Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet knowledge of biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to find real solutions to agricultural problems, throwing their support behind a charlatan at the expense of many human lives.Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. Behind him are (left to right) Stanislav Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreev and Joseph Stalin.
From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Isaak Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943.
ReplyDeleteGenetics was stigmatized as a 'bourgeois science' or 'fascist science' (because fascists — particularly the Nazis in Germany — embraced genetics and attempted to use it to justify their theories on eugenics and the master race, which culminated in Action T4).
Despite the ban, some Soviet scientists continued to work in genetics, dangerous as it was.
In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience"; all geneticists were fired from their jobs (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. Nikita Khrushchev, who claimed to be an expert in agricultural science, also valued Lysenko as a great scientist, and the taboo on genetics continued (but all geneticists were released or rehabilitated posthumously). The ban was only waived in the mid-1960s.
Thus, Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet knowledge of biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to find real solutions to agricultural problems, throwing their support behind a charlatan at the expense of many human lives.
活東庵：
ReplyDelete...『ルイチェンコ学説の興亡』という本をふと思い出した。学生時代に読んだ本で、まだベルリンの壁が崩れていない頃、ソビエト連邦という国家が存在した頃に出版され、スターリン時代のトンデモ科学について告発した本である。
学説の内容はあまり覚えていないが、 ... その実験に成功したと主張するルイチェンコがスターリンの覚えめでたく、その周りの御用学者もこれを支持、反対派は当時冷や飯を食った、という話だった。訳者だか、さいごに解説を書いた日本人科学者は冷静に「科学の実験は”追試が効くか”ということがまず大前提にある、しかもある一定条件下なら誰がやっても同じ結果が出る、というものでなければいけない」と記していた。