Soviet genetics and world science : Lysenko and the meaning of heredity / [Julian Huxley].
- Julian Huxley
- Date:
- 1949
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Soviet genetics and world science : Lysenko and the meaning of heredity / [Julian Huxley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![science. Thus Prezent, the philosophical êminence grise of Lysenko, referring to the painstakingly fair and almost ultra-conscientious appraisal of the work of Lysenko and his school by the two Englishmen, Hudson and Richens (1946), does not scruple to say that ' the motives of Hudson and Richens, who suggest that Russian varieties may not be pure, are . . . questioned.' Finally, the Praesidium of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences itself, in a letter to Stalin ( 2 ), pledges itself ' to root out unpatriotic, idealist Weismannite-Morganist ideology. ' This preoccupation with teaching or doctrine and with an overriding philosophy leads logically on to two further results—the establishment of a party line in science, and the division of science into two camps. Thus the manifesto from which I have previously quoted ( x : p. 662) also states that ' the Report by Lysenko, which has been approved by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshe viks), lays down the party line in biology. ' Zhebrak, in a letter (summarized in 1 ; p. 662), writes that he finds it necessary to withdraw from his previous position [on genetics], since this has been declared mistaken by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party. The question of the unity of science clearly pre occupies the more philosophically minded Michurin- ites ; but their claim that scientific work in a capitalist country must be tainted with bourgeois ideology, and to such an extent that its scientific value may be thereby vitiated, enables them to deal with it to their own satisfaction. Listen once more to Prezent ( 2 ; p. 134; my trans lation from French) 1 : ' The opponents of the Mich- 1 This apparently verbatim French translation frequently differs from the official English translation in ( 3 ) ; presumably it is a summary.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022777_0071.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
