Trofim Lysenko
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist and scientist. He was a proponent of Lamarckism, and rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific 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.
Early life and study
The son of Denis Nikanorovich and Oksana Fominichna Lysenko, Trofim Lysenko was born into a peasant family of Ukrainian ethnicity in the village of Karlovka, Poltava Governorate on 29 September 1898. The family later welcomed two sons and a daughter.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.
Lysenko's period of study in Uman coincided with the First World War and the Russian Civil War: the city was captured by Austro-Hungarian troops, then by the Central Ukrainian Rada. In February 1918, Soviet power was proclaimed in Uman, after which until 1920 the city periodically passed into the hands of the Red and White Armies.
In 1922, Lysenko entered the Kiev Agricultural Institute. During his studies, he worked at the Belotserkovsk experimental station as a garden plant breeder. 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.
Academic career
Work in Azerbaijan
In October 1925, Lysenko was sent to Azerbaijan, to a breeding station in the city of Ganja. The Ganja breeding station was part of the staff of the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops, created in 1925, which was headed by Nikolai Vavilov. The director of the station at that time was Nikolai Derevitsky, a specialist in mathematical statistics in agronomy. Derevitsky set Lysenko the task of introducing legume crops into Azerbaijan, which could solve the problem of starvation of livestock in early spring, as well as increasing soil fertility when plowing these crops in the spring. Vavilov had done experiments on converting winter wheat into spring wheat. It was Vavilov who initially supported Lysenko and encouraged him in his work. In an article, Pravda correspondent Vitaly Fedorovich described his first impression of the meeting with Lysenko:Lysenko had a difficult time trying to grow various crops 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 peas 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.
File:Lysenko with Stalin.gif|thumb|upright=1.4|right|Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. Behind him are 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 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" to describe this chilling process, which he used to make the seeds of winter cereals behave like spring cereals.. 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". 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.
Work in Odessa
In October 1929, Lysenko was invited by the People's Commissariat of Ukraine to Odessa, to the newly formed where he headed the laboratory for vernalization of plants. People's Commissar of Agriculture of the Ukrainian SSR Alexander Schlichter reacted to Lysenko's ideas with enthusiasm and actively supported him. On 17 April 1936, he was appointed director of the VSGI.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 Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
After Odessa and first confrontation with geneticists
In August 1936, at a visiting session of the grain section of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Omsk, Lysenko made a report "On intravarietal crossing of self-pollinating plants," in which he entered into a discussion with Vavilov and other geneticists. In this discussion, Lysenko denied both the general theoretical views of his opponents and their practical implementation in breeding work. In particular, Lysenko denied the method of inbreeding field crops.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". 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, 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 Trotskyist-Bukharinist 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.