Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science [Hardcover]

Valery N. Soyfer (Author)

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Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

Product Details

• Hardcover: 410 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (June 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813520878
• ISBN-13: 978-0813520872
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #458,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Politics destroys empirical science, December 14, 1999

By 

Christopher Glick (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science (Hardcover)

Though no scientist, I had heard the name of Lysenko passed about for years. He seemed to have been a mad scientist, creating bizarre hybrids and ecological disasters that plague Russia to this very day. That one man could do so much damage intrigued me, so I sought to learn more about him.

In this book, Dr. Soyfer, a former Soviet scientist who had met Lysenko, documents the destruction of science and scientists under the influence of Lysenko. Contrary to numerous opinions, Lysenko was an poorly educated agronomist who happened to have been in the right place at the right time: In the '30s, "Pravda" wrote him up as a pioneering scientist. Recognizing that newspapers and popular support could fuel his rise to the top of Soviet society, he set about making a name for himself as a scientist in non-academic journals and periodicals. His peasant upbringing and miraculous findings--never empirically proven or duplicated--made him a star proletarian scientist, the kind needed to bring about true Communism.

Along his way to the top, he was assisted by many people who thought him a sincere, but ill preparted, scientist; he later had many of these people purged after gaining the almost total support of Stalin and Khrushchev. His grand claims of producing superior cattle and wheat, among other things, consistently failed, yet no one dared oppose or even question his policies. Whether to propel himself upward, bring down the academics he apparently detested, or protect himself and his "science", Lysenko nearly eliminated all serious work in genetics, agriculture, and biology from the '30s into the '60s. Numerous scientists were exiled, fired, or executed during his reign as the people's scientist; according to the author, the effects still linger in Russia.

An amazing story of how, when politics decrees what science is acceptable and how it is going to work in the political paradigm, the results can be tragic.