In 1948, at the end of a week-long session of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) in Moscow, Trofim D. Lysenko announced that he had received the support of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for his anti-genetic theories. What followed was not just a purge of genetics and geneticists across the Soviet Union, but the rest of the Communist Bloc as well. Lysenko seemed to have succeeded, as one author put it, in ‘set[ting] the clock back’ by renouncing the most important advance in twentieth-century biology. A lost generation of would-be geneticists were forced to follow other paths of research, and by the time it was over there was a palpable sense of having been left behind. What they were now free to discover was a genetics that to a large extent had been developed in reaction to Lysenko’s crime of exploiting his connections in a totalitarian political system in order to escape having to subject his theories to the judgement of his peers.
Historians of the Lysenko controversy owe an enormous debt to Loren Graham. The chapter where Graham covered what was at the time a recent event in Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (1966), was part of the first wave of literature on what David Jorvasky termed ‘the Lysenko affair’. Though numerous books and articles appeared in the immediate aftermath of the VASKhNIL session, describing what had happened and was still ongoing, the period after Lysenko’s downfall was when ‘Lysenkoism’ was finally treated from a critical perspective. Graham has returned to the topic over the years in a voluminous output of literature, as though never quite satisfied he has said enough. Now with his new book, Lysenko’s Ghost, Graham has produced something of supreme value – proof that Lysenkoism still matters.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, restoring Lysenko’s reputation as a hero of Russian science has become the bailiwick of an increasingly large number of local nationalists engaged in composing their own version of the history of the Soviet Union. There have been a number of strategies in this effort, including even what is purported to be photographic evidence that Lysenko’s argument trees should be planted in clusters so they could co-operate for survival has proved correct. However, none is more potent – and potentially effective – than presenting Lysenko as the precursor to epigenetics.
Among the reasons this claim has gained currency is that it is not without merit. After all, C. H. Waddington’s first studies were published in Lysenko’s mouthpiece journal, Agrobiologia, at a time when they were not getting a hearing in the West. This was in part due to a defensiveness towards Lysenko which resulted in a reactionary suspicion of theories which might in any way challenge the priority of the gene, versus the environment, in evolution. Now epigenetics is recognised as an important contribution to our knowledge of the function of genes, and is a vibrant area of research. But is coincidence causality? Can the man who denied genes existed be given credit just because editorial evidence indicates he was the only one willing to listen?
Among other supreme merits of Graham’s book is that he is willing to render a verdict. While acknowledging that by doing so he is stepping out of his traditional role as reporter of scientific history, he believes the stakes merit that he do. After providing a fluent account of the history of eugenics, genetics and Lamarckian heredity in Russian science, including highly evocative accounts of his personal encounters with Soviet biologists – including Lysenko – Graham delivers a verdict: ‘No.’
Graham’s reasoning is sound. There is nothing in Lysenko’s writings to indicate he had any conception of the science he is credited with anticipating. Even worse, as Graham clearly testifies, Lysenko is culpable of the death and ruin of numerous Soviet geneticists and their colleagues behind the, at the time, aptly named ‘iron curtain’. The only caveat, or better said, question for future research, is to what extent this very fact – that Lysenko is guilty of abusing power to snuff out challenges to his ideas – is the reason he should not be credited as a sponsor of Waddington’s ideas? A casual read through popular accounts of epigenetics today shows that Jean-Baptiste Lamarck – whose theories Lysenkoists alternately denied and embraced – is granted this honour routinely. Could Lamarck have had any more of a clue about all of this than Lysenko? Or is that beside the point?
This question and a few others will make Graham’s book invaluable reading for those who are already well-versed in the history of Lysenkoism, as well as those who might be hearing it for the first time. It is notable that Graham’s account of the rise of neo-Lysenkoism in Russia today seems mapped out onto the history of the rise and fall of its namesake. This part of the book is essential reading for those interested in current trends in Russian science, and proof that the story is not over.
