Lysenkoism

R.J. Stove has an essay in the latest issue of the Observer & Review titled American Academy's Khrushchev Moment. In it he mentions a Russian scientist called T.D. Lysenko and claims that Lysenko "probably slew more people than any other individual who ever lived".

I was intrigued and looked up Lysenko. It turns out that he is a significant figure who should be better known on the right. In short, there was a debate in Soviet Russia between the followers of Lysenko and the "geneticists". Lysenko believed that an organism could pass on traits acquired during its lifetime to its offspring. The geneticists believed that the characteristics of an organism are passed down through inherited genes. 

Lysenko in 1938

Stalin backed Lysenko. First, because Lysenko was of peasant background, and Stalin wanted to create a new intellectual class from the workers and peasants. Second, because Lysenko promised miraculous results in food production. Third, the genetic account did not fit in well with the Marxist Leninist state ideology:

Lysenko claimed that the concept of a gene was a "bourgeois invention", and he denied the presence of any "immortal substance of heredity" or "clearly defined species", which he claimed belong to Platonic metaphysics rather than strictly materialist Marxist science. Instead, he proposed a "Marxist genetics" postulating an unlimited possibility of transformation of living organisms through environmental changes in the spirit of Marxian dialectical transformation, and in parallel to the Party's program of creating the New Soviet Man and subduing nature for his benefit.

To understand the significance of this, consider the premodern approach to Man and nature as described by Patrick Deneen:

Premodern political thought...understood the human creature as part of a comprehensive natural order. Humans were understood to have a telos, a fixed end, given by nature and unalterable. Human nature was continuous with the order of the natural world, and thus humanity was required to conform both to its own nature and, in a broader sense, to the natural order of which it was a part. Human beings could freely act against their own nature and the natural order, but such actions deformed them and harmed the good of human beings and the world.

The Soviet metaphysics is modern rather than premodern in the sense that there is a rejection of essences that might give a stable and recognisable form to species and provide them with a distinct place within a natural order and with given ends and purposes. Instead, nature - including human nature - was to be directed to the ends that we ourselves determined. The Soviets had the intention of creating a New Soviet Man - a new and improved type of human - and so the idea that we might have genetically inherited traits was not approved by the Soviet leadership.

But this had momentous consequences. First, there was a purge of those scientists who held to the genetic view rather than the one promoted by Lysenko. I find this interesting because the left likes to claim that it is the Catholic Church who persecuted scientists several hundred years ago, but here is a much more recent case of an atheist state persecuting scientists on an industrial scale. The first wave of persecution was in the late 1930s:

While the Great Purge was at its peak, Lysenko openly accused geneticists of hampering his methods and named N.I. Vavilov and G.D. Karpechenko, who both perished later. A meeting of the VASKhNIL Presidium was held in April 1937, and Lysenko complained that VASKhNIL leaders supported his work poorly and that he was forced to ask for help. The VASKhNIL president, A.I. Muralov, and his deputies, A.S. Bondarenko and G.K. Meister, were shot soon afterward. Of the 52 VASKhNIL academicians, 12 were shot on false charges in 1936–1938.

Another purge took place in the late 1940s:

Academician Vladimir Strunnikov, head of the Commission for the History of the Development of Genetics in the Soviet Union at the USSR Academy of Sciences, wrote: “In autumn 1948 alone, 127 teachers, including 66 professors, were dismissed. The total number of those who had been dismissed, demoted, or removed from leadership positions after the session of the VASKhNIL of 1948 amounted to several thousands of people”

The persecution had a much wider effect on scientific research within the Soviet Union:

The decisions of the August session had a ripple effect within the total scientific community, affecting areas distant from genetics, as well as biology in general. In 1950, sessions on physiology, cytology, and microbiology were held in the USSR Academies of Sciences and Medical Sciences to condemn the most important achievements in biology, and glorify the “experiments” of Olga Lepeshinskaia, who claimed to have observed cells emerging from unstructured vital substances, or Gevork Bosh’ian, who claimed to have “demonstrated” that viruses turn into bacterial cells, and bacteria into viruses and antibiotics. Cybernetics, mathematical logic, certain fields of physics and chemistry, sociology, economics, and even philology were jeopardized. Party ideologists chose a “Lysenko” as the sole holder of true knowledge for each discipline.

But why does Stove make the bold claim about Lysenko killing more people than any other individual? It's because Lysenko had such influence over Soviet agriculture at a time when there were shortages of food. Lysenko is thought to have worsened and prolonged the great famine of 1932-33 (6 million deaths), and also that of  1946-47 (2 million deaths). Furthermore, Lysenko influenced the Chinese communists and so played a part in the Great Famine of 1959 to 1961 (30 million deaths). 

If you're interested there is a good article on Lysenko setting all this out in more detail here.