Lysenkoites, Physicists, and Scientific Cultures: Approaching the Politics of
Stalinist Science

The historiographical debate surrounding the nature of Stalinist science is a crucial one for historians of the Soviet period. The central subject there – the role that politics played in science – remains pertinent today for policy makers and is equally important for historians of science. However, if the long-standing historiographical paradigm of “politicized science” is still on the agenda, the angle the old problems approached may be viewed as a different one, with a new hypothetical question at stake: why did such different outcomes occur from a similar set of political relationships with science? In my review, I would like to address this question and examine two recent English language histories that focus on the historiographical background and particularly on what may be called the institutional approach toward the subject. In addition, I will briefly remark on the methodological need for more research on the impact of Soviet science policy in the institutes away from Moscow, the center of political control.
In my view, two key examples provide a useful way to frame the current debate. First, the case of Lysenko, a plant breeder seeming to exemplify the worst excesses of politicized pseudo-science during the Soviet regime. Second, post-WWII physics, especially nuclear physics, as an example of the successes of Soviet science in its attempts to “catch up and overtake” the West. Of course, such a double focus does not presuppose overstating the homogeneity between these cases and downplaying the crucial differences in the mode of scientific operation and, consequently, the degree of ideological infiltration in both disciplines.

HISTORIOGRAPHY: POLITICS AND SCIENCE

It is only recently that critical histories of Stalinist science have begun to appear, displacing and critiquing prior works that were largely informed by Cold War discourses. These texts either glorified “material progress” during this period or attacked the illiberalism of Stalinist science. Now we have a number of new academic works that discuss critically the mechanisms by which science and politics were so closely entwined. For instance, Nikolai Krementsov explained how science played a subservient role to politics in delivering material improvement. The move toward materialist science (against western bourgeois science) that is depicted in his work was apparently premised on a famous quote from Marx that disparaged impractical philosophical enquiry: “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” The result was the creation of a new “communist science.”^[1] Krementsov argued that by the 1930s all forms of scientific endeavor had been “Bolshevized.” This included the adoption of some elements of the party etiquette in the scholarly milieu, such as public repentance and self-criticism, constant reference to Marxist ideology in scientific papers, and denouncements of “wreckers” and those colleagues who dared to deviate from the party line.^[2] Helena Sheehan emphasized that the aversion to “Bourgeois” science was so strong that many scientific publications attributed every important discovery to Soviet scientists at the time, as ridiculous as these official statements might be: “the formula E=MC2 [was] attributed to Lebyedyev and S. I. Vavilov… [in an] article on space and time, Einstein was not mentioned, but instead Butlerov and Fyodorov.”^[3]
Yet more recent histories have stressed how the process of imbuing science with political ideology also went both ways, with party members and high ranking politicians seeking academic recognition (often on spurious grounds) of their contributions to academic research. Honorary degrees, questionable doctorates, and membership in the Academy of Sciences were all used by politicians to enhance their prestige and gain legitimacy for their policies during the Soviet period.^[4] Likewise, scientists themselves became active political players, tailoring their research and findings into ideologically acceptable terms, yet retaining their creditability as scientists – a process mediated through the Academy of Sciences.^[5] On a broader level, Vera Tolz has presented a series of cases on how academics were able to effectively combine their professional work with the political situation at the time.^[6] Likewise Kristie Macrakis and Dieter Hoffman have showed the example of East Germany under socialism, where socialist science was set against the backdrop of Nazi political influence and the perversion of science.^[7] Indeed, this is one of the real achievements in research in recent years, with new archival materials enabling historians to consider differences in scientific cultures (first of all, in the professional ethos of scientific communities) and examine the relationship between science and politics as a complex bi-directional process rather than a simple case of the subordination of science to politics.^[8]
Likewise the institutionalist histories that have emerged from the likes of Krementsov (1997) and Kojevnikov (1998) have provided more detail of how Soviet science functioned within a bureaucratic and political/organizational framework. This has served to enhance our understanding of how science and politics interacted at the personal and ideological levels. This approach has been strengthened by a broader analysis of cases of Soviet science in action.^[9] Whereas Western histories once focused primarily upon the Lysenko case, which stressed the triumph of pseudo-science under a dictatorial regime, we now have many more examples of more normal science – as well as opportunities for reinterpretations of the Lysenko case.^[10] Yet many old historiographical assertions have survived, like Birstein’s claim that Lysenko was the norm for Soviet science.^[11] While Loren Graham (in his later works) moved away from such a simple classification of Lysenkoism, he failed to adequately explain why there were such divergent outcomes from Stalinist Science.^[12] To engage in this debate, however, it is necessary to understand why disciplines took such divergent developmental paths and to which extent ideological infiltration was the primary cause. This means that one must analyze the different scientific cultures at work within disciplines. Likewise, having established that the relationships between science and politics were complex and involved institutional factors, there is a need for greater knowledge about the limitations placed upon these relationships and theories to explain why some scientists were better able to exploit these connections than others. The two primary case studies below focus on the most recent additions to the literature, and assess how well they confront these, and other, historiographical questions.

THE LYSENKO DEBATE

It has often been argued that the outcome of the politicized “communist science” discussed above was the creation of ideologically based pseudo-science. During the Cold War, the Lysenko case provided valuable propaganda material for those wishing to discredit Soviet science in general. It was certainly a blunder, a fact acknowledged by all the contributors to the debate, yet its usefulness as an example is worth considering. Some authors have seized upon Lysenkoism as evidence of the inherent flaws of Soviet science, taking it as an illustrative example for the whole of Soviet science.^[13] Others, such as Loren Graham, posited that “Lysenkoism was only the most extreme of many manifestations of philosophical dogmatism and political oppression under Stalin.”^[14] As is well known, Trofim D. Lysenko, a man of peasant roots from the Ukrainian province of Poltava, with little scientific training, was able to gain official state support, and made Mendelian genetics illegal and banned experimental biology between 1948 and 1964. By promoting the vernalization of seed (itself a useful technique), Lysenko established a school that saw (through the prism of Soviet ideology) a victory of “faith in the environment as opposed to heredity.”^[15] This concept aligned with the Soviet slogan claiming that human beings (and ultimately all of nature) could be shaped and conditioned to succeed, regardless of their birth – a key tenet in the creation of a classless society. This ideology of social mobility, combined with the political pressure to “push up” the lower classes into science, gave Lysenkoism a good chance. One driving force behind Lysenko was his explicitly non-scientific background. Indeed, Pravda praised Lysenko in 1927 as a “barefoot scientist,” a sobriquet he himself often used. The same article went on to attribute to him the solving of “the problem of fertilising the fields without fertilisers and minerals… turning the barren fields of the Transcaucasus green in winter, so that the cattle will not perish from poor feeding, and the peasant Turk will live through the winter without trembling for tomorrow.”^[16] It was Lysenko’s early work, and especially its positive coverage in the popular press in the 1930s, that helped him gain the prestige and promotion that ultimately allowed him to ban competing opinions. In his earlier work, Nils Roll-Hansen^[17] points out that Lysenko’s initial research was scientifically grounded and certainly had positive applications for Soviet material improvement.
The extent to which Lysenkoism was a product of Marxist theory is a matter of dispute. Whatever the arguments, it is fair to state that the ascendancy of Lysenkoism was only possible because of support from the highest echelons of the Communist Party. Whilst Lysenko was not an apparatchik, Stalin and then Khrushchev gave unfettered support to him. What is required, however, is a more nuanced analysis of the mechanisms through which science and politics interacted in the case of Lysenkoism. This is a question that Roll-Hansen sets out to answer in his work.
He begins this analysis by surveying the connections between Marxism and science policy from an institutional and philosophical perspective. Institutionally, Soviet science was centrally managed and controlled as an apparatus of the government. In the case of Lysenko and plant breeding, it was the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL), established in 1929, that provided the institutional background for his work. This was conducted in what Roll-Hansen describes as an “industrial” manner, with a hierarchical structure of institutes constructed. Thus “zone stations” and “branch institutes” operated under the authority of the Academy and gave an example for how other branches of science should be organized (Pp. 77-78). Roll-Hansen correctly points out that the ideology of operation of VASKhNIL cannot be divorced from the dominant philosophical issues at the time, namely Marxist dialectical materialism, which strove for the “unity of theory and practice” (P. 81). As discussed earlier by Kremenstov and Graham, dialectical materialism coincided with socialist planning and aimed to lead to a system of science whereby scientists worked on topics that would produce material improvement contrary to bourgeois “pure” science. But whereas Graham focused on individual scientists, Roll-Hansen made much clearer linkages between the institutions of science, the Marxist philosophies of science, and the philosophies of biology. The crucial debate in biology during the 1920s was between the proponents of Lamarckism and Mendelism, with the former advocating the interaction of organism and environment and the latter favoring stable genes that remained unchanged across time and different environments. This debate was also between the adherents of dialectics (Mendelism) and “mechanicism” (Lamarckism), with both sides making credible claims about the validity of their science. By the end of the 1920s, the philosophical debate was won by the dialecticians, and “the bond between science and official philosophical ideology was strengthened” (P. 86). This situation was mirrored in other developments in the natural sciences at the time: Roll-Hansen, for instance, discusses how Isaya I. Prezent (a “pushed up” vydvizhenets like Lysenko) was able to package “creative Darwinism” as a “class struggle on the natural science front,” initially within Mendelism until he saw other opportunities and turned to Lamarckian ideas and Lysenko’s agrobiology (P. 89). The real contribution Roll-Hansen makes is in analyzing how these debates influenced the institutional structure of VASKhNIL and other research institutes. The use of political-like rhetoric concerned the causes of the failure of science to deliver upon the immense expectations made upon it during the 1920s (the poor quality of science or the residual lack of unity between theory and practice) and the reforms implemented to ensure future success (socialist competition, greater unity of theory and practice).^[18]
Against this institutional and philosophical background, Roll-Hansen plots the rise of Lysenko’s career, discussing how an ambitious young scientist was able to exploit the political and philosophical climate to his own advantage. However, what remains out of the discussion is the degree to which this climate affected other sciences, or was unique to biology, given the emphasis afforded to agriculture in the 1930s. Roll-Hansen does introduce some new archival evidence, not previously cited in the popular press and academic journals, to further support his claim that Lysenko was initially promoted on the basis of merit. In bringing this new evidence to the fore, Roll-Hansen contributes to the literature by showing that Lysenkoism and its scientific techniques were not accepted uncritically by the academic community. Roll-Hansen shows a number of examples where the technique of vernalization was thoroughly critiqued on sound scientific grounds. Lysenko’s response in each case was a vigorous defense of his theories; he often accused his opponents of “belonging to an obsolete bourgeois science that was about to collapse” (P. 127). Roll-Hansen argues that Lysenko was convinced of the truth of his ideas about vernalization, yet that he was prepared to make veiled threats of political reprisals as early as in 1937 (P. 129). It is this politicization of Lysenko as a scientist that is the most interesting aspect of Roll-Hansen’s work. In this regard, the institutional perspective adopted by Roll-Hansen resonates much with Krementsov’s and Kojevnikov’s approach showing how individuals such as Lysenko were able to exploit the policy landscape to promote their own view of science, which with time came to displace competing views. Such a progression from one paradigm to another is deemed a part of normal science by Thomas Kuhn.^[19] What is abnormal here is that “primitive and retarded biological science” dominated other promising scientific forms (P. 282). In explaining this phenomenon, Roll-Hansen distances himself from the “moralistic” work of Joravsky, citing the evidence of the serious scientific opposition that existed to Lysenkoism (P. 292). The argument that Roll-Hansen makes instead is that there was an interdependence of science and politics at work. Viewed form this perspective, Lysenkoism represents more than simply an example of pseudo-science.

SOVIET PHYSICISTS

In his recent work, Kremenstov points out that “the greatest achievements of Soviet science occurred exactly at the time of the greatest repression: practically all Soviet Nobelists received this highest scientific award for research done when arrests were common and the Gulag camps overflowing.”^[20] At the same time, huge grain shortages and consistent agricultural underperformance are often attributed to the self-destructive agricultural policies promoted by Lysenkoism.^[21] Herein lies a paradox: while Soviet scientific culture was one of repression, it also achieved some outstanding successes, suggesting, perhaps, that the Lysenko affair was an aberration of Soviet Science rather than the norm. The positive example of Soviet physicists is not the only possible one, as linguistics, genetics, and physiology also present plausible cases of science advancing during the Soviet period.^[22] However, physics presents perhaps the most illustrative example of how Stalinist science did succeed in its goal to catch up and overtake the West. This was best shown by the ability of Soviet science to mobilize immense resources and to successfully replicate the Manhattan Project to manufacture nuclear weapons. It is this paradox that Kojevnikov sets out to examine in his ambitious work Stalin’s Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists.
While accepting that Stalinism and communist rule had immense impacts on the entire society and culture of the Soviet Union, including science, Kojevnikov critically assesses the historical forces that shaped and informed Soviet physics and other disciplines, showing these to be much more complex than a simple characterization of conflict and opposition. Indeed Kojevnikov spells out in his introduction that the title is not intended as an ironic slight, in the same manner as many Western studies of Lysenkoism held up Soviet science for ridicule. Rather it is a serious comment on an appreciable scientific achievement.
Popper’s theory that science “for its normal functioning required political democracy” (P. xi) is now a generally accepted liberal notion, the influence of which is evident in many writings on the history of Soviet science. Roll-Hansen’s work also exhibited such tendencies, however, it was more preoccupied with establishing the “correct” policies and limits that determined the degree of political interference in science, in order to avoid “isolation and a narrow minded search for socially irrelevant truths” by scientists (Roll-Hansen, P. 11). In contributing to this theoretical controversy, Kojevnikov is seeking to answer why it was that a truly great science, Soviet physics, developed during a time that was “neither democratic nor liberal, nor economically prosperous, and definitely unsafe” (Kojevnikov, P. xiii).
Kojevnikov makes a solid contribution with his analysis of the institutional system of research and development that was created after the Revolution. This is conducted through the case study of the optical glass industry, which was in an illaudable state at the time of the revolution (Pp. 32-37). The optical industry was established as an early example of science and industry working cooperatively in order to meet governmental needs. In fact, the industry was centered largely upon military demands, due to an acute shortage of optical sights in the navy. Scientists were mobilized into work teams focused on obtaining direct practical outcomes, and organized according to the principles of collectivism and centralism. Kojevnikov does little to discuss the impact of ideology from the top down on physicists working in the 1920s, nor does he compare this situation with other disciplines working within similar or different institutions. What is introduced instead is a unique account of how those scientists who had lived through the social transformations of the revolutionary period were in turn influenced in their scientific work by concepts of radical transformation and utopian ideals. This is discussed with direct reference to theoretical problems in physics at the time.
Kojevnikov does an excellent job of describing how the radical scientific breakthroughs of the early twentieth century found parallels with the social changes that were beginning to occur: “the perceived affinity between the two revolutions, the social and the scientific, abetted the enthusiastic reception of modernist science by many Soviet academics, including Yakov Frenkel and Lev Landau” (P. xiv). For instance, the concept of the “freedom” of an electron or particle was a valid theoretical debate in particle physics from the 1920s until the 1950s. Frenkel proposed that the concept of freedom was problematic, suggesting instead that the freedom of particles in dense bodies would be better described as “collectivist” (P. 49). This language, and indeed principle, found its genesis in leftist political theory yet was introduced into physics from science as opposed to from politics, as is suggested was the case with Lysenkoism. “Disagreements over the large issue of freedom,” Kojevnikov writes, “played a particularly important role during the early formative stages of the quantum physics of the solid, liquid and plasma states of matter – or condensed matter in current usage – from the 1920s through the ’50s. At stake were not only the language proper but also the mathematical models and conceptual foundations of an emerging scientific discipline. A variety of specific approaches and theories that existed and competed during that period rested on their authors’ conflicting intuitions regarding the freedom of particles. In their attempts to conceptualize these intuitions in physical and mathematical terms, physicists often used social metaphors, implicitly as well as explicitly, consciously as well as unconsciously. These metaphors reflected their varying interpretations of the general concept of freedom, their political philosophies, and also – no less important – personal and often incompatible existential experiences of social life in different countries and regimes” (P. 49).
Kojevnikov presents in detail the case of the collectivist approach in the early history of condensed matter physics. Here Socialist physicists attempted to explain complex phenomena through recourse to Marxist theory, utilizing the language of socialism to declare “Fermions are individualists, while bosons are collectivists” (P. 245). Kojevnikov convincingly shows how these concepts, backed up with sound science, have become an accepted part of modern thinking on physics – and moreover that the foundations of these ideas was very much grounded within the political situation at the time – yet that it was scientists themselves who were introducing collectivist metaphors from politics into science (Pp. 50-53). Thus, physical scientists were utilizing philosophy and leftist theories in describing complex natural phenomena at the theoretical level. However, as was the case with Lysenkoism, the development of these concepts also occurred within a political system of state patronage in which scientists were very much actors.
One of the case studies in the book centers on an individual scientist, Piotr Kapitza, who provides an example of how scientists were able to cultivate direct relationships with senior politicians and even with Stalin. Kojevnikov characterizes this as a patron-client relationship, whereby those scientists who were able to ingratiate themselves to the regime were better able to gain support for their research, inventions, and theories (Pp. 99-100). Thus the example of Kapitza is in someway no more remarkable than that of Lysenko: Kapitza’s scientific work has been shown to be more useful, yet it was his capacity to operate within a politically defined environment that distinguished him from his peers – not the quality of his science. The second case Kojevnikov presents is the successful production of nuclear weapons. This example of top-down management was similar, in many respects, to that of Lysenko’s research. Yet it is exactly the different outcomes in two compared cases that point to the most important historiographical and theoretical question that arises from Kojevnikov’s new work: what were the differences in scientific culture and why did these differences lead to such divergent outcomes?
Kojevnikov attempts to answer this question by delving into the complexity of the relationship between science and politics in the Soviet Union, likening it to the historical relationship between science and religion, to the process of “mutual rhetorical adoption” (P. 232). This process is explained as one whereby scientists and politics both draw upon and contribute to the reservoir of ideological rhetoric, for which the collectivist metaphor for atomic particles serves as a good example. So politicians reserved their right to act as “referees” to shape science when they wished to and scientists in turn would “translate” their findings into ideological terms which could be understood by the politicians (P. 214).
Kojevnikov re-opens the Lysenko case, suggesting a reconstruction of the sequence of events to further his argument that this was a deviant, rather than normal, example of Soviet science. This analysis is interesting, yet unconvincing to the degree that Kojevnikov fails to consider Lysenko as both a politician and a scientist, focusing instead on his non-party status as evidence of disinterestedness. His conclusion suggests “it was probably the Soviet physicist’s skills – and some luck – in playing the rhetorical, ideological, and political games” that enabled physics to escape the fate of biology (P. 244). The book concludes with a chapter on the contribution of Soviet ideology to contemporary physics, which is a fascinating, eloquent look at the role of science in shaping society.

THE ONGOING DEBATE

To evaluate the contribution that these two works make to the literature, one can turn back to the initial questions. What was the relationship between politics and science? How did the ideological infiltration differentiate between scientific cultures? If the answer to the first question may be found in these two books in different ways, the second one remains largely unanswered.
Roll-Hansen’s contribution is incremental. The introduction of new materials allows one to analyze the character of Lysenko as a more complex individual than it was earlier assumed. The history of Lysenkoism is recast in terms of the ideological struggles of the time, which provides a better understanding of the outcome – otherwise is difficult to fathom – that led to such a devastating setback for Soviet biology. Yet little evidence is given to support or refute the contention that Lysenkoism was the norm for Soviet science. One cannot answer whether the scientific culture of biology, which supported Lysenko’s rise, was an anomaly, unrepeated during the Soviet period, or if similar (and less dramatic) blunders occurred in other disciplines.
Kojevnikov presents a more ambitious work, aiming to re-examine the paradigm of Soviet science as a whole. In this respect, one learns a great deal about the intra-party games in which scientists were actors. The reader is provided with a stronger set of analytical tools to evaluate the extent to which personality and politics influenced scientific development. The example of collectivism in particle physics and leftist ideology is illustrative in this regard. Where this thesis is lacking, however, is in proposing a credible theoretical explanation for why such different outcomes occurred. Thus, while the new examples are a tangible contribution to the developing historiography of Stalinist science, we do not know why they are so different. Were there real and discernable (institutional) differences in how the disciplines operated under certain political conditions? And not the least, did Soviet politicians learn from their mistakes with Lysenko?
What both these cases tell us is that the relationship between science and politics was much more nuanced than traditional accounts reveal. Scientists played an active role in developing and contributing to the ideological debates. Moreover many of the scientists of the period also became, simultaneously, political actors. To a lesser extent, so did politicians attempt to gain scientific credibility for their programs.
Methodologically, the weakness of these and the other histories of Soviet science lies in their failure to collect and analyze data about how Soviet science operated at the periphery. We know already that the Soviet system was an incredibly centralized system, yet considerable scientific work was conducted at the periphery in base stations, research sites, and remote institutes. For instance, the large number of research institutes that were moved to Central Asia during WWII led to a considerable influx of scientists working there, especially in Tashkent. It would be useful to know more about how them, how their research was shaped by ideology and how their careers progressed – as fascinating comparisons with the existing literature. Yet very little has been written to date on how science operated there, away from the center of political control. The differences between the center and periphery were also well acknowledged by actors at the time. One good history of Soviet provincial science is Paul Josephson’s account of Akademgorodok.^[23] Nevertheless, it is important that historians of the Soviet Union continue to recognize the considerable heterogeneity that existed within the Soviet system.