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Lysenko in Yugoslavia, 1945–1950s: How to De-Stalinize Stalinist Science

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Abstract

By the summer of 1948, socialist Yugoslavia seemed determined to follow in the footsteps of its closest ally, the Soviet Union, and strike a decisive blow to “reactionary genetics.” But barely a month before the infamous VASKhNIL session, the Soviet–Yugoslav split began to unravel, influencing the reception of Lysenko’s doctrine in Yugoslavia. Instead of simply dismissing it as yet another example of Stalinist deviationism, Yugoslav mičurinci carefully weighed its political and ideological implications, trying to negotiate the Stalinist origins of Michurinist biology with political and ideological reconfigurations in post-Stalinist Yugoslavia. The essay examines the strategies employed by supporters and opponents of Lysenko’s doctrine, as well as those sympathetic to it but yet unconvinced of its scientific validity and political appropriateness. It emphasizes globally unique attempts to de-Stalinize Michurinist biology and use it in the political-ideological struggle against the Stalinist Soviet Union, pointing to local agency and the bottom-up nature of attempts both in support of and against the doctrine.

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Notes

  1. Lomeiko pointed out that another Serbian agronomist, Dobroslav B. Todorović (1889–1959), was the first to suggest this version of the term—which never entered into wide circulation—for this specific reason (there seems to be no difference in meaning between them). It is therefore possible that more Yugoslav agronomists were acquainted with Michurin and Lysenko’s work but either did not attempt to replicate their procedures or did not publish papers on the topic.

  2. Gligić (1945) got imprimatur already in April 1945, before the war of the territory of Yugoslavia ended, and was reprinted in Sarajevo the next year (Gligić 1946).

  3. Gordin (2018, pp. 57–58) reflected on the terminology and opted for “agrobiology” instead of “Lysenkoism” that, as he stated, “collapse[s] the doctrine into a personality cult of its most prominent advocate.” Unlike in the Soviet Union, agrobiologija and its derivatives were used less frequently in Yugoslavia. For that reason, when appropriate, I use the translation of source terms mičurinska nauka/biologija, Mičurinovo/Lisenkovo učenje, etc.

  4. After a short period of facilitating both pro- and anti-Lysenkoist opinions (see Potrč 1948–1949), the former disappeared from the pages of Proteus. See also Bernot (1955, 1957).

  5. Issues outlined at the Fifth Congress became a centerpiece of the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPY in December 1949, which was devoted specifically to ideological distancing from the Stalinist model through education, culture, and science. See Rezolucija Trećeg plenuma CK KPJ o zadacima u školstvu (1950).

  6. Related to science, in the spring of 1949, the daily newspaper Politika accused the Soviets of ascribing the inventions by Nikola Tesla to Russian and Italian scientists, and of neglecting the contributions of the physicist Pavle Savić. See Yugoslavs Assail Claims by Russia (1949).

  7. There was also a shared Belgrade–Zagreb edition of Lysenko’s opening address, without the transcript of the session, printed in both Cyrillic and Latin script by a prominent publishing house (Lisenko 1948b).

  8. Arhiv Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti, Zagreb, 2834/1948, Moli se dostaviti knjigu “O položenii v biologičeskoi nauke,” 4 December 1948. The Russian original was also not listed in the Inventory of Books of the Biological Library of the Faculty of Science in Zagreb, 1941–1959. Though, rarely, publications dealing with Michurinist biology still reached the Society for Cultural Cooperation between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union (Društvo za kulturnu saradnju Jugoslavije sa SSSR) in late 1948 and 1949, they were more closely scrutinized and seem not to have been distributed to the local branches of the society outside Belgrade. See Arhiv Jugoslavije, Belgrade, Fund 524 (further AJ 524), Društvo za kulturnu saradnju Jugoslavije sa SSSR 1945–1950, Folder 56, Savetovanje sekretara republičkih društava za kulturnu saradnju sa SSSR sa Društvom za kulturnu saradnju Jugoslavije sa SSSR, 12 April 1949, p. 2.

  9. In April 1947, Adolf Polšek gave a lecture on the life and work of Michurin to an audience of 200 factory workers in Sisak, Croatia (AJ 524, Folder 26, Izveštaj 1947–2004). An unidentified local agronomist gave a lecture on “Creative power of Soviet agriculture and agronomy” on 23 March 1948 in an agricultural school in Djakovo, Croatia (AJ 524, Folder 52, Razno–Prepiska). Vojin Gligić spoke on “Darwin in the Soviet Union” in Sarajevo in April 1948 (AJ 524, Folder 25, Izveštaj 1948–2004). Maksim Goranović was one of the people who recapitulated the conclusions and implications of the VASKhNIL session to wider audiences in a lecture “Situation in Biology” held on 10 November 1948 in the House of Soviet Culture in Belgrade (AJ 524, Folder 25, Izveštaj 1948–2011). In Slovenia, in a public lecture held on 8 December 1948, Jože Potrč offered a “philosophical introduction” into the controversy; on 15 December 1948, Jovan Hadži spoke about Lamarck and Darwin; on 22 December 1948, Hubert Pehani spoke on Weismann, Mendel, and Morgan; and on 5 January 1949, Gabrijel Tomažič gave a lecture on Michurin and Lysenko. See the note in Proteus 1948, p. 144.

  10. Only two students of biology from Yugoslavia sent to the Soviet Union were listed in the academic year 1946/47, and three in 1947/48. The number of students of agriculture and forestry was larger: twenty-one in 1946/47 and twenty-five in 1947/48, but this number includes a variety of specializations. See AJ, Fund 315, Komitet za škole i nauku pri Vladi FNRJ 1946–1948, 7-31, 7-101, and 7-102. Furthermore, not all who went to the Soviet Union were persuaded. The Slovene botanist Gabrijel Tomažič (1899–1977), who had been among the first to write affirmatively about Michurinist biology in 1945, was not impressed by a visit to Lysenko’s laboratory and, under influence of the geneticist Anton Zhebrak, who was his mentor in Moscow, turned sides. See Dragiša Ivanović to Pavle Savić, 24 February 1947, p. 4, AJ, Fund 507, CK SKJ 1919–1990, XIII-k. 59, 15. Moskva.

  11. The list was quite impressive and included, among others, Lisenko 1949a; Instrukcija za sprovođenje jarovizacije1949; Jubilej velikog biologa: Članci povodom 50-godišnjice akademika T. D. Lisenka1949; Pobeda mičurinske biološke nauke u SSSR1949; Prezent (1949), Safonov (1949), Timirjazev (1949), Viljams (1949), Zavadski (1949), Život i rad V. R. Viljamsa: Tvorca napredne nauke socijalističke poljoprivrede1949.

  12. In 1949, at the Sarajevo Faculty of Agriculture, for instance, the required literature was eclectic and included, but was not limited to, Ivanov, Schmalhausen, Paramonov, Eskin, Dorfman, Oparin, Mel’nikov, Michurin, and Engels—but not Lysenko. AJ, Fund 317, Savet za nauku i kulturu Vlade FNRJ 1950–1953 (1945–1953), Folder 74-270, Program predavanja i vježbi (1949).

  13. Hrvatski državni arhiv, Zagreb, 1220.3.3.4.7, CK SKH, Komisija za agitaciju i propagandu, Podaci o radu na području školstva, box 15.

  14. Hrvatski državni arhiv, Zagreb, 1220.3.3.4.7, CK SKH, Komisija za agitaciju i propagandu, Podaci o radu na području školstva, box 15.

  15. Hrvatski državni arhiv, Zagreb, 1220.3.3.4.7, CK SKH, Komisija za agitaciju i propagandu, Podaci o radu na području školstva, box 15.

  16. Siniša Stanković to Milislav Demerec, 5 August 1952, Milislav Demerec Papers (Mss.B.D394), American Philosophical Society (hereafter, APS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  17. “Characteristics” of the faculty members, composed by party members at the universities in the aftermath of the Cominform Resolution, argued that this was the case with many agronomists and biologists, as well as other scientists, at the University of Belgrade. See AJ, Fund 317, Savet za nauku i kulturu Vlade FNRJ 1950–1953 (1945–1953), Folder 67, Ideološko-političke karakteristike profesora univerziteta (1949).

  18. On the contrary, Mirko Korić later claimed he was instructed not to raise the issue, lest the Yugoslav relations with the Soviet Union deteriorate even further. See Zapisnik sa održanog sastanka komisije na dan 10. V. 1952 po predmetu pretstavke studenata IV. godine poljoprivrednog otsjeka, p. 2, Milislav Demerec Papers, APS.

  19. Kojevnikov (1998) and Krementsov (1997), among others, have elaborated on the purpose, structure, and functioning of scientific meetings in Stalinist Soviet Union, and deJong-Lambert (2012a) examined a succession of meetings devoted to Michurinist science in Poland.

  20. The published transcript of another large meeting of biologists and agronomists, the Federal Conference for Scientific Research in Agriculture, held in Belgrade between 24 and 28 March 1947, which was specifically dedicated to the tasks of agriculture in the First Five-Year Plan, suggests that neither Michurin nor Lysenko were mentioned (Savezna konferencija za naučno-istraživački rad u poljoprivredi 1947).

  21. Stanković himself had already written on the environmental influences in the interwar period; see Stanković (1933).

  22. Milislav Demerec to Alois Tavčar, 18 August 1952, Milislav Demerec Papers, APS.

  23. Fink’s preface reveals the slow pace of development of genetics in Yugoslavia: his position on Darwinism seems to have developed little since 1919, when he had written on Mendelism, with genetics being conspicuously absent; see Fink (1919).

  24. Mirko Korić to Milislav Demerec, 18 February 1952, Milislav Demerec Papers, APS.

  25. Zapisnik sa održanog sastanka komisije na dan 10. V. 1952. po predmetu pretstavke studenata IV. godine poljoprivrednog otsjeka, Milislav Demerec Papers, APS.

  26. Mirko Korić to Milislav Demerec, 15 May 1952, Milislav Demerec Papers, APS.

  27. Mirko Korić to Siniša Stanković, 8 May 1952, AJ, Fund 317, Folder 69-685.

  28. Mirko Korić, Predgovor u diskusiji o programu, p. 8, 25 April 1952; Korić attached the document to a letter to Demerec, Milislav Demerec Papers, APS.

  29. I informally interviewed a number of people who attended school in Yugoslavia between the late 1940s and the1970s—especially those who did not later receive training in science or medicine—who remembered Michurin, rather than Lysenko, as the representative of “Soviet biology” and, more specifically, associated Michurin with the notion of inheritance of acquired characteristics.

  30. See Danon (1974, p. 29). For a similar strategy employed by anti-Lysenkoists in the Soviet Union during the 1960s, see deJong-Lambert and Krementsov eds. (2017, vol. 1, p. 13).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Tatjana Buklijaš, Dejan Lukić, Ivan Obadić, and William deJong-Lambert, who offered invaluable feedback on early versions of the essay, each of them approaching the matter at hand from a different, yet inter-related, perspective. I would particularly like to thank the anonymous reviewers who set the bar, when it comes to offering truly constructive suggestions, exceptionally high. This work has been fully supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project IP-06-2016-6762, “Croatian Scientific and Philosophical Heritage: Transfers and Appropriations of Knowledge from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century in the European Context.”

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Duančić, V. Lysenko in Yugoslavia, 1945–1950s: How to De-Stalinize Stalinist Science. J Hist Biol 53, 159–194 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-020-09598-2

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