This View of Life 
A Most Chilling Statement 
A Russian scientist's name has been rehabilitated, 
and his ideas are resurfacing, too 
by Stephen Jay Gould 
In 1936, Trofim D. Lysenko, strug- 
gling to reform Russian agricultural 
science on discredited Lamarckian 
principles, wrote: “I am not fond of 
controversy in matters concerning the- 
ory. I am an ardent controversialist 
only when 1 see that in order to carry 
out certain practical tasks I must re- 
move the obstacles that stand in the 
way of my scientific activities.” 
As his practical task, Lysenko set 
out to “alter the nature of plants in 
the direction we desire by suitable 
training.” He argued that previous 
failure to produce rapid and heritable 
improvements in important crop 
plants must be laid to the bankrupt 
ideology of bourgeois science, with its 
emphasis on sterile academic theory 
and its belief in Mendelian genes, 
which do not respond directly to the 
prodding of breeders but change only 
by accidental and random mutation. 
The criterion of a more adequate sci- 
ence must be success in improved 
breeding. 
“The better we understand the laws 
of development of plant and animal 
forms,” he wrote, “the more easily 
and quickly will we be able to create 
the forms we need in accordance with 
our wishes and plans.” What “laws 
of development” could be more prom- 
ising than the Lamarckian claim that 
altered environments can directly in- 
duce heritable changes in desired di- 
rections? If only Nature worked this 
way! But she does not, and all Ly- 
senko’s falsified data and vicious po- 
lemics budged her not one inch. 
If Lysenko’s “obstacles” had been 
disembodied ideas alone, the history 
of Russian genetics might have been 
spared some of its particular tragedy. 
But ideas emanate from people, and 
the obstacles designated for removal 
were necessarily human. Nikolai Ivan- 
ovich Vavilov, Russia’s leading Men- 
delian geneticist and director of the 
All-Union Lenin Academy of Agri- 
cultural Sciences centered in Len- 
ingrad, served as a focal point for 
Lysenko’s attacks in 1936. Lysenko 
castigated Vavilov for his general 
Mendelian views, but any geneticist 
might have served equally well for 
such generalized target practice. Ly- 
senko singled out Vavilov for a more 
specific and personal theory (and the 
subject of this column) — the so-called 
law of homologous series in variation. 
Twelve years later, following the dev- 
astation of war, Lysenko had tri- 
umphed. His infamous address, “The 
Situation in Biological Science,” read 
at the 1948 session of the Lenin Acad- 
emy of Agricultural Sciences, contains 
as the first statement of its summary 
what may well be the most chilling 
passage in all the literature of twen- 
tieth-century science. 
The question is asked in one of the notes 
handed to me, “What is the attitude of 
the Central Committee of the Party to 
my report?” I answer: The Central Com- 
mittee of the Party has examined my re- 
port and approved it [ Stormy applause. 
Chat ion. All rise]. 
Following another ten pages of rhet- 
oric and invective, Lysenko con- 
cludes: “Glory to the great friend and 
protagonist of science, our leader and 
teacher, Comrade Stalin! [All rise. 
Prolonged applause.]" 
Nikolai Vavilov was unable to at- 
tend the 1948 meeting. He had been 
arrested in August 1940 while on a 
collecting expedition in the Ukraine. 
In July 1941, he was sentenced to 
death for agricultural sabotage, spying 
for England, maintaining links with 
emigres, and belonging to a rightist 
organization. The sentence was com- 
muted to ten years imprisonment, and 
Vavilov was moved to the inner prison 
of the NKVD in Moscow. In October, 
he was evacuated to the Saratov prison 
where he spent several months in an 
underground death cell, suffering 
from malnutrition. He died, still a pris- 
oner, in January 1943. 
What is Vavilov’s “law of homolo- 
gous series in variation,” and how did 
it provide Lysenko with rhetorical lev- 
erage? Vavilov published this law, the 
guiding principle for much of his prac- 
tical work in agricultural genetics, in 
1920 and revised it in 1935. It was 
printed in English in the prestigious 
Journal of Genetics in 1922 (vol. 12, 
pp. 48-89). 
Vavilov was perhaps the world’s 
leading expert on the biogeography 
of wheat and other cereals. He trav- 
eled throughout the world (thereby 
leaving himself vulnerable to trumped- 
up charges of espionage), collecting 
varieties of plants from their natural 
habitats and establishing the world’s 
largest “bank” of genetic variation 
within major agricultural species. As 
he collected natural races of wheat, 
barley, oats, and millet over a large 
range of environments and places, he 
noticed that strikingly similar series 
of varieties could be found within the 
different species of a genus and often 
within species of related genera as 
well. 
He collected, for example, a large 
number of geographical races within 
the species of common wheat, Tri- 
ticum vulgare. These varied in com- 
plex sets of traits, including color of 
the ears and seeds, form of the ears 
(bearded or beardless, smooth or 
hairy), and season of maturation. Vav- 
ilov was then surprised and delighted 
to find virtually the same combina- 
tions of characters in varieties of two 
closely related species, T. compactum 
and T. spelta. 
He then studied rye ( Secale ce- 
reale), a species in a genus closely 
related to wheat but previously re- 
garded as much more limited in its 
geographical variation. Yet, as Vavi- 
lov and his assistants collected rye 
throughout European and Asiatic Rus- 
sia, Iran, and Afghanistan, he found 
not only that its differentiation 
matched wheat in extent but also that 
its races displayed the same sets of 
characters, with the same variations 
in color, form, and timing of growth. 
The similarities in series of races 
were so precise and complete between 
related species that Vavilov felt he 
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