Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. 335 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

1. Ukrainian agronomist Lysenko was the leader of an influential Soviet agrobiological school that rejected standard genetics and instead promoted a brand of pseudoscience that held sway among Soviet biologists for over twenty-five years. The dominance of Lysenko’s pseudoscientific ideas has been characterized as the biggest scandal of 20th-century science. That it happened under a regime that took particular pride in building its policy on science makes the affair particularly interesting, even for Western observers free from totalitarian governments. The Soviet Union was the first country with a government policy and large-scale public support for science. Agricultural science was a main showcase for this unprecedented investment in science. Unlike other scholars who have studied Lysenko’s influence, Roll-Hansen argues that the corruption of Soviet biology should not be explained primarily as the result of Stalin’s despotism and the willful intervention of party hacks into the objective methods of science. Because of ideological and economic pressures to produce tangible benefits to society, says Roll-Hansen, Soviet biology, under Lysenko’s leadership, succumbed to a wishful-thinking syndrome, which paved the way for Lysenko. By such thinking scientific objectivity was compromised in favor of ideas that accorded with progressive political ideals and economic goals as determined by the ruling politburo. Roll-Hansen draws provocative parallels between Lysenko’s bad science in mid-20th-century Russia and attempts by Western theorists today to construe science in social constructivist terms or to exercise political control over scientific research. – from publisher description.

Series statement

1. Control of nature

Uniform title

1. Control of nature

Subject

1. Lysenko, Trofim, 1898-1976
2. Biology > History. > Soviet Union
3. Genetics > History. > Soviet Union
4. Geneticists > Soviet Union > Biography
5. Plant breeders > Soviet Union > Biography
6. Agriculture and state > Soviet Union > History
7. Science and state > Soviet Union > History
8. Communism and science > Soviet Union > History
9. Science > history > USSR
10. Politics > USSR
11. History, 20th Century
12. USSR

Genre/Form

1. Biographies
2. History
3. History.

Contents

1. Science policy and the problem of Lysenkoism -- The situation in plant science -- The "barefoot professor" -- Marxism and science policy -- Vernalization -- From problems in plant breeding to controversy in genetics -- "Two directions in genetics" : the Congress of December 1936 -- Against bourgeois ideology in science -- Lysenko takes over -- Concluding discussion : why did it happen?

Owning institution

1. Harvard Library

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-324) and index.

Processing action (note)

1. committed to retain