Man sounds proudly. But, you must admit, he often looks unimportant: he does not shine with intelligence and talent, he is ill, smokes, drinks, steals and generally constantly sins. Human nature is imperfect, alas.
How can I improve it? With eugenics, of course! Thousands of brilliant scientists from different countries thought so a hundred years ago. And the powers that be, listening to their research, adopted inhuman laws - such that they are still ashamed of them.
Eugenics is a specific doctrine, at the intersection of science, ethics and religion - promised to quickly solve two global problems: so that children are born healthy, talented and smart and so that inferior, sick people do not appear, who then become alcoholics, schizophrenics, serial criminals …
The father of eugenics, who is also a cousin of Charles Darwin, - the eminent anthropologist and psychologist Francis Galton - in 1883 wrote the landmark work "Research of Human Abilities and Their Development." Galton argued that the difference between people is not at all due to social conditions and little effort to achieve their goals. No, intellectual abilities are inherited in the same way as physical ones, and the "quality" of a child depends directly on the father and mother. If you match pairs systematically, you can turn high intelligence from a random quality to a permanent one.
Galton agreed with Darwin's idea that natural selection maintains the survival of a species. But after all, humanity is the only biological species on Earth, which, thanks to the development of civilization, avoids this. And this is a direct road to degeneration. It is urgent to make up for the natural selection that is absent in the cultural environment by artificial means: "what nature does blindly, slowly and cruelly, should be done quickly, perspicaciously and gently."
Spartan children. The weak are not allowed to live
Darwin himself was favorably disposed towards eugenic theory. “Man examines the pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs with scrupulous care before joining pairs,” he wrote. "But when it comes to his own marriage, he rarely or never cares about something like that."
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Utopian model
Galton's ideas of eugenics are not new at all. Even in Sparta, frail babies were thrown into the abyss by the decision of the ephors - the highest advisors. After all, the Spartans needed invincible warriors, not sick "white riders"!
National Socialist poster illustrating the consequences of marriages with "handicapped" people"
In the IV century BC, Plato wrote in his "State": it is necessary to stimulate the birth rate from healthy, smart and beautiful and limit it from those who are sick. The great philosopher urged his fellow citizens: children with defects or from an inferior father and mother should be denied medical care, and "moral degenerates" should be executed. An ideal society should encourage temporary alliances between select men and women to produce high quality offspring.
In ancient Rome - the same thing. Quoting Seneca: "We destroy the ugly offspring and drown the weak and abnormal newborns."
And here is another die-hard eugenicist - Tommaso Campanella, a medieval utopian socialist. He assured: “Reproduction is in the competence of the state, and not of individuals. The new state must choose its own parents, taking into account their physical characteristics and temperament, in order to avoid the appearance of ugly and weak children …"
By the way, the first Russian eugenicist was Peter the Great. According to one of his decrees, “fools who are not suitable for any science and service” were forbidden to marry, since there is nothing to expect from them “a good heritage and state benefit”. And the famous wedding of dwarfs is Peter's eugenic experiment, reflecting his desire to experiment with heredity.
There is always a place for death in life
Galton's ideas quickly captured the minds of all progressive mankind at that time. Already at the beginning of the century in America in 12 states forced sterilization of "hereditarily defective" was legislatively formalized. Dr. Sharp, who performed the operations, a fanatic of eugenics, noted that after them, interest in the opposite sex did not decrease.
Sweden distinguished itself, where in 1918 the Institute for Experimental Biology and the Study of Heredity was created in Lund, and four years later - the State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala. Admittedly, the Swedes were very humane. Sterilization was deemed desirable but entirely voluntary. The operation was offered to those whom doctors and lawyers considered mentally or racially disabled.
Then the list added asocial personalities, dangerous criminals and people with unusual or excessive sexual desires. The program was canceled only after the Second World War, and the last operation - you will not believe it! - made in 1976.
There were similar programs in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Switzerland. From 1890 to 1930, eugenics was actively developed in at least 30 countries. The scale of eugenic research is tremendous, and the popularity is enormous.
The events of the International Congress on Eugenics, which took place in 1932 in New York, were followed in much the same way as they are now at the World Cup …
In the USSR, after the revolution, eugenics was also in a special position. “It is necessary to improve human nature, as the breeds of domestic animals and plants are improved by artificial selection,” assured our brilliant biologist, author of several world-scale discoveries, Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov. In 1920, he founded the Russian _ Eugenic Society, which consisted of outstanding biologists, doctors, chemists and psychiatrists - the same Bekhterev, by the way.
And in the "Russian Eugenic Journal", which was edited by Koltsov, dozens of studies were published on the genealogies of genius writers, philosophers, scientists, prominent Bolsheviks and representatives of the masses, whose outstanding abilities must certainly be passed on to posterity.
Koltsov's student, Professor Alexander Sergeevich Serebrovsky demanded an immediate "Bolshevization of science."
In 1929, he proposed the creation of a sperm bank of valuable producers - especially the leaders of the revolution - and an extensive program of artificial insemination of working women.
According to the professor, one talented and effective producer can have a thousand children, so giving birth to a beloved man is not at all necessary. But the new Soviet supermen will fulfill the five-year plan in two and a half years. And very soon the majority of Soviet people will have the same innate inclinations like Lenin, Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Pasteur, Beethoven or Karl Marx …
But already in the mid-1930s, the Soviet government finally lost faith in the promises of eugenics to create a new person. And the colleagues called Academician Koltsov a fascist, a Black Hundred, a supporter of zootechnical breeding, an obscurantist and an ignoramus.
The patient needs care - from a doctor
Of course, Germany has gone farthest in promoting eugenics. On July 14, 1934, the law "On the prevention of the birth of hereditarily sick offspring" was adopted. Special "courts of hereditary health" were created. If they established the bad heredity of both parents, then a decision was made to sterilize them.
Over the four years of this operation or euthanasia with the help of poison gas, more than a million people were subjected to: Jews, Roma, gays, alcoholics, mentally ill, political oppositionists, homeless people, criminals …
At the same time, Himmler promotes the Lebensborn (Source of Life) program: the selection of healthy and educated Aryans in order to raise supermen capable of commanding inferior races and nations.
Eugenic ideas organically merged with fascist ideology. Hitler wrote that the people's state should place the interests of race at the center of social life and make sure that only healthy people produce offspring.
The monstrous German experience has sobered many even the most committed eugenic scholars in other countries. And already at the end of the 1930s, they tried not to remember eugenics: the road to real hell was paved with the good intentions of scientists.
They remembered eugenics many years later, when the genetic boom began. Indeed, now the possibilities for improving human nature are much more powerful. Only there are much more questions than answers. What is better for nature: so that all children are born as one smart, healthy and beautiful? Or are we not allowed to invade this reserved, divine area?
The famous biologist Timofeev-Ressovsky once said: “The pig breeder knows exactly what he wants from his pigs and in what direction he wants to improve his swine. The breeder knows the same about his cattle. And tell me, please, who knows how and in what direction to improve humanity? There are no such people. Pigs cannot improve their breed. Every pig thinks she is the best pig. The same is often observed within humanity."
Mikhail BOLOTOVSKY