Trofim Lysenko

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In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Denisovich and the family name is Lysenko.

Trofim Lysenko
Трофим Лысенко
Kiev Agricultural Institute
Known for
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Soviet Academy of Sciences
Signature

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (

agronomist and pseudoscientist.[1] He was a strong proponent of Lamarckism, and rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific ideas later termed Lysenkoism.[2][3][4]

In 1940, Lysenko became director of the Institute of Genetics within the USSR's Academy of Sciences, and he used his political influence and power to suppress dissenting opinions and discredit, marginalize, and imprison his critics, elevating his anti-Mendelian theories to state-sanctioned doctrine.[5]

Soviet scientists who refused to renounce genetics were dismissed from their posts and left destitute. Hundreds if not thousands of others were imprisoned. Several were sentenced to death as

People's Republic of China had similarly calamitous results, culminating in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1962.[6]

Early life and career

The son of Denis and Oksana Lysenko, Trofim Lysenko was born into a peasant family of Ukrainian ethnicity in Karlivka, Poltava Governorate (present-day Poltava Oblast, Ukraine) on 29 September 1898.[7]

As a young man working at the Kyiv Agricultural Institute (now the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine), Lysenko found himself interested in agriculture, where he worked on a few different projects, one involving the effects of temperature variation on the life-cycle of plants. This later led him to consider how he might use this work to convert winter wheat into spring wheat. He named the process "jarovization" in Russian, and later translated it as "vernalization".[8]

The conversion of winter wheat into spring wheat was not a new discovery. Scientific experiments had been done by

Transcaucasus green in winter, so that cattle will not perish from poor feeding, and the peasant Turk will live through the winter without trembling for tomorrow."[10]

Stanislav Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreyev and Joseph Stalin

Lysenko worked with different wheat crops to try to convert them to grow in different seasons. Another area Lysenko found himself interested in was the effect of heat on plant growth. He believed that every plant needed a determinate amount of heat throughout its lifetime. He attempted to correlate the time and the amount of heat required by a particular plant to go through various phases of development. To get his data he looked at the amount of growth, how many days went by, and the temperature on those days, instead of measuring any actual heat. In trying to determine the effects, he was making mistakes in statistical analysis of data. He was confronted by Maksimov, who was an expert on thermal plant development. Lysenko did not take well to this or any criticism. After this encounter, Lysenko boldly claimed that mathematics had no place in biology.[10]

His experimental research in improved crop yields earned him the support of the Soviet leader

forced collectivization
in several regions of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.

Vernalization

In 1927, at the age of 29, working at an agricultural experiment station in

winter-wheat seedlings. By treating wheat seeds with moisture as well as cold, Lysenko induced them to bear a crop when planted in spring. Lysenko coined the term "Jarovization" (яровизация) to describe this chilling process, which he used to make the seeds of winter cereals behave like spring cereals. (Because spring cereals are called Jarovoe in Russian – from jarovój, an archaic adjective meaning spring, especially in relation to crops). However, this method had already been known by farmers since the 1800s, and had recently been discussed in detail by Gustav Gassner in 1918. Lysenko himself translated Jarovization as "vernalization" (from the Latin vernum meaning Spring).[11] Lysenko's claims for increased yields were based on plantings over a few hectares, and he believed that the vernalized transformation could be inherited, that the offspring of a vernalized plant would themselves possess the capabilities of the generation that preceded it – that it too would be able to withstand harsh winters or imperfect weather conditions.[12]

Lysenko's theories

Main article: Lysenkoism
Lysenko proposed an influence of the body on inheritance similar to Darwin's pangenesis theory, that every part of the body emits tiny gemmules which migrate to the gonads and are transferred to offspring. Gemmules were thought to develop into their associated body parts as offspring matures. The theory implied that changes to the body during an organism's life would be inherited, as proposed in Lamarckism.[13]

Lysenko rejected

Ivan Michurin, and of other Soviet scientists.[14] Through this mixture of ideas, Lysenko founded the "Michurinist" school of thought.[14] The core ideas are that body cells (the soma) determine the quality of an organism's offspring; every part of the body contributes to the germ cells, in the manner of Darwin's theory of pangenesis, though Lysenko denied any such connection.[15]

These ideas were not directly derived from established biological theories such as Mendelian genetics,

inheritance of acquired characteristics.[15] Some of Lysenko's ideas can also seem to be vitalistic. He claimed that plants are self-sacrificing—they do not die due to a lack of sunlight or moisture but so that healthy ones may live and when they die they deposit themselves over the growing roots to help the new generation survive.[citation needed
]

One of several unsubstantiated Lysenkoist claims: vegetative hybridisation. The mechanism would imply an unobserved Lamarckian effect of scion on stock when a fruit tree is grafted.[15]

Lysenko believed that in one generation of a

hybridized crop, the desired individual could be selected, mated again and continue to produce the same desired product, not worrying about separation/segregation in future breeds. For that to work, he had to assume that after a lifetime of developing (acquiring) the best set of traits to survive, those were passed down to the next generation.[10]
That assumption disregarded the potential for variation or mutation.

Lysenko did not believe in genes and only spoke about them to say that they did not exist. He instead believed that any body, once alive, obtained heredity. That meant that the entirety of the body was able to pass on the hereditary information of that organism, and was not entirely dependent on a special element such as DNA or genes.[10] That puzzled biologists at that time because it went against established notions of heredity and inheritance. It also contradicted the Mendelian principles that most biologists had been using to base their ideas on.[16] Most scientists believed that Lysenko's ideas were not credible, because they did not truly explain the mechanisms of inheritance. Biologists now consider that his beliefs are pseudo-scientific, with little relationship to genetics.[10]

Lysenko argued that there is not only competition, but also mutual assistance among individuals within a species, and that mutual assistance also exists between different species.

According to Lysenko,

The organism and the conditions required for its life are an inseparable unity. Different living bodies require different environmental conditions for their development. By studying these requirements we come to know the qualitative features of the nature of organisms, the qualitative features of heredity. Heredity is the property of a living body to require definite conditions for its life and development and to respond in a definite way to various conditions.[17]

Another of Lysenko's theories was that obtaining more milk from cows did not depend on their genetics but on how they were treated. The better they were handled and taken care of, the more milk would be obtained; Lysenko and his followers were well known for taking very good care of their livestock.

brood parasites.[19]
Lysenkoites believed that fertilization was not random, but that there was specific selection of the best mate. For reasons like these, Lysenkoism can be viewed as pseudo-scientific.

After

cytology, as well as genetics.[10]

Consequences of Lysenkoism

Lysenko forced farmers to plant seeds very close together since, according to his "law of the life of species", plants from the same "class" never compete with one another.

People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong adopted his methods starting in 1958, with calamitous results, culminating in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1962, in which some 15–55 million people died.[note 1][6]

Outside the Soviet Union, scientists spoke critically: British biologist S. C. Harland lamented that Lysenko was "completely ignorant of the elementary principles of genetics and plant physiology" (Bertram Wolfe, 2017). Criticism from foreigners did not sit well with Lysenko, who loathed Western "bourgeois" scientists and denounced them as tools of imperialist oppressors. He especially detested the American-born practice of studying fruit flies, the workhorse of modern genetics. He called such geneticists "fly lovers and people haters".[28]

During the 1930s and '40s, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences (

geneticists. On August 7, 1948, at the end of a week-long session organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin,[29] the VASKhNIL announced that from that point on Lysenkoism would be taught as "the only correct theory." Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko.[30] Several geneticists who refused to denounce the theory were executed (including Izrail Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. One prominent critic of Lysenko, the famous Soviet geneticist and president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943.[31] Before the 1930s, the Soviet Union had arguably the best genetics community. According to The Atlantic writer Sam Kean, "Lysenko gutted it, and by some accounts, set Russian biology and agronomy back a half-century".[6] Lysenko's work was eventually recognized as fraudulent by some, "but not before he had wrecked the lives of many and destroyed the reputation of Russian biology" according to scientist Peter Gluckman.[32]

Politics

During the early and mid twentieth century the Soviet Union went through war and revolution. Political oppression caused tension within the state but also promoted the flourishing of science: this was possible due to the flow of resources and demand for results. Lysenko aimed to manipulate various plants such as wheat and peas to increase their production, quality, and quantity, while he impressed political officials with his success in motivating peasants to return to farming.[33]

The Soviet Union's collectivist reforms forced the confiscation of agricultural landholdings from peasant farmers and heavily damaged the country's overall food production, and the dispossessed peasant farmers posed new problems for the regime. Many had abandoned the farms altogether; many more waged resistance to collectivization by poor work quality and pilfering. The dislocated and disenchanted peasant farmers were a major political concern to the USSR's leadership.[34] Lysenko became prominent during this period by advocating radical but unproven agricultural methods, and also promising that the new methods provided wider opportunities for year-round work in agriculture. He proved himself very useful to the Soviet leadership by reengaging peasants to return to work, helping to secure from them a personal stake in the overall success of the Soviet revolutionary experiment.[33]

Timeline of Genetics and Science in the Soviet Union

Lysenko's success at encouraging farmers to return to working their lands impressed Stalin, who also approved of Lysenko's peasant background, as Stalin claimed to stand with the proletariat. By the late 1920s, the USSR's leaders had given their support to Lysenko. This support was a consequence, in part, of policies put in place by the Communist Party to rapidly promote members of the proletariat into leadership positions in agriculture, science and industry. Party officials were looking for promising candidates with backgrounds similar to Lysenko's: born of a peasant family, without formal academic training or affiliations to the academic community.[35] Due to close partnership between Stalin and Lysenko, Lysenko acquired an influence over genetics in the Soviet Union during the early and mid twentieth century. Lysenko eventually became the director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences in 1940, which gave him even more control over genetics.[5] He remained in the position for more than two decades, throughout the reigns of Stalin and Nikita Khruschchev, until he was relieved of his duties in 1965.

After Stalin

In 1955, an attempt was made to disempower Lysenko, with a letter signed by more than three hundred scientists, the so-called "Letter of three hundred", which was sent to Nikita Khrushchev. It led to Lysenko resigning temporarily but he returned to power through the efforts of Khrushchev.[36] Though Lysenko remained at his post in the Institute of Genetics until 1965, his influence on Soviet agricultural practice had declined after the death of Stalin in 1953.[37] Lysenko retained his position, with the support of the new leader Nikita Khrushchev. However, mainstream scientists re-emerged and found new willingness within Soviet government leadership to tolerate criticism of Lysenko, the first opportunity since the late 1920s. In 1962, three of the most prominent Soviet physicists, Yakov Zeldovich, Vitaly Ginzburg, and Pyotr Kapitsa, presented a case against Lysenko, proclaiming his work as pseudoscience. They also denounced Lysenko's application of political power to silence opposition and eliminate his opponents within the scientific community. These denunciations occurred during a period of structural upheaval in Soviet government, during which the major institutions were purged of the strictly ideological and political machinations which had controlled the work of the Soviet Union's scientific community for several decades under Stalin.

In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR:

He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.[38]

The Soviet press was soon filled with anti-Lysenkoite articles and appeals for the restoration of scientific methods to all fields of biology and agricultural science. In 1965,

Lenin Hills (the Institute itself was soon dissolved). After Khrushchev's dismissal in 1964, the president of the Academy of Sciences declared that Lysenko's immunity to criticism had officially ended. An expert commission was sent to investigate records kept at Lysenko's experimental farm. His secretive methods and ideas were revealed. A few months later, a devastating critique of Lysenko was made public.[41] Consequently, Lysenko was immediately disgraced in the Soviet Union.[42]

After Lysenko's monopoly on biology and agronomy had ended, it took many years for these sciences to recover in Russia. Lysenko died in Moscow in 1976, and was ultimately interred in the Kuntsevo Cemetery,[43] although the Soviet government refused to announce Lysenko's death for two days after the event[44] and gave his passing only a small note in Izvestia.[45]

Honours and awards

Works

See also

Notes

  1. ^ According to various sources.[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]

References

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  2. ^ Sterling, Bruce (June 2004). "Suicide by pseudoscience". Wired. Vol. 12, no. 6.
  3. S2CID 7541203
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  4. ^ Caspari EW, Marshak RE. The Rise and Fall of Lysenko. Science. 1965 Jul 16;149(3681):275-8. doi: 10.1126/science.149.3681.275. PMID: 17838094
  5. ^
    ISBN 0-521-24566-4
    .
  6. ^ a b c d e f g "The Soviet Era's Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia". The Atlantic. 19 December 2017.
  7. ^ "Герои страны".
  8. ISBN 978-0-25-30007-43
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  9. S2CID 10527354
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  10. ^ a b c d e f Joravsky 1986
  11. doi:10.1146/annurev.pp.11.060160.001203
    .
  12. PMID 15466409
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  13. S2CID 207150548
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  14. ^
    PMID 15754596
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  15. ^
    JSTOR 3625986
    .
  16. ^ Graham, Loren (1998). What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience?, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
  17. ^ "Soviet Biology". marxists.org.
  18. ISBN 0-253-34716-5
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  19. ^ Joravsky 1986, p. 398.
  20. PMID 10600969
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  21. S2CID 54763671
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  22. doi:10.1093/restud/rdv016. Archived
    (PDF) from the original on 5 March 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  23. ^ Hasell, Joe; Roser, Max (10 October 2013). "Famines". Our World in Data. Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  24. ^ Dikötter, Frank. "Mao's Great Famine: Ways of Living, Ways of Dying" (PDF). Dartmouth University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2021.
  25. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived
    from the original on 10 January 2016. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  26. ^ "China's Great Famine: A mission to expose the truth". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  27. ^ Huang, Zheping (10 March 2016). "Charted: China's Great Famine, according to Yang Jisheng, a journalist who lived through it". Quartz. Archived from the original on 25 May 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  28. S2CID 32789492
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  29. PMID 31053614
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  30. S2CID 146284128
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  31. S2CID 27563223
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  32. ISBN 978-0199236398
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  33. ^ a b Graham, Loren R. (1972). Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union. Knopf. p. 208.
  34. ^ Fitzpatrick, Sheila (1994). Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. Oxford University Press. pp. 4–5.
  35. ^ Krementsov, Nikolai (1997). Stalinist Science. Princeton University Press.
  36. ^ Fujiyoka, Tsuyoshi (2016). "Japanese Lysenkoists after Lysenko's Downfall" (PDF). Historia Scientiarum. 26 (1): 15–24.
  37. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 August 2013. Archived from the original
    on 21 July 2012. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
  38. ^ Norman L., Qing Ni Li, Yuan Jian Li (2003) Biography of Andrei Sakharov, dissent period Archived 21 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine. The Seevak Website Competition
  39. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a107425
    .
  40. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a108776. Archived from the original
    on 15 April 2011.
  41. ^ Joravsky 1986, p. 184.
  42. ^ "Trofim Denisovich Lysenko Facts". yourdictionary.com. LoveToKnow Corp. Retrieved 20 April 2014.
  43. ISBN 9783319391762
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  44. ^ "Russian Biologist Dead at 78"; in "Obituaries"; Beaver County Times, 24 November 1976; p. A4
  45. ^ ‘Soviet Biologist Lysenko Dies in Obscurity’; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 24 November 1976, p. 8
  46. ^ Куценко А. С., Смирнов Ю. Д. Ордена Советских республик. Донецк, РИП «Лебедь», 1996.

Further reading

External links

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