Vavilov was such an extraordinary individual. While he was imprisoned in 1940 for defying Stalin-era leader Trofim Lysenko for his Mendelian beliefs, his collaborators protected the then largest seed bank in the world during the Siege of Lenningrad [1] by Nazi Germany. Most of those "protectors" died, and Vavilov died of starvation in prison - the same thing he was so obsessed of solving for everyone.
"Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End" [2] is the canonical read on this topic!
Starvation was a Big Deal(TM) in pre-ww2 Russia. Many of the best and brightest were drawn toward working on agricultural problems in their niche. Mikhail Kalashnikov got interested in mechanics and engineering because he wanted to help design better farm equipment and improve yields.
The comment was kind of unnecessary and not complete right but please don't excuse the Soviet government complicity in the massive famines between the revolution and WW2.
The waste majority of famines in pre-Communist Russia were limited in scope in one region before transport was available.
Even the most extreme famine in modern Russian history killed a few 100k of people.
Under the Soviet government many millions died and often in years where there was not actually shortfall in the harvest, but that the government continued to export food during the mass starvation of its citizens.
And lets not ignore what is basically genocide when the Soviet government forced nomads to farm and basically killed large parts of the population.
While Russian agricultural productivity lagged significantly behind western countries, government policies (both soviet and imperial) were arguably the most significant cause of all peace time famines in the Russian Empire/USSR that occurred since the mid/late 19th century.
Before 1913 main reason behind regional famines in Russia (excluding war time) was poor infrastructure and no efficient mechanism for redistributing grain (and the imperial government's unwillingness to establish one). Russian net exports of grain remained positive during the 1891–92, 1901 & 1906 famines.
This (at least according to the death count) only got worse after the revolution. Agricultural production levels in 1930's weren't that much higher than they were in 1913 (grain production was much higher in all years besides 1936, however livestock production remained mostly at similar levels or even fell).
However again, even taking into account the poor productivity exacerbated by the poor harvests the Soviet Union remained a next exporter of grain in all years between 1930 and 1933 (in 1932 and 1933 around 50% of all exports were from Ukrainian ports). During the same period at least 2 million people (up to 10 million according to higher estimates) died as a results of the famine. Considering this I don't really see how could anyone seriously blame the weather...
He was. Only he was imprisoned for political reasons of being anti-bolshevik, you can even read this in the quote from his sentence in this cold-warish piece of writing in OP. This is biggest scientific myth i know - that soviets/marxism/etc deny science, because they prosecuted Vavilov for it. Like genetics back then was as it is now (search eugenics), and scientific debate about nature vs nurture was settled, and Lysenko was just some boy and didn't get applause in NYC conference on agrobiology. But I'm glad at least in research frontiers people do revisit Lysenko legacy nowadays, in the the light of epigenetic research. For common people it's just another neccesary illusion.
Sorry, the Soviet Union explicitly advocated for science based on ideology instead of the other way around under Stalin. Wikipedia has numerous examples of this [0]. And no, one person getting applause at one conference in the US does not make a scientific hypothesis valid. Your also either fundamentally misunderstanding what the current research on epigenetics says or what Lysenko was advocating. Lysenko claimed to do things well beyond anything current studies of epigenetics would allow, and the SU went all in on these claims to disastrous effects. (Because they preferred Lamarckism instead of Darwinism for purely ideological reasons.)
Thanks for your comment, i'm working on heterochromatin formation rn as a phd (not claiming full understanding of full epigenetic field ofc, but have some conceptual touch).
>Lysenko claimed to do things well beyond anything current studies of epigenetics would allow
You are right, but this is not true for all of his work; look at his earlier works on seed vernalization by heat treatment - he experimentally did what is mechanisticaly described now [0]. Isn't it funny - instead of tweaking crazy plant genome with complicated patented GM tech with minimal improvement as a result, you can dip your seeds in warm water and change the phenotype competely. Worth revisiting?
Btw, both your and my comments fairly can go to Vavilov too and his less-known sides of research. But for myth sustaining purposes - Lysenko is totally bad, Vavilov is totally good, thus communism (or whatever "bad" label is tranding rn in capitalism criticism) is anti-science.
>they preferred Lamarckism instead of Darwinism for purely ideological reasons
I've tried here to add this scientific debate dimension to this preference, which is omitted. Both theories were in their nappies back then, and one (Lamarckism) was more appealing bcs of its alignment with ideology, right. It does not mean that genetics were evidently true back then and SU denied it for ideology' sake - this is how is read in the OP writing.
Let's separate discussion of the Soviet system from the individuals caught up in that system. I am not ( nor do I think most people) saying that this was a problem purely with Lysenko overstating scientific claims (which he certainly did). It is a problem with a system that looks towards Marxism, says what science fits that best, and embeds it into society. That is in stark contrast to the way science is supposed to be done, where we reserve judgement and endorse a theory only when it has sufficient evidence and no alternative has better judgement.
Short recap: Vavilov was prosecuted for political opposition, not science. Two arguements for this: 1 - read his sentence and biography; 2 - genetics of that day was not an alternative and did not get a more sufficient evidence than agrobiology, that is the real explanation of genetic research being put aside (but never stopped).
>the way science is supposed to be done
There was a lot of good thinking done last century about how you can not disentangle science and ideology or other cultural biases, starting from defining science. Science is a tool, not a goal. So you can say
> It is a problem with a system that looks towards <private gain/God's love/progress for whole humanity/etc>, says what science fits that best, and embeds it into society
and it works everytime. Unless you've got an ideology based on science? That's what historical materialism attempted by the way.
The Soviet denial of science actually went much more beyond relatively minor details like the prosecution of Vavilov.
I have read a large number of school manuals from the sixties, both from the Soviet Union and from a few of the East European countries dominated by the Soviet Union.
All these school manuals were extremely ridiculous, because they always included some pseudo-historical sections where for every useful scientific or technical discovery or invention, or even for every innovation in sports, it was claimed that there was some unknown Russian scientist, worker or even peasant, who had discovered or invented that, much earlier than their well-known discoverers or inventors from West-European countries.
Additionally, all the biology manuals included a pseudo-historical section containing criticism against the "Mendelo-Morganism", where Gregor Mendel, Thomas Morgan and the other people with well-known contributions to modern biology and genetics were presented as a gang of crooks who belonged somehow to some kind of international conspiracy that promoted some kind of pseudo-science for some unspecified but certainly evil purposes.
On the contrary, Lysenko and a few other Russian geneticists were presented as some luminaries who are the only source of truth about biology.
Reading any of those Russian school manuals, which tried to poison the minds of many generations of students in Russia and in the countries controlled by them, is enough to make you understand the relationship between the Soviet Union (and communists in general) and the true sciences.
> as a gang of crooks who belonged somehow to some kind of international conspiracy
this is exactly what is being done now, but in the opposite direction. When this should be viewed as a purely normal scientific process of debate.
>All these school manuals were extremely ridiculous
Did you try to read any other schol manuals in different countries? School education is well-known to be a source of pure objectivity and true enlightment for an individual in its core.
I see, sacrifice by common men/women, without any special training, against certain death for a non personal cause is one of the unifying positive trait of humanity across time/space.
the "non personal cause" could be tricky though, I see that for example with religious people doing things for non personal causes- they are actually gaining from it but not money or fame, could be "points" in the afterlife or happiness
FYI: If you shake your head at Lysenko in the article, note that similar things are happening today with Marxists and critical race theory and science/math in the US.
It's unfortunate that this was the fate of some important science in the USSR.
The story of Vygotsky is similar. His psychological/pedagogical is still pretty influential to this day but he was largely rejected in part because his work challenged the legacy of Pavlov.
Shame that this was the state that was supposed to be rigorously scientific.
The problem is that it was an article of marxist faith that "class origin" was a guarantee of correctness - the proletariat was supposed to automatically lead the way to the future.
Communist parties all over the world were keen on demonstrating that their central committees had a "proletarian majority", with a sprinkling of helpful intellectuals, which might include the secretary general ...
Don't you see any room for a scientific development whatsoever? Or every dogma or fork from a current dogma is accepted normally immediately as it emerges? No, rather let's look into political perspective on this, because we are talking about SU after all.
Oh man, I'm happy to see this here — I've been slowly working my way through various science and engineering done in the Soviet Union since there was some incredible work done that's very poorly known in the West.
Vavilov is definitely a first-class scientist who seemed to have an incredible personality. In some alternative better timeline, Vavilov would probably be as well-known and had inspired as many people as, say, Feynman. Alas.
Anyway, while we're on the topic of Soviet scientists, the whole silver fox domestication research program is infinitely fascinating —
Edit: Soviet pharmacology also very interesting — and even more surprising it hasn't been studied and imported since, like, humans are humans and it works. Probably an unfortunate secondary effect of how trials/licensing/patenting work. Not a bad starting point: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/an-iron-curtain-has-de...
Nikolai Vavilov's younger brother Sergei [0] was a famous physicist who together with Pavel Cherenkov discovered Vavilov-Cherenkov radiation [1]. By the time Nobel committee awared Cherenkov the Nobel price Sergei Vavilov already died (of natural causes). Got me thinking about genetic predisposition to science among Vavilov brothers.
"and of “twenty-one employees of noblesse origin, eight from the priesthood, twelve honorary citizens [code for tsarists], and ten from the merchant class.”
For those not familiar with this part of Russian history, the relevant concept here is "class enemy" - an individual who is an enemy of the people by virtue of being of certain social class.
The echos that we see today of similar class warfare, of similar narratives supplanting real science, and replacing it with activism ... This is the direction we are heading toward. As the joke goes, history doesn't repeat itself. It does rhyme however.
You can see echos of Lysenkoism where a narrative pushed hard by activists, that has numerous problems from a scientific point of view, is rammed down peoples throats. When people can be "deplatformed" or "canceled" for having the temerity to express different opinions than the narrative allows for ... that is, in many ways, modern day Lysenkoism.
It took Russia many decades to recover from this. As it will us, if we allow this to continue.
Class enemy is defined in socio-economic terms rather than purely social (which are even hard to define). Responding to your irony on "virtue" - there are certain pre-defined aspects of one's economic activity on others, for example if you are living off by owning private property and interest from this - your interested are naturally against the interest of people you are dealing with. This simple concept seems very hard to comprehend.
Vavilov was prosecuted for political reasons not for his stance on genetics per se.
Also painting Lysenko as a pseudoscientific snake oil seller is a bit reductionist. He did have some high level ideas that have been proven right by modern science in the field of epigenetics. He just greatly overestimated the importance of environment factors and his idea did not prove practical for large scale farming. He did so at a time when genetics was still far away from the agriculture revolution of modern day and did not yet offer much in terms of practical solutions.
Did ideological reasons and certain structural deficiencies exist that explain the popularity of Lysenkoism? Sure. Though these problems exist in capitalist countries as well. Especially the social sciences are riddled with it.
By the way, when someone tried to put a pseudo-Marxist spin on linguistics, claiming that all languages would have a common origin, it was Stalin himself who put a stop to it, arguing for more a honest and open debate.
> It is generally recognized that no science can develop and flourish without a battle of opinions, without freedom of criticism. [1]
And before we condem Lysenko too thoroghly we should look at ourselves.
In my country whole regions, once food baskets, are in danger of being retired because of the "...the agriculture revolution of modern day..." Build-ups of toxic chemicals in the soil from synthetic fertilisers are building up to levels where milk from cows grazed on the grass is not fit for human consumption
Lysenko was a unfortunate fool, a man of his time. But we are not much better for all our "science". Yes he got genetics wrong, but the "green revolution" that ignored soil structure and microbial life has gotten things just as wrong
Lysenko and his followers presented intentionally rigged evidence to support their theories. If that's not pseudoscience, what is?
As far as Marr and his "Japhetic theory" of linguistics - sure, Stalin took him down... 15 years after Marr died. And until then, it was the officially blessed interpretation, and criticizing it could get one accused of "bourgeois nationalism" quite easily.
Could you please give any info on "intentionally rigged evidence"? It is generally viewed as a problem of reproducibility in science.
I am working on the topic and this is particularly important. It seems very hard to have a solid proof of any fraud except diary notes, confessions of others.
By an odd coincidence I was just today looking around to see if I could find any data or graphs or anything from Lysenko's original work. I didn't turn up anything. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I hadn't thought about Vavilov and all that in years. It happens that my grandmother worked for him briefly in the early 30s. She and her husband decided communism was a good idea and shipped out to Russia from their home (in Philadelphia) and within a year or so concluded that communism was insane. There was (I was told) a certain amount of touch-and-go securing a boat ride for the two of them back to somewhere in Scandinavia and thence back to the US. They both remained staunch anti-communists for the rest of their lives.
Not a lot of point telling all that, I guess, but it is interesting to think that I grew up in a household where Lysenko and the ills he caused were a commonplace. Funny to see it on Hacker News.
59 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] thread"Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End" [2] is the canonical read on this topic!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad [2]: https://www.librarything.com/work/7565437
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia...
The waste majority of famines in pre-Communist Russia were limited in scope in one region before transport was available.
Even the most extreme famine in modern Russian history killed a few 100k of people.
Under the Soviet government many millions died and often in years where there was not actually shortfall in the harvest, but that the government continued to export food during the mass starvation of its citizens.
And lets not ignore what is basically genocide when the Soviet government forced nomads to farm and basically killed large parts of the population.
Before 1913 main reason behind regional famines in Russia (excluding war time) was poor infrastructure and no efficient mechanism for redistributing grain (and the imperial government's unwillingness to establish one). Russian net exports of grain remained positive during the 1891–92, 1901 & 1906 famines.
This (at least according to the death count) only got worse after the revolution. Agricultural production levels in 1930's weren't that much higher than they were in 1913 (grain production was much higher in all years besides 1936, however livestock production remained mostly at similar levels or even fell).
However again, even taking into account the poor productivity exacerbated by the poor harvests the Soviet Union remained a next exporter of grain in all years between 1930 and 1933 (in 1932 and 1933 around 50% of all exports were from Ukrainian ports). During the same period at least 2 million people (up to 10 million according to higher estimates) died as a results of the famine. Considering this I don't really see how could anyone seriously blame the weather...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov...
>Lysenko claimed to do things well beyond anything current studies of epigenetics would allow
You are right, but this is not true for all of his work; look at his earlier works on seed vernalization by heat treatment - he experimentally did what is mechanisticaly described now [0]. Isn't it funny - instead of tweaking crazy plant genome with complicated patented GM tech with minimal improvement as a result, you can dip your seeds in warm water and change the phenotype competely. Worth revisiting?
Btw, both your and my comments fairly can go to Vavilov too and his less-known sides of research. But for myth sustaining purposes - Lysenko is totally bad, Vavilov is totally good, thus communism (or whatever "bad" label is tranding rn in capitalism criticism) is anti-science.
>they preferred Lamarckism instead of Darwinism for purely ideological reasons
I've tried here to add this scientific debate dimension to this preference, which is omitted. Both theories were in their nappies back then, and one (Lamarckism) was more appealing bcs of its alignment with ideology, right. It does not mean that genetics were evidently true back then and SU denied it for ideology' sake - this is how is read in the OP writing.
[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppl.13163
Short recap: Vavilov was prosecuted for political opposition, not science. Two arguements for this: 1 - read his sentence and biography; 2 - genetics of that day was not an alternative and did not get a more sufficient evidence than agrobiology, that is the real explanation of genetic research being put aside (but never stopped).
>the way science is supposed to be done
There was a lot of good thinking done last century about how you can not disentangle science and ideology or other cultural biases, starting from defining science. Science is a tool, not a goal. So you can say > It is a problem with a system that looks towards <private gain/God's love/progress for whole humanity/etc>, says what science fits that best, and embeds it into society
and it works everytime. Unless you've got an ideology based on science? That's what historical materialism attempted by the way.
I have read a large number of school manuals from the sixties, both from the Soviet Union and from a few of the East European countries dominated by the Soviet Union.
All these school manuals were extremely ridiculous, because they always included some pseudo-historical sections where for every useful scientific or technical discovery or invention, or even for every innovation in sports, it was claimed that there was some unknown Russian scientist, worker or even peasant, who had discovered or invented that, much earlier than their well-known discoverers or inventors from West-European countries.
Additionally, all the biology manuals included a pseudo-historical section containing criticism against the "Mendelo-Morganism", where Gregor Mendel, Thomas Morgan and the other people with well-known contributions to modern biology and genetics were presented as a gang of crooks who belonged somehow to some kind of international conspiracy that promoted some kind of pseudo-science for some unspecified but certainly evil purposes.
On the contrary, Lysenko and a few other Russian geneticists were presented as some luminaries who are the only source of truth about biology.
Reading any of those Russian school manuals, which tried to poison the minds of many generations of students in Russia and in the countries controlled by them, is enough to make you understand the relationship between the Soviet Union (and communists in general) and the true sciences.
this is exactly what is being done now, but in the opposite direction. When this should be viewed as a purely normal scientific process of debate.
>All these school manuals were extremely ridiculous
Did you try to read any other schol manuals in different countries? School education is well-known to be a source of pure objectivity and true enlightment for an individual in its core.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-vault/
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed/e...
A Blight on Soviet Science - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26513415 - March 2021 (40 comments)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJHOiQ2uniU
>any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
And an english version is available to rent/buy: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/scientist/392774148
The story of Vygotsky is similar. His psychological/pedagogical is still pretty influential to this day but he was largely rejected in part because his work challenged the legacy of Pavlov.
Shame that this was the state that was supposed to be rigorously scientific.
Communist parties all over the world were keen on demonstrating that their central committees had a "proletarian majority", with a sprinkling of helpful intellectuals, which might include the secretary general ...
Vavilov is definitely a first-class scientist who seemed to have an incredible personality. In some alternative better timeline, Vavilov would probably be as well-known and had inspired as many people as, say, Feynman. Alas.
Anyway, while we're on the topic of Soviet scientists, the whole silver fox domestication research program is infinitely fascinating —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
Highly highly recommended.
Edit: Soviet pharmacology also very interesting — and even more surprising it hasn't been studied and imported since, like, humans are humans and it works. Probably an unfortunate secondary effect of how trials/licensing/patenting work. Not a bad starting point: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/an-iron-curtain-has-de...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Ivanovich_Vavilov
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
For those not familiar with this part of Russian history, the relevant concept here is "class enemy" - an individual who is an enemy of the people by virtue of being of certain social class.
In our enlightened times, this has been replaced with other categories which make automatic allies - "if you're X, you must do Y."
(But still a "traitor" if you disobey the diktat.)
You can see echos of Lysenkoism where a narrative pushed hard by activists, that has numerous problems from a scientific point of view, is rammed down peoples throats. When people can be "deplatformed" or "canceled" for having the temerity to express different opinions than the narrative allows for ... that is, in many ways, modern day Lysenkoism.
It took Russia many decades to recover from this. As it will us, if we allow this to continue.
Also painting Lysenko as a pseudoscientific snake oil seller is a bit reductionist. He did have some high level ideas that have been proven right by modern science in the field of epigenetics. He just greatly overestimated the importance of environment factors and his idea did not prove practical for large scale farming. He did so at a time when genetics was still far away from the agriculture revolution of modern day and did not yet offer much in terms of practical solutions.
Did ideological reasons and certain structural deficiencies exist that explain the popularity of Lysenkoism? Sure. Though these problems exist in capitalist countries as well. Especially the social sciences are riddled with it.
By the way, when someone tried to put a pseudo-Marxist spin on linguistics, claiming that all languages would have a common origin, it was Stalin himself who put a stop to it, arguing for more a honest and open debate.
> It is generally recognized that no science can develop and flourish without a battle of opinions, without freedom of criticism. [1]
[1] J.V. Stalin https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1950...
In my country whole regions, once food baskets, are in danger of being retired because of the "...the agriculture revolution of modern day..." Build-ups of toxic chemicals in the soil from synthetic fertilisers are building up to levels where milk from cows grazed on the grass is not fit for human consumption
Lysenko was a unfortunate fool, a man of his time. But we are not much better for all our "science". Yes he got genetics wrong, but the "green revolution" that ignored soil structure and microbial life has gotten things just as wrong
As far as Marr and his "Japhetic theory" of linguistics - sure, Stalin took him down... 15 years after Marr died. And until then, it was the officially blessed interpretation, and criticizing it could get one accused of "bourgeois nationalism" quite easily.
I hadn't thought about Vavilov and all that in years. It happens that my grandmother worked for him briefly in the early 30s. She and her husband decided communism was a good idea and shipped out to Russia from their home (in Philadelphia) and within a year or so concluded that communism was insane. There was (I was told) a certain amount of touch-and-go securing a boat ride for the two of them back to somewhere in Scandinavia and thence back to the US. They both remained staunch anti-communists for the rest of their lives.
Not a lot of point telling all that, I guess, but it is interesting to think that I grew up in a household where Lysenko and the ills he caused were a commonplace. Funny to see it on Hacker News.