The twisted politics of Soviet science
It wasn’t just Stalin who made life hell for many of the Soviet Union’s scientists. It was the very ideology of Bolshevism itself. A scientists’ research had to fit in with that ideology, or it wasn’t allowed to continue. Academics who didn’t toe the party line faced denunciation, blacklisting, exile, imprisonment, or execution. Anyone with a university education was suspected of being a bourgeois liberal, so the Communist government and the press favored “citizen scientists,” such as farmers who came up with one good idea in plant breeding or laborers who increased efficiency in their factories. These folk heroes were hailed as authorities in scientific disciplines, even when their unscientific methods didn’t merit such accolades, and the government appointed them to positions of authority over more capable researchers.
From the title and the propagandistic cover art, I imagined sinister master plans for the development of military technology, and there is a bit of that here. Mostly, however, the book focuses on the biological sciences, and genetics in particular. Why genetics, you might ask? For a nation that faced decimating famine several times in the 20th century, the breeding of productive agricultural crops was of vital concern. The fundamental basis of genetics, however—that some individuals are born with advantageous characteristics—was antithetical to Bolshevik philosophy. Instead, the Soviet regime favored a Lamarckian approach that insisted that characteristics acquired during one’s lifetime could be passed down to one’s children. This more Communistically palatable view was carried to the point of denying the very existence of the gene itself. Geneticists who experimented with fruit flies were denounced as anti-patriotic, time-wasting quacks while citizen scientists little better than snake oil salesmen were allowed to perpetuate their erroneous, fraudulent, and damaging theories of plant and livestock breeding. Meanwhile, research into eugenics—the “science” of selectively breeding the perfect human—was encouraged until the Nazis became known for it, at which point it was deemed a fascist undertaking.
The catchy title really doesn’t do justice to the scope of this book. For starters, Ings’s narrative begins before the Russian Revolution. Stalin doesn’t really show up until halfway through the book. Many of the scientists whose lives Ings traces over the course of the book began their careers under Lenin and ended their careers (and often their lives) under Stalin. After Stalin’s death, Ings continues his study into the reign of Khrushchev and beyond. The book ends with a very thought-provoking epilogue that suggests the whole world is now operating under misguided and politicized science similar to the Soviets’ mistakes of the 20th century. We continue to disregard the signs of catastrophic climate change, burning voraciously through natural resources, while hoping that some future utopian technological miracle will make everything OK. Thus we are guilty of the same scientific sins that amused and horrified us throughout the preceding book.
Ings describes himself as “not an academic,” and his writing is very accessible to general readers. He does not, however, sacrifice scholarly rigor in his historical research. This is a complex history with multiple branches to follow, but Ings renders it all in very understandable and lively prose. I learned much from Stalin and the Scientists, and it is truly a fascinating read.
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