Lysenko .. to condemn millions of people to death with your scientific research!

Introduction to translation

This report examines the accomplishments of the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, which claimed millions of lives through his forged agricultural research that led to widespread crop failure in the country and then to starvation.

The text of the report

Troofen Lisenko extended his research to the famines that claimed millions of lives, so why would a group try to praise its scientific heritage?
(Sam Kane - Writer and Author)

Although it is impossible to say with certainty, Lysenko’s Trophim probably killed more people than any other world throughout history, while some other suspicious scientific achievements resulted in the loss of thousands of lives such as dynamite, poison gas and atomic bombs. . However, Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned millions of people to starvation through some fake agricultural research, without hesitation. Many inventions may not be able to match this human catastrophe, except for the sum total of guns and gunpowder over several centuries.

Lisenko, who grew up in extreme poverty at the turn of the twentieth century, sincerely believed in the promises of the Communist Revolution. So when the doctrines of science conflicted with those of communism, he always sided with the latter, confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end, something that never happened. But in a twisted way, this commitment to ideology helped save Lysenko's reputation today. Because of his hostility towards the West and his lack of confidence in the Western science, he is currently enjoying a revival of his heritage in his homeland, where anti-American sentiments are growing stronger.

Lisenko jumped to the top of the Soviet scientific community at an extraordinary speed. Born in a family of peasant farmers in 1898, he was illiterate until he reached the age of thirteen, according to a recent article on his revival in the journal Current Biology. Nevertheless, he took advantage of the Russian Revolution and gained acceptance in many agricultural schools as he began experimenting with new methods of growing peas during the harsh Soviet winter, among other projects. Although he ran poorly designed experiments and perhaps even falsified some results, his research won praise for him through a government newspaper in 1927. He was called the "barefoot scientist", and his toiling background helped increase his popularity within the Communist Party that glorified peasants .

Lysenko officials eventually appointed a Soviet agricultural official in the 1930s. The only problem was those idiotic scientific ideas he possessed, or one might refer to his dislike of genetics in particular. Despite the urgency of genetics at the time, he made rapid progress during the second and third decades of the last century, and was awarded the first Nobel Prize for a work related to genetics in 1933. Genetics - especially in that era - emphasized the basic features: that plants and animals have Stable properties, and genetic codes, which they pass on to their children. Although considered a biologist, Lysenko considered these ideas reactionary and evil, because he saw them as reinforcing the status quo and preventing any ability to change. (He denied the presence of genes.)

Instead, Lisenko promoted the Marxist idea that the environment alone constitutes plants and animals, and that you can reshape almost infinitely by putting it in the right positions and exposing it to appropriate stimuli, according to what journalist Jasper Baker described in The Ghost of Hunger.

To this end, Lisenko began to "teach" Soviet crops to germinate at different times of the year through some different practices, among which, we soak them in frozen water. He then claimed that future generations of crops would remember this signal and environmental knowledge, and even without treatment, they would inherit those beneficial traits. According to known genetics, this is impossible: it is even closer to cutting a cat's tail and anticipating that it will give birth to cats without tails, just because it has lost its tail. Soon, the bragging enthusiast Lysenko soon began planting orange trees in Siberia, according to the above-mentioned book. He also promised to increase crop production throughout the country and turn empty inner spaces into vast farms.

These allegations were exactly what Soviet leaders wanted to hear. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Joseph Stalin, with Lysenko's support, devised a disastrous scheme to modernize Soviet agriculture, forcing millions of people to join state-run collective farms. The country's widespread failure of crops has led to famine. However Stalin refused to change course, and Lysenko ordered that the disaster be remedied with methods based on his new radical ideas. Lysenko forced farmers to plant seeds very close to each other, because according to the "Species Life Act", plants of the same "layer" never competed with each other. It also banned the use of all types of fertilizers and pesticides.

The Book of Ghosts of Hunger states that almost all crops - wheat, rye, potatoes and beets - that were grown according to Lisenko's methods died or rot. Stalin still deserves the bulk of the blame for the famines that killed at least 7 million people, but Lisenko's practices lengthened and exacerbated food shortages. (Deaths from famines reached their peak from 1932 to 1933, but after four years, after increasing agricultural land cultivated using Lysenko methods 163 times, food production decreased significantly from before). Allies of the Soviet Union also suffered from Lysenko's methods. Communist China adopted its methods in the late 1950s, leading to greater famines. The peasants resorted to eating tree bark, bird droppings, and sometimes family members' waste. At least 30 million people have died from starvation.

Lysenko's failure did not diminish his influence within the Soviet Union as he enjoyed Stalin's support. His image was hung in scientific institutes all over the country, and every time he made a speech, the copper band was playing with the choir a song written in his honor.

Outside of the Soviet Union, Lysenko garnered enormous amount of criticism. For example, a British biologist regrets "Lysenko's ignorance of basic principles of genetics and plant physiology" and it is said that "talking to Lysenko is like trying to explain the differentiation to someone who does not know the multiplication table." However, Western criticism disliked Lisenko, who Western scholars hate "bourgeois", describing them as the softest tools for imperialist tyrants. In particular, he detested American-born practices of studying fruit flies, which are the backbone of modern genetics. These geneticists called them "lovers of flies and haters of people."

Lisenko was unable to silence Western critics, but he tried to eliminate all opponents within the Soviet Union. Scientists who refused to abandon genetics found themselves at the mercy of the secret police. The lucky ones were dismissed from their posts and left impoverished, and hundreds, if not thousands, were arrested and imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals, and many were sentenced to death - as enemies of the state - or to starve them in prison cells to death (among the most prominent of these is the botanist Nikolai Vavilov). Before the thirties of the last century, the Soviet Union was said to include the best genetics community in the world, but Lysenko destroyed all of that, and according to some reports, Russian biology has brought back half a century back.

Lisenko's grip on power began to weaken after Stalin's death in 1953. By 1964, he had been overthrown as a Soviet biologist dictator, and he died in 1976 without restoring any influence. His image remained suspended in some institutes during the years of Gorbachev's rule, but by the 1990s the country had finally put terror and disgrace of Lysenkoye behind its back.

Until recently. As an article in the "Current Biology" journal of biology shows, Lisenko has enjoyed his resurgence in Russia over the past few years. Numerous books and documents praising his legacy have emerged, supported by what the article calls "a crooked alliance of Russian Rightists, Stalinists, a few qualified scholars, and even the Orthodox Church."

There are several reasons for this renewal. The first reason may be the emergence of a new succession epigenetics that made Lisenko's ideas popular. Most organisms have thousands of genes, but not all of them are active at the same time. Some of them are either turned on or off inside the cells, or their sizes change, increase or decrease. The study of these changes in "gene expression" is called transgenic or morphology. It has happened that environmental signals often cause the genes to turn on or off. In some cases, these environmentally driven changes can be passed from parent to child - just as Lysenko claimed.

A quick look at his research shows that he did not foresee or predict successive ethics in any significant way. While Lisenko claimed that genes do not exist, genetics considered genes to be taken for granted: they represent things that are turned on or off. While the genetic changes over the genetic can be transmitted sometimes (and sometimes only) from one parent to the child, those changes always disappear after a few generations; that is, they are not permanent, and this contradicts everything Lysenko said.

The science of genetics alone cannot explain the attempt to restore Lysenko's legacy again. There is something bigger going on here: lack of confidence in the science itself. As the article explains in the "Current Biology" journal of biology, the new advocates of Lysenko "accuse genetics of serving American colonial interests and acting against Russia's interests." Science, after all, is a major component of Western culture. Because the peasant barefoot Lysenko stood in the face of Western science, in this sense, Lysenko must be a true Russian hero. Indeed, nostalgia for the Soviet era and its anti-Western men is common in Russia today. A poll conducted in 2017 found that 47 percent of Russians favored Joseph Stalin's character and his "management skills", followed by many of his followers, including Lisenko.

On the one hand, Lisenko's reputation for improvement is shocking. Certainly, genetics will not be banned in Russia again, and these reputational efforts remain just a marginal movement in general. But marginal ideas can have serious consequences. This idea distorts Russian history and shines on the losses caused by Lysenko by abusing his authority to silence and kill his colleagues in order not to say anything about all the innocent people starved to death because of his orders ... and the fact that some "qualified scholars" defend Lysenko only show the extent of anti-Western sentiments in some circles : Even science can deviate from promoting intellectual and political doctrines.

On the other hand, there is something disturbingly familiar about the Lysenko case, because intellectual and political doctrines deviate science from objectivity in the Western world as well. Nearly 40 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form, without development, and nearly 60 percent of Republicans attribute changes in global temperature to non-human causes. Although there is no real moral comparison between them, it is hard not to hear the echoes of Lysenko in Sarah Palin's mockery of Drosophila research in 2008. Lest liberals become too arrogant, many largely left-wing issues - such as pathogenic fear of creatures Genetically modified, and the "white page" theory (blank board) denying human nature - all looks just as terrible as Lysenko's ideas.

Similar to the Soviet Union itself, the "flag" of Trophim Lisenko was transferred to the dustbin of history. However, the risks of lysenskoye - from the inclusion of biology in ideology - remain latent.
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This report is translated from: The Atlantic and does not necessarily represent Meedan.