To Carrol & Louis

[Hari Kumar <hari.kumar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
Louis Proyect wrote: I don't know whether Lysenko's reputation revolved around quick,
technical solutions. I was under the impression that he was infamous for quackery
> under pressure from Stalin.
-reply from Carrol Cox:
Lou, you've referred off and on to Levins & Lewontin, _The Dialectical Biologist_. They don't treat Lysenko at all like this. See Chapter 7, "The Problem of Lysenkoism." There were many elements involved, and it was no matter of mere quackery.
Carrol
COMMENTS:
1) As Louis then agreed, Carrol was correct to call a halt to simplicism.
2) However, the story is far more complex than the ones made out by even good histories such as Joravsky. This is made clear in the preface to a book we produced in 1991. (See via the link below:
 http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/Lysenko/lysenkotable.html )
Some of the problems that most histories of the period - at least in our view - overlook include:
i) Recognition that the one gene one protein paradigm was extensively challenged by even Western geneticists. Well, most are familiar with the Paul Kammerer story - but deride him as a fool. However most histories overlook the seminal work of barbara McClintlock and all the German workers in the genetic trade led by those such as Goldschmidt (Gould did an excellent essay on Goldschmidt - however did not place him within the school that he belonged & within the tradition that extends to McClintlock). The Western geneticists led by the fly men - were of course reductionists ,as anyone familiar with the extraordinary tale of the current DNA sequencing will recognize. [Digression the Cystic Fibrosis 'gene' solution - was to cure the world of CF. In reality the multiple alleles conforming to the sequence domains necessary for the CFTR (a portion of the cytoplasmic membrane) are numerous and NOT all confer disease). Equally clearly, Lysenko was a reductionist. Both reductionism - played out within the context of class struggles .....
ii) Most histories do not recognise adequately, the real class battle that was going on - within which the few ML-ists in the CPSU(B) led by Stalin - were fending off the precursors of the Liberman reforms led by Vosnozensky & Khruschev. (see Part IV of the book via the table above- See also McCagg Jnr: "Stalin Embattled").
iii) Most histories simply deride the Stalinist views on nature/science e.g. the Plan to Transform Nature. In fact there is good western data suggestive of much that was sensible about the plan - which in fact parallels the Roosevelt "tree belt" plan of 1935-1942 - to prevent "Dust Bowling". Further - the great eco-disasters in the psot 1953 USSR - were created largely by Khruschev who went against much of the earlier work. [I am aware of new materials since we wrote this book - & will take account of Weiner et al in later up-date]. Most works ignore the attack launched on pseudo-linguistics by JVS - deriding the "arakchev" regimes in pseudo-science. This paralleled the brakes on Lysenko - that were in fact removed by Khruschev and hsi notorious maize belts.
I conclude that Carrol is quite correct that the story is much more complex than it is depicted by most - including sadly, by Levins & Lewontin.
Sincerely, Hari