a direct continuation of the discussion between neo-Lamarckians and neo-Darwinians which had started long before genetics had come into being.And his correction made Lysenko's final text look even more archaic. Soon after the session, Theodosius Dobzhansky commented on the character of Lysenko's Lamarckism: "Lysenko's brand of Lamarckism is borrowed from Herbet Spencer, as interpreted by some Russian popular writers." 27
25. I. Stalin,"Anarkhizm ili sozialism?"in I. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. 1 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1946).
26. In the text of this article page numbers of the manuscript of Lysenko's talk are given at the end of each quotation; page numbers of the published version were put in bracketts.
27. Theodosius Dobzhansky,"The Suppression of a Science,"in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 5, no. 5 (May 1949): 143-46.
58 Russian Histoiy/Histoire Russe
Dobzhansky was right in his identification of Spencer's influence, but what he did not know is that it was Stalin himself who shaped Lysenko´s attitude toward neo-Lamarckians and neo-Weismannism. And it is very probable that Stalin's views were influenced by turn-of-the-century popular Russian articles. (Stalin didn't know any languages other than Russian and Georgian and it is unlikely that he read any serious scientific journals, even in Russian.)
But why did Stalin object to the references to his own article? Perhaps Stalin did not want his name to become too closely associated with Lysenko´s.
Alternatively, Stalin's objections could be associated with Lysenko´s attempts to use some quotations in order to support his own unusual views on species formation. The 1906 article expressed Stalin´s view that gradualism had been a weak point in Darwin's theory; but apparenmtly, he had given up that idea by 1948. In a 1950 article, Stalin compared gradual accumulation of minor changes to revolutions, and stressed that the former may be even more significant than the latter. 28 As I will try to demonstrate later, Stalin´s statement also had clear implications for the official views on evolutionary theory.
It is evident from Stalin's insertions that he considered Darwinian theory to have some defects "in so far as it included Malthus' erroneous ideas." And he insisted that Lysenko give a more detailed criticism of Darwin's Malthusianism. At the beginning of the section of Lysenko's talk entitled "The History of Biology — A History of Ideo-logical Battle," he wrote in the margins: "And Defects of Darwin's theory?" (p. 6) As a result, Lysenko added a long insertion on Darwin's Malthusian errors — some two pages of printed text. (pp. [12-14])
Stalin's concept of "Soviet Darwinism" cleansed of Malthusian elements may be traced to the specific Marxist attitude toward Thomas Malthus and his doctrine. But it might more likely have flowed from the Russian tradition of anti-Malthusianism vividly embodied in the Russian nineteenth century response to Darwinism. 29
In two instances, Lysenko s insertions about our home-grown Medelists Morganists" (pp. [23-24]) and "the unity of theory and practice" (pp.[42-44]) were unrelated to any of Stalin's marginalia. This might support Lysenko's subsequent assertion in a news-paper article after Stalin's death that Stalin met with him personally and explained to him how to improve his text.
In some places, Stalin's corrections didn't lead to any substantial changes: Stalin simply helped Lysenko to express ideas more clearly. For example, he advised Ly-senko (pp. 2-3) to move the paragraph criticizing Schroedinger's book, What is Life? 30 to a different place in the speech.
28. I. Stalin "Otnositelno marksizma v iazykoznanii."
29. Daniel P. Todes, Darwin Without Malthus: The Struggle for Existence in Russian
Evolutionary Thought (Oxford,: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989).
30. Erwin Schroedinger, What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (Cambridge:
Univ. Press, 1944); Erwin Schroedinger, Chto takoe zhizn' s tochki zrenia fiziki? (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo inostrannoi literatury, 194
Stalin as Lysenko's Editor 59
A large part of Stalin's remarks dealt with the sociopolitical dimensions of Lysenko's reasoning. In his original text Lysenko expresses the view that there exist two class-based biologies: "bourgeois”, vs. ”socialist”, dialectical materialist." He obviously intended to reduce his conflict with genetics to contradictions inherent in antagonistic classes.Probably Lysenko thought that he would achieve his purpose if he convinced the Party authorities of the bourgeois nature of genetics. But, remarkably, Stalin decisively rejected Lysenko's thesis, deleting from his text discorse about the classa character of of natural science. This is undoubtedly is undoubtedly one of the most striking things Stalin's editing, because Lysenko's original statement that science en-tirely depends on class relations would have substantiated the Party´s interference in science.
Lysenko's original text had included an extensive section entitled "The Fundamen-tals of Bourgeois Biology Are False." (pp. 1 -5) Stalin crossed out the entire section. Next to Lysenko's remark in this section that .. Any science is class orented in its very nature,"
Stalin sarcastically wrote in the margin: "Ha-ha-ha! ! ! And what about mathematics? And what about Darwinism?" (p. 4)
Stalin also carefully deleted the terms "bourgeois science" and "buorgeois biology," which had been used more than twenty times throughout the original text. He either excised them, or replaced them with "reactionary" or "idealist" biology or science.
On the whole, Stalin made Lysenko's discourse sound less "political" and more "objective." For example, in describing T. H. Morgan's theory, he replaced Lysenko's phrase "an alien enemy of Soviet science" with the phrase "unscientific and reactio-nary." (p. 18 [26]) Elsewhere, he replaced "dialectical materialism" with "materialism" (p. 19 [27]), "socialist agrigulture" with "agriculture" (p. 21 [29]), "anti-Marxist biology" with "reactionary biology" (p. 22 [29]), and "Soviet biology" with "scientific biology." (p. 28 [34]) Even the title of Lysenko's speech was changed in a similar way: Intitially it read, "The Situation in SOVIET Biological Science;" this was changed to "The Situation in Biological Science" — the "Soviet" was dropped, and this title change was the only change made in the text between July 30, when Lysenko finished his revisions, and July 31, the day the meeting opened. It is likely that this change was made due to Stalin's or Malenkov's personal instructions by phone.
Stalin's changes here are not without irony for the historian. Most of those who have commented on what the session did see Lysenko's language as subordinating science to politics; but Stalin's changes, if anything, "toned down" this dimension of Lysenko's language.
60 Russian History/Histoire Russe
In the Soviet context, at least, the terms "idealist" and "reactionary" were less politically loaded than "bourgeois." 31
In this way, the concept of two class-based sciences seemed to be replaced by the much more traditional dichotomy between ”correct” and "incorrect" science. On the one hand, the attitude toward science was objectivized; but on the other hand, it was personalized, because it was Stalin himself who decided what was correct and what was incorrect science.
At first glance, the class-based rhetoric of Lysenko's original text didn't contradict Stalin's intention to strengthen political control over the sciences.
What, then, could be the reasons for such profound editorial changes in
ideological language?
Late Stalinism: Theory and Practice
It has often been assumed that the postwar campaigns in Soviet science were rela-ted to Marxism, which laid strong emphasis on the social determination of cognition. Prominent Soviet ideologist often argued, especially in the 1920s, that the proletariat should create its own science, which would be fundamentally different from the science that existed before. But I doubt that this is the underlying cause of the postwar campaigns.
The assumption that there was some general, uniform Marxist ideological paradigm which determined certain actions of the Soviet regime throughout its history seems to me misleading.A fundamental change occurred in Soviet ideology during the early 1930s.From 1928 to 1932,the idea of uncompromis ing class struggle dominated the Soviet scene. The prevailing ideolgy of that time was undoubtedly connected with Marxism, albeit in a primitive and vulgarized form. In the 1930s,isolationist and nationalistic tendencies began to play an ever-increasing role in the Soviet mentality After World War II, national messianism and the idea of the great State standing in opposition to hostile surroundings was the central theme of political ideology. Clearly, this attitude had very little to do with any kind of Marxism.
The renunciation of the ideological heritage of the 1920s and early 30s became an integral part of the postwar Soviet ideological campaigns. For example, in an article published in 1950, Stalin expressed his negative attitude toward the attempts made in the 1920s to create a class-oriented culture (proletkult). 32 From the mid-1930s, the emphasis shifted from revolutionary cultural experimentation to upholding tradi-tional cultural values. I think that this nationalist, conservative trend was the main reason for Stalin's changes in Lysenko's political discourse.
31. My opinion is not universally held; V. Esakov, S. Ivanova, and E. Levina, for example, argue that "idealist"and "reactionary"are stronger terms than bourgeois, and therefore that Stalin SHARPENED Lysenko's tone. See V. Esakov, S. Ivanova, and E. Levina, "Iz istorii bor'by s lysenkovshchinoi,"Izvestiia TsK KPSS, No.7 (1991): 120.
32. Stalin,"Otnositelno marksizma v iazykoznanii.”
Stalin as Lysenko's Editor 61
In the new ideological climate, science was considered to depend, not on class inte-rests, but on some "objective” laws of nature. In this respect, the VASKhNIL session was a landmark: class science had focused principally methodology; immediately after 1948, the Soviet ideology became reified into a new ontology, a new picture of the world as it purportedly was, articulated by the political leadership. In revising Lysenko´s text, then, Stalin was doing more than changing Lysenko´s writig style, or even his rhetoric; He was , in a sense, reconstructing the world. This, perhaps, helps to explain why his changes were so numerous and detailed.
The agricultural academy session set a pattern for similar campaigns in other scien-ces — physiology, cytology, physical chemistry, 33 and physics. 34 All of those cam-paigns were organized as "open discussions," but in almost every case there was one speaker whose talk had been edited either by Stalin or by his close associates. For example,in 1950 Stalin edited the main talk at the session which was held to dis-cuss the situation in physiology. 35 Soon afterthe V ASKhNIL session, it was decided to convene an all-union conference of physicists to condemn the theory of relativity and quantam mechanics.36 This time it was probably not Stalin, but someone else in the Central Committee who several times edited the main talk which had to be delivered by the president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Sergei Vavilov. That discussion was cancelled just before it was scheduled to begin.Probably the chief of the Soviet secret police, Lavrenty Beria,who at that time was also responsible for the Soviet atomic bomb project, persuaded Stalin to revise his original decision. 37
It was always kept secret that Stalin or other Party leaders were involved in editing the talks to be delivered at those discussions. Only once, in 1950, Stalin decided to take part himself in a discussion. He wrote several pieces on linguistic theory. His articles on the subject were published in Pravda in the summer of 1950. 38
33. See Nauchnaia sessia. posviashchennaia problemam fiziologicheskogo ucheniia akademika I. P. Pavlova. 28 iiunia - 4 iiulia I950 g. stenograficheskii otchet. (Moscow: Izdatelstvo, AN SSSR, 1950);Soveshchaniepoproblème zhivogo veshchestva irazvitia kletok.22-24 maia 1950 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo AN SSSR, 1950); Sostoianie teorii khimicheskogo stroenia v organicheskoi khimii: Vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie 11-14 iiulia !95lg. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Izdatelstvo AN SSSR, 1952).
34. See Tsentralnyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi Revolutsii (TsGAOR), fund 9396,
dossier 1; AAN, fund 596, dossier 2, files 173-75.
35. See M.G. laroshevskii,"Vystuplenie na kruglom stole «"Pavlovskaia sessia" 1950 g. i sud'by sovetskoi fiziologii»," Voprosy istorii estestvoznania i tekhniki, No. 3 (1988): 133.
36.A.S.Sonin, "Soveshchanie, kotoroe ne sostoialos '"Priroda,No.3(1990): 97-102; no. 4: 91 - 98; no.5:93-101. K.A.Tomilin, "Nesostoiavshiisia pogrom v teoreticheskoi fizike (kodnomu epizodu iz sozialnoi istorii fiziki v SSSR)," in Tezisy vtoroi konferentsiipo sozialnoi istorii sovetskoi nauki, 61.
37. Sonin, "Soveshchanie, kotoroe ne sostoialos'," no. 5: 99.
38. See note 21 above.
62 Russian History / Histoire Russe
Stalin wrote them himself, though he consulted with a professional linguist, Academician Arnold Chibokova of Georgia. 38
These articles reflected some of his ideological concerns.He criticized Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr,who postulated the class nature of language.Opposing Marr´s views, he advocated the idea of a single national language.Stalin not only narrowed the sphere of class struggle in social life, but he also stressed that a major role in the develop-ment of language, culture and society belongs not to revolutions, but to a gradual accumulation of minor changes.
It is remarkable that,at the very same time Stalin was downplaying revolution, Trofim Lysenko published sseveral articles in which he laid great stress on the role of sud-den revolutionary leaps in the origin of new species. 40 He asserted that many spe-cies of cultivated plants could spontaneously transform, even under natural condi-tions, into other, quite different species – for example wheat into rye. It is no wonder, then, that it became a joke of Wedtern scientists and journalists that the next step would be the birth of orangutang in Lysenko's family. 41 At this time, Lysenko again used ”revolutionary” rhetoric in order to support his position.The very spirit of Marxist, Lysenko claimed, called for a theory of species formation which would entail revolutionary leaps. He attacked Darwinism as a ”theory of all-aroud gradualism”.
As I have shown, Stalin had severely criticized Lysenko´s political discourse in 1948, and it is hard to understand why Lysenko once again included this revolutionary rhetoric in the text of case, it probably undermined his position.
At the end of 1952, the leading Soviet botanical journal began a discussion on problems of species formation and published several articles criticizing Lysenko. 43
We know that "open" discussion became the favorite mode of political authorities for interfering in science. There is some evidence in this case the publication of these articles was sanctioned by Stalin´s personal order. 44 The charges were leveled against Lysenko´s theory of species formation, with the critics stressing its incompatibility with Stalin´s idea of gradual, non-revolutionary development.
39. See V. M. Alpatov, Istoriia odnogo mifa (Moscow, Nauka, 1991), 181 – 83
40. T. D. Lysenko, "Novoe v nauke o biologicheskom vide ”Agrobiologiia”, No 6 (1950) Vol. 8, 25, also published in Pravda, Nov. 3, 1950; see also T. D. Lysenko: ”Vid”, Bolshaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, Second edition (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia 1953) vol. 8
41. See, for example, [E. R.] ”The Miracles of Soviet Biology” in Soviet science, A Symposium" published in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 8, no 2 (febr. 1952)
42. T. D. Lysenko,"Novoe v nauke o biologicheskom vide” Agrobiologiia 17
43. N. V. Turbin,"Darwinizm i novoe uchenie o vide” Botanicheskii Zhurnal no 6 (1952) 798 - 818; N. D. Ivanov,"0 novom uchenii T. D. Lysenko o vide”. ibid. 819- 42
44. Reported by N. V. Turbin at the meeting of the Comission or the analysis of the History of Soviet Genetics held in the Institute of the History of Natural Sciences and technology in Moscow (October 1988); see also Soifer, Vlast' i Nauka, 51
Stalin as Lysenko's Editor 63
At the same time any attempt to criticize other aspects of Lysenko's doctrine in the corse of discussion were still censored by the authorities.
We don't know what would have would have been the outcome of this anti-Lysenko campaign if Stalin hadn't died short after it had begun. It may actually be that Stalin's death postponed Lysenko's fall from power for a decade, until 1965, when the government and Party finally deprived Lysenko from their personage.
Some Concluding Remarks
It is remarkable how much emphasis was laid in the last years of Stalin´s life on the "political correctness" of language used in scientific publications. But it is even more striking that Stalin himself tried to control the content of science, editing scientific typescripts. It is hard to imagine similar behavior on the part of the political leaders of the democratic countries (Roosevelt or Churchill) or even other dictators (such as Hitler and Mussolini). Even in George Orwell's famous classic, 1984, the top political leaders who stood behind the mythical "Big Brother” disn´t do it themselves. The work of rewriting history was done by small clerks in the Ministry of Truth.
The inclination personally to edit a wide variety of texts on diverse subjects was very characteristic of Stalin as a person. Several years before the 1948 session, for example, Stalin, as the leader of Soviet Union edited yhe words to the new Soviet hymn. 45 In addition There is some evidence that during the purges of the 1930s, he personally edited confessions of former Party comrades. The confessions, often obtained by torture, were delivered to the Kremlin. Stalin changed some phrases, and then the investigators urged the prisoners to rewrite them following Stalin´s suggestions.
But at the same time, Stalin's editorial inclination reflected not only his personal pre-dilections, but also more general features of the Soviet regime: first, a historically un-precedented degree of regimentation of the hierarchically organized Soviet society, with Stalin at the top: and second, thje critical significance for the Stalinist system of the TEXT. In this case, being an edistor Stalin only confirmed his rank as top political leader. And it became simply ther next logical step for Stalin to move from editing texts to editing the nature itself.
Russian Academy of Sciences
45. See TsPA, fund 558, dossier I, file 3399 "
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