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Frontispiece (wood cut portrait of the author) and title page of 

 Lysenko's Theoretical Bases of Vernalization (1935), see pp. 5-8. 



Lysenko, whose name is identified so closely with the early practice of 

 vernalization, "is an excellent prophet," writes Ashby in his recent 'Scientist in 

 Russia' : "He is full of the unquenchable optimism, the impatience with inactivity, 

 the scorn of the word 'impossible,' which Russia must have to complete her 

 social experiment. He is a peasant who understands peasants. He is a shrewd 

 and clever practical agriculturist . . . When potato yields were too low in the 

 Ukraine, he suggested that tubers should be sown in summer instead of spring. 

 . . When he saw the thin layers of snow being driven by winds off the fields in 

 Siberia, he shocked convention by announcing that wheat should be sown in 

 stubble. Again it worked. When the much-advertised pre-treatment of grain 

 by low temperatures . . . proved a great failure, Lysenko cleverly substituted 

 another pre-treatment which is virtually a germination test, but which appeared 

 under his name in the decrees for the Spring sowing in 1945 and 1946. He is 

 the peasants' demagogue. What he says to them, goes. And he epitomises 

 dialectical materialism in action; he provides the practical philosophy for the 

 collective farm. If the Bolsheviks had not believed that man can remake his 

 crops, his beasts, and even himself, they would not be where they are today. 

 The missionaries of this faith have to be less sophisticated than the average 

 polished and well-educated Academician. That, in my opinion, is one reason 

 why Lysenko and his school are quietly tolerated." 



