Science: Renegade Russian

The scientist-darling of Communist theologians is Soviet Academician Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Lysenko’s basic idea seems to be that living forms (like nations) need to be shaken up by a kind of genetic revolution. Thus shaken, a tomato or wheat plant is capable of very rapid development. In proving this thesis, Lysenko is short on controlled experimentation and long on thundering Marxist phrases like “The Liquidation of the Conservatism of the Nature of Organisms” (TIME, Feb. 11, 1946). Many non-Communist geneticists consider him a politically motivated fraud.

Last week another Soviet scientist was cowering under an ideological hurricane stirred up by an anti-Lysenko reference he had made in the U.S. weekly, Science, nearly two years ago.

Dangerous Step. Science of Oct. 5, 1945 printed an article by Biologist Anton R. Zhebrak which looked (to Americans) like an able defense of the freedom of Soviet science. The Soviet Union, said Zhebrak, has many good scientists and allows them professional liberty. Her geneticists, particularly, are doing excellent work.

So far, the Soviet’s Zhebrak was on solid, safe ground. But he took another dangerous step forward. He admitted the world’s low opinion of Soviet genetics. There is an impression abroad, he said, that all Soviet geneticists are followers of Lysenko. This is not so, said Zhebrak. Many Soviet geneticists “are sharply critical of [Lysenko’s] theories.”

For nearly two years Zhebrak’s indiscretion went unpunished. Then, a few weeks ago, the storm began to break over his head. Three devoutly Communist poets, writing in the very nonscientific Literary Gazette, keelhauled him for agreeing with foreigners who do not admire Lysenko. “Under the mask of giving an objective account of the state of genetics in the U.S.S.R.,” wrote the three poets, “Zhebrak takes up complete solidarity with the most reactionary American professors. . . .”

Unsightly Role. Pravda soon joined the attack. What annoyed Pravda most: Zhebrak’s heretical belief that there is no difference between Soviet and non-Soviet science.* “Zhebrak as a Soviet scientist,” cried Pravda, “should have unmasked the class meaning of the struggle which is taking place around questions of genetics. But blinded by bourgeois prejudices, by detestable fawning on bourgeois science, he has adopted the attitude of the enemy’s camp. . . . It turns out that there is a so-called pure science for Zhebrak. . . . It appears that there is no progressive Soviet biological science; there is no reactionary idealistic biology in the world. . . . How unsightly is the role of Zhebrak!”

* The Nazis, in much the same manner, believed that science was “Aryan” or “non-Aryan.” They rejected Einstein’s relativity as “non-Aryan.”