Stalin’s War on Genetics

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 The History Channel, Original Podcast

spk_0 History this week, October 11th, 1955.

spk_0 I'm John Earl.

spk_0 The letter will remain a secret for decades, but behind the scenes in the Communist Party's

spk_0 Inter-Sanctum, it lands like a bomb.

spk_0 The Soviet Union's leading scientists have signed this letter, saying, essentially,

spk_0 you need to fire the country's most influential scientific thinker, a man named Trafim Lysenko.

spk_0 Lysenko was born a poor farm boy, and he'd risen through the ranks to dominate entire sectors

spk_0 of Soviet science. Within his domains, he determines which research gets funded, what's taught in

spk_0 schools, what the public believes, all of it, and he has some bold and unusual ideas.

spk_0 For example, he thinks that species of plants can instantaneously transform into other species,

spk_0 like wheat can become rye. And these scientists who write this letter are banding together to say,

spk_0 look, these ideas are ridiculous. They're holding our country back, and the West is laughing at us.

spk_0 Lysenko has got to go. They know that the new leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Krushchev,

spk_0 is open to reform. But, like Lysenko, Krushchev is a rags-to-riches story. He likes this farmboy

spk_0 turned scientist, and when he gets the letter, he's pissed. Don't touch my Lysenko, he warns,

spk_0 or heads will roll. Lysenko, this powerful scientist, keeps his job for now. But even though the

spk_0 letter-reading scientist have failed, the episode is a glimmer of hope. They've begun chipping away

spk_0 at Lysenko's power. Eventually, Lysenko will fall. Today, the Lysenko affair. How did a

spk_0 charlatan convince a superpower to renounce modern science? And what happened when pseudoscience

spk_0 became official government policy?

spk_0 Long before the scientist revolt, before anyone had ever heard of Traffin Lysenko, a man in his

spk_0 mid-30s stands in Abyssinia, today Ethiopia, admiring a wheatfield.

spk_0 Nikolai Vavlov is probably wearing a three-piece suit. If there's a breeze, it rustles his neatly

spk_0 groomed mustache. He's a world-famous scientist who speaks at least five languages fluently.

spk_0 On his travels, he's often taken for a Soviet spy. And he is here on a mission, but it's a scientific

spk_0 one. Vavlov wants to save millions of his fellow Russians from famine, and he thinks the key

spk_0 might be here in eastern Africa. The Russian Empire has historically struggled to feed its people.

spk_0 The biggest problem? The country's extreme climate.

spk_0 Almost half of the territory covers the so-called zone of uncertain agriculture.

spk_0 Nikolai Krimman-Solv is a historian of science at the University of Toronto and the author of

spk_0 Stalinist science. Half of that is permafrost, and you can't draw anything in permafrost.

spk_0 The other side is subject of continuous drought. It is simply not enough water.

spk_0 In Vavlov's lifetime alone, Russia has already suffered three major famines.

spk_0 Millions have died. Russian farms are the least productive in all of Europe.

spk_0 And Vavlov's theory is that they could have better results with better seeds.

spk_0 This expedition to Avisinia is just one of over a hundred that he'll undertake.

spk_0 In all, he'll visit five continents and 64 countries from Afghanistan to Brazil.

spk_0 He makes Indiana Jones look like a home body. Vavlov is looking for local varieties of wheat,

spk_0 barley, and other Russian staples. If he can find a variety that's, say,

spk_0 highly resistant to drought or colds, he can breed crops that can withstand Russia's climate.

spk_0 Finding the seeds to do all that would be amazing.

spk_0 We might be able to solve the most important problem, the yield, the amount of bread available

spk_0 to feed the Russian people.

spk_0 Vavlov's project hinges on an old idea that's just getting its scientific legs under it,

spk_0 that there's something in the seeds that pass its traits from one generation to the next.

spk_0 Scientists in the 1920s knew about genes, the fundamental units of heredity,

spk_0 and they suspected that the genes were stored in chromosomes. But they hadn't yet discovered

spk_0 the molecular structure that underpinned it all. DNA, the double helix, which left room for skeptics.

spk_0 It's time to meet Trafim Lysenko.

spk_0 Whereas Vavlov is the son of a wealthy Moscow merchant, a cosmopolitan elite type,

spk_0 Lysenko is a salt of the earth kid from Ukraine.

spk_0 Lysenko is a farm boy. He was born on the farm, grew up on the farm. He never learned

spk_0 any foreign languages. He only learned to read and write at the age of 13.

spk_0 Whereas Vavlov is a charmer, Lysenko can be a bit prickly.

spk_0 He was kind of dry, ascetic, not very friendly.

spk_0 Even their appearance is a study in opposites. Vavlov has a friendly professor vibe.

spk_0 Lysenko looks like a Ukrainian Daniel Craig, piercing eyes, sharp jawline, perfectly combed dark hair.

spk_0 At the time that Vavlov is standing in that wheat field in Abyssinia,

spk_0 Lysenko is a junior agronomist that's an agricultural scientist. He's at a backwater research station,

spk_0 one of dozens across the country that Vavlov oversees. This one is about a thousand

spk_0 miles south of Moscow in Soviet Azerbaijan. He is a rank and file breeder assigned to study

spk_0 the methods of sewing and growing bean plants.

spk_0 Lysenko is diligent, and it's here in Azerbaijan that he begins to develop his signature idea.

spk_0 It starts with an observation. Certain plants require exposure to cold to stimulate their

spk_0 development. And Lysenko thinks if cold temperatures can make plants grow faster,

spk_0 why can't we use it to grow more food? Maybe it's a better way to feed Russia

spk_0 than Vavlov's gene-based plant breeding, which takes years to produce results.

spk_0 Lysenko's belief that cold treatment can boost crop yields is cemented by an experiment that

spk_0 supposedly takes place on the family farm back in Ukraine. His father takes two sex of grain,

spk_0 puts them in the snow all winter, and then plants them in the spring.

spk_0 And in the summer, the grain grows tremendously. He picks up a bunch of wheat plants and shows it

spk_0 to people there saying, look, this is what we can do.

spk_0 The Communist Party newspaper Provda eats up the story. They love tales of ingenious peasants

spk_0 solving problems the eggheads like Vavlov can't. A glowing op-ed hails the folksy experiment as a

spk_0 triumph. This tremendous discovery made by this unknown man called Trafim Lysenko promises to solve

spk_0 all our agricultural problems once and for all. Lysenko starts gaining a reputation in the popular

spk_0 media as an agricultural wizard. They call him the barefoot professor, but mainstream scientists

spk_0 are rolling their eyes. They're like, this guy doesn't even have an advanced degree. He has one

spk_0 so-so scientific paper to his name, and the cold treatment stuff exaggerated at best.

spk_0 But there's one important scientist who gives Lysenko a chance.

spk_0 Vavlov was very open-minded, and he believed that all sides should be listened to.

spk_0 William D. Young Lambert is a historian of science at Bronx Community College CUNY,

spk_0 and the author of a book about Lysenko. He told us that Vavlov wasn't the kind of scientist who

spk_0 thought he alone had all the answers. He believes in hearing people who disagree with him,

spk_0 and he believes in fostering young researchers like Lysenko.

spk_0 The irony here is that Vavlov is the one who in many ways is most responsible for promoting

spk_0 Lysenko and really helping him. Vavlov hears about Lysenko's work in Azerbaijan, and thinks

spk_0 not bad. So he invites Lysenko to present at a big agricultural conference in Leningrad in 1929.

spk_0 There are more than a thousand people there. A granniness, schmoozing with party leaders,

spk_0 everyone is talking about how science can boost Soviet agriculture. It's a major turning point for

spk_0 Lysenko, and not in a good way. He gets pushback, gets sort of demolished by the real experts,

spk_0 guys with fancy degrees and bourgeois manners. They say,

spk_0 Trifim, cute paper, but you didn't discover anything with your theories about the cold.

spk_0 We knew all this. Lysenko is crushed, and his response is to reject the scientists right back.

spk_0 This is the moment when he basically stops trying to be a scientist, stops conducting rigorous

spk_0 experiments, stops submitting articles for pure review, but he does spot a different way to climb

spk_0 the social ladder. Lysenko realizes that under the tightening grip of Joseph Stalin,

spk_0 the Soviet Union is changing. Stalin is pushing to replace the old intellectual class with new

spk_0 specialists from humble backgrounds. Barefoot professors are in, and bourgeois experts are out.

spk_0 Now, the party looks at specialists whom they entrusted with suspicion, and that suspicion could

spk_0 result in firing squads. Literal firing squads. The year before Stalin orchestrates a big public

spk_0 show trial. He's trying to industrialize the country, which is hard, and when things go wrong,

spk_0 he finds someone to blame. In this case, executives and engineers add a mine in southern Russia.

spk_0 They're accused of sabotaging their own mine, and Stalin pronounces them guilty before the trial

spk_0 even begins. Lysenko sees which way the wind is blowing, and he sees that he can benefit.

spk_0 His peasant background makes him perfectly situated to rise to power now, not based on his

spk_0 scientific discoveries, but based on his political and media skills. And he decides that's exactly

spk_0 what he's going to do. It turns out he has a genius for climbing the Stalinist ladder.

spk_0 Here are three plays from his playbook. Play number one, become a pundit. Rather than trying to publish

spk_0 and serious academic journals, Lysenko realizes that he can promote his ideas much more effectively

spk_0 in the popular media. So he becomes a science pundit. He launches his own journal,

spk_0 no peer review, which becomes a bullhorn for spreading his ideas. He publishes continuously

spk_0 on every single agricultural question he can imagine, and creates this kind of impression

spk_0 that fees, indeed, an expert on nearly all of the agricultural questions. And not just agriculture.

spk_0 Lysenko also pontificates on this wonky yet very important question of how heritable traits

spk_0 are acquired and passed down.

spk_0 Nikolai Vavlov and his fellow geneticists believe, like scientists already did around the world,

spk_0 that traits are passed from one generation to the next in these stable units called

spk_0 genes. But Lysenko is pushing a very different theory. He thinks the characteristics that an

spk_0 organism develops during its lifetime can be passed on to its offspring, environment and experience

spk_0 shape us for generations. So for example, giraffes develop a long neck not because of natural

spk_0 selection, but because they stretch their neck out a lot. And then they pass that long neck

spk_0 onto their offspring. But the fact is giraffes have long necks because it's encoded in their genes.

spk_0 This was the scientific consensus in 1930, and it's still the consensus today. But Lysenko is

spk_0 spreading his ideas in the popular media, and he's also doing something else.

spk_0 Here's play number two from Lysenko's playbook.

spk_0 Promise quick and easy solutions to complex problems. Lysenko knows people want bold proposals

spk_0 they can understand, not scientific mumbo jumbo. And he has a bold proposal. Remember the seeds

spk_0 in the snow? He's coined a term for that technique. Vernalization. He basically promises that he can

spk_0 use it to dramatically increase yield for pretty much everything. From potatoes to cotton to fruit trees.

spk_0 Vernalization is proven, he says, ready to save the Russian people. The days of famine will be over.

spk_0 It's a noble goal. But some of the solutions he's pushing are really out there. Here's William D. Young

spk_0 Lambert. Theories like you're the mentor method whereby if you graft a cutting from one plant onto

spk_0 another, the characteristics will be transmitted. But the thing is that the cutting has to be from

spk_0 an older plant. You see so that the older plant is mentoring the younger plant to teach it to grow or

spk_0 develop in a certain way. Plants teaching other plants to grow, it doesn't totally work, which

spk_0 could of course be a problem. If you say, I'll solve your problems and your promise does not realize

spk_0 how do you explain to your patrons the reasons for your failure? Lysenko has an answer.

spk_0 As in any other bureaucratic system, you shift blame. You say, you know, we did everything we could,

spk_0 but the enemies undermined our work. They impede our efforts. They propagate wrong ideas, wrong

spk_0 techniques, and thus we cannot fulfill our promises. This is play number three. If your proposals fail,

spk_0 blame somebody else and then just make more proposals. When vernalization doesn't increase yields

spk_0 like Lysenko promises, he says, you're doing it wrong or it's sabotage, then he moves on to

spk_0 another bold proposal and another and another. Lysenko plays the Stalinist game like a pro and it pays off.

spk_0 In 1935, he's invited to the Kremlin to speak at a big agricultural conference and it becomes a sort

spk_0 of coronation. This is the pyrrhicle of the first stage of his career because who is present is the

spk_0 great teacher himself, Yoroslav Pysyryanovich Stalin. With Stalin watching, Lysenko lectures about

spk_0 vernalization, urging more farms to adopt the technique and he is mesmerizing. Listen for yourself.

spk_0 You don't have to understand Russian to imagine the magical effect he had on listeners.

spk_0 But part way through, his speech takes a dark turn. Comrades, Lysenko says,

spk_0 there are dangerous enemies in the sciences. They have attacked a vernalization,

spk_0 but their real goal is to sabotage Soviet agriculture. Stalin jumps to his feet, clapping and shouting.

spk_0 Stalin's endorsement places Lysenko above all other scientists.

spk_0 Prove to runs a front page photo of Lysenko mid-speech, angular face,

spk_0 parted hair, hand raised to emphasize a key point. Behind him, separated by a raised day is stamped

spk_0 with the hammered sickle, stands Stalin in his grey tunic. The faintest hint of a smile on his face.

spk_0 In the audience that day, but not in the picture, is the country's top agricultural scientist,

spk_0 Nikolai Vavlov. Stalin had charged Vavlov with boosting grain production,

spk_0 but he's been struggling. The timelines are insanely aggressive, and Vavlov has fallen behind.

spk_0 Plant breeding takes years. After Lysenko's speech, Nikolai Vavlov is fired.

spk_0 And then, his colleagues begin to disappear.

spk_0 1937-1938 is the height of Stalin's great terror, a massive campaign of political repression

spk_0 that cuts across Soviet society. Millions are arrested and either executed or sent to brutal

spk_0 forced labor camps where many later die. The purges gut the military and the party,

spk_0 but they also devastate the intelligentsia, writers, experts, and scientists.

spk_0 The terror was aimed at eliminating Stalin's opponents, mostly imaginary, but it also functioned

spk_0 to justify the regime's economic failures. Somebody had to take the fall for all the wild promises

spk_0 that didn't pan out. And so, on August 6, 1940, the secret police come for Vavlov.

spk_0 He's on an expedition, looking for seeds in southwestern Ukraine. Stalin's agents

spk_0 bundle him into the back of a car and drive away.

spk_0 He's just disappears, and when you eat the correspondence of people writing about it in the

spk_0 less, then no one knows what's happened. We can't get anywhere what happened to Vavlov.

spk_0 But there is another scientist who's in the know. The man who has taken Vavlov's place

spk_0 as head of the agricultural academy. He's not in Leningrad, Lysenko tells a colleague,

spk_0 obviously gloating. He's under arrest.

spk_0 What's up guys? It's Candice Dillard Bassett, former real housewife of Potomac.

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spk_0 The interrogations are carried out deep inside Moscow's Lubyanka prison.

spk_0 Nikolay Vavlov is accused of plotting against the Soviet Union. He refuses to confess,

spk_0 which is the surest way to get a death sentence.

spk_0 The exact details of the interrogations are unknown, but they begin in the early morning

spk_0 and last for 10, 12, 13 hours at a time. Stalin's secret police were known to employ various

spk_0 tortures, from beatings to sleep deprivation to more elaborate methods.

spk_0 For especially resistant prisoners, interrogators would produce a stranger who they threatened to kill

spk_0 unless the prisoner confessed. The torments are unbearable, and eventually, Vavlov breaks.

spk_0 The man who devoted his life to feeding Russia and building Soviet agricultural science

spk_0 now confesses to plotting against it.

spk_0 His trial lasts five minutes. He sentenced to death, later commuted to 20 years in a labor camp.

spk_0 In the Bitterest of Ironies, Vavlov dies in prison in 1943 of starvation.

spk_0 Trafim Lassenko, meanwhile, has been enjoying a privileged life.

spk_0 As the country's top agricultural scientist, he has sweeping power over where research

spk_0 rubles go and how crops are grown. He's also tightened his grip over biology, attacking the

spk_0 science of genetics from the inside. But his power isn't absolute.

spk_0 Some criticism is still permitted, especially in scientific circles, and genetics is still taught in

spk_0 schools. By the late 1940s, Lassenko's old playbook isn't working like it used to. His attempts

spk_0 to feed the country are falling flat. The Soviet Union suffers yet another devastating famine,

spk_0 from 1946 to 1947. But Lassenko doesn't lose his job.

spk_0 If you look at the arc of Lassenko's career, I mean it's never tied to this

spk_0 disassessor failure of anything he's doing. Lassenko's career is tied to politics, not to science.

spk_0 It's not as though he's successful because he achieved something great in science,

spk_0 at all. It's about whoever's supporting him politically.

spk_0 And luckily for Lassenko, he still has the support of the only person who really matters.

spk_0 Stalin doesn't just stick with Lassenko. He doubles down. Why? Because not too long ago in Russia,

spk_0 a peasant could never rise to prominence. Stalin himself grew up in poverty. But now in the USSR,

spk_0 the peasants, the working people, they are in charge. At least that's the idea. You could go from

spk_0 a wheat field in Ukraine to the Kremlin. And that gets at the core of Lassenko's science. He says,

spk_0 quote, human organisms are born. But people are created. Stalin wants to create new Russians for a

spk_0 new Russia. And Lassenko is saying, yes, this is possible. Just like those giraffes with their

spk_0 long necks, people can be transformed. So when Lassenko needs a political shot in the arm,

spk_0 Stalin comes through in a big way. He orchestrates yet another big scientific conference to shore up

spk_0 Lassenko and Lassenkoism by putting genetics itself on trial. This session is like a show trial

spk_0 of genetics. So you've got 700 people there is being heavily reported on him and probed up,

spk_0 which will really send the message to the average Soviet citizen that this is a very, very big deal.

spk_0 The 1948 session of the Agricultural Academy is all about pitting Soviet science against western

spk_0 science. The Cold War is just getting underway, dividing the world into competing economic systems,

spk_0 competing militaries, and now competing sciences. Stalin wants to argue that Soviet biology is

spk_0 different from and superior to western biology. And part of that comes down to condemning this

spk_0 fancy new genetic stuff and saying, Lassenko has it right. One geneticist, he actually manages to

spk_0 sneak into the meeting and just says, well, you know, but can't we have both sides? Does genetics

spk_0 have to be all bad? Can't we just be critical of it? But not completely toss it out? And the answer

spk_0 is absolutely not. At this conference, Lassenko proclaims genetics a pseudo biology. The future,

spk_0 he says, lies with his version of biology. Lassenko is getting most of the floor and he's speaking.

spk_0 And then it's like on the third or the fourth day or something, geneticist Zavodowski. He just

spk_0 asks openly at the session, what is the position of the Central Committee? The Central Committee of

spk_0 the Communist Party. Everyone knows that what they say goes. And it's here that Lassenko reads

spk_0 allowed the words that echo in Soviet science for decades. The Central Committee has examined my

spk_0 report and approved it. And that's like the, you know, the 10 words that shook the world right there.

spk_0 That's when Lassenko has declared victory. The official transcript describes what happens next.

spk_0 Stormy applause, turning into innovation, all rise. The message is clear. Lassenkoism has become

spk_0 official state ideology. Genetics is now effectively banned. Resist at your own risk.

spk_0 After this 1948 conference, the chips fall swiftly. You see sweeping firings taking place across

spk_0 the universities and the various academies. All of his enemies are being purged and all his allies

spk_0 are taking over and the curriculum is being revised and so forth. This big campaign takes place.

spk_0 The entire scientific establishment gets the message from the provincial school teacher

spk_0 to the head of the Academy of Sciences. Incidentally, he has a name you might recognize.

spk_0 Vavlov. Sergei Vavlov is a renowned physicist and Nikolai's brother. He's forced to publicly admit

spk_0 that Lassenko's doctrines are scientifically correct and pledge to eliminate quote reactionary

spk_0 idealistic biology. But in his diary, he shares his true feelings. Quote, everything is so sad and shameful.

spk_0 This is also the moment in the story when the worst charlatans and cranks are unleashed upon

spk_0 the Soviet public. It's like that scene in Ghostbusters when the ghosts get loose and terrorize New York

spk_0 City. Charlatans are always around. They're usually what is called harmless cranks. They can produce

spk_0 whatever theories or made experiments. It doesn't need much. It's a kind of normal

spk_0 fringe of scientific activities. What changes is when this cranks get access to power.

spk_0 One of the most notorious is a cell biologist named Olga Lipishinskaya. She's almost 80 by this time.

spk_0 Plump, white hair, round glasses, a babushka of a scientist with some really out there ideas.

spk_0 She claimed to have created cells from bits of straw and egg yolk. I mean literally like, you know,

spk_0 the spontaneous creation of life. She was her own movement and she just kind of gets them

spk_0 brought along with the kind of castor characters who end up becoming promoted around Lassenko.

spk_0 Say you're an average Soviet citizen living in this new pseudo-scientific reality. You pick up a

spk_0 copy of Profta on your way to work. You read all about Lipishinskaya's work covered in total

spk_0 seriousness. And you're like, okay, straw plus egg yolk equals life. Got it? Meanwhile,

spk_0 your kids are learning all the same stuff in school. In fact, where Lassenko left his deepest

spk_0 mark was on Soviet education. He blocked any attempts to introduce more in genetics not to mention

spk_0 molecular biology into textbooks, either for high schools or universities, medical schools

spk_0 or agricultural schools. Meaning that a generation of Soviet students learn a distorted version of

spk_0 here's what a textbook from this period would have contained. I'll just these big prop again the

spk_0 sloganering kind of things and collectivization of agriculture has increased shields by this

spk_0 percent, but they're not learning about chromosomes and genes and crossing over in the basics

spk_0 of biological science. I mean, that's what biology is by the time we get to the 1950s. It's genetics.

spk_0 Perhaps the biggest tragedy of Lassenkoism is all the brilliant biologists who never were.

spk_0 The discoveries that never happened. Think of the thousands, tens of thousands of students

spk_0 who would have studied, say genetics who would have been studying contemporary biological science.

spk_0 You just don't because it doesn't exist. This is taking place at exactly the moment when

spk_0 molecular biology really takes off in the West. In 1953 Watson, Crick and Franklin discover the

spk_0 molecular structure of DNA, the double helix. The debate about heredity is now so over it's

spk_0 beyond a doubt. Traits are encoded in DNA end of story. But Lassenko doesn't budge. He'll continue

spk_0 to say that DNA contains no hereditary material for the rest of his life.

spk_0 Genetics research does continue in secret pockets within the Soviet science system, especially the

spk_0 military where national security trumps ideology. And the reason those people become really concerned

spk_0 is because of the genetic damage that radiation can do. You know, now we're in an era of atomic testing.

spk_0 Frustration among scientists, real scientists begins to simmer. They want to return to a world

spk_0 based on rationality and research. And then one man's heart stops. And the revolt begins.

spk_0 On March 5th, 1953, Joseph Stalin dies after a quarter century in power.

spk_0 Nikita Khrushchev becomes the new leader of the Soviet Union, ushering in a period known as the

spk_0 Thaw. The country loosens up a bit. The gulags start emptying out. And for the first time in almost

spk_0 a decade, Lassenko's critics see an opportunity. In October 1955, some scientists write a letter

spk_0 outlining Lassenko's errors and all the damage he's done. They're careful not to blame the state

spk_0 or the party. Instead, they say that Lassenko has deceived everybody. The author's also known,

spk_0 in essence, the West is laughing at us, which is true. Lassenko was a major source of anti-Soviet

spk_0 propaganda. Like, only a terrible system could promote this guy. The scientists send a letter to

spk_0 the party's top leadership, demanding that Lassenko be ousted. But Khrushchev, a farm boy himself,

spk_0 and a former close advisor to Stalin, he rejects the letter outright and sticks by Lassenko.

spk_0 A decision that will cost him dearly. And sure enough, in 1964, Khrushchev is ousted by party

spk_0 insiders. They cite, among other things, his unrealistic agricultural schemes.

spk_0 Khrushchev's support of Lassenko was one of the major reasons why he ended up being removed from

spk_0 power by the Politburo, supposedly, was because he had actually continued to support this person

spk_0 who by now, more and more, were realizing was actually someone who really was not doing the Soviet

spk_0 Union any favors whatsoever. The year is 1965. Khrushchev has been replaced by Leonid Brezhnev.

spk_0 For the first time in decades, Lassenko is without a political patron. The force field that

spk_0 protected him all those years suddenly vanishes. And there's an investigation into the experiments he's

spk_0 been doing at his dairy farm outside Moscow. Of course, what he's been doing all along, he finally

spk_0 gets caught and called out for, which is, you know, faking data and none of the experiments are

spk_0 turning out to be producing any kind of results. So that's really kind of like when they yank the

spk_0 platform out from under him. It has become impossible to ignore the gap between Western and Soviet

spk_0 biology. Lassenko is now a liability. After 30 years at the bully pulpit, he's finally ousted from

spk_0 his official posts. The era of Lassenkoism is over. Lassenko does retain his prestigious

spk_0 membership to the Academy of Sciences and the perks, a good salary, an office, and other privileges.

spk_0 But he's shunned by other scientists.

spk_0 It's 1971. Historian Lauren Graham is doing research in the Soviet Union. He's been tried to

spk_0 interview Lassenko for years. No luck. And then one day, Graham is grabbing lunch at the House of

spk_0 Scientists when he spots an old man sitting alone and he realizes it's Lassenko. He's ostracized.

spk_0 You know, and that's why he's, you know, eating alone in the famous scene when Lauren Graham approaches

spk_0 him. You know, he's fallen from grace. It's like any former celebrity, I suppose, just quietly ignored.

spk_0 Graham, the historian, orders a bowl of borscht, sits next to Lassenko, says, hi, I'm so-and-so.

spk_0 Lassenko says, I know who you are. You've made serious mistakes in describing me in my work.

spk_0 What mistakes, Graham asks? I had nothing to do with Nikolai Vavlov's death. Lassenko says,

spk_0 now Graham knows this isn't true. Lassenko called Vavlov a traitor in Stalin's presence.

spk_0 So he presses him. He's like, you knew Vavlov devoted his life to feeding Russia. And yet,

spk_0 you've denounced him and let the police do the rest.

spk_0 Lassenko suddenly gets up and walks away and Graham thinks he's blown the whole interview.

spk_0 But then, after a few minutes, Lassenko comes back. You are mistaken in your understanding of

spk_0 what he says. You think that I am a part of the Soviet oppressive system, but I have always been

spk_0 an outsider. I came from a simple peasant family. Vavlov came from a wealthy family. I had to fight

spk_0 to be recognized. And once again, I am now an outsider. Why do you think I was sitting alone?

spk_0 And Lassenko compared himself to Soviet Jews who had been persecuted, he identified with them,

spk_0 seeing himself as a victim. Though he had reached the heights of Soviet society,

spk_0 Lassenko was still the same farm boy, grinding the same acts, even after shaping Soviet science

spk_0 for a generation. Science is a very powerful, frightening force. Yet, simple questions of who control

spk_0 that great power, which science is capable of unleashing, still with us.

spk_0 This problem is still with us because science is powerful, but it's also vulnerable to being

spk_0 misunderstood by ordinary people and misrepresented by ideologues like Lassenko.

spk_0 And that creates a dangerous situation, because it's easier than you think to convince an entire

spk_0 country that life can come from some egg yolk and a bit of straw.

spk_0 Thanks for listening to History This Week, a Backpocket Studios production and partnership with

spk_0 the History Channel. To stay updated on all things History This Week, sign up at historythisweek.com.

spk_0 And if you have any questions or thoughts, send us an email at historythisweekathistory.com.

spk_0 Special thanks to our guests, William D. Young Lambert, author of the Cold War Politics of Genetic

spk_0 Research, an introduction to the Lassenko affair, and Nikolai Kremensolv, author of Stalinist

spk_0 We also use the books Lassenko's Ghost, Epigenetics in Russia by Lauren Graham,

spk_0 The Forbidden Garden by Simon Parkin, Lassenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science by Valery Soifer,

spk_0 and other sources. This episode was produced by me, John Earl, and Sound Design by Ben Dixstein.

spk_0 It was also produced by Sally Helm. For Backpocket Studios, our Executive Producer is Ben Dixstein.

spk_0 From the History Channel, our Executive Producer is our Eli Lair and Lib Fiddler.

spk_0 Don't forget to follow, rate, and review History This Week wherever you get your podcasts.

spk_0 And we'll see you next week.

Stalin’s War on Genetics

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