I know historical hindsight is 20/20, but how did no one bully this guy into giving up his moronic “de-stalinisation” policy? Like the SU was built by Stalin and now suddenly hes satan incarnate? No wonder SU citizens lost faith in the party over time, how can you trust a bunch weather vanes?
What sort of criticisms got purged?
Nikolai Vavilov, a hero of soviet science and creator of hardy strains of wheat, was purged for believing genetics was real
That’s a pretty interesting claim and sounds pretty wild. Where can I read about the soviets purging genetics believers? You genetics guys gotta be careful ya know.
Read about Trofim Lysenko. He said the concept of a gene was bourgeois.
The guy was legitimately a dumbass I don’t know why Stalin kept him around and edited his speeches. He caused a ton of harm to agriculture and genetics. His idea on grafting trees has to be one of the most foolish things I’ve read in a while. Even worse, Khrushchev got rid of him, then brought him back to do more damage for another decade, before getting rid of him again.
Source?
Editing Nature: Joseph Stalin and the “New” Soviet Biology in Isis vol. 84 (4) pp. 728-745 (1993) DOI: 10.1086/356638
https://libstc.cc/#/stc/id.nexus_id:9ko3mb04eo9nsyb1g6wp1by98
He sent this back to Lysenko to remove
Vavilov was awarded the Order of Lenin under Stalin and his research institute was established under Stalin as well (that Lysenko came up in).
There’s unfortunately not a lot of easily accessible information on the investigation of Vavilov, but if:
You should probably have resigned and kept doing field work.
It’s reported that Stalin was directly involved in Vavilov’s arrest, intervening to support Lysenko, but it’s unclear whether this was actually the case - 8 years later, Stalin edited a speech of Lysenko to remove references to what’s considered a key factor in Lysenko’s popularity