Stalin and the Scientists

by Simon Ings

  Wolfe, Audra J., ‘What Does It Mean to Go Public? The American Response to Lysenkoism, Reconsidered’, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 40 (2010), 48–78

  Wolfe, Ross, ‘The Ultra-Taylorist Soviet Utopianism of Aleksei Gastev, The Charnel-House (7 December 2011), http://thecharnelhouse.org

  Wren, Daniel A., and Arthur G. Bedeian, ‘The Taylorization of Lenin: Rhetoric or Reality?’, International Journal of Social Economics, 31 (2004), 287–99

  Wynne, Clive D. L., ‘Kissing Cousins’, New York Times (12 December 2005)

  ———, ‘Rosalia Abreu and the Apes of Havana’, International Journal of Primatology, 29 (2008), 289–302

  Yakovlev, Y. A., Red Villages: The 5-Year Plan in Soviet Agriculture (M. Lawrence, 1931)

  Yashin, D. I., Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (Soviet Film Agency, 1940).

  Yasnitsky, Anton, ‘Vygotsky Circle during the Decade of 1931–1941: Toward an Integrative Science of Mind, Brain, and Education’ (University of Toronto, 2009)

  Yasnitsky, Anton, and M. Ferrari, ‘From Vygotsky to Vygotskian Psychology: Introduction to the History of the Kharkov School’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 44 (2008), 119–45

  Yassour, Avraham, ‘Bogdanov-Malinovsky on Party and Revolution’, Studies in Soviet Thought, 27 (1984), 225–36

  ———, ‘The Empiriomonist Critique of Dialectical Materialism: Bogdanov, Plekhanov, Lenin’, Studies in Soviet Thought, 26 (1983), 21–38

  Young, Robert M., ‘Evolutionary Biology and Ideology: Then and Now’, Science Studies, 1 (1971), 177–206

  ———, ‘Malthus and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social Theory’, Past and Present, 1969, 109–45

  Zajicek, Benjamin, ‘Scientific Psychiatry in Stalin’s Soviet Union: The Politics of Modern Medicine and the Struggle to Define “Pavlovian” Psychiatry, 1939–1953’ (University of Chicago, 2009)

  Zakharov, I. K., L. D. Kolosova and V. K. Shumny, ‘Raisa L’vovna Berg (March 27, 1913–March 1, 2006)’, Russian Journal of Genetics, 42 (2006), 1470–3

  Zamyatin, Evgenij Ivanovic, We, trans. Bernard Guilbert Guerney and Michael Glenny (Penguin, 1972)

  Zhinkin, L. N., and V. P. Mikhailov, ‘On “The New Cell Theory”: Two Soviet Authors Critically Review Recent Soviet Work on the Origin of the Cell’, Science, 128 (1958), 182–86

  Ziegler, Charles E., Environmental Policy in the USSR (University of Massachusetts Press, 1987)

  Zimmer, Karl Günter, ‘N. W. Timoféeff-Ressovsky 1900–1981’, MUT Mutation Research – Fundamental and Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis, 106 (1982), 191–93

  Zimmer, Karl Günter, Max Delbrück, and N. V. Timofeev-Resovskii, Creating a Physical Biology: The Three-Man Paper and Early Molecular Biology, ed. Phillip R. Sloan and D. Brandon Fogel (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

  Zirkle, Conway, Death of a Science in Russia: The Fate of Genetics as Described in Pravda and Elsewhere (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949)

  Zuberi, Matin, ‘Stalin and the Bomb’, Strategic Analysis, 23 (1999), 1133–53

  Zvereva, G. V., ‘Professor I. I. Ivanov – Osnovopolozhnik Iskusstvennogo Osemeneniia Zhivotnykh’, Veterinariia, 7 (1970), 88–90

  Index

  Academic Union, 1

  Academy of Medical Sciences, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. See also ‘Pavlovian session’

  Academy of Sciences, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; secures government funding, 1;

  decimated by 1921–2 famine, 1;

  oversees work in human–ape hybridisation 1;

  and VARNITSO, 1;

  press attacks on, 1;

  reforms of, 1, 2;

  absorbs Communist Academy, 1;

  moves to Moscow, 1, 2;

  elects Stalin honorary member, 1;

  philosophers in, 1, 2;

  Uranium Commission, 1;

  220th Jubilee, 1;

  renounces genetics, 1;

  in ‘Pavlovian session’, 1

  See also Institute of Genetics, Laboratory No. 2, ‘Pavlovian Session’

  Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 1, 2

  acclimatisation, 1, 2, 3, 4. See also vernalisation

  Agol, Izrail Iosifovich (1891–1937), 1; and genetics; 1, 2, 3, 4;

  with H. Muller in Texas, 1;

  arrested, 1

  agriculture: communal, 1, 2; modernisation of, 1, 2, 3

  See also collectivisation

  Alexander II (1818–81): emancipates the serfs, 1; assassination, 1

  Alexander III (1845–94), 1

  Alliluyeva, Nadezhda Sergeevna (2nd wife of Stalin, 1901–32), 1n11

  animal breeding, 1, 2, 3, 4

  antisemitism 1, 2, 3, 4

  Artsimovich, Lev Andreevich (1909–73), 1, 2

  Arzamas–16 (weapons laboratory), 1

  Ashby, Eric (1904–92), 1, 2

  Askania-Nova, Ukraine (breeding station), 1

  atom bomb: Soviets initially sceptical, 1; Americans develop, 1;

  Americans detonate, 1;

  used against Japan, 1;

  Germans develop, 1, 2, 3, 4;

  Soviets acquire German plans for, 1;

  Soviets develop, 1, 2;

  German scientists assist in making, 1, 2, 3, 4;

  Klaus Fuchs gathers intelligence on, 1;

  P. Kapitsa criticises management of, 1;

  Soviets detonate, 1;

  industrial production of, 1

  ‘August session’: see Lenin Academy

  Bakh, Alexei Nikolaevich (1857–1946), 1, 2, 3

  Bakhteyev, Fatikh Khafizovich (1905–82), 1

  Barulina, Elena Ivanovna (1895–1958), 1, 2

  Bateson, William (1861–1926), 1, 2

  Bauman, Karl Ianovich (1892–1937), 1

  Baur, Erwin (1875–1933), 1, 2

  Bedny, Demyan (Yefim Alekseevich Pridvorov) (1883–1945), 1

  Bekhterev, Vladimir Mikhailovich (1857–1927), 1, 2, 3

  Benediktov, Ivan Alexandrovich (1902–?), 1, 2

  Berg, Axel Ivanovich (1893–1979) 1, 2

  Berg, Raissa (1913–2006), 1, 2, 3, 4

  Beria, Lavrentiy Pavlovich (1899–1953), 1, 2; builds sharashka system 1;

  leads atom bomb project, 1, 2, 3

  Beria, Nina Teimurazovna (1905–91), 1

  Berlin crisis, 1

  Bernal, John Desmond (1901–71), 1

  Bernstein, Nikolai Alexandrovich (1896–1966), 1, 2

  Berzin, Eduard Petrovich (1894–1938), 1

  Beztuzhev Advanced Courses for Women (colloq. ‘Moscow Women’s University’), 1, 2

  biomechanics, 1, 2, 3

  biometrics, 1, 2

  biosphere, 1

  Birobidzhan, 1n8

  black earth belt, 1

  blood transfusion, 1, 2n21

  Bloody Sunday massacre (22 Jan. 1905), 1

  Bogdanov, Alexander Alexandrovich (born Malinovsky (1873–1928), 1, 2, 3; Tektology: Universal Organisation Science (1913–17), 1;

  attitudes to science, 1, 2, 3;

  founder of Bolshevik movement, 1, 2, 3;

  Engineer Menni (1913), 1;

  Emperiomonism (1904–6), 1;

  philosophy of experience (emperiomonism), 1;

  visits M. Gorky on Capri, 1;

  tektology, 1;

  and blood transfusion, 1;

  Red Star (1908), 1

  Bohr, Niels (1885–1962), 1, 2, 3

  Bolsheviks, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; Fedorovian influences on, 1;

  conception of science, 1, 2;

  as science educators, 1;

  strive for scientific government, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

  vulnerable to opportunists 1, 2;

  foment cultural revolution, 1;

  Americanism, 1;

  criticism and self-criticism, 1, 2, 3;

  optimistic creed, 1, 2, 3;

  as social engineers, 1, 2, 3, 4n14;

  cult of longevity, 1.

  See also ‘partyness’

  Bondarenko, Al
exander (?–?), 1

  Born, Hans-Joachim (1909–87), 1

  Borodin, Dmitry Nikolaevich (1889–1957), 1, 2

  brain: cytological study of, 1; study of injury, 1

  See also Institute for Brain Research, Berlin-Buch

  branching wheat, 1

  Brentano, Franz (1838–1917), 1

  Brest-Litovsk, see Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

  Bridges, Calvin Blackman (1889–1938), 1, 2

  Brücher, Heinz (1915–91), 1

  Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich (1888–1938), 1, 2; Science at the Crossroads (1931), 1n19

  Bulletin of Vernalisation (journal, est. 1932), 1

  Burbank, Luther (1849–1926), 1

  Burdenko, Nikolai Nilovich (1876–1946), 1

  Bureau of Applied Botany: established, 1; under Nikolai Vavilov 1, 2;

  US extension service, 1, 2;

  collection of useful plants, 1, 2;

  vernalisation programme, 1, 2;

  plant breeding programme, 1, 2;

  anniversary celebrations cancelled, 1;

  NKVD agents in, 1;

  publications lead to N. Vavilov’s arrest, 1;

  collection beseiged, 1;

  collection restored, 1

  bureaucracy, see nomenklatura

  Butlerov, Alexander Mikhaylovich (1828–86), 1

  Bykov, Konstantin Mikhailovich (1886–1959), 1

  cancer research, see KR affair

  capitalism: Russian hostility to, 1, 2, 3

  Central Executive Committee (Soviet Union), 1

  censorship, see publications

  Central Commission to Improve the Living Conditions of Scholars see TsEKUBU

  Central Committee (Communist Party), 1;

  orchestrates the ‘August Session’, 1

  Central Institute of Labour, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  centralisation, 1

  Cheka, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Chelyabinsk–40 (production reactor), 1

  Chelpanov, Georgy (1862–1936), 1, 2n16

  chernozem, see black earth belt

  Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Gavrilovich (1828–89), 1, 2

  Chetverikov, Sergei Sergeevich (1880–1959), 1; Waves of Life (1905), 1, 2;

  ‘On certain aspects of the evolutionary process …’ (1926), 1;

  arrested and exiled, 1, 2n15

  Chetverikov, Anna Ivanovna, (?–?) 1

  chromosomes, 1, 2

  Churchill, Winston (1874–1965), 1

  civil war, Russian (1917–19), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  civil war, Spanish (1936–9), 1

  Cold War, 1, 2, 3

  collectivisation: American origins, 1, 2; enthusiasm among science community for, 1;

  triggers famine, 1, 2;

  vehicle for citizen science, 1, 2, 3

  Commissariat of Agriculture, 1, 2, 3; promotes vernalisation, 1

  Commissariat of Education: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; supports scientific institutions, 1;

  science section, 1, 2

  Commissariat of Health, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Commissariat of Internal Affairs, see NKVD

  Committee on Inventions, 1

  Communist Academy, 1; biology in, 1, 2, 3;

  supports Ilya Ivanov’s work in human–ape hybridisation, 1;

  subsumed by Academy of Sciences, 1;

  members purged, 1

  Communist Party: 10th Party Congress (8–16 March 1921), 1; Stalin’s rise within, 1;

  13th Party Congress (23–31 May 1924), 1;

  candidates elected to Academy of Sciences 1, 2;

  status of science in, 1;

  16th Party Congress, (26 June–13 July 1930), 1;

  purged, 1;

  criticism and self-criticism in 1;

  in World War 1, 2, 3;

  under Andrei Zhdanov, 1, 2;

  youth wing, 1.

  See also Bolsheviks, Central Committee, nomenklatura

  Constitutional Democratic Party, see Kadets

  ‘cosmopolitanism’: campaigns against, 1, 2, 3

  Council of People’s Commissars, 1, 2, 3

  Crew, Francis (1886–1973), 1, 2n21

  crime, see justice system

  ‘criticism and self-criticism’, 1, 2, 3

  cruzin, 1, 2, 3

  cultural revolution, 1, 2

  cultural–historical psychology, 1

  Curie Institute (Paris), 1

  cybernetics, 1, 2, 3; genetics recast as 1;

  applications of, 1

  cyclotron, 1, 2

  Czech Legion, 1

  Dalstroi (Main Administration for Construction in the Far North), 1

  Darlington, Cyril (1903–81), 1, 2, 3

  Darwin, Charles, (1809–82), 1

  Deborin, Abram Moiseyevich (1881–1963), 1, 2

  Delbrück, Max (1906–81), 1, 2n6

  Tsarskoye Selo (experimental farm), 1, 2, 3

  dialectical materialism, 1, 2n13; in physics, 1

  Dneprostroi (hydro-electric plant), 1, 2, 3

  Dobzhansky, Theodosius Grigorovich (1900–75), 1; aids V. Vernadsky while in hiding, 1,

  in America, 1, 2, 3;

  translates T. Lysenko’s Heredity and its Variability, 1

  Doctors’ Plot, 1

  Dokuchaev, Vasily Vasilyevich (1846–1903), 1, 2

  Dovzhenko, Alexander Petrovich (1894–1956), 1, 2; Michurin (Life in Bloom, 1948), 1

  Drosophila (fly), 1; genetics studied at Columbia University, 1;

  international exchanges of, 1, 2;

  wild populations studied, 1, 2,

  value for genetics, 1,

  mutations induced by X-rays, 1,

  genes counted, 1

  Drosophilist Screeching Society (drozsoor), 1, 2

  Dubinin, Nikolai Petrovich (1907–98): replaces S. Chetverikov at Institute of Experimental Biology, 1; defends genetics at 4th session of the Lenin Academy, 1;

  renews overseas contacts in genetics, 1;

  joins institute of forestry, 1;

  and A. Liapunov, 1;

  replaces Lysenko as director of Institute of Genetics, 1

  Dugdale, Richard Louis (1841–83), 1

  Duma (state assembly), 1, 2, 3

  Dunn, Leslie (1893–1974), 1, 2

  Dzerzhinsky, Felix Edmundovich (1877–1926): directs the Red Terror, 1, develops state surveillance, 1,

  supports bourgeois factory managers, 1

  ecology, 1, 2; management of, 1, 2, 3;

  and radiation studies, 1, 2;

  and Soviet price system, 1.

  See also Stalin Plan for the Great Transformation of Nature

  education: primary, extended to remote regions, 1, 2; public, 1

  See also higher education

  Eikhfeld, Iogan Gansovich (1893–1975), 1

  Einstein, Albert (1879–1955), 1, 2;

  relativity theory, 1, 2

  Elektrostal (uranium plant), 1

  emancipation of the serfs (1861), 1

  Engelhardt, Vladimir Alexandrovich (1894–1984), 1

  Engels, Friedrich (1820–95), 1, 2, 3n13

  engineers, government attitudes toward, 1, 2, 3 See also Shakhty trial

  environment, damage to, 1, 2, 3, 4

  epigenetics, 1

  eugenics, 1, 2; recast as ‘human genetics’, 1;

  denounced as fascist, 1, 2, 3

  evolution, Lamarckian model of, 1;

  efforts to reconcile with genetics, 1; ‘tested’ by I. Ivanov’s hybridisation experiments, 1

  factories, management of, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; peasant workers in, 1, 2;

  effect of Shakhty trial on, 1;

  Stakhanovites in, 1

  famine, 1; of 1891–2, 1;

  of 1905–6, 1;

  of 1921–2, 1, 2, 3, 4;

  of 1932–3, 1, 2;

  of 1946–47, 1

  farming see agriculture

  Fedotov, Dmitry Dmitryevich (1908–82), 1

  Fersman, Alexander Evgenievich (1883–1945), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  ‘The Fields in Winter’ (Pravda), 1

>   Filipchenko, Yuri Alexandrovich (1882–1930), 1

  First Five Year Plan, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

  First World War, 1, 2, 3, 4

  ‘fly room’ (Columbia University), 1

  Flyorov, Georgy Nikolayevich (1913–90), 1, 2

  Foerster, Otfrid (1873–1941), 1

  Fofanova, Margarita Vasilyevna (1883–1976), 1, 2

  food: surpluses required for capitalism, 1; city shortages of, 1, 2, 3, 4;

  withheld by farmers, 1, 2;

  forcibly requisitioned, 1, 2

  forestry: V. Dokuchaev and, 1; T. Lysenko and, 1;

  mismanaged 1

  ‘founding fathers’ campaign, 1, 2, 3

  Frenkel, Iakov Ilich (1894–1952), 1, 2n16

  Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), 1, 2

  fruit fly, see Drosophila

  Fedorov, Nikolai Fedorovich (1829–1903), 1

  Fuchs, Klaus (1911–88), 1

  Galton, Francis (1822–1911), 1, 2, 3

  Ganike, Evgeny (?–?), 1

  Gastev, Alexei Kapitonovich (1882–1939), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; literary influences, 1;

  revolutionary activity, 1;

  shop-floor experience, 1, 2, 3, 4;

  ‘The Accursed Question’ (1904), 1;

  poetry, 1, 2, 3, 4;

  Syndicalist sympathies, 1;

  in Paris, 1, 2;

  ‘Express: a Siberian Fantasy’ (1924), 1;

  union secretary, 1;

  Poetry of the Factory Floor (Poezija Rabodego Udara), 1, 2, 3;