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Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (; , ; 20 November 1976) was a Soviet agronomist and scientist. An ill-educated agronomist with huge ambitions, Lysenko failed to become a real scientist, but greatly succeeded in exposing of the “bourgeois enemies of the people.” From such a “scion” who was “grafted” to the Stalinist totalitarian regime “stock”, impressive results could have been expected—and were indeed achieved. He was a proponent of Lamarckism, and rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own idiosyncratic, Pseudoscience ideas later termed Lysenkoism.
In 1940, Lysenko became director of the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet 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.
Soviet scientists who refused to renounce genetics were dismissed from their posts and left destitute. Several were imprisoned including the botanist Nikolai Vavilov. Lysenko's ideas and practices contributed to the famines that killed millions of Soviet people; the adoption of his methods from 1958 in the People's Republic of China had similarly calamitous results, contributing to the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1961.
Lysenko learned to read and write only at the age of 13. In 1913, after graduating from a two-year rural school, he entered the lower school of horticulture in Poltava. In 1917, he entered and in 1921 he graduated from the secondary school of horticulture in Uman (now the ).
Lysenko's period of study in Uman coincided with the First World War and the Russian Civil War: the city was captured by Austria-Hungary troops, then by the Central Rada. In February 1918, Soviet power was proclaimed in Uman, after which until 1920 the city periodically passed into the hands of the Red Army and White Army Armies.
In 1922, Lysenko entered the Kiev Agricultural Institute (now the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine). During his studies, he worked at the Bila Tserkva experimental station as a plant breeding. In 1923, he published his first scientific works: "Techniques and methods of tomato selection at the Belotserkovskaya selection station" and "Grafting of sugar beets." Lysenko graduated from the institute with a degree in agronomy in 1925.
Lysenko had a difficult time trying to grow various crops (such as peas and wheat) through the harsh winters. However, when he announced success, he was praised in the Soviet newspaper Pravda for his claims to have discovered a method to fertilize fields without using fertilizers or minerals, and to have shown that a winter crop of could be grown in Azerbaijan, "turning the barren fields of the 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.".
Soon, Lysenko married one of the interns who trained under him, Alexandra Baskova. During the same period, breeder , a future academic and supporter of Lysenko, began working with Lysenko.
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 Nikolai Maximov, 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.
His experimental research in improved crop yields earned him the support of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, especially following the famine and loss of productivity resulting from crop failures and forced collectivization in several regions of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.
Lysenko considered how he might use his work to convert winter wheat into spring wheat. In 1927, Lysenko embarked on the research that would lead to his 1928 paper on vernalization, which drew wide attention because of its potential practical implications for Soviet agriculture. Severe cold and lack of winter snow had destroyed many early 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 been discussed in detail by Gustav Gassner in 1918. Lysenko himself translated Jarovization as "vernalization" (from the Latin vernum meaning Spring). 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 itthat it too would be able to withstand harsh winters or imperfect weather conditions.
In September 1931, the All-Ukrainian Breeding Conference adopted a resolution on a report by Lysenko, in which he noted the theoretical and practical significance of his work on vernalization. In October of the same year, a similar resolution was adopted by the All-Union Conference on Combating Drought. In 1933, he began experiments on summer planting potatoes in the south. In 1934, he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In the same year, Ivan Michurin, speaking about the results of his scientific activities in his book Results of Sixty Years of Work, mentioned Lysenko's activities in studying the photoperiodism of field cereals. On 30 December 1935, Lysenko was awarded the Order of Lenin and elected a full member of the VASKhNIL.
The discussion continued on 23 December 1936 at the 4th session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, where Lysenko made a report "On two directions in genetics" (published in the collection Agrobiology by Lysenko). Lysenko, together with Isaak Prezent, referred to the opinion of Charles Darwin and Kliment Timiryazev on the issue of degeneration of self-pollinating plants and the usefulness of intra-varietal cross-pollination of plants.
In the spring of 1937, the journal Yarovizatsiya, founded and edited by Lysenko, published a speech by the head of the agricultural department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Yakov Yakovlev (No. 2), where Vavilov's theory of homological series of plant variability and the chromosomal theory of heredity were sharply criticized. The scientific discussion on genetics in the Soviet Union was transformed into a political struggle against "the enemies of the people." Issue 3 of Yarovizatsiya published an article by Prezent, in which he accused geneticists of the classical school of supporting the Left Opposition-Right Opposition opposition, and an article by that accused Vavilov of being a reactionary saboteur. The 7th International Genetic Congress in Moscow in 1937 was canceled and instead took place in 1939 in Edinburgh.
On 11 January 1938, the newspaper Sotszemledeliye published an article titled "Improve the Academy of Agricultural Sciences: Ruthlessly uproot enemies and their rumps from scientific institutions," where Vavilov, Mikhail Zavadovsky, and were indicated as accomplices of the enemies of the people.
In 1938, Lysenko became president of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. At the beginning of 1939, Yarovizatsiya published an article by Prezent "On pseudoscientific theories and genetics", in which Prezent compared the works of Vavilov with those of the anti-Marxist philosopher Eugen Dühring. In the same year, the journal Pod znamenem marksizma held a discussion on genetics. At the conclusion of this discussion, its organizer, philosopher Mark Mitin, sharply criticized the activities of Vavilov.
In 1939, According to official data, by changing the agricultural technology of millet, Lysenko increased the yield of millet from 2-3 to 15 centners per hectare. On 13 December 1942, at a session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lysenko argued that "in 1940, millet on millions of hectares had already become the highest-yielding grain crop" and called for "a turn towards millet." Lysenko proposed a system of spring cultivation for grain, which made it possible to clear the soil of weeds before sowing, and then sow with vernalized seeds.
In mid-1940, by Lysenko's order, NKVD employee S. N. Shundenko was appointed deputy director of the All-Union Research Institute of Plant Industry, despite the categorical protest of Vavilov, who wrote denunciations of the institute's workers. In August 1940, Vavilov was arrested; following this, Vavilov's employees and friends, Georgii Karpechenko, Grigory Levitsky, , and , were arrested and died in custody.
On 22 March 1943, Lysenko received the Stalin Prize of the first degree "for the scientific development and introduction into agriculture of a method of planting potatoes with the tops of food tubers." On 3 June 1943, at a ceremonial meeting of the Soviet Academy of Sciences dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kliment Timiryazev, Lysenko made a report: "K. A. Timiryazev and the tasks of our agrobiology." In 1943, the first edition of Lysenko's collection was published, titled Agrobiology: Work on genetics, breeding and seed production.
On 10 June 1945, Lysenko was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin, "for outstanding services in the development of agricultural science and increasing the productivity of agricultural crops, especially potatoes and millet." On 10 September 1945, Lysenko was awarded the Order of Lenin "for the successful completion of the government's task in difficult war conditions to provide the front and the country's population with food, and industry with agricultural raw materials."
From 31 July to 7 August 1948, a Session of the VASKhNIL (VASKhNIL) took place, at which most of the speakers supported Lysenko's biological views and pointed to the "practical successes" of specialists of the "Michurinist movement."
At the session, Lysenko presented erroneous views on genetics (denial of Mendel's law of segregation, denial of immutable "genes"), as well as politicized statements addressed to opponents (for example, Morgan's genetics was credited with justifying racism, eugenics, and serving the interests of the militaristic bourgeoisie class).
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. 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.
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, lacking formal academic training or affiliations to the academic community. Due to his close partnership with Stalin, Lysenko acquired an influence over genetics in the Soviet Union during the early and mid-20th century. Lysenko eventually became the director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences in 1940, which gave him even more control over genetics. (1993). 9780521245661, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. ISBN 9780521245661 He remained in the position for more than two decades, throughout the reigns of Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, until he was relieved of his duties in 1965.
Outside the Soviet Union, scientists spoke critically: British biologist Sydney 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".
During the 1930s and '40s, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) served as a floor for debate between Lysenkoism and geneticists. On 7 August 1948, at the end of a week-long session organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin, 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. Prezent accused the geneticists, whom Lysenko and supporters termed "August Weismann-Mendelists-Morganists", of ideological unreliability. At the 1948 VASKhNIL session, Prezent said:
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 . 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. 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". 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.
In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR:
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, Lysenko was removed from his post as director of the Institute of Genetics at the Academy of Sciences and restricted to an experimental farm in Moscow's 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. Consequently, Lysenko was immediately disgraced in the Soviet Union.
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, (2026). 9783319391762, Springer. ISBN 9783319391762 although the Soviet government refused to announce Lysenko's death for two days after the event"Russian Biologist Dead at 78"; in "Obituaries"; Beaver County Times, 24 November 1976; p. A4 and gave his passing only a small note in Izvestia.‘Soviet Biologist Lysenko Dies in Obscurity’; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 24 November 1976, p. 8
These ideas were not directly derived from established biological theories such as Mendelian genetics, Lamarckism or Darwinism. He shaped his genetic concepts to support the simple practical purpose of breeding and improving crops. His ideas were also shaped to disprove other claims made by his fellow geneticists. His ideas and genetic claims later began to be termed "Lysenkoism". He claimed that his ideas were not associated with Lamarckism, but there are similarities between the two ideas, such as a belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Some of Lysenko's ideas can also seem to be vitalism. 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.
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. That assumption disregarded the potential for variation or mutation.
Lysenko did not believe in 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. 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.Graham, Loren (1998). What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience?, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. 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.
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,
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. Lysenko claimed that the cuckoo was born when young birds such as warblers were fed hairy caterpillars by the parent (rather than host) birds; this claim failed to recognise that the cuckoos he described were brood parasites. 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 World War II ended, Lysenko took an interest in the works of Olga Lepeshinskaya, an older feldsher and biologist, who claimed to be able to create cells from egg yolk and non-cellular matter. Lepeshinskaya recognized common ground between her ideas and Lysenko's. By combining both of their ideas it was possible to proclaim that cells could grow from non-cellular material and that the predicted ratios of Mendelian genetics and meiosis were incorrect, thus undermining the basis of modern cytology, as well as genetics.
In this work, Lysenko came to the conclusion that each phase of plants ("the following phases were recorded: sowing-watering, germination, tillering, booting, heading, Anthesis, wax ripeness and harvesting time") begins its development "at a strictly defined intensity of thermal energy, that is, at a certain, always constant degree Celsius, and requires a certain amount of degree days." Carrying out mathematical processing of the initial data using the least squares method, Lysenko determined the values of the constants A and B - "the starting point at which processes begin" and "the sum of degrees required to complete the phase."
In 1927, the main provisions of this work were reported by Lysenko at the "congress convened by the People's Commissariat for Agriculture of the Azerbaijan SSR at the Ganja station," and then, in December 1928, at the All-Union Meeting of Sugar Trust in Kiev. In this book, Lysenko thrice cited the work of , dedicated to the same issues.
Working at the Ganja breeding station, Lysenko was also able to accelerate the development of plants. Based on his experiments, he developed a technique for germinating seeds before sowing at low positive temperatures, which he termed vernalization.
This technique was supported by a number of prominent scientists in the early 1930s. For example, Nikolai Vavilov saw the main advantage of vernalization in the possible simplification of breeding work, as well as in the ability to control the length of the growing season of plants. In addition, he believed that vernalization could help preserve winter crops from freezing during harsh winters. Vavilov wrote:
The main reason Vavilov initially supported Lysenko's work on vernalization was his interest in the potential use of vernalization as a means of synchronizing the flowering of various plant species in the Institute of Plant Industry collection, since Vavilov's team had encountered problems in cross-species experiments that required such synchronization. Vavilov, however, eventually stopped supporting the use of vernalization because the method did not produce the expected results.
Crops with vernalized seeds increased on USSR farms every year. In particular, in 1935, experimental vernalized crops of spring grain were carried out by more than 40,000 collective and state farms on an area of 2.1 million hectares; in 1937, 8.9 million hectares.
However, the mass introduction of vernalization into USSR agriculture ended in failure. Critics of vernalization explained this failure, among other things, by the lack of experimental data on varieties and regions of the Soviet Union. To collect data, questionnaires were sent to collective and state farms. The questionnaire method made it possible to fabricate data, suppress negative results, and was convenient for promoting vernalization. The data obtained by Lysenko and his supporters was published mainly in the journal Byulleten yarovizatsii, published under the editorship of Lysenko, or in the Soviet press. However, these publications were not published in any independent scientific journals.
The agricultural method of vernalization has been criticized by experts for reasons such as the possibility of damage to seeds during the process of soaking, germination and sowing, the labor intensity of this operation, and the greater vulnerability of vernalized plants to smut. Critics of vernalization in the 1930s included , S. Levitsky (Poland), , and .
Vernalization of grain crops during World War II (spring of 1942-1945) and the post-war period did not receive widespread industrial use. Pravda, in an editorial dated 14 December 1958, argued that after the massive introduction of technology on Soviet farms, which made it possible to sow in a shorter time, vernalization of seeds "was not always necessary." However, vernalization, according to the newspaper, continued to produce "remarkable results" in the cultivation of Panicum and .
Based on this theory, Lysenko proposed vernalization of winter and spring grains, potatoes and other crops.
The provisions of Lysenko's theory on the staged development of plants, according to critics, were to some extent consistent with the level of knowledge of the 1930s, but not all of them were confirmed experimentally. The shortcomings of the theory of stage development were pointed out by Mikhail Chailakhyan among others. In particular, critics argued that even without preliminary vernalization, various plant varieties have a photoperiodic reaction and are delayed in development when the length of daylight hours is reduced.
On 11 January 1941, in a lecture given at the Polytechnic Museum, Lysenko stated:
However, as with vernalization, data was collected using questionnaires, making the results easy to falsify, and any scientific data obtained was never published. When summer planting did not produce any positive results, Lysenko suggested burying the harvested potatoes in trenches, spreading a layer of soil over a layer of potatoes, arguing that this would reduce losses from rotting tubers. However, burying tubers in trenches led to huge crop losses, as the rotting of the tubers only intensified.
Lysenko ignored the real reason for the degeneration of potato plantings - potato viruses (a particularly large role in the degeneration is played by the potato leafroll virus - PLRV, potato virus X - PVX, and potato virus Y - PVY), replacing it with abstract ideas about the "deterioration of the potato breed". Ignoring the role of viruses in the degeneration of potato plantings and the subsequent ban on research into plant viruses led to a significant delay in the development of methods for detecting plant viruses in the Soviet Union, the spread of viruses not only in the south, but also in other regions of the Soviet Union, and, as a result, to a sharp drop in potato yields.
Sowing over stover, despite the advantages of the method (snow retention and better temperature conditions for wintering plant seeds in Siberian conditions), was criticized for clogging fields with weeds, since this excludes conventional agricultural technology - surface plowing, which provokes the germination of weeds, and subsequent spring plowing. In the absence of herbicides at that time, this led to clogging of fields.
, in a letter to Stalin dated 2 February 1948, noted the low grain yield in stubble crops:
Citing negative examples of stover crops, Tsitsin explained positive examples by the fact that "in the harsh conditions of Siberia, there are occasionally exceptionally favorable years." In general, he considered work on stover unpromising, considering instead that work to increase the winter hardiness of grains with wheatgrass-wheat hybrids, distant hybridization with wild plants, and the use of fallows and semi-cultivated fallows were more justified.
Lysenko himself, at the August 1948 VASKhNIL session, argued the following regarding the inheritance of acquired characteristics:
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky cited Lysenko as the inspiration for the character of from their 1965 satirical science fantasy novel Monday Begins on Saturday:OFF-LINE интервью с Борисом Стругацким. [4]
Lysenko's ideas have been attracting a renewed following in contemporary Russia, linked to a strain of Russian nationalism that views "Western" ideas and mainstream science with suspicion.
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