Trofim Denisovich Lysenko

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko

Trofim Lysenko ( Russian Трофим Денисович Лысенко , scientific. Transliteration Trofim Denisovich Lysenko , 17 September * . Jul / 29. September  1898 greg. In Karlovka , Poltava Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 20th November 1976 in Moscow , RSFSR , USSR ) was a Soviet agronomist who gained great political influence under Josef Stalin . His theory of Lysenkoism , according to which the properties of living beings are determined not by genes but by environmental conditions, was scientifically untenable and contradicted the foundations of genetics known in Lyssenko's time . Some of his research results have been exposed as falsifications .

Because Lyssenko enjoyed the personal support of Josef Stalin, hardly any geneticist in the Soviet sphere of influence dared to openly contradict Lyssenko's theories. Scientists who did this, such as Nikolai Wawilov , were persecuted as dissidents. The application of Lyssenko's concepts in Soviet agriculture led to crop failures and exacerbation of famine. The failures were declared by the Stalinist regime to be caused by "sabotage" and responded with an intensification of political repression and terror.

From today's perspective, Lyssenko's influence on the development of Soviet genetics is judged to be catastrophic. The pseudo-scientific Lysenkoism held back the development of genetics in the Soviet Union and the states dependent on it for decades.

biography

Lyssenko came from a farming family. In 1925 he graduated from the Agricultural Institute of Kiev University as an agronomist.

In 1929 he went to the All Union Institute for Genetics and Seed Breeding in Odessa , which he headed from 1934 to 1939. From 1940 he headed the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union . As a loyal party supporter (he was never a member of the CPSU ), he promised to breed high-yielding crops and solve all nutritional problems. In 1936 he was awarded the Lenin Order by Josef Stalin , which he received six more times later. Until the end of the Khrushchev era , he had significant influence in the party and science.

In 1948 he organized the notorious August session of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences called Lenin (Всесоюзная академия сельскохозяйственных наук имени В. И. И. Ленина [В.В] ;СХASНChNА). Lyssenko's introductory speech “On the Situation in Biology” was transformed into a formal ban on the so-called Mendel-Weismann-Morgan genetics through Stalin's personal initiative . The teachings of Gregor Mendel , August Weismann and Thomas Hunt Morgans and thus modern genetics as such were rejected in the Soviet Union. Until the 1960s it was considered at Lysenkoism firmly. This also had intense socio-political influence and catastrophic consequences for agriculture in the Soviet Union and other countries of the CMEA .

In March 1953 he was criticized personally by Nikita Khrushchev . In mid-April 1956 he was replaced as President of the Lenin Academy for Agricultural Research by PP Lobanov , but remained an agricultural advisor to Khrushchev.

In 1962 his scientific misinterpretations and falsifications as well as his policy of the political exclusion of scientific critics were exposed by prominent natural scientists, including Jakow Seldowitsch , Vitali Ginsburg , Andrei Sakharov and Pyotr Kapiza . Lysenko was then dismissed by Khrushchev.

Lyssenko's work

Lyssenko was the leading biologist in the USSR under Josef Stalin . Like Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and the Neolamarckists, he took the view that acquired traits were inherited and denied the existence of genes as anti-socialist and therefore false. The emergence of new species therefore does not take place through mutation and selection ( synthetic theory of evolution ), but through influences from the environment. He tested his theories in large-scale agricultural projects. So he sowed wheat under unfavorable climatic conditions and then found rye plants in the field the next year . In fact, rye plants were sown from neighboring fields. Lyssenko, however, interpreted such results as evidence for his theses. With the introduction of artificial vernalization of wheat seed he wanted after the forced collectivization widespread crop failures prevent in Ukraine and Russia. The increases in yield he had forecast soon turned out to be untenable.

Essential theses of Lyssenko, e.g. B. in his main lecture at the meeting of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the USSR in August 1948 in Moscow, were:

  1. Heredity is a property of the whole organism. There are no discrete hereditary factors or genes.
  2. Hereditary changes can be induced by changing environmental and living conditions. The character of the changes is adequate to the character of the inducing conditions.
  3. Properties acquired in dealing with environmental conditions are inherited.
  4. In plants, specific changes can be induced by grafting in the process of vegetative hybridization; there is no fundamental difference to sexual hybridization.
  5. By rearing winter forms without a cold shock, hereditary summer forms can be achieved in cereals.
  6. Cultivated plant species such as wheat and rye can be transformed into one another through suitable environmental conditions.

Through good relations with the Soviet secret service NKVD , he succeeded in silencing critics. In particular after his appointment as President of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1938, he had other biologists, especially geneticists, politically persecuted and brought to prison camps . Lysenko was partly responsible for the death of the important biologist and founder of the academy, Nikolai Wawilow , in 1943.

Lysenko knew how to acquire considerable resources through good relations within the party and with Stalin personally. At his instruction, considerable areas were planted with wheat, which were not climatically suitable for this. The bad harvests caused by this aggravated the already poor food situation of the Soviet citizens, there were famines. Likewise in the People's Republic of China , after Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese farmers to use Lyssenko's methods for the great leap forward . In agriculture in the GDR , there was no practical application of Lyssenko's theses due to the courageous activity of Hans Stubbe, apart from a few lip service in school books.

The biological sciences of the Soviet Union were permanently damaged, so that the term Lysenkoism was henceforth used as a catchphrase for charlatanism and the subordination of scientific knowledge to the wishes of politics.

Works

  • The situation in biological science. Meeting of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the USSR. July 31 - August 7, 1948. Stenographic report. Publishing house for foreign language literature. Moscow 1949. (therein Lyssenkos' report of the same name: pp. 9–59)

See also

literature

  • Shores Alexandrovich Medvedev : The Lyssenko case. Science surrenders . Hamburg, 1971 (Original: The Rise and Fall of TDLysenko . New York / London 1969) Very good introduction to all aspects of the "Fall" Lyssenko .
  • Johann-Peter Regelmann: The history of Lyssenkoism . Frankfurt (Main) 1980.
  • Ekkehard Höxtermann: "Class biologists" and "formal geneticists" - on Lyssenkow's reception among the biologists of the GDR . In: Acta Historica Leopoldina Vol. 36, 2000, pp. 273-300.
  • Nils Roll-Hansen: The Lysenko Effect: The Politics of Science. Humanity Books, 2005.
  • Martin Gardner : Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science . Dover Publications, New York 1957, reprint 2000, chapter 12 (Lysenkoism).
  • Dominique Lecourt: Proletarian Science? The Lysenko case and Lysenkism. VSA, West Berlin 1976.
  • Fiction processing in: Dudinzew, Wladimir : White robes. Novel . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1990, trans. Erich Ahrndt and Ingeborg Schröder ISBN 3-353-00508-0 (Russian Белые одежды)

Web links

Commons : Trofim Lyssenko  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Maggie Koerth-Baker: MIT Technological Review: When Biology Meets Ideology. February 23, 2016, accessed August 18, 2019 .
  2. ^ Semyon Reznik and Victor Fet: The destructive role of Trofim Lysenko in Russian Science. In: European Journal of Human Genetics. Volume 27, 2019, pp. 1324-1325, doi: 10.1038 / s41431-019-0422-5
personal data
SURNAME Lyssenko, Trofim Denisovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Трофим Денисович Лысенко
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet biologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlivka
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1976
Place of death Moscow