Agricultural Sciences
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko(* September 29, Karlovka, Poltava region, Ukraine, - November 20) - agronomist, figure in Michurin agrobiology of the USSR, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (), academician of the VASKhNIL (), academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (), president of the VASKhNIL (1938- 1956, 1961-1962), deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1937-1966), Hero of Socialist Labor (), holder of eight Orders of Lenin, three times laureate of the Stalin Prize (,,).
1. Start of a career
T. D. Lysenko in a wheat field
2. Criticism of “formal” genetics
2.1. Theses on the possibility of inheritance of acquired characteristics, vegetative hybridization and the generation of other species
T. D. Lysenko argued that the properties of plants acquired during the process of “vernalization” or other methods of “education” can be inherited by subsequent generations, thus allowing breeders to significantly speed up the development of new valuable varieties. Supporters of classical genetics (whom Lysenko called "Weismannists" , "Mendelists" And "The Morganists") denied this possibility, but Lysenko preferred Lamarck's ideas: ?... in the dispute that broke out at the beginning of the 20th century between the Weismannists and the Lamarckists, the latter were closer to the truth, because they defended the interests of science, instead of the Weismannists they fell into mysticism and broke with science... We, representatives of the Soviet Michurinsky direction, we affirm that the inheritance of properties acquired by plants and animals in the process of their development is possible and necessary? .
Lysenko believed that in nature there is no intraspecific overpopulation and no intraspecific struggle, and existing biological species, under the influence of changes in environmental conditions, are capable of directly giving rise to other species.
Lysenko also considered vegetative hybridization possible and argued that the existence of such hybrids proves the falsity of “Mendelism-Morganism”: “I.V. Michurin and the Michurinites found means for the mass production of vegetative hybrids. Vegetative hybrids are convincing proof of the correctness of Michurin’s understanding of heredity. At the same time, they are an insurmountable obstacle to the theory of the Mendelian-Morganists.” .
2.2. An attempt to refute Mendel's laws
2.3. The transition of scientific discussion to the political plane
In the first half of the 1930s, Lysenko began to work closely with I.I. Present, who, without a special biological education, headed the department of Darwinism at Leningrad State University, and in the city became deputy editor-in-chief of Lysenko’s journal “vernalization.” I.I. Present developed an ideological and phraseological basis for Lysenko’s theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, “vegetative hybridization” and “the generation of new species,” which made it possible to transfer a purely scientific discussion into the plane of ideological and political struggle. Classical genetics was accused of being not only divorced from practice, but also interfering with it.
Lysenko's scientific concepts also received support from the party leadership. In October, a meeting on genetics and selection issues took place in Moscow, at which a dispute unfolded between the “Lysenkoites” and their scientific opponents, known as the “discussion of 1939.” The ideological line of the party was represented by the editor-in-chief of the magazine “Under the Banner of Marxism” M. B. Mitin, who chaired this meeting. Mitin called Lysenko's ideas "advanced", "revolutionary" and "innovative", contrasting them with "conservative", "dogmatic" and "outdated" concepts, for which "reactionary elements in science are clinging" .
3.2. Protests by prominent Western biologists against “Lysenkoism”
In protest against the campaign of persecution of genetics, the famous American geneticist Herman Möller, Nobel Prize laureate, in September announced his refusal of the honorary title of foreign corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, calling Lysenko a “charlatan” and condemning the attempt "to create a politically oriented" science "separated from world science as a whole", similar to how it was done in Germany under Nazi rule. The party leadership instructed academicians A.I. to prepare a response on behalf of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Oparina, T.D. Lysenko, E.N. Pavlovsky, L. A. Orbeli, V. N. Sukachev. Meller was called “a traitor to the interests of genuine science, openly joining the camp of the enemies of progress and science, peace and democracy.” In November, the outstanding English biologist and Nobel laureate Henry Dale also refused the title of honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, stating, in particular, that the communist government was forcibly introducing the dogmatic doctrine of T. D. Lysenko into the USSR, "actually denies all the achievements of researchers in this area since the time when Lamarck's reasoning was published at the beginning of the 19th century". In the USSR Academy of Sciences, Meller and Dale were deprived of honorary titles, and in the Soviet press Meller and other “American Mendelists” were proclaimed servants of racism and fascism, “fly-loving misanthropes”: "American Mendelians are unable to hide their blood relationship with Hitler's fanatical scientists, who covered themselves with shame in the eyes of all progressive humanity... Mendelian genetics, eugenics, racism and propaganda of imperialism are now inseparable " .
4. Criticism and gradual decline of the “Lysenko” direction of biology in the post-Stalin period
4.1. 1955: criticism of Lysenko in "Letter 300"
4.2. Late 1950s - early 1960s: continued political support for “Michurin science”
4.3. 1964: criticism of the “Lysenkoites” at a session of the USSR Academy of Sciences
4.4. Loss of political support and end of career
After the removal of N.S. Khrushchev from leadership positions in October, Lysenko finally lost political support. Already in November 1964, articles criticizing the activities of Lysenko and his supporters appeared in the newspapers Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda. At the beginning of 1965, the Department of General Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences voted against the re-election of Lysenko to the post of director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Pravda published a critical speech by M. V. Keldysh, and the popular magazine Science and Life published an article by Nobel laureate Academician M. Semenov , who stated that Lysenko belongs "not to the 20th century, but to the distant past of science". A commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences is checking the activities of the experimental farm "Gorki Leninskie" led by Lysenko and calling into question its achievements.
Gg - Scientific supervisor, director of VSGI.
Scientific director of the laboratory of the Experimental Research Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences? Leninskie Hills."
And - gg - President of VASKhNIL.
Gg - Director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
G. - Awarded the Gold Medal. I.I. Mechnikov "for outstanding work in the field of biology and the development of creative Soviet Darwinism, which led to important practical results in agriculture."
G. - Dismissed from the post of director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Gg - Head of the laboratory of the Experimental Research Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences? Lenin Hills.
T. D. Lysenko died in
Name: Trofim Lysenko
Age: 78 years old
Place of Birth: Poltava region, Ukraine
A place of death: Moscow
Activity: Soviet agronomist and biologist
Family status: wasn't married
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko - biography
If you are in the right place at the right time, you can reach sky-high heights. This is exactly what happened to Trofim Lysenko - a limited man, but tenacious and ambitious. However, his rise came at a cost to Soviet genetics.
In the pre-revolutionary village, the first person after the master was considered an agronomist. It depended on him whether the peasants would spend the winter well-fed or whether they would have to subsist on flour and sawdust. The peasant son Trofim was not destined to become a master, but he was able to become an agronomist.
A native of the Poltava village of Karlovka, Trofim Lysenko did not know a single letter until the age of 13, until his father sent him to a two-year school. The prospect of living life differently than my parents dawned. At the age of 15, the young man ended up in the Poltava Lower School of Horticulture, then in secondary school and in 1921 received a diploma in agronomist.
Having entered the correspondence department of the Kyiv Agricultural Institute, 21-year-old Trofim got a job at an experimental station as a plant breeder. It was then that the first two scientific works about tomatoes and beets, written in his own hand, appeared in the biography of Trofim Lysenko. After graduating from university, Lysenko was assigned to a selection station in Ganja. The poor lands of Transcaucasia produced small harvests, which often led to famine and loss of livestock.
The station director set the task: to develop a variety of beans suitable for sowing in winter. Already in early spring, breeders wanted to get seedlings that could be used to feed livestock. And, amazingly, Lysenko’s fields turned green already a year later, in March. But the “to blame” for this was not Trofim’s botanical genius, but the mild winter. However, no one attached any importance to this then.
A Pravda correspondent immediately came to write about the new “biological miracle.” Trofim left not the most pleasant impression of himself. Later, a guest from the capital would write: “This leaves Lysenko with a feeling of toothache, he is a sad-looking person... all I remember is his gloomy eye, crawling along the ground as if he was about to kill someone.”
The next breakthrough in Trofim's biography was vernalization - this is the name for keeping seeds in the cold before sowing. In biology, this technique has been known since 1854 and was actively studied before Lysenko. But he managed to simplify it for mass practice. The soaked seeds were germinated at a low, although positive, temperature and then sown. As a result, the cereals produced synchronized seedlings and increased the yield by 15%. That is why the guru of Soviet biogenetics Nikolai Vavilov spoke positively about Lysenko. If only he knew how encouraging his colleague would turn out!
The Soviet press did not spare praise either. Lysenko was literally molded into a new Lomonosov: “a genius in bast shoes,” “a nugget of the people,” “a luminary of botany.” Journalists generously awarded the newly minted scientist with these epithets.
On the wave of success, Lysenko was noticed by the authorities. In 1929, the head of Narkozem Yakovlev took the botanist under his wing. Every year 150 thousand rubles were allocated for his work, and a bulletin “Problems of Vernalization” was published specifically for him. When Academician Konstantinov conducted research and tried to prove that vernalization according to Lysenko was a bluff, Trofim was already beyond the reach of criticism.
“Successes” from vernalization allowed the future academician to first take the place of head of the laboratory of the Odessa Genetic Institute, and 7 years later, the head of the institute. During this time, he managed to receive the Order of Lenin, membership in the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and other privileges. The reason for career growth was simple: the authorities needed such “nuggets” with the right origin, who ardently supported the communist ideology.
However, Lysenko had some achievements. One of them was chasing - cutting off shoots during the growth period, which gave faster fruiting. Another success of the academician was the method of top planting of potatoes. During the war, there was not enough food, and Lysenko came up with the idea of cutting potato tubers for food and using the tops as planting material. The technology has saved hundreds of tons of potatoes. And yet such experiments looked more like successful experiments than scientific work. He was unable to understand new serious research in science. This was precisely the reason for his irritation with the arguments of geneticists.
Back in 1936, Lysenko publicly entered into a discussion with Nikolai Vavilov, who then headed the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences. The “nugget of the people” denied Mendel’s laws and the role of genes in the transmission of hereditary information, which caused consternation in the scientific world. But Trofim was not worried about this. Having received the support of the authorities, Lysenko only intensified the attack on geneticists. The argument is simple: it gives the country harvests, and these “Weismann-Morganists” are just poking around in laboratories and flaunting incomprehensible words!
“Our domestic ones have recently begun to sing along with the chorus of capitalist mongrels from genetics... Vavilov’s people and Vavilov have finally loosened their belts, they will try to use the international genetic congress to strengthen their positions...” - Lysenko sent this monstrous letter of ignorance to the head in 1939 government to Molotov.
They responded to the letter quickly: Vavilov was arrested. A sentence is the ultimate measure. Later it was replaced by a long prison sentence, during which the scientist died of starvation.
Trofim Lysenko - brother of the traitor
After the war, Lysenko, who became the first person in Soviet botany, continued the defeat of geneticists. Scientists were fired from research institutes, arrested, and exiled. Lysenko was triumphant. He felt like a god in the scientific community, sincerely believing in his power. Of course, no one can resist him, no one enters into a scientific debate with him. Even the fact of being related to a traitor to the Motherland did not harm the academician.
In 1942, Lysenko’s brother Pavel voluntarily began collaborating with the Germans. At that time, the relatives of such a person were subject to restrictions on their rights. Trofim Lysenko escaped this fate: during the war he received the Stalin Prize, two Orders of Lenin and the Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor. Meanwhile, Pavel fled to Munich, where he waited for the end of the war. Fearing the NKVD, he turned to the Americans asking for asylum. Already in the USA, Pavel wrote an open letter to Stalin, but his agronomist brother was still held in high esteem by the leader. Only the death of the latter allowed the position of the academician to be shaken.
In 1955, 300 Soviet biologists, physicists and chemists wrote a letter to Khrushchev about Lysenko's anti-scientific views. Igor Kurchatov volunteered to take the letter to the Secretary General. After reading the message, Khrushchev slammed his fist and called it “outrageous.” However, after thinking about it, he still removed Trofim’s friend from the post of head of VASKHNIL. True, after 5 years he personally returned him to the same post. Only when Khrushchev himself lost power was Lysenko finally removed from office.
Trofim Lysenko - last years and death
At that time, he was an elderly person who was no longer interesting to anyone. He was given the post of head of the laboratory at the Gorki Leninskie station, where he worked until his death in 1976. People learned about his passing (death) from a five-line obituary in the Pravda newspaper. Almost immediately, Lysenko’s archive was seized by the KGB and for many years the “academician from the plow” was not remembered. Trofim Lysenko died on November 20, 1976. He was buried in Moscow at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
Soviet agronomist, biologist, academician Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was born on September 29 (according to Article 17), 1898 in the village of Karlovka (now the city of Karlovka, Poltava region, Ukraine).
He graduated from the Poltava Gardening School, the College of Agriculture and Horticulture in Uman, Kyiv Province in 1921, and the correspondence department of the Kyiv Agricultural Institute with a degree in agronomy in 1925.
In 1922-1925, Lysenko worked as a senior specialist at the Belotserkovsky breeding station near Kiev.
Since 1925, head of the department of selection of legumes at the Ganja breeding station in Azerbaijan. From 1929 to 1934, senior specialist in the physiology department of the All-Union Selection Genetic Institute in Odessa.
In 1934 he was elected academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and in 1935 - academician of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after. Lenin (VASKhNIL) USSR.
In 1934, Lysenko was appointed scientific director, and two years later director of the All-Union Selection Genetic Institute. Since 1938, scientific director of the laboratory of the Experimental Scientific Research Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences "Gorki Leninskie" in the Moscow region.
From 1938 to 1956, Trofim Lysenko was elected President of the USSR Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
In 1940-1965 he was director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Lysenko has considerable achievements in creating highly effective methods for increasing yields. He created the theory of staged development of plants, a method of directed change of hereditary winter varieties of grain crops into hereditary spring varieties and vice versa. He proposed a number of agrotechnical techniques (vernalization, cotton chasing, summer planting of potatoes).
Under the leadership of Trofim Lysenko, the winter wheat variety Odesskaya 3 and the spring barley variety Odessky 9 were developed; cotton variety Odessa 1, which became the main variety of cotton growing in new areas of its cultivation.
Lysenko's ideas were introduced into agriculture in the 1930s and 1960s.
Some of the theoretical positions and proposals put forward by Trofim Lysenko have not received experimental confirmation or widespread industrial application.
He put forward the position that in nature there is no intraspecific overpopulation and no intraspecific struggle, and also that existing biological species, under the influence of changes in environmental conditions, are capable of directly giving rise to other species. These provisions are not shared by many scientists.
Thanks to his successes in practical agricultural science, Lysenko received the support of the country's leadership and, above all, Joseph Stalin. This turned out to be enough for any criticism of Lysenko, both justified and unfounded, to be perceived as disagreement with the line of the Communist Party in the field of agriculture, and as a consequence of sabotage. Lysenko's monopoly in biology, combined with Stalin's methods of combating dissent, caused the destruction of entire scientific schools and the death of many scientists (including Nikolai Vavilov).
In 1955, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee received a “letter from three hundred” with harsh criticism of Lysenko’s activities, which described the damage he caused to science and the state. The letter was signed by 297 academicians, doctors and candidates of biological sciences. The consequence of this letter was the release of Lysenko from the post of President of VASKhNIL in 1956 “at his own request.” In 1956-1961 he was a member of the Presidium of VASKhNIL. During these years, Lysenko actively defended himself. At the Academy of Sciences and VASKhNIL there were continuous clashes between his supporters and opponents.
In 1961-1962, Trofim Lysenko took the post of president of VASKHNIL for the second time. After Nikita Khrushchev was removed from power, Lysenko was finally removed from leading scientific activities. In 1965, he was removed from his post as director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and then the institute itself was liquidated. From 1966 until the end of his life, Trofim Lysenko worked as the head of the laboratory of the Experimental Scientific Research Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences "Gorki Leninskie" in the Moscow region, continuing his scientific research work.
Lysenko was deputy chairman of the Committee for Stalin Prizes in Science (since 1940), deputy chairman of the Higher Attestation Commission; member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1935-1937), deputy chairman of the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1937-1950), deputy of the Supreme Council of the 1st - 6th convocations (1937-1966).
For his practical and theoretical work, he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, awarded 8 Orders of Lenin, a medal named after. Mechnikov, prizes at VDNKh exhibitions, etc. Lysenko was a laureate of the USSR State Prize three times (1941, 1943, 1949).
The material was prepared based on open sources
| Trofim Denisovich Lysenko | |
| Science | |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | |
| Place of Birth |
With. Karlovka, Konstantinograd district, Poltava province, Russian Empire |
| Citizenship |
USSR |
| Date of death | |
| A place of death |
Moscow, RSFSR, USSR |
| FreakRank | |
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko(1898 - 1976) - Soviet agronomist and biologist. Founder and largest representative of the pseudoscientific direction in biology - Michurin agrobiology, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939), academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1934), academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935). Hero of Socialist Labor (1945). Winner of three Stalin Prizes of the first degree (1941, 1943, 1949). He was awarded eight Orders of Lenin, a gold medal named after. I. I. Mechnikov USSR Academy of Sciences (1950).
As an agronomist, Trofim Lysenko proposed and promoted a number of agrotechnical techniques (vernalization, cotton minting, summer planting of potatoes). Most of the methods proposed by Lysenko were criticized by scientists such as P. N. Konstantinov, A. A. Lyubishchev, P. I. Lisitsyn and others, even during the period of their widespread implementation in Soviet agriculture. Revealing the general shortcomings of Lysenko's theories and agronomic methods, his scientific opponents also condemned him for breaking with world science and economic practice. Some methods (such as, for example, the method of combating the beet weevil proposed by the Hungarian entomologist Yablonovsky) were known long before Lysenko, but did not live up to expectations or were outdated. Author of the theory of stage development of plants. The name of Lysenko is associated with a campaign of persecution against genetic scientists, as well as against his opponents who did not recognize “Michurin genetics”.
Life path and activities
Trofim Lysenko was born on September 17 (29), 1898 in a Ukrainian peasant family to Denis Nikanorovich and Oksana Fominichna Lysenko, in the village of Karlovka.
The family later welcomed two sons and a daughter.
Period of study
Lysenko did not learn to read or write until he was 13 years old. 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 the city of Uman.
Lysenko’s period of study in Uman coincided with the First World War and the 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 1921, Lysenko was sent to Kyiv for selection courses of Glavsakhar, then, in 1922, he entered the Kiev Agricultural Institute (now the National University of Bioresources and Natural Resources of Ukraine), to the correspondence department, from which he graduated with a degree in agronomy in 1925 . During his studies, he worked at the Belotserkovsk experimental station as a breeder of garden plants. In 1923, he published his first scientific works: “Techniques and methods of tomato selection at the Belotserkovskaya selection station” and “Grafting of sugar beets.” As Roll-Hansen writes, Lysenko did not speak a single foreign language.
In 1922-1925. Lysenko worked as a senior specialist at the Belotserkovskaya breeding station.
Early works
Work in Ganja (Azerbaijan)
In October 1925, Lysenko, having graduated from the Kiev Agricultural Institute, 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 (VIPBiNK, later VIR), created in 1925, which was headed by N. I. Vavilov. The director of the station at that time was a specialist in mathematical statistics in agronomy N.F. Derevitsky. He set Lysenko the task of introducing legume crops (lupine, clover, china, vetch) 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 to green manure the soil "
On August 7, 1927, the Pravda newspaper published an article about Lysenko, where the following was said about his activities in Ganja:
Lysenko solves (and has solved) the problem of fertilizing the land without fertilizers and mineral fertilizers, greening the empty fields of Transcaucasia in winter, so that livestock does not die from meager food, and the Turkic peasant lives through the winter without trembling for tomorrow... The barefoot professor Lysenko now has followers, students , experimental field, the luminaries of agronomy come in winter, stand in front of the green fields of the station, gratefully shake his hand.
Here is what science historian David Joravsky (1970) writes about this period of Lysenko’s activity:
Session of VASKhNIL 1948 Confrontation with geneticists
On April 10, 1948, Yu. A. Zhdanov, who considered the complaints of scientists against Lysenko, made a report at the Polytechnic Museum at a seminar of regional party committee lecturers on the topic: “Controversial issues of modern Darwinism.” Lysenko himself listened to the critical speech of Yu. A. Zhdanov at the loudspeaker in another room, since he was denied a ticket to the report. Correspondence and a personal meeting between Lysenko and Stalin followed, who ordered the session to be held and personally made corrections to Lysenko’s report.
From July 31 to August 7, 1948, a Session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences took place, at which most of the speakers supported the biological views of T. D. Lysenko, and pointed to the “practical successes” of the specialists of the “Michurin direction,” which can be easily explained by the fate of Lysenko’s previous opponents.
Due to Lysenko’s erroneous views on genetics (denial of Mendelian segregation, denial of immutable “genes”), as well as politicized statements addressed to opponents (for example, Morgan genetics was credited with justifying racism, eugenics, and also serving the interests of the militaristic bourgeois class), Lysenko’s critics subsequently viewed the session as a “debacle of genetics.”
As the historian of science Aleksey Kozhevnikov (1998) notes, the session took place according to the scenario of one of the “games of internal party democracy” that Stalin’s regime introduced into all spheres of life of Soviet society at that time, namely, according to the scenario of the game of “party congress”: 1) decision a representative collective body carried much more weight than an individual decision; 2) factions and opposition were allowed only until the final vote. 2) The Lysenkoites directly stated at the session that the discussion (another element of the game) ended in 1939, and now “formal geneticists” continue their useless factional struggle; Thus, “formal geneticists” were relegated to the category of “disloyal pests”, to whom administrative measures should be applied, not words. According to the rules of the game of "congress", after the final discussion and voting, the discussion ceased forever, and the only possible remaining options for the game were "discussion" of the decision made and "criticism/self-criticism". Repressive measures or other measures of persecution were applied to the “formal geneticists” who were transferred to the category of “disloyal pests”. (see also the section “Lysenko and the repression of biologists”)
“Letter of the Three Hundred”, end of career
On October 11, 1955, a “letter of three hundred” was sent to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee - a letter criticizing Lysenko’s activities, signed by 297 scientists, among whom were biologists (including surviving geneticists), physicists, mathematicians, chemists, geologists, etc.
Critics considered Lysenko's activities "bringing incalculable losses", citing as examples the work of a group of Lysenko's supporters on vegetative hybridization, "remaking the nature" of plants and nesting plantings, and denying the practical and scientific significance of these works.
Lysenko's critics paid special attention to his denial of the method of incubating plants, in particular corn, considering this method the greatest practical achievement of genetics and referring to the experience of American geneticists. Critics in this letter considered the method of intervarietal hybridization of corn recommended by Lysenko’s supporters to be outdated and discarded by US practice. Regarding corn they wrote:
As a result of the activities of T.D. Lysenko, we did not have hybrid corn, the income from the introduction of which, according to the Americans, fully covered all their costs for the manufacture of atomic bombs.
Critics called Lysenko’s theory of the “generation of species” “medieval, disgracing Soviet science.” They pointed out that as a result of the discussions of 1952-1955. This theory was completely rejected by USSR specialists.
Mathematicians and physicists, who wrote a separate letter, argued that Academician A. N. Kolmogorov’s attempt to establish the correct application of statistics in biology was rejected by Academician T. D. Lysenko.
N. S. Khrushchev, according to I. V. Kurchatov, was very indignant and spoke of the letter as “outrageous.” Kurchatov himself and the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician A.N. Nesmeyanov, were familiarized with the text of the letter and fully approved it, but could not sign it, since they were members of the CPSU Central Committee. However, Kurchatov supported the opinions and conclusions of scientists in a conversation with Khrushchev.
The rejection of scientists and many letters to the governing bodies ultimately led to Lysenko’s resignation from the post of president of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, but in 1961-1962. Lysenko was returned to this post on the personal initiative of N. S. Khrushchev.
T. D. Lysenko spoke out against us [the All-Union Institute of Grain Farming] in the newspaper Pravda: “We must finish sowing grain in Northern Kazakhstan by May 15, and not start at this time.” But we knew something else: in 1961, the infestation of wild oats in the Virgin Lands was more than 80%, because we usually sowed early and did not wait for the germination of wild oats, which occurred on May 15 in optimal springs.
- Director of the All-Union Institute of Grain Farming A. I. Baraev
After Khrushchev's resignation in 1965, Lysenko was removed from his post as director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and the institute itself was transformed into the Institute of General Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1966-1976, Lysenko worked as the head of the laboratory of the Experimental Research Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences "Gorki Leninskie".
He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
Lysenko and the repression of biologists
The name of T. D. Lysenko was mentioned by critics in connection with the repression of biologists during the reign of I. V. Stalin.
In confrontation with opponents, whom he and his supporters called “Weismannists-Mendelists-Morganists.” Lysenko's supporter Isaac Izrailevich Prezent used accusations from his opponents of ideological unreliability. At the 1948 VASKhNIL session, Prezent said:
We are encouraged to debate here. We will not discuss with the Morganists (applause), we will continue to expose them as representatives of a harmful and ideologically alien movement, brought to us from an alien foreign country, pseudoscientific in its essence. (Applause.)
At the Second Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers, held in February 1935 (Pravda, February 15, 1935), Lysenko, speaking about the kulak and class enemy “at the front” of vernalization, argued:
And in the learned world and not in the learned world, the class enemy is always an enemy, whether he is a scientist or not.
Relationship between Lysenko and N.I. Vavilov
In 1931-1935, Vavilov to a certain extent supported Lysenko’s work, in particular, nominated him for the V.I. Lenin Prize for his work on vernalization. However, from 1936 he switched to sharp criticism of his views and practical activities.
After the arrest of the director of the Institute of Genetics, Academician Vavilov, in 1940, Lysenko was appointed director. Most sources consider Lysenko directly involved in the Vavilov case.
“Michurin Genetics” Lysenko
Lysenko and his supporters extolled the practical and theoretical achievements of I.V. Michurin, while not verbally denying the role of genetics. In 1939, Lysenko stated in his speech: “It is in vain that the Mendelian comrades claim that we profess the closure of genetics. ... genetics is necessary, and we are fighting for its development, for its flourishing". However, the unconditional support of Lysenko by the party leadership of the USSR, Lysenko’s direct use of the party apparatus to suppress any dissent led to the virtual defeat and, ultimately, the official prohibition of genetics in the USSR.
Denial of Mendel's laws
T. D. Lysenko had a skeptical and even negative attitude towards Mendel’s laws, pointing out the non-compliance with the 3:1 ratio in the experiments of G. Mendel himself. However, Lysenko's experiments were not accompanied by a thorough scientific analysis of the results, and their results were not reproducible. As for Mendel’s laws, they were confirmed by three independent groups of scientists back in 1900. Postgraduate student Lysenko N.I. Ermolaeva in 1939 published the article “Once again about the “pea laws””, where, using extensive statistical material when crossing pea plants, she unsuccessfully tried refute this pattern.
Lysenko published a critical response in which he considered Kolmogorov’s work “absolutely impeccable” from a formal mathematical point of view, but did not prove the conclusions of the “Mendelists” in essence. However, as stated above, Mendel's experiments were confirmed back in 1900 by three independent groups of scientists.
Explaining the difficulties in clarifying this pattern when observing the crossing of plants, A. N. Kolmogorov recognized the presence of a fairly high probability of distribution of 3:1 only in large samples (in the example with Ermolaeva’s tables - 12000 with a probability of 0.99). Lysenko, although with significant reservations, also recognized the possibility of observing this law on large amounts of source data.
On average, of course, it can and does happen (though not always) a ratio of 3:1. After all, the average ratio of three to one is obtained and is derived by geneticists (they do not hide this) from the law of probability, from the law of large numbers.
At the same time, Lysenko considered the influence of the external environment to be a significant factor that prevents Mendel's laws from manifesting themselves in actually observed plants (in particular, during intravarietal crossing of cereals), and believed that following this law would be an obstacle in his work to improve cereal seeds , which was a completely unscientific argument, unacceptable among scientists.
J. B. S. Haldane, in an article "Lysenko and Genetics", published in 1940 in the journal Science and Society, discussing this position of Lysenko, pointed out that the 3:1 ratio "is very rarely obtained with complete accuracy." He considered systematic deviations of this kind to be an instrument of natural selection, and “a fact of extreme biological importance.” However, Haldane, unlike Lysenko, did not consider these deviations to be a direct result of the influence of the external environment.
Notes
- http://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/bse/article/00043/92800.htm
- Graham L., 1993, Science in Russia and the Soviet Union, New York: Cambridge University Press
- Joravsky D., 1970, “The Lysenko affair”, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA
- Soyfer V.N., 2001. “The consequences of political dictatorship for Russian science,” Nature Reviews Genetics 2, 723-729
- Amasino R., 2004, “Vernalization, competence, and the epigenetic memory of winter,” The Plant Cell 16, 2553-2559
- Roll-Hansen N., 2005. “The Lysenko effect: The politics of science,” Humanity Books, Amherst, New York
- Roll-Hansen N., 2008. “Wishful science: The persistence of T.D. Lysenko’s agrobiology in the politics of science", OSIRIS 23, 166-188
- Yongsheng Liu “Lysenko’s Contributions to Biology and His Tragedies” // Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum 97 (2004), pp. 483-498.
- http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=9475 ]
- Lyubishchev A. A. About Lysenko’s Monopoly in Biology - M.: Monument to Historical Thought, 2006.
- Vasily Leonov “The Long Farewell to Lysenkoism”
- Great Soviet Encyclopedia
- T. D. Lysenko
Almost everyone has heard about living and dead water. No, not the one from fairy tales, but from our real life. Although it does not have fabulous properties, what it does have are enough for it to take root in every home.
How I experienced living and dead water myself
At the end of the last century (how does it sound, huh?) I made a device for obtaining living and dead water. Just out of curiosity, just in case. They said that the New Year tree stands on this water for a long time and does not fall off, and the wounds heal quickly, like in a fairy tale. Well, I decided to check it out. I made the device, but didn’t find a use for it then: it was far from the New Year, I was young and healthy, there was nothing to treat; and I forgot about him.
One day I had to go to a neighboring town in my Zhiguli. I arrived and the engine started to malfunction. I climbed under the hood to make repairs and severely burned my left palm in the area of the thumb. A large white blister immediately swelled at the site of the burn.
About an hour later I returned home and remembered about the device that produced wonderful water. Prepared it quickly. I generously smeared the blister and the area around it with fresh dead water. When the hand was dry, I did the same thing twice using living water.
After this procedure, I did something, and the burn simply fell out of my memory. Already in the evening I caught myself thinking that something unpleasant had happened during the day, but there was no discomfort. Then I remembered about the burn and looked at my hand. There was no blister! The skin returned to its place and only its slightly whitish color indicated the site of the burn. Nothing hurt.
How I use living and dead water
In addition to healing burns and wounds, I use dead water as an aftershave lotion. There are no irritations or unpleasant sensations, the skin subjectively becomes more velvety or something. And it also seems to me that the stubble is growing a little slower.
Dead water is still the first remedy for caries. If you rinse your mouth with this water after every meal, then you won’t have to spend money on the orbit that everyone is given. Fact.
I sometimes use living and dead water to wash my hair. Or rather for rinsing or rubbing. If itching appears and hair begins to fall out, I immediately prepare water. After washing, I rinse my hair with dead water. After 10-20 minutes, when the sediment has settled, I rinse it with live water. After drying, the hair becomes voluminous and it seems that there is twice as much hair.
I tried to drink this water. But I didn’t notice any effect. Apparently I haven’t acquired the corresponding diseases yet :) But the Internet is full of recipes for a lot of diseases. The field for experimentation is vast.
Already, taking into account the above, a device for preparing living and dead water, I believe, is worth having in every family. You can make the device yourself or buy it. This is not a problem now.
My friends experimented with plants. The experience is positive, but not interesting to me yet. You can find everything you want on the Internet.
In the magazine “Inventor and Innovator” (sorry, I don’t remember the year and issue) I read an article by one smart, judging by the text of the article, candidate of technical sciences from Moscow about a miraculous cure for prostatitis.
The candidate described the electrochemical processes occurring in the prostate during inflammation and the treatment procedure. He specially made a device for himself, calculated everything and was cured.
G.D. Lysenko is one of the first promoters of living and dead water
One of the first propagandists of the living and the dead is G.D. Lysenko from the city of Slonim, in Belarus. He wrote one pamphlet and two books on this topic. I know him personally, I even organized his meeting with residents of my city. At almost seventy then, he looked quite dashing and noticed every pretty young skirt.
His books contain a lot of things for a healthy lifestyle. I don’t entirely agree with some things, but everyone will find something according to their faith. Read his books if you can find them: “Wonderful Water” (1997) and “Saving Water” (2001).
Next time I will talk about the intricacies of making the device yourself. You don't have to read any further.
What happens to water during electrolysis?
In conclusion, a little science from the book by G.D. Lysenko "Wonderful Water":
“During the electrolytic decomposition of water, the release of hydrogen and oxygen, the pH of the solution changes: the catholyte becomes alkaline (pH reaches 10-11), and the anolyte is acidified (pH up to 3-4).
Alkaline catholyte actively absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and carbonizes - soluble carbonates (and biocarbonates) of sodium and potassium appear in it, as well as insoluble carbonates of potassium and magnesium. The physiological effect of carbonate-bicarbonate waters is well known: millions of people drink mineral water.
When receiving living and dead water, mineral salts undergo inevitable electrochemical transformations. Chlorine ions, discharging at the anode, form elemental chlorine. It is released in the form of a gas, and, evaporating from the solution, partially dissolves to form the so-called active chlorine - a strong oxidizing agent that exists in different forms: in the form of dissolved molecular chlorine, in the form of products of its hydrolysis, for example, hypochlorous acid or hypochlorites.
The oxidizing properties of active chlorine solutions are well known; they have long been widely used for disinfection. Under certain conditions, other oxidizing agents can also form at the anode - percarbonates, persulfates, etc. Their concentration is not high, but they also have a disinfecting effect.
At the cathode, along with the release of hydrogen, oxygen reduction occurs, albeit to an insignificant extent - the water is constantly in contact with air. As a result, hydrogen peroxide is formed, which can be easily detected, for example, by a characteristic reaction with titanyl sulfate.
The composition of living and dead water strongly depends on the initial composition of natural water and on the electrolysis conditions: electrode materials, current density, temperature, process duration, electrolyzer geometry, etc. Therefore, it is impossible to predict in advance what will happen in each specific case. But in most cases, it is possible to explain what determines the “miraculous” effect of living and dead water.
If acidic soil requires liming, and it is watered with dead water, this most likely will not benefit the crop. If a purulent wound is treated with dead water containing active chlorine, the pathogenic microbes will die and the wound will heal. If you drink a certain amount of alkaline-carbonate living water during heartburn, the heartburn will stop. In principle, the mechanism for curing gastric diseases becomes clear - changing the pH of the environment and actively influencing the microflora.”