Academician Trofim Lysenko is called the executioner of Soviet genetics and is accused of almost a personal "order" for Academician Vavilov, who ended his days in the dungeons of the NKVD. Meanwhile, Lysenko himself did not deny genetics, however, he interpreted it in his own way, and completely denied any involvement in Vavilov's arrest.
Lysenko found himself in the Uman School of Gardening at the most inopportune time - 1917. But the guy still graduated from it and, being an employee of the plant breeding station, wrote two works about tomatoes and beets. In parallel, he entered the Kiev Agricultural Institute, after which he was sent to the selection station in Ganja.
Capable guy
The station manager instructed the young specialist to develop a variety of beans suitable for winter sowing. And Trofim bred such a variety. True, it was not his breeding talent that was “to blame”, but the mild winter, thanks to which the crops did not freeze. A Pravda correspondent accidentally found out about the success of the young agronomist and wrote an article about him. The article and, most importantly, its hero were noticed at the top. And Trofim has already switched from legumes to cereals - the main agricultural crop of the country - and began experiments with vernalization.
Although the results of vernalization were mediocre, the praise in the press allowed Lysenko to take the place of the head of the laboratory of the Odessa Genetic Institute, and seven years later - the head of the institute. The government awarded him the Order of Lenin, and the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR accepted him as a member. Such people from the people, even with minimal merit, were needed by the authorities. And the merits were.
Take, for example, minting - cutting off shoots during growth. The reception allowed to increase the cotton yield by 15%. Another achievement of Trofim is the method of apical planting of potatoes. During the war, he proposed cutting off potato tubers for food, and planting their tops in the ground. True, chasing, and apical planting, and even the notorious vernalization could make a reputation for an inquisitive peasant. As a last resort, an agronomist. This is exactly what Trofim Lysenko was, in fact. But officially he was considered an academician and head of the genetic institute.
In 1934, Lysenko met the young head of the Department of Dialectics of Nature and Evolutionary Doctrine - Leningrad University, Isaac Prezent. This acquaintance proved to be beneficial for both. Isaac prepared such reports for Trofim, after which his opponents made a helpless gesture - they came to talk about chromosomes and DNA, and they were accused of class unconsciousness.
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In 1936, Lysenko and Prezent published a devastating article in Pravda, where they criticized geneticists who accepted Mendel's theory.
Geneticists accused Lysenko of an anti-scientific approach and incorrect conclusions, and he retorted in the spirit: "You have not done anything worthwhile with your Mendeleev genetics, but we Michurinians have bred dozens of new varieties and raised the yield by an unprecedented amount!" Trofim stubbornly denied Mendel's genetic laws and the possibility of their practical use in breeding work.
In total, his messages were generously flavored with Stalinist slogans and references to the works of Lenin and Marx, in which the academician's consultant, Isaac Present, was a great specialist.
Executioner and his henchman
Soon, Present wrote to the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Molotov slander: “Recently, our domestic ones have begun to sing along with the chorus of capitalist mongrels from genetics …"
It is not known for sure whether Lysenko read the entire text of the note or simply signed it without looking. He himself, after Stalin's death, assured that he had no desire to eliminate Vavilov. But be that as it may, after that denunciation, Vavilov was arrested on an expedition to Chernivtsi and brought to the Lubyanka. He was expected to be interrogated with beatings and torture, as a result of which Vavilov confessed to the leadership of the non-existent "Labor Peasant Party" and other "sins."
Based on this, on July 9, 1941, the troika sentenced him to death, which was later commuted to 20 years in prison. In 1943, Vavilov died due to harsh conditions in the Saratov prison.
One more fact also speaks of Lysenko's unsinkability. In 1942, his brother Pavel voluntarily went over to the Germans and began to cooperate with them.
In those days, such a person fell into the category of "IR" - "traitor to the Motherland", and all his relatives were subject to restriction of rights. But not Trofim Lysenko. During the war, he received the Stalin Prize, and after the war - two Orders of Lenin and the Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor.
Prokhor EZHOV