Proletarian Science?

Dominique Lecourt 
London: NLB 
Atlantic Highlands: HUMANITIES PRESS

Proletarian Science? 
The Case of Lysenko 
Introduction by Louis Althusser 
Translated by Ben Brewster

First published as Lyssenko 
by François Maspero, 1976 
© François Maspero, 1976 
This edition first published 1977 
© NLB, 1977 
This digital edition first published 2003 
© Digital Reprints, 2003

Contents 
Introduction: Unfinished History by 7 
Louis Althusser 
1. ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ (1948) 17 
2. The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 36 
(1927-1948) 
3. The Peasant Question: Stalinist 55 
Technicism 
4. The Theory of Heredity: Biological 78 
Finalism 
5. The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 100 
and State Ideology 
6. In Memoriam 129 
Appendix: Bogdanov, Mirror of the 137 
Soviet Intelligentsia 
Index 163


Louis Althusser 
Unfinished History 
It is nowadays child¹s play to deal with the problem of Lysenko, 
dismissing him as a charlatan whose fortune was entirely bound up 
with Stalin¹s despotism. But it is a much more perilous enterprise 
to examine the history of Lysenkoism from a Marxist standpoint. 
Here I will restrict myself to a few remarks, to some glaring 
facts and memories. 
There is, after all, something curious about this long and tumultuous 
adventure of Lysenko, all adventure which covers nearly fifty 
years of Soviet history, which mobilized successively the forces of 
the agricultural apparatus, then those of the official philosophy and, 
finally, in the great consecration of 1948, the Soviet state apparatus 
and all the world¹s Communists - a long, scandalous and dramatic 
history which, over a period of decades, and on the basis of a 
theoretical fraud, produced confrontations, splits, tragedies and 
victims: this history simply does not exist. 
It sleeps in the silence of closed Soviet archives, in the fact that, 
theoretically and politically, it has already been buried. It does, it 
is true, still haunt the memory of those who survived the repression 
and the blackmail, but no Soviet philosopher or scientist has raised, 
or has been able to raise his voice in order to write a Marxist history 
of this period, and shed a little light into the shadows.1 The silence 
of the Soviets, who hold the archives, is paralleled by that of the 
Communists who, outside of the Soviet Union, have lived through 
the same constraints of the same history, and are keeping quiet 
about it. 
An extraordinary paradox thus asserts itself here, just as it does 
in the case of the terrible reality later baptized with the derisory 
1 Zh. Medvedev¹s book cannot, in spite of its interest, be described as a Marxist history. 
7

8 
name of the Œpersonality cult¹,2 and in many other episodes in the 
history of the labour movement: the Communist Parties, provided 
by Marx for the first time in history with scientific means of 
understanding history, which they generally put to good use when 
analyzing other forces and other times, seem to be powerless to 
account, as Marxists, for their own history - especially when they 
have made a mistake. 
It is no good to argue that it is difficult to orient oneself in 
history, that the strongest will can be overwhelmed by the conditions 
and lose its way, that the past, tradition, habit (Lenin feared 
them all) can cast their shadow over the present. Because these conditions 
can themselves be analyzed (if new concepts are needed 
for the task, why are they not produced?). And, finally, supposing 
that this analysis is neglected, the murkiest history is nevertheless 
clear enough in its effects for Communists to recognize, even in 
their silence, by the fact that rectifications have taken place (of this 
or that detail or line), the fact of their error. 
But, it will be said, if the mistake has been rectified, what does it 
matter that Communists turn their back on it, provided that they 
are Œadvancing¹? Have the Soviets not themselves Œrectified¹ the 
Œviolations of Soviet legality¹ to which the system called the 
Œpersonality cult¹ is apparently to be reduced? Have they not 
Œrectified¹ the errors of Lysenkoism by giving the geneticists their 
jobs back and re-establishing their tarnished reputations? And the 
French Communist Party, which more than any other had marched 
forward, its leaders sheltered behind its Œgreat intellectuals¹, exalting 
Lysenkoism and the theory of the Œtwo sciences¹, bourgeois and 
proletarian - has it not Œput matters right¹ by abandoning, at the 
right moment, its professions of faith, and by ceasing to pressurize 
its militants? No-one has explained himself, of course. But that 
really does not matter, because in any case things have been Œput 
right¹. . . . And, to crown this Œargument¹, it is always possible to 
invoke a good, tailor-made theory of the primacy of practice over 
theory: a concrete act is worth more than all the analyses in the 
world! 
It must be said without hesitation that this whole argument is 
unworthy of Marxism. Remember Lenin, who (be it said for all 
Popperian lovers of Œfalsification¹) alloted to error a privileged role 
2 With two exceptions: F. Claudin. The Communist Movement; C. Bettelheim, Les 
Luttes de classes en U.R.S.S.

Introduction: Unfinished History 9 
in the process of the rectification of knowledge, to the point where 
he conferred on it, with respect to scientific experiment and political 
practice, a kind of heuristic primacy over Œtruth¹: how many times 
did he repeat that it is worse to blind yourself and keep silent about 
a defeat than to suffer it, that it is worse to close your eyes to an 
error than to commit it. 
And we know how often he had to admit such an error: over 
Brest-Litovsk, the conditions of which he never ceased to examine; 
over war communism: Œwe were wrong¹, and here is why . . . 
Lenin was not a historian, but, from his action station, faced with 
the terrible contradictions of the Soviet Revolution, he warned 
that the labour movement must analyze and understand its past, 
not out of a love of historical study but for political reasons related 
to the present itself: so that it will not be fighting in the dark. You 
must go to the root of things, analyze the reasons for an error in 
order to understand it properly and thus really to be able to rectify 
it: if you do not, then even in the most favourable of cases you will 
only put it right in part, and a superficial part at that. Lenin had a 
quite different idea of putting things right from this notion of a 
circumstantial Œrectification¹. In pleading for the primacy of 
analysis, in arguing the need for the labour movement to understand 
its own history, what it had done, where it had succeeded 
and where it had failed, he was pleading for the primacy of Marxist 
politics. 
This question of the way to treat mistakes must be very seriously 
considered if we are to weigh up what Lenin meant when he said 
that to close your eyes to an error is worse than to commit it. 
For we know, we who have no religion, not even the religion 
of our theory, still less that of the goals of history, that the class 
struggle is never crystal-clear, and that the proletariat, which fights 
its own class struggle, a different one from the struggle of the 
bourgeoisie, is not transparent to itself, a composite class, always 
engaged in forging its unity. It is in the class struggle that the 
proletariat comes to disentangle and confront the relations of forces 
in which it is enmeshed, and succeeds in defining the Œline¹ of its 
struggle. None of this resembles the clarity of the case in which a 
pure consciousness confronts the pure objectivity of a situation. 
For the whole process is constituted and dominated by contradictory 
relations which are only realized and discovered little by 
little, and may later reveal some surprises, either of anticipation

10 
(overdetermination) or of retardation (underdetermination). That 
is why, inserted as it is in a dominant system of relations, the class 
struggle is necessarily a history full of errors, sometimes dramatic 
or tragic. The possibility of such errors, just like the possibility of 
deviations, is written into the contradictory relations dominating 
the class struggle. An error - even if it has been pointed out in 
advance by a neglected, disowned, disarmed or defeated minority - 
is always recognized and denounced as an error (if it is recognized!) 
when it is already too late. And since this struggle develops, even 
for those who have seen clearly in advance, without the aid of any 
superior instance judging and deciding each question, we must 
speak here, paradoxically, of error without truth and of deviation 
without a norm. An unmastered fault, a hesitation, aberration, defeat 
or crisis, which slowly develops or suddenly gapes in the midst of 
reality, a reality without truth or norm: that is error, that is 
deviation. 
To return to Lenin: is it sufficient to recognize, after the event, 
the existence of an error (or of a deviation) and to content oneself 
with Œrectifying¹ it in silence, without setting oneself the task, as 
a Marxist, of analyzing its real history, that is, its conditions and 
causes? I say no. If the party, faced with a real mistake, with an 
error which can no longer be tolerated, is content simply to recognize 
it and Œrectify¹ it without explaining it, i.e., without subjecting 
it to a real and profound Marxist analysis, then the substance of 
the error will quite simply persist, sheltered by this silence, in its 
Œrectified¹ form. How can an error be rectified if you refuse to 
talk about its history, to analyze it, to try to understand it? How 
can you seriously claim to have Œrectified¹ an error which you have not 
understood? You are condemned to Œrectify¹, arbitrarily, only its 
most easily visible aspects, or, which is the most invidious, only 
details or surface elements. In short, you will Œmake amends for 
things¹ - but only in so far as that is possible without troubling the 
established order, which needs nothing more than silence. When 
no-one will talk about an error, then the error remains. Even 
supposing that it was not Œrectified¹ just a little bit in order for it to 
be allowed to live on in peace. 
It is clear that in these matters the frontier between error, 
disingenuity and deceit is very tenuous: blindness to the sources 
of error, whether such blindness is intentional or simply tolerated, 
is usually politically inspired. If Lenin attached so much importance

Introduction: Unfinished History 11 
to dealing with error, it is because the process of dealing with error is 
always a political process, and implies a political struggle. The test 
of time has shown that there is no third way: just as an act of political 
determination is required in order to destroy error and its 
roots, so an act of political determination is required - even if it is 
not open, but hidden - in order not to analyze it, not to understand 
it and therefore not to root it out: a determination to take the side 
of error, to promote the political cause which wants that error to 
live on in peace. 
Must we once again refer to the reality designated by the 
notorious term: Œthe personality cult¹? Yes, we must - because the 
silence has not yet been broken. But why object to the burial of 
such long-lasting and tragic facts, even if they have not been 
explained? Did not the 20th Congress of the Soviet Party in any 
case admit the Œerror¹ (and, it is often added: what other party in 
the world has ever dared to make such an admission?) and Œrectify¹ 
it? Has not Œsocialist legality¹ been restored (having Œsimply¹ been 
violated)? Have not the Soviet leaders thus Œput matters right¹, 
corrected the Œabuses¹? All those voices which pointed out the 
error in advance were of course silenced by abuse, punishment, 
even death. But the moment came when, the crisis having become 
open, the error had to be admitted. It was thus admitted after the 
event, and in a very limited, very circumscribed fashion, and dealt 
with in terms of a few limited decisions which were decreed to be 
adequate. But as far as the search for its basic causes is concerned - 
for its roots in the history of the Soviet social formation, in the 
class struggles of that formation, and in the political Œline¹ applied 
in the infrastructure and superstructure: silence. I am not talking 
about the silence or half-silence of the moment, but about a silence 
which has lasted twenty years. It is clear that the Soviet leaders 
have refused and are still refusing to undertake a Marxist analysis 
of this gigantic error, buried, like its millions of victims, in official 
silence. They have even gone back on the few poor glimpses of 
elucidation with which Khrushchev awakened hope. The USSR 
thus lives on in symptomatic silence about its own history. It is a 
sure bet that this silence is not foreign to the system. Lenin¹s words 
echo again: to keep silent about an error means to allow or to 
encourage the error to persist. If the silence continues, then the 
error continues. The purpose of the silence may even be to ensure 
that it continues - in order to reap the ensuing political benefits.

12
I do not of course deny that the masses are no longer touched by 
its bloodiest forms, nor that it now claims an infinitely smaller 
number of direct victims; but it does still claim victims, and the 
repressive system of the Stalin period, including the camps, 
remains in existence, as do the basic practices of that period regarding 
social, political and cultural life. Behind these, there subsist the 
essential elements of an economism, coupled with its ideological 
counterpoint, a verbal humanism of a terribly conformist and 
ponderous kind. Shall we add an a contrario proof, which would 
be ridiculous if it were not so eloquent? In order to Œsalvage¹ Soviet 
socialism before French public opinion, very responsible French 
Communist officials have explained to us that the Œdifficulties¹ 
encountered by the Soviet Union in its transition to Œdemocratic 
socialism¹ are simply formal, since the USSR is only Œlagging 
behind¹ by Œsocialist standards¹, that is, lagging behind itself. The 
proof? The USSR has all the Œresources¹ (economic growth, widespread 
culture) needed to become fully Œdemocratic¹, and what is 
more, it feels the Œneed¹ to do so (Œthe need for extended democracy¹ 
- sic). What is missing, then? Strictly speaking, nothing. Just one 
extra little factor, the idea of Œdemocratic¹ socialism, which has 
not yet occurred to the Soviets, but which will occur: we must 
just wait a little longer. But the unfortunate fact, or rather, the 
simple fact is that the USSR manifestly does not want to know about 
this dialectic of backwardness, of the resources and need for 
democracy and the Œextra¹ little factor. Contrary to what we are 
told, and to this quite un-Marxist pseudo-dialectic, it is probable 
that the Soviet regime has neither the resources nor any need for 
Œdemocratic socialism¹. If it has not really analyzed, in Marxist 
terms, the class basis of its gigantic historical Œerror¹, that is certainly 
not because it is forgetful or absent-minded, but because 
somewhere, in its own social relations, there exists a political Œneed¹ 
for this error, in order to maintain these relations, and thus a need 
for the error to live on, too. It is time to call a spade a spade, and 
stop telling (ourselves) stories. It has to be admitted that the reality 
which the Soviet leaders have refused and are still refusing to 
analyze in Marxist terms does constitute, in so far as it has not been 
Œrectified¹, an integral part of the Soviet system (and not a simple 
relic or accident), because it plays an essential political role within 
it. The subtlest distinctions or apologetic histories cannot change 
this fact. The substance of the practices of the Stalin period,

Introduction: Unfinished History 13 
unanalyzed, are peacefully pursuing their career in the USSR and 
elsewhere. It is crystal-clear that, if these practices have not been 
analyzed, it is for political reasons: so that they should not be 
exposed to danger, so that they should live on, for they are necessary 
to the maintenance of the existing social relations. But in that 
case the question must be completely re-framed, so as to get rid of 
the derisory theory of an Œaccident¹ in Œtime and space¹ - an accident 
which just happened to befall a socialism otherwise as imperturbable 
as an Aristotelian substance (the theory depends on the conceptual 
distinction: substance/accident). The simple but serious 
problem must be posed: what social relations today constitute the 
Soviet social formation? 
The Lysenko episode is obviously in itself an episode of lesser 
historical weight. But the lesson which it teaches is no less important. 
And it has a direct interest for us, since the French Communist 
Party played a vanguard ideological and political role in the matter 
in the years 1948-52. Here too things have been Œrectified¹. But 
how? Without any analysis. So what chance was there that anyone 
would get to the roots of the matter and attack its effects on the 
basis of a knowledge of its causes? The phenomenon was reduced 
to the one element which it was intended to Œrectify¹. Just as the 
Soviets have reduced the facts of the Stalinian deviation to the 
purely juridical aspect of Œviolations of socialist legality¹, so 
Lysenkoism was reduced to a theoretical folly involving questions 
of biology, a folly abetted by State intervention. Once the scientific 
position had been Œput right¹, once the theory of the Œtwo sciences¹ 
had been abandoned and State intervention in research forbidden, 
it was decided to pass on to Œnext business¹ without any further 
explanation. Silence on the question of the social stratum of 
Œintellectuals¹ involved by this State ideology which bound them - 
by ties of pressure, threats and repression - to the State, whose 
domination over the popular masses they in turn served. Silence 
on the class relations and conflicts and on the political line, one of 
economism and voluntarism, which supported the whole system. 
And silence on the fact that the official version of dialectical 
materialism guaranteed Lysenko¹s theories, while these theories in 
turn served to Œverify¹ this official version and to strengthen its 
pretension to the role of Œscience of sciences¹. The controlled 
Œrectification¹ of Lysenkoism did not touch on these realities, which 
nevertheless determined the historical destiny of this aberration.

14 
They have pursued their career in the official silence which surrounds 
them. 
I will select only one example among all those which exist: that 
of Marxist philosophy. So compromised was it, and visibly compromised, 
by the Lysenko episode, that the analysis of this error 
should have entailed its thoroughgoing examination. It would 
then have been possible to see that a certain, let us say ontological 
version of Marxist philosophy had for a number of years been 
gaining ground in the USSR, that it had been codified by Stalin 
in his famous chapter of the History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), and that it 
had become dominant in the Soviet Union and in all Communist 
Parties. It would have been possible to understand that certain 
previously existing contradictions of Marxist philosophy, which 
can be found in the writings of Marx and Engels, had allowed later 
writers, and finally Stalin, to rush headlong into an ontology. And 
it would thus have been possible to acquire some perspectives on 
a philosophy which presents the paradoxical characteristic of 
existing in a practical state in the theoretical and political deeds of 
the labour movement without ever being defined except in terms 
of certain cursory theses whose system remains, and for good 
reasons, problematical. In short, it would have been possible 
seriously to pose, from a Marxist standpoint, the question of dialectical 
materialism, of its contradictions and deviations, in order 
really to put Marxist philosophy onto its own road: a Œcritical 
and revolutionary¹ road (Marx). But no. Things were left in their 
original state. And the dominant version of dialectical materialism 
which transforms materialism into an ontology of matter whose 
Œlaws¹ are supposed to be stated by the dialectic, the version which 
refuses to recognize that the whole virtue of materialism and of 
dialectics lies in the fact that they state not Œlaws¹ but theses - this 
version has pursued its successful career. Indeed, it remains dominant 
even today. Negative and servile protests by Soviet philosophers 
and their followers - like their ridiculous warnings against Œdeductivism¹ 
(sic), which remind one of Œwet paint¹ warning signs - can 
never provide an escape road from domination by a version of 
Marxist philosophy which remains totally aloof in its Œinterpretation¹ 
of and apology for the fait accompli, and therefore quite 
reactionary and unproductive. Have Marxist philosophers forgotten 
what Marx said about dialectics, that it could become one 
thing or the other, could either become Œcritical and revolutionary¹

Introduction: Unfinished History 15 
or play the role of Œglorifying the existing state of affairs¹? 
And, to come to the political root of the question: why this 
silence, whose effect is to shelter and perpetuate the dominant 
version of Marxist philosophy? The reason must be that the 
profoundly conformist, apologetic function of this version, which 
excels in Œglorifying the existing state of affairs¹ and in transforming 
its practitioners into headmasters of the school of theoretical 
production, serves the existing political practices too well to be 
allowed to disappear: they Œneed¹ it. In the best idealist tradition, 
which restricts itself to the work of Œinterpreting¹ (Marx), it provides 
these practices in advance (that is, after the event) with a 
higher guarantee and justification for every political decision of the 
hour, since its role is simply to play their servant, not to say their 
maid-of-all-work. What does it matter that it produces nothing, 
that it is incapable of outshining its opponents? At least it serves as 
an internal ideology within the party, providing its cadres and its 
militants with a lexicon of common passwords, an internal system 
of signs of recognition which help to strengthen the unity of the 
organization. Now unity is not of course a bad thing - but unity 
for its own sake, unity for any end and by any means? All this is 
only possible at a price, of course, since the decay of philosophy 
into a practical ideology, sustaining the political ideology of the 
party by providing it with the guarantee of the Œlaws¹ of the dialectic, 
encourages the party to close in on itself, to cut itself off from the 
outside world. It deprives it of the political benefit which a real 
Marxist philosophy, a Œcritical and revolutionary¹ philosophy, 
could contribute both to its theory and to its historical practice, 
in every domain. 
If we take only this effect into consideration (and there are more 
serious consequences), it becomes clear what price the French 
party has paid for its apology for Lysenkoism and for its silence on 
the political, theoretical and philosophical questions involved and 
at stake. For having simply passed on to Œnext business¹, for having 
shrunk from the debate on the reactionary misrepresentation of 
Marxist philosophy, for not having turned this philosophy into a 
Œcritical and revolutionary¹ weapon, it suffered the loss of many 
intellectuals: of all those who, for these reasons, left it, and even 
more of all those who afterwards never joined it. When I mention 
the Œintellectuals¹ in this connexion, I do so intentionally. They 
were the target in the USSR for the dominant version of dialectical

16 
materialism and for the theory of the Œtwo sciences¹: the aim was 
both to unite them and to subjugate them. Intellectuals - it is an 
effect of the existing division of labour - are particularly sensitive 
to theoretical and philosophical questions. They already have 
plenty of prejudices against the party of communism, and when 
the attempt is made, in the name of criticism and of revolution, to 
win them over to a theoretical fraud, to a philosophy which 
Œglorifies the existing state of affairs¹, then there is no need to be 
surprised when they keep, wherever they can (in the West, of 
course), their distance. Nor must you be astonished that it proves 
difficult even to pose (correctly), let alone to solve, the Œirritating 
question¹ of the relations between the party and the intellectuals. 
Since the manner in which an error is dealt with is itself political, 
and in its own way the index of a political position, we are forced 
to conclude that whoever refuses to question the dominant version 
of dialectical materialism is following a line and abetting practices 
which have no Œneed¹ to analyze the causes of a supposedly Œrectified¹ 
error. That is how Lysenko was Œrectified¹. As if by accident, 
the dominant version of Marxist philosophy was never questioned: 
because its services were required. 
The history of Lysenko is finished. The history of the causes of 
Lysenkoism continues. 
One history is at an end. Is the other endless? 
Translated by Grahame Lock

1 
ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 
(1948) 
It was at the end of the summer of 1948 that what has since come 
to be called the ŒLysenko affair¹ began in France. At that time the 
name of Academician Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was unknown 
outside the Soviet Union except to a few specialists in the biological 
sciences; few among them could have said what it was exactly 
that he studied. 
As for Communist militants, the political conjuncture confronted 
them with subjects of concern on quite another scale and 
of quite another urgency; it is hardly surprising that they did not 
give undivided attention to the debates on the theory of heredity 
from which Lysenko had just emerged victorious at the Academy 
of Agricultural Sciences in Moscow. 
In those dramatic days the system of the Œcold war¹ was coming 
into being, repression was being unleashed against striking miners 
throughout the country and inflation was plunging the working 
class into poverty, so all their energies went into the struggle against 
the power of American imperialism which, in the shape of the 
Marshall Plan, had set out to establish its sway over the war-ruined 
countries of Western Europe; they were working to assemble 
round them the broad grouping of Œfighters for peace¹ which, at 
Kominform initiative, was to deter the imperialist powers from 
any attack on the USSR and thus to dispel the threat of a new 
world confrontation. 
On the ideological front it seemed that their tasks should be 
inscribed in the same perspective: to unite the widest possible 
spectrum of intellectuals into a front for the Œdefence of the 
spiritual heritage of the peoples¹ against American imperialism 
and its allies in Europe, in the interests of peace. Thus on August 
25th and 26th, amidst the still visible ruins of the ancient Polish city 
17

18 
of Wroclaw, there had been a ŒWorld Congress of Intellectuals 
for Peace¹ which, soon followed by many national congresses, 
had solemnly reaffirmed these objectives. 
Nevertheless, in a fortnight the name and works of Lysenko 
quite unexpectedly became the object of one of the biggest ideological 
battles of the post-War period. From the ranks of biologists 
where it began the polemic quickly gained those of other scientific 
researchers; philosophers and politicians having been drawn in, it 
came eventually, in open contradiction to the ŒWroclaw spirit¹, 
to produce a lasting division among intellectuals of all specializations 
along a line which from the beginning isolated the 
Communists. 
The article which put the spark to the powder keg appeared on 
August 26th in Les Lettres françaises. This article, signed by Jean 
Champenoix, made the first page, under the imposing heading 
ŒA Great Scientific Event: Heredity is not Governed by Mysterious 
Factors¹. It was presented as a report on the supposedly Œhistoric¹ 
Session of the USSR Academy of Agricultural Sciences which had 
just taken place in Moscow from July 31st to August 7th. 
What it hailed was nothing less than the birth of a new science: 
an event already in itself of a kind to arouse passions and controversies, 
as many examples in the history of the sciences bear witness. 
But what astonished both Lysenko¹s supporters and his opponents 
was the fact that the new Œbiology¹ whose birth the Soviet 
Academicians had just officially sanctioned deliberately set itself 
against a discipline - genetics - that was held to be one of the 
major scientific victories of the first half of the twentieth century. 
It dismissed as Œmetaphysical¹ a rapidly developing science whose 
concepts and theories had withstood the test of several decades of 
experimentation, a science which could boast of the conjunction 
of its results and problems with those of neighbouring sciences 
such as cytology and micro-biology, and whose medical applications 
had also made Soviet laboratories like the Institute of Medical 
Genetics, directed by Levit, and the Institute of Experimental 
Biology, directed by Kol¹tsov, internationally famous. 
What was shocking was the fact that the article in Les Lettres 
françaises attempted to justify this counterposition of Lysenko¹s 
doctrine to Œclassical¹ genetics by arguments which were not of a 
scientific nature, but ideological and political.

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 19 
Indeed the author presented the Session he was reviewing as 
Œthe outcome of a long struggle going far beyond the bounds of 
biological science, or even of science, and of the country in which 
it is taking place, which had been going on since before the War¹. 
And so that the scope of the discussion should be perfectly clear, 
he went on as follows: ŒAs everything fits together in our world, 
the two hostile and irreconcilable conceptions which clashed on 
the apparently specialized and circumscribed terrain of biology, or 
more precisely of genetics, were the same as those that have 
confronted one another and still do confront one another throughout 
the modern world, in sciences, philosophy, economics, politics: 
the conception that makes men exterminate one another on the 
battlefields and sterilizes the resources of the earth and of human 
intelligence; the conception that wishes to unite all the citizens of 
the world so that they can increase and multiply, along with their 
fields and their flocks. Broadly, very broadly speaking, these 
debates have seen the defeat of the ideas that in matters of heredity, 
of the transmission of acquired characters, of the evolution of 
species, of the direction of these changes by man, constitute before 
and after Hitler the basis for all the doctrines of racism.¹ 
The article went on to summarize Lysenko¹s basic positions and 
to attempt to prove their radical incompatibility with the theses 
ordinarily accepted in the science of heredity: ŒFor Lysenko and 
the other members of this scientific assembly who shared his 
opinion, the Soviet biologists who have remained prisoners of the 
totally idealist theories of Mendel and Morgan persist in believing 
that the transmission and modification of hereditary characters is 
achieved by means of a substance in the scholastic sense of the 
term, or, so to speak, a ³virtue² - in the sense in which Molière¹s 
doctor claimed that opium causes sleep because it possesses dormitive 
virtue - which resides only in the chromosomes, in embryonic 
cells. . . . It follows from this theory that the properties acquired 
by the animal or plant organism during its life as a result of special 
circumstances, the influence of the environment, are not transmitted 
from generation to generation. . . . The grand idea defended 
by Lysenko is as follows: the living organism, animal or plant, is 
in all its parts, which reciprocally and constantly interact with one 
another. The organism and the conditions necessary for its life 
represent a unity.¹

20
Much could be said about this passage. But all things considered, 
it reproduces fairly faithfully the misunderstandings and impostures 
on which Lysenko¹s report was built. 
At any rate, no one could miss the seriousness of the injunction 
it unambiguously formulated: biologists were to support Lysenko¹s 
conceptions, his theory of heredity, or else they would ipso facto 
be joining the camp of the heirs of Nazism, the side of what were 
denounced at Wroclaw as the Œforces of darkness¹. It was also 
clear that the summons was not addressed to biologists alone but 
to all scientists and intellectuals. Hence the bitterness and breadth 
of the discussion which took place in the succeeding days. 
Already on September 8th, a column was opened in the paper 
Combat under the general heading ŒMendel . . . or Lysenko? Have 
the Sciences of Heredity been Built on an Error for Two Hundred 
Years?¹ the presentation of its inquiry, the newspaper announced 
that it proposed Œto ask a number of personalities from the scientific 
world about the interpretations made in France of the works of 
the Soviet scientist Lysenko, in order to discover what differentiates 
his work from that of his predecessors and to what extent it has 
suffered from partisan distortions¹. So, from September 8th to 
15th, on the first page, famous scientists one after another took up 
positions on the basis of the still fragmentary information then 
available to them. 
Let me run through the contributions to this debate. 
After a cautious article by Jean Rostand, who reckoned that 
Œeven if the facts announced by Lysenko are accurate as facts, it 
may be that they did not have the significance he attributes to 
them,¹ and consequently applied himself to negotiating the 
possibility of a compromise between Lysenko¹s interpretation and 
Œan interpretation different from his and still in conformity with 
the teachings of classical genetics,¹ two sharply polemical articles 
were to give the debate its full dimensions. 
One by Maurice Daumas,1 who first threw the name of Galileo 
into the controversy. After a stinging criticism of the Œsupposedly 
scientific¹ content of the article in Les Lettres françaises, denouncing 
notably its obvious falsification of the theses of classical genetics, 
Daumas concluded that this was not indeed a matter of a scientific 
debate proper, analogous for example to the memorable disputes 
1 Maurice Daumas was at that time Assistant Curator at the Musée des Arts et Métiers.

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 21 
between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire or Newton and the 
Cartesians: ŒIn fact, the recent Moscow debates take us back to 
the epoch of Galileo. With them come the same procedures of 
intimidation, the same arguments (almost literally) to smear theses 
and individuals, the same one-sidedness, the same absolutism. . . . 
The great sorrow of our epoch - it can no longer be a matter of 
indignation - is thus that such an undertaking should be possible 
today. But those who have launched it with such massive publicity 
should remember that despite the Congregation, Copernicus¹ 
system triumphed over Ptolemy¹s.¹ Thus Galileo came to be central 
to the debate, and he has never left it: the geneticist Zhores 
Medvedev,2 writing in the 1960¹s a now famous book on ŒThe 
Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko¹, was to identify Vavilov, Lysenko¹s 
opponent who died in deportation, with Galileo; as for the 
Communists, in the heat of battle they replied by making the 
opposite identification. 
On September 15th the inquiry ended with an intervention by 
Jacques Monod3 who asked and protested: ŒHow could Lysenko 
have obtained sufficient power and influence to subjugate his 
colleagues, win the support of the radio and the press, the approval 
of the Central Committee and of Stalin in person, to the extent 
that today Lysenko¹s derisory truth is the official truth guaranteed 
by the state, that everything that deviates from it is ³irrevocably 
outlawed² from Soviet science. . . . All this is senseless, monstrous, 
unbelievable. Yet it is true. What has happened?¹ 
Monod¹s answer to this question was not to vary. He was still 
repeating it in 1970 in his introduction to Medvedev¹s book. It is 
a global answer: all is explained, he wrote, by the Œmortal decay 
into which socialist thought has fallen in the Soviet Union. There 
seems no possible alternative to this conclusion, painful as it may 
be to anyone who has long set all his hopes on the emergence of 
socialism in Russia as the first stage of its triumph throughout the 
world.¹ 
To these increasingly virulent attacks one single reply: that of a 
man divided in whose honour it must be said that he refused to 
2 Zhores Medvedev was a student of biology at the time of Lysenko¹s rise in the Soviet 
Union. Even before Lysenko¹s Œfall¹ he set out to write a book on the affair, extracts from 
which were passed clandestinely from hand to hand. This book came out in the USA in 
1968 and was translated into French and published in an abridged edition in France by 
Gallimard in 1971. 
3 At that time Jacques Monod was laboratory head at the Institut Pasteur

22 
the end the impossible choice that so many wanted to impose on him 
between his political convictions and his scientific conceptions. 
That man: Marcel Prenant, former partisan leader, member of the 
Central Committee of the French Communist Party and internationally 
famous biologist. 
In his intervention of September 14th, he marked himself off 
from Œenthusiasts and insufficiently experienced vulgarizers¹, and 
from Œthe critics whose ill-will is expressed a priori¹, and then sought 
to control the conflagration by negotiating with and against 
everyone a point of agreement between Lysenkoism and classical 
genetics. ŒThe really new point seems to be as follows. Whereas 
hitherto the experimental interventions made by geneticists (by 
irradiation, for example) have enabled them to increase the percentage 
of mutations but not to produce a determinate transformation, 
Michurin and Lysenko say that they have, by suitable 
techniques such as extreme changes in temperature, obtained in 
certain cases the hereditary fixation of characters acquired under 
environmental influence and hence knowable in advance. There is 
nothing absurd in this. . . . It may well be that on top of that 
Lysenko¹s texts are often obscure, that he sometimes appeals in a 
way to which we are unaccustomed to argument by authority, 
quoting from Marx, Engels, Darwin, Timiryazev, but this cannot 
gainsay the fact that a whole people is today profiting by the work 
of Michurin and Lysenko. Which of our vehement critics has 
obtained comparable results?¹ 
In La Pensée at the end of the year, Marcel Prenant took up the 
same arguments: the Lysenkoists had obtained good practical 
results in agriculture where Œclassical¹ geneticists had been ineffective; 
the facts he signalled should be closely studied; no doubt they 
were compatible with Mendelist theory. When the review Europe 
had published the full documentation of the debate, Prenant 
attempted a final evasion: Lysenko¹s criticisms, he claimed, do 
not apply to genetics itself but only to the reactionary, mystical 
or racist, idealist exploitations to which it had been subject in 
Germany and the USA. . . . As for the Œpositive¹ content of the 
doctrine, he asked that it be examined seriously. 
Meanwhile what was already the ŒLysenko affair¹ had become 
an object of everyday political struggle: on September 5th, Charles 
Dumas4 had written in Le Populaire a very sharp response to Les 
4 At the time Charles Dumas was head of the foreign policy department of the socialist 
journal.

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 23 
Lettres françaises entitled ŒReturn to the Middle Ages¹. Having 
recalled that all tyrannical regimes have always wanted to Œsubject 
the arts and philosophy to the will of the holders of power¹, he 
went on to justify the title of his article: ŒWhere it is no longer 
possible to smile is when it is claimed that from now on science 
must submit to the doctrine of a political ideology, because it is 
an attempt to take the human spirit back to the worst periods of 
the middle ages.¹ 
Georges Cogniot replied in L¹Humanité, September 10th: 
ŒSoviet Science and the Socialists of the Middle Ages¹. Cogniot 
repeated, without an iota¹s change, the theses unfolded in Les 
Lettres françaises; he identified Mendelism and metaphysics and 
gave credence to Lysenko¹s hundredfold repeated declarations of 
his fidelity to Darwinism; he recalled the persistent hostility of 
reactionary ideologists to Darwin¹s doctrine and closed with the 
following counter-attack in the form of a diatribe: ŒAll the servants 
of capitalism ask of science something other than objective truth: 
they ask of it justification for social and philosophical systems 
condemned by the facts; they pursue aims foreign to the search 
for truth. . . . The time is not long since when the biologist Scopes 
was put on trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for having taught evolutionism. 
Ten years after the Soviet Revolution the states of 
Tennessee and Mississippi passed laws prohibiting the teaching of 
Darwinism, a law of Texas removed everything about evolution 
from school textbooks, no less odious ³dogmatic slaveries² were 
instituted by the ministries of North Carolina, California, the 
school boards in Atlanta, capital of Georgia, and many others. 
There is the Inquisition, Messrs. socialists of the middle ages.¹ 
Clearly, Marcel Prenant¹s critical moderation was no longer in 
season: he was forced into silence and then to leave the Party. 
There began the time of what Althusser, in the preface to For 
Marx, called Œconviction, whether inspired or forced¹. 
To Aragon then fell the responsibility for refuting the hostile 
arguments.5 Thus: ŒWithout taking sides between the two tendencies, 
a philistine may be allowed to observe that the first decrees 
man¹s inability to change the course of species, to direct living 
5 To be fair however it should be added that some biologists subsequently helped to 
spread Lysenkoist theses in France. They formed a ŒFrench Association of Friends of 
Michurin¹. See for example the publications of Cl. Ch. Mathon, one of the leading spirits 
in this Association. Notably his Études mitchouriniennes sur les céréales (together with M. 
Stroun) and his article ŒQuelques aspects du mitchourinisme¹ in the Revue générale des 
sciences pures et appliquées, nos. 3-4, 1951.

24 
nature, while the second claims to justify man¹s power to change 
the course of species, to direct the course of species, to direct 
heredity. He may be allowed to say to himself that someone who 
does not lay claim to dialectical materialism, to Marxism, will be 
less embarrassed if he chooses the first theory than a Marxist who, 
on every occasion, not just in biology, regards it as his role not 
merely to explain the world but also to change it. A non-Marxist 
is certainly more comfortable with the first theory than a Marxist. 
Or, to make myself more plain, if Marxism is postulated first, 
before going on to biology, the Marxist biologist will certainly be 
prejudiced in favour of the Michurinist theory which justifies the 
possibility of human action on living nature.¹ And this conclusion, 
which has the merit that it puts things crudely: ŒPersonally, I am 
not a biologist. My confidence in Marxism obviously makes me 
wish that the Michurinists are right in this quarrel. This is not an 
argument for non-Marxists. And it is a fact that there are men who 
consider themselves Marxists and yet reckon that classical genetics 
is right against Michurin and Lysenko. If I do not see how they 
reconcile this with their Marxism, I must surely blame my inadequacy 
in this matter, which I do not deny, and in general my 
ignorance of biological science. But still, to rely on crude common 
sense, it seems to me that they must have some difficulties to 
surmount which the Michurinists do not have.¹ 
The Party¹s philosophers were not slow to supplement Aragon¹s 
Œinadequacy¹ by adding a Marxist theoretical Œfoundation¹ to this 
stand. From a tendentious interpretation of certain texts by Lenin 
they drew the absurd theory of the two sciences: the distinction 
between Œbourgeois science¹ and Œproletarian science¹, which of 
course goes beyond the case of genetics, was to become for several 
years the favourite weapon of Communist intellectuals in the 
ideological battle; mathematics, physics, chemistry, psychoanalysis 
. . . were to fall victim to it in the same way. 
The essence of this theory was set out in a kind of manifesto 
published by Éditions de la Nouvelle Critique in 1950.6 
Let me go into the logic of its argument for a moment. 
6 It consists of a collection of articles and lectures prefaced by Laurent Casanova, in 
which appear texts by Francis Cohen, Jean Toussaint Desanti, Raymond Guyot and 
Gérard Vassails entitled Science bourgeoise et science prolétarienne. 
Under the title ŒScience, a Historically Relative Ideology¹, J. T. Desanti, wrote: That 
there is a bourgeois science and a fundamentally contradictory proletarian science means 
above all that science too is a matter of class struggle, a party matter.¹ And he asked: If science 
is the product of a class, how is one to understand the objectivity of its content? How is

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 25 
First, it established that every science has a class character. Now 
this class character does not just affect the socio-material conditions 
of research, as is plain to any sociologism, but also, something 
much more radical, the concepts and theories that it gives rise to. 
If one added that by virtue of the division of manual and intellectual 
labour integral to the existence of class societies, it is always the 
mark of the ruling class that science bears, it was easy to draw the 
conclusion that science as it exists in the middle of the twentieth 
century is 99 per cent Œbourgeois science¹: all its productions are 
marked with the brand of its class of origin; they express the 
interest that this class has in knowing reality and transforming it to 
its advantage. 
Here a question and an objection arise: this being so, what then 
distinguishes bourgeois Œscience¹ from mere bourgeois ideology? 
Can one still say, as the Marxist classics maintained, that scientific 
knowledges are objective? How is one to explain the effective, if 
still imperfect, control of natural phenomena that humanity has 
acquired thanks to the sciences, and especially to the Œbourgeois¹ 
sciences? The answer came in two stages: if it is true, it was explained, 
that when the bourgeoisie was involved in the conquest of 
power it had an interest in knowing reality objectively and was 
one to understand the undoubted unity of its development?¹ Answer: ŒScience is the fruit of 
human labour and in this labour man determines nature as it is in itself. To transform the 
thing in itself into a thing for us means to attack brute nature with tools forged in contact 
with it and to learn by this labour to master it. Now this transformation is not the work 
of man in isolation; it uses tools it is achieved in labour. Hence it is the fruit of the whole 
society: the way it is achieved reflects the state of the productive forces that sustain the whole 
social edifice; and hence also the interests of the class whose social activity promotes the 
productive forces and sustains the form of organisation of labour. Hence the content of 
science must retain the dialectical unity of the two terms of this transformation: human 
labour on the one hand, nature on the other. This unity is precisely what Lenin calls the 
³thing for us², or in other words the sector of nature already dominated by human practice. 
This dialectical relation must also be found in the development of science. This development 
always has a social content: as such it is always relative to the state of the productive 
forces always linked to class struggles (often by remote links) always expressive of the 
interests and consciousness of a class. But this development thereby expresses the degree 
of mastery and domination that a given society has achieved over nature. It thus contains 
and uses even as it extends it the sector of nature already dominated. This explains how 
science can be one in its development and is yet linked by a necessary bond to class struggles; 
this explains how the content of science can be objective and yet express the viewpoint of 
the rising or ruling class.¹ 
This text is undoubtedly the most systematic justification for the philosophical basis of 
Lysenkoism. It has the exceptional interest that it confronts the crucial philosophical 
questions posed by the theory of the two sciences without side-stepping: an imprudence 
from which the majority of Soviet philosophers were retreating at the same moment.

26 
thus able to produce authentically scientific knowledges, on the 
contrary, once its struggle became a defensive one and it had to 
preserve its power against the proletariat, this was not allowed it 
as a victim of its own interest in masking reality from its opponent. 
Thus, where heredity is concerned: with Darwin the bourgeoisie 
reached the limits of the knowledges of which it was capable. 
What came after was no more than ideological defences that, far 
from developing Darwinism, have betrayed its essence. 
With the crisis of capitalism has come the hour of Œproletarian 
science¹: now, by its position in the class struggle, only the proletariat 
can know reality objectively-scientifically, because it 
alone is interested in its transformation. That it should lay down 
the cornerstones of this science of a new type in the Soviet Union, 
the first country in which it is in power, is nothing if not logical. 
Lysenko¹s Œbiology¹ was thus presented as the first achievement of 
this new era in the history of the sciences to which the October 
Revolution had given birth; the critique of Œclassical¹ genetics as 
the first tremor in an earthquake which was to spread throughout 
the scientific edifice. 
However obviously hazardous it seems today, this theoretical 
construction had the appearance of consistency. Reinforced by the 
authority of the highest scientific and political instances of the 
USSR, it was strong enough to spur the enthusiasm of a number 
of philosophers and to pitch some scientists into the most tragic of 
intellectual collapses. 
Such were the first exchanges in the great Œquarrel¹ (bagarre), in 
Aragon¹s words, that constituted the ŒLysenko affair¹ in France; 
such, in their mutual intransigence, were the positions of the two 
opposed camps confronting one another after September 1948. The 
polemic broke out, as we have seen, vis-à-vis an article which gave 
a review of Lysenko¹s Report to the Academy of Agricultural 
Sciences in Moscow. It was not long before the precise contents 
of the Report which occasioned that article were revealed, thanks 
to an issue of the magazine Europe (Nos. 33-4, September-October 
1948) . 
t t t 
If we restrict ourselves to its title, Lysenko¹s Report concerns Œthe 
situation in biological science¹.7 But this is specified in its opening 
7 The full proceedings of the Session were translated into English and published as The 
Situation of Biological Science: Proceedings of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Science of the

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 27 
lines, which explain the orientation of the text as a whole: biology 
is envisaged as the foundation of scientific agronomy. Hence the 
examination centres on Œthe laws of the life and development of 
vegetable and animal forms, i.e., primarily . . . the science known 
for half a century now as genetics¹ (p. 11). 
There follow the broad outlines of a history of biology which 
Lysenko made begin with Darwin. Not for convenience, but 
because in his eyes Œthe appearance of Darwin¹s teaching, expounded 
in his book, The Origin of Species, marked the beginning of scientific 
biology¹ (ibid.). 
The key notion of Darwinist theory is, according to Lysenko, 
the theory of natural and artificial selection by adaptation. By 
his theory of selection, Darwin gave a rational explanation of the 
adaptation of living nature, thus generalizing the results obtained 
empirically over centuries by agriculturalists and breeders. ŒAgricultural 
practice,¹ explained Lysenko, Œserved Darwin as the material 
basis for the elaboration of his theory of evolution, which explained 
the natural causes of the purposiveness we see in the structure of 
the organic world¹ (p. 12). 
The Report went on to recall Engels¹s dual appreciation of 
Darwin¹s achievement:8 on the one hand, the theory of natural 
selection is celebrated as one of the three essential discoveries which 
together with that of the cell and that of the transformation of 
energy, have advanced by leaps and bounds our Œknowledge of the 
interconnection of natural processes¹ (ibid.) and on the other, it 
is criticized for a series of mistakes, all of which in the last analysis 
come down to Darwin¹s borrowings from Malthus¹s reactionary 
teachings. 
Following Engels, Lysenko cited Darwin himself: ŒIn October 
1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic 
enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, 
and, being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence 
which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of 
the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under 
USSR Session: July 31st-August 7th 1948 Verbatim Report, Foreign Languages Publishing 
House, Moscow 1949. Page references cited in the text are henceforward to this volume. 
8 The three most important of Engels¹s texts on the question are: 
‹ his letter to P. L. Lavrov of November 12th-17th 1875; 
‹ Anti-Dühring (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1959), pp. 97-101; 
‹ Dialectics of Nature (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1940) pp. 235-6. 
I shall return to these later.

28 
these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, 
and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. . . . Here then I 
had at last got a theory by which to work¹ (pp. 12-13). 
Thus, concluded Lysenko, biologists should not be unaware of 
or ignore the erroneous aspects of Darwin¹s teaching. On the 
contrary, they should ponder Engels¹s words: ŒThe entire Darwinian 
teaching on the struggle for existence merely transfers from 
society to the realm of living nature Hobbes¹ teaching on bellum 
omnium contra omnes and the bourgeois economic teaching on 
competition, along with Malthus¹ population theory.¹9 
Here the intention behind the history of biology as written by 
the Soviet Academician is revealed: by isolating within Darwin¹s 
teaching, at the heart of the theory which, according to him, 
inaugurates biological science, an inner contradiction between a 
materialist element (the theory of Œselection by adaptation¹) and a 
reactionary idealist element (the notion of the Œstruggle for existence¹), 
Lysenko provided himself with a theoretical justification 
for his position in the contemporary conjuncture: the contradiction 
between his own teaching and existing biological science appears 
as the result of the internal history of that science. 
Inversely, that history appears as the history of the development 
of the contradiction which Lysenko was the first to bring into the 
open. But the style of this development as it was described subsequently 
deserves attention. We do not, as one might expect, 
find the initial contradiction reproducing its effects within the 
different works to which The Origin of Species opened the way, 
but in what might be called a Œlinear¹ manner, we find it generating 
two Œlineages¹ of research: some, integrally materialist, developed 
the scientific and revolutionary side of Darwinism - these are the 
works of Kovalevskii, Mechnikov, Sechensv and Timiryazev, the 
only Œtrue scientists¹ - the others, those of Œthe overwhelming 
majority of biologists¹, who, instead of developing Darwin¹s 
teaching, have done everything to Œdebase Darwinism, to smother 
its scientific foundation¹ - these researches have found their Œmost 
glaring manifestation¹ in the works of A. Weismann, G. Mendel 
and T. H. Morgan, Œthe founders of modern reactionary genetics¹ 
(p. 15). 
The Report is thus divided into two distinct and sequential 
9 Letter to Lavrov. November 12th-17th 1875.

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 29 
developments: one devoted to the Œreactionary¹ lineage, the other 
to the materialist lineage that leads to Lysenko¹s own doctrine. 
In the Œreactionary¹ lineage, the first theory envisaged, the one 
submitted to the longest and most detailed analysis in the Report, 
is that of August Weismann. This theory, forgotten by most 
biologists today, owes this privileged treatment less to its position 
in the chronological sequence than to its theoretical content. 
Throughout his battle against the geneticists, indeed, Lysenko 
referred to Weismann¹s Lectures on Evolutionary Theory as the text 
in which the principles supposedly guiding all later constructions, 
often unbeknownst to them, are clearly expressed: in sum, as the 
philosophical archetype of Mendelist genetics. 
These principles are summarized as follows: ŒWeismann denied 
the inheritability of acquired characters and conceived the idea of 
a special hereditary substance ³to be sought for in the nucleus². 
³The sought-for bearer of hereditary,² he stated, ³is contained in 
the chromosome material.² The Chromosomes, he said, contain 
units, each of which ³determines a definite part of the organism 
in its appearance and final form.²¹ (p. 16). In other words, by 
rejecting the notion of selection by adaptation, brutally assimilated 
by Lysenko to the thesis of the inheritability of acquired characters, 
Weismann opened the way to the idealist tradition in biology 
which, after him, was based on the postulated existence of a special 
substance to which the phenomena of heredity could be imputed. 
ŒAn immortal hereditary substance,¹ Lysenko went on, Œindependent 
of the qualitative features attending the development of the 
living body, directing the mortal body, but not produced by the 
latter - that is Weismann¹s frankly idealist, essentially mystical 
conception, which he disguised as ³Neo-Darwinism². Weismann¹s 
conception has been fully accepted and, we might say, carried 
further by Mendelism-Morganism¹ (p. 17). 
The identification of Mendelist genetics as a variety of Weismannism 
is marked in the text of the Report by the repeated use 
of the expression ŒWeismannism-Mendelism¹, coined by Lysenko. 
It explains the style in which the principles of the Mendelist 
theory of heredity are presented: according to Lysenko: ŒThe 
Mendelist-Morganists contend that the chromosomes contain a 
special ³hereditary substance² which resides in the body of the 
organism as though in a case and is transmitted to succeeding 
generations irrespective of the qualitative features of the body and

30 
its conditions of life. . . . The Mendelist-Morganists hold that the 
efforts of investigators to regulate the heredity of organisms by 
suitably changing the conditions of life of these organisms are 
utterly unscientific.¹ (p. 19). 
In the discussion that followed the Report this last point was to 
be one of Lysenko¹s war-horses: there is no better illustration of 
the idealist character of classical genetics, he repeated, than its 
belief in the fatality of hereditary phenomena, the renunciation it 
implies in practice of the modification of nature to man¹s advantage. 
Given this, it is easy, concluded Lysenko, to explain the total 
sterility of this Œmetaphysical¹ and Œscholastic¹ doctrine, and he 
missed no opportunity for ironic comment on the results obtained 
by the geneticists: ŒAs the result of many years of effort, Dubinin 
³enriched² science with the ³discovery² that during the War 
there occurred among the fruit-fly population of the city of 
Voronezh and its environs an increase in the percentage of flies with 
certain chromosome structures and a decrease in the percentage of 
flies with other chromosome structures¹ (p. 33). 
Lysenko then went on to expound the positive content of the 
new Œscientific¹ biology: ŒMichurinist¹ biology. The first principle 
of this doctrine cuts across what Lysenko regarded as the ultimate 
conclusion of classical genetics: Œ²It is possible, with man¹s intervention, 
to force any form of animal or plant to change more quickly 
and in a direction desirable to man. There opens before man a broad 
field of activity of the greatest value to him²¹ (p. 34). This 
principle implied a rejection of the thesis that leads, according to 
Lysenko, to the opposite conclusion: ŒThe Michurin teaching 
flatly rejects the fundamental principle of Mendelism-Morganism 
that heredity is completely independent of the plants¹ and animals¹ 
conditions of life¹ (p. 34). In doing which, incidentally, it is only 
returning to the Œmaterialist content¹ of Darwinism conveyed in 
the following general proposition: ŒThe organism and the conditions 
required for its life constitute a unity¹ (p. 35). 
Hence the Lysenkoist definition of heredity: a definition 
presented as Darwinian: ŒHeredity is the property of a living body 
to require determinate conditions for its life and development and 
to respond in a definite way to various conditions¹ (p. 35). 
Hence also the outlines of a theory of variation: ŒWhen an 
organism finds in its environment the conditions suitable to its 
heredity, its development proceeds in the same way as it proceeded

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 31 
in previous generations. When, however, organisms do not find 
the conditions they require and are forced to assimilate environmental 
conditions which, to some degree or other, do not accord 
with their nature, then the organisms or sections of their bodies 
become more or less different from the preceding generation. If the 
altered section of the body is the starting point for the new generation, 
the latter will, to some extent or other, differ from the 
preceding generations in its requirements and nature¹ (p. 35). 
A certain number of agronomic techniques are then invoked 
(grafting, mentors, cross-breeding) to illustrate the validity of this 
thesis and this theory: these techniques are presented as proofs that 
it is possible to change, in whole or in part, the heredity of a plant 
or animal organism by altering the external environment. They 
are also given as the practical basis for the Lysenkoist theory. 
The presumed result of this whole elaboration: a possible 
development of Darwinism by corrections and transformations, of 
which Lysenko gave only two examples in his Report. But two 
extremely important examples that were rapidly to become the 
centre of discussion. ŒThe time has come,¹ he announced first, Œto 
consider the question of speciation, approaching it from the angle 
of the transition of quantitative accumulation into qualitative 
distinctions¹ (p. 47). On this point, Lysenko did not hesitate to 
oppose Darwin directly: ŒI think,¹ he wrote, Œthat in posing the 
question in this way we may assume that what leads to the appearance 
of a new specific form, to the formation of a new species out 
of an old one, is not the accumulation of quantitative distinctions 
by which variations within a species are usually recognized. The 
quantitative accumulation of variations which lead to the leap 
which changes an old form of species into a new form are variations 
of a different order¹ (p. 47). 
His second correction of Darwinism: The denial of any struggle 
within one and the same species. Lysenko had discussed this at 
length in an article published in Literaturnaya Gazeta in October 
1947. ŒAt first glance,¹ he wrote, Œit may seem that bourgeois 
science, in its attempt to prove the existence of intra-specific 
competition, proceeds from natural selection, a correct thesis of 
Darwinism. After all, anybody can see that an eternal struggle 
between organisms is going on in nature. And organisms whose 
requirements coincide (for instance carnivorous animals of various 
species), carry on this struggle directly or indirectly, compete

32 
among themselves for the capture of food, while organisms whose 
requirements do not coincide (for instance, carnivorous animals 
and plants) wage no struggle among themselves¹ (T. D. Lysenko: 
Agrobiology, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1954, 
pp. 511‹12). 
But, added Lysenko, what has been forgotten is the fact that in 
both cases it is a matter of animals or plants of different species. 
ŒFor instance, who can demonstrate that rabbits interfere with each 
other more than they are interfered with by wolves or that wolves 
harm each other more than they are harmed by rabbits which, 
having fine ears and long legs, run away from them and leave 
them hungry. Anyone will believe that weeds, being different in 
species from wheat, for instance, interfere with it and kill it. But 
nobody is going to believe that a thin and hence weed-choked stand 
of wheat fares better in the field than thick-grown and hence pure 
wheat. I affirm once more that no one has ever yet produced, 
or ever will produce, any scientific proof that competition within 
a species exists in nature¹ (ibid., p. 512). 
t t t 
These, in their brutality, are the essential theses of Lysenko¹s 
Report. They had to be summarized in order to give some notion 
of the ideological and Œtheoretical¹ fait accompli that authoritatively 
confronted all geneticists and biologists, Marxists and Communists. 
It will have been noticed that nothing is more striking than the 
Œtheoretical¹ appearance of this discourse, which argues, builds a 
history of biology in which to trace its pedigree, appropriates the 
materialist aspect of Darwin and condemns his idealistic tendencies, 
violently opposes its adversaries in the form of the Mendel- 
Weismann amalgam, proposes concepts by which to think evolution 
and heredity and finally takes the liberty of differentiating 
itself from Darwin himself in two decisive matters. But at the same 
time nothing is more striking in this discourse of Œscientific theory¹ 
than the disproportion between the mass of ideological and 
Œtheoretical¹ arguments and the few facts invoked as proof of the 
theory¹s correctness. Nothing is more striking than the absence 
of an organic relationship between the Œtheory¹ and its Œfacts¹. From 
the Report, it is impossible to avoid the impression that the Œtheory¹ 
has been cut to fit the facts it invokes and that its relationship with 
them is one of affirmation close to injunction. This is what gives

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 33 
Lysenko¹s Report the closure into itself which makes it quite 
irrefutable and implacable, once one has entered its logic (as 
happened to some geneticists who thought they could compromise 
with it) or once one is committed to accepting it. We shall have 
occasion to prove it: in order to criticize and at the same time 
understand the illusion and the imposture of the Report, it is 
essential to leave its closure and subject it to the facts and to history. 
t t t 
Lysenko¹s Report is no more than the first part of the record of a 
long Session: over six stormy sittings more than sixty speakers 
developed, illustrated and discussed each of its assertions. A discussion 
of the greatest interest, essential to an understanding of the 
Report itself, since it brought face to face in a confrontation in 
which neither side made any concessions the two tendencies of 
Mendelism and Michurinism. 
All this culminated on August 7th 1948, after the sending of a 
letter of greetings to Stalin, with the adoption of a resolution 
approving Lysenko¹s Report and concluding in the following 
terms: 
ŒThis Session notes that to this day scientific research in a number 
of biological institutes and the teaching of genetics, plant breeding, 
seed cultivation, general biology and Darwinism in universities 
and colleges, is based on syllabuses and plans that are permeated 
with the ideas of Mendelism-Morganism, which is gravely prejudicial 
to the ideological training of our cadres. In view of this, 
this general meeting is of the opinion that scientific research in 
the field of biology must be radically reorganized and that the 
biological sections of the syllabuses of educational institutions must 
be revised. 
ŒThe purpose of this reorganization must be to help to arm 
scientific research workers and students with the Michurin theory. 
This is a necessary condition for success in the work of specialists 
in production and in scientific research connected with urgent 
problems in the field of biology. Simultaneously with the revision 
of syllabuses, work should be organized for the issue of high quality 
textbooks, and of books and pamphlets to popularize Michurin¹s 
theory. . . . 
ŒThis Session of the Academy is of the opinion that the researches 
conducted in the Academy¹s institutions should be subordinated

34 
to the task of assisting the collective farms, machine and tractor 
stations and state farms in their efforts to secure higher yields of 
agricultural crops and livestock produce¹ (Verbatim Report, op. cit., 
pp. 650-51). 
These practical measures signalled no more nor less than the 
death sentence to genetics in the Soviet Union: all teaching of this 
discipline and all research were to be prohibited for more than 
fifteen years. Knowing the developments this science saw in the 
1950¹s, knowing the extent of the applications to which it has 
given rise in medicine, physiology, agronomy . . . , one can imagine 
the disastrous consequences of these administrative measures which 
amazed the whole world. 
Soviet geneticists on the other hand could not be surprised by 
the result of the Session: if they had been able to express their 
positions freely at it, if they had been able to defend their science, 
they had done so with the energy of despair, for they knew before 
the session began that all was already lost. 
Listen to Lysenko once again: 
ŒIn the higher official scientific circles of biologists [in the 
USSR], too, the followers of Michurin and Vil¹yams have often 
found themselves in the minority. They were a minority in the 
Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences too. But the situation in 
the Academy has now sharply changed thanks to the interest taken 
in it by the Party, the Government, and Comrade Stalin personally. 
A considerable number of Michurinists have been added as members 
and corresponding members of our Academy, and we expect 
that more will be added shortly, at the coming elections. This will 
create a new situation in the Academy and new opportunities for 
the further development of the Michurin teaching¹ (p. 30). 
In other words: however Œopen¹ the discussion, its result was 
never in doubt. The majority had previously been reversed in 
Lysenko¹s favour, at Party instigation. The vote for the final 
resolution merely sanctioned a decision taken outside the Academy 
of Agricultural Sciences; independently of the proceedings at the 
sittings that were to be held in it. 
For, as the article in Les Lettres françaises put it, this Session 
marked Œthe culmination of a long struggle¹. 
In other words, no more than the Report is the discussion that 
immediately followed it comprehensible by itself. To understand 
either, it is necessary to evoke the episodes of this Œlong struggle¹,

ŒThe Lysenko Affair¹ 35 
conducted by the Lysenkoists for thirty years. But in speaking of 
the Œculmination of a long struggle¹, the article in Les Lettres 
françaises was speaking Lysenko¹s own language. No one should be 
surprised if the real history of Lysenkoism does not coincide with 
the history of Lysenkoism written by Lysenko.

2 
The Long Fight of 
Lysenkoism 
(1927‹48) 
The intellectual confusion produced outside the Soviet Union by 
the reading of Lysenko¹s Report and the violence of subsequent 
reactions were partly due to the suddenness of the Œdiscovery¹: 
from one day to the next a doctrine was presented which apparently 
had an already well specified field of investigations, definite 
concepts, a programme of experimentation and many applications. 
A doctrine which immediately presented itself as a constituted 
science, and yet one which had given no previous hint of its 
existence. In the mere fact of such a brutal irruption there was 
something unprecedented and provocative. 
Lysenko was discovered on the day of his victory. But where 
did he come from? It was said that one Œtendency¹ in biology had 
carried the day against another. But how had this confrontation 
in the official framework of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences 
come about? When had the Lysenkoist tendency made its appearance? 
All questions few could have answered in 1948. 
And yet, the Œhistoric¹ Session that had just ended was, in its 
way, the Œculmination of a long struggle¹. At the moment it took 
up its place at the centre of the stage, Lysenkoism had twenty years 
of battles and many changes of fortune behind it; twenty years 
during which it had assumed the features now discovered in it; 
twenty years which had seen it undergo profound transformations 
and play more than one part. 
Thanks to recent studies - notably Zhores Medvedev's book and 
the investigations of David Joravsky1 - we are beginning to see this 
1 Zhores Medvedev's book The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko is a polemical work. 
Written over a number of years the text circulated secretly between 1961 and 1963 and 
helped to prepare Lysenko's 'fall'. It was later rewritten by its author and it being impossible 
to publish it in the USSR it appeared in the USA (Columbia University Press, New York 
36

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 37 
Œpre-history¹ somewhat more clearly. We have at our disposal 
sufficient documentation to follow the Œcareers¹ of Lysenko and 
his supporters from year to year. But it seems to me that to this day 
no one has successfully disentangled the real theoretical importance 
for the analysis of Lysenkoism of the episodes that marked this 
long history. For two conjoint reasons their relief has been blunted 
and their significance concealed from the very people who have 
brought them to light. 
The most immediate of these reasons is the retrospective illusion 
that leads one to seek in pre-1948 Lysenkoism a prefiguration of 
the features it eventually took on. From the fact that in 1948 
Lysenko¹s doctrine was consecrated as the official doctrine under 
pressure from the authorities, it seems justifiable to treat the earlier 
texts as if they were already marked Œin potentia¹ with the character 
they ultimately acquired. This illegitimate procedure makes the 
history of Lysenkoism a continuous one, the constantly amplified 
effect of a calculation by the authorities: a deliberately engineered 
mystification all the cogs in which had been secretly set in motion 
by Stalin himself from the very beginning. 
The other, much more powerful reason, inspiring and reinforcing 
the retrospective illusion, is obvious: the interpretation of 
the history of Lysenkoism to which it gives credence harmonizes 
with a general conception of the history of the ŒStalin period¹; a 
conception which would see the hand of Stalin himself, or that of 
one of his representatives, in all the events that constitute its 
thread, a conception for which a phenomenon in this period has 
been exhaustively explained once it has been possible to find in it 
the direct or indirect intervention of the authorities. In the present 
case, it is enough to have shown how, by cunning or naivety, 
Lysenko became Stalin¹s instrument. In exchange, Stalin made sure 
that all obstacles were cleared from his path. . . .2 
Experience, however, has made me realize that these presuppositions 
should be rejected and that, in opposition to this conception 
of a continuous or premeditated history, stress should be laid 
1969). David Joravsky¹s The Lysenko Affair, written by a specialist for the Russian Research 
Center of Harvard University is presented as a well documented study in Œepistemological¹ 
history. It contains a remarkable bibliography and a very accurate chronology. Its general 
orientation is violently anti-Marxist (Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mass. 1970). 
2 The very expression ŒLysenko affair¹, often used to designate the history of Lysenkoism 
is a fair reflection of the forensic tone of this idealist conception of history.

38 
on the real and relatively aleatory distinction between three 
periods which, preceding the official consecration, took Lysenkoism, 
between 1927 and 1948, to its eventual form. This recognition of 
real distinctions not only enables one to understand the transformations 
of Lysenkoism in its history, it also forces one to ask 
what were the reasons for these transformations, in terms which 
cannot be reduced directly to the intervention of the authorities 
alone. That is why, although it relies on essentially the same 
documents3 as have been used by Medvedev, Joravsky, Graham 
and others, to whom I gladly admit all my debt, the historical 
study that follows does not coincide in its outline with the one 
they have presented. 
t t t 
The first period of Lysenkoism (1927-9) can be schematically 
characterized by saying: Lysenko was a practitioner of agrobiology 
who became famous for a number of discoveries of agricultural 
techniques. At this time he was only a technician without any 
pronounced theoretical pretensions. 
It was in 1927 that Lysenko¹s name first came to the notice of a 
wide audience in the USSR, when Pravda published a resounding 
article on him. 
This article (ŒThe Fields in Winter¹), which included a verbal 
portrait of Lysenko,4 told of an original experiment successfully 
conducted to resolve difficulties in the provision of foodstuffs posed 
by cotton monoculture in Azerbaidzhan.5 ŒHe has turned the 
3 It should therefore be clear that I have no intention of contributing any new facts, 
any Œrevelations¹ about the Œaffair¹. On the contrary, I share with those who have written 
on the question the difficulties that stem from the small number of Soviet documents on 
which we are able to draw. At least I have tried to make the maximum possible use of 
those to which we do have access. 
4 ŒIf one is to judge a man by first impression, Lysenko gives one the feeling of a toothache; 
God give him health, he has a dejected mien Stingy of words and insignificant of 
face is he; all one remembers is his sullen look creeping along the earth as if, at the very 
least, he were ready to do someone in. Only once did this barefoot scientist let a smile pass, 
and that was at mention of Poltava cherry dumplings with sugar and sour cream . . .¹ 
(cit. Medvedev, op. cit., p. 11). As is clear, if the article¹s writer is not sparing in his praise 
of the Œscientist¹s¹ researches, he does not seem to have been conquered by his personality. 
And no more were those who approached him subsequently. 
5 In his novel Land in Bloom (Stalin Prize 1949; English translation by J. Fineberg, 
published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1951) V. Safonov 
summarized the problem posed in these terms: 
ŒHere in Gandzha it would have been possible to grow the Southern legumes with the 
exotic names - mung bean and vigna, but there was shortage of water. A fierce struggle

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 39 
barren fields of the Transcaucasus green in winter,¹ the journalist 
did not hesitate to write, and concluded: ŒCattle will not perish 
from poor feeding, and the peasant Turk will live through the 
winter without troubling for tomorrow¹ (cit. Joravsky, op. cit., 
p. 58). At a time when famine threatened every year, what these 
lines contain was enough to arouse more than interest in what was 
going on on the agricultural station at Gandzha (Kirovabad) in 
which Lysenko worked. . . . 
The experiment referred to in Pravda had consisted in getting 
herbaceous plants (peas), chosen for early ripening and planted in 
the autumn, to mature before the frosts. But the importance of 
the experiment did not so much lie in these practical results, which 
were far from being so spectacular as the paper proclaimed; it 
arose rather from the conclusion Lysenko drew from an unexpected 
difficulty encountered in the choice of the experimental material. 
Early ripening plants were required. He therefore used a variety 
of peas which he had earlier worked on at the Kiev station and 
which he knew to be early ripening. The surprise was that these 
peas, early ripening at Kiev, proved slow at Gandzha! How was 
such a change to be explained? Lysenko carried out other experiments 
of the same type, which led him to a general conclusion: the 
most important factor in the determination of the time between 
the germination and the maturity of a given plant is the temperature. 
Guided by this conclusion, he perfected the technique which 
was to constitute his fame, the one he always claimed as his Œdiscovery¹: 
the technique of Œvernalization¹6 to which his name is 
still attached. 
The first, brief, exposition of the technical procedures this term 
had to be fought for it in the summer the irrigation ditches carried their rippling loads to 
the cotton fields; the ³white gold² cotton could not be allowed to suffer from thirst 
ŒThere was no time for legumes. 
ŒIn the autumn of course and in the winter there was plenty of water. Nay more, the 
harvested cotton fields no longer needed it. But what can be done in the fields in the 
autumn and winter? 
ŒIn Gandzha, however these seasons are not like our Northern frowning autumn, not 
like our winter. This was Azerbaidzhan where the sun does not stint light and heat. 
ŒWould it not be possible therefore to plant legumes in the autumn and winter, in 
the months when there is plenty of water, and let cotton have the summer?¹ (p. 194). 
6 The term Œvernalisation¹ (yarovizatsiya) is indisputably Lysenko¹s. The reality of the 
technique it designated initially predates Lysenko, as we shall see. It should also be noted 
that later on Lysenko used the term in a much looser sense to designate any technique 
which brought a thermal factor into play in what he called the training of plants.

40 
Œvernalization¹ designates was given by Lysenko in 1928 in an 
article entitled ŒThe Influence of Temperature on the Length of 
the Development Period of Plants¹, an article whose substance he 
repeated in January 1929 before the Leningrad Congress on 
selection and breeding. 
In essence this technique consisted of maintaining at a low 
temperature the previously moistened seed of a winter variety of 
a given plant. By this means, explained Lysenko, it would be 
transformed into a spring plant. 
In Leningrad, Lysenko had spoken amidst general indifference. 
But a remarkable success abruptly drew the attention of the scientific 
and agricultural authorities to this new technique, so that even 
before the end of 1929 the Ukrainian Commissariat of Agriculture 
had ordered experiments in vernalization on a wide scale. The 
success had been obtained in the Ukraine by Lysenko¹s father who, 
to deal with the famine that had been raging for two years, had 
sown winter wheat in the spring after having kept the seeds the 
whole winter in a sack under the snow. He had thus obtained a 
quite exceptional yield in the region of 24 quintals per hectare. 
The term Œvernalization¹ became famous throughout the Soviet 
Union in a few months. Lysenko left Gandzha and was nominated 
to the Odessa Institute of Selection and Genetics. He published a 
Bulletin of Vernalization (Byulleten¹ Yarovizatsii) which guaranteed 
the diffusion of his research. The new technique was imposed on 
numerous state farms in the next five years: in 1935 2.1 million 
hectares were vernalized. 
As is clear, Lysenko received the support of the Government 
from the first. It is not incorrect to say that it was this support that 
decided his Œcareer¹. But it must be noted that initially this official 
support was only accorded to an original agronomic technique. 
In fact, in those early years Lysenkoism was only a technique - 
Œvernalization¹ - to which other procedures of the same type were 
added little by little, notably the summer planting of potatoes. 
For example, whenever Lysenko took up the pen in his Byulleten¹ 
at this time, it was to give practical advice to peasants on how to 
use thermometers, refrigerate seeds and carry out irrigation. 
Nothing more. 
t t t 
After this purely Œtechnical¹ period, the technician plunged into 
the theory of his technique. This opened the second period of Lysenkoism 
(1929-34), the least rich in spectacular developments, entirely

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 41 
occupied by the elaboration of a theory directly inferred from the 
practice of Œvernalization¹ that he was perfecting at the Odessa 
station whose director he had become. This theory he called the 
theory of the Œphasic development of plants¹. It was still one of the 
key components of Lysenkoist doctrine in 1948. 
This is how Stoletov7 summarized it for a wide readership: 
ŒLysenko discovered that the requirements of plants as to life 
conditions are not identical at different periods in their individual 
lives. At each phase of its development, a plant requires determinant 
conditions of life. Thus autumn wheat and rye require in the first 
phase of their development (corresponding to vernalization) fairly 
low temperatures (+1°, +2°C) and are indifferent to light. The 
phase of vernalization of different species of plants and different 
varieties of the same species (for example wheat) varies in length 
from ten or fifteen days to sixty and more. Once the phase of 
vernalization is terminated, the plant acquires new characteristics. 
Then begins the second phase of development, the ³luminous² 
phase. At this phase autumn wheat already requires higher temperatures 
and a fairly long light day. If these requirements are not 
met, the plant does not pass through the ³luminous² phase and 
cannot move on to the next phase of development.¹ 
It is this knowledge of the different phases of development of 
plants which, according to Lysenko, allows one to direct this 
development, to direct the life of plants. 
This theory was to remain rudimentary; even such a zealous 
propagandist as Safonov had to admit in 1949 that Œwe do not yet 
know all the phases¹. ŒIt is obvious that after the light phase, plants 
pass through other phases we do not know of.¹ It was to remain 
rather imprecise: the same Safonov wrote that Œit is doubtful 
whether there are many¹ phases, and that ŒLysenko thinks that 
there are no more than four or five¹ (op. cit., p. 206). In fact only 
the first was adequately delimited and studied for a small number 
of plant species. 
Nonetheless, the theory played a decisive part in the elaboration 
of Lysenkoism: for it established the link between the modest 
agricultural recipes of Gandzha and the great polemic on genetic 
7 V. N. Stoletov, later Minister of Higher Education, wrote a theoretical and pedagogic 
exposition of The Fundamentals of Michurin Biology, translated into English and published 
by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow in 1953, and into French as Mendel 
ou Lyssenko? Deux voies en biologie in the collection Études Soviétiques in 1950. Quotations 
here are from this edition.

42 
theory: ŒThe definition of the requirements of organisms, the 
study of the causes of the emergence and development of these 
requirements, the study of the way a certain plant reacts to the 
action of the environment, these are the bases for the theoretical 
works of our sciences of heredity and its mutability,¹ as Stoletov 
could write (op. cit.). 
How should one go about changing the heredity of a plant? 
asked Lysenko. One should go about it in such a way that the phase 
of vernalization begins in the normal conditions corresponding to 
the plant species considered and ends in abnormal conditions. To 
Œbreak¹ the heredity of a plant, all one need do is to play on this 
correspondence/non-correspondence between the plant¹s requirements 
and the constraints of the environment. 
A favourite example of Lysenko¹s: the winter wheat Lutescens 
0329. The first phase (Œvernalization¹) lasts from fifty to fifty-five 
days. The plant then requires low temperatures (+1°, 2°C). If the 
ears of Lutescens 0329 develop at the indicated temperatures for 
the desired time, they move on to the next phase. In the case of a 
normal sequence of all the phases, these ears will give seeds which 
will not be changed from the point of view of the characteristics of 
the species and will give normal winter ears. On the contrary, it is 
found that if the same ears are placed from the earliest hours of 
their growth in high thermal conditions, a temperature higher than 
15°C, they will continue to grow, but they will not go beyond the 
phase of vernalization and will produce neither stems nor ears: no 
seeds, just a bush. 
It is the combination of these two processes that, according to 
Lysenko, enables one to change the heredity of the wheat Lutescens 
0329; if, for example, it develops at normal low temperatures for 
the first forty-five days and is then placed in conditions of a higher 
temperature, the development of the plant will go on, and this 
time it will produce seeds. 
But, said Lysenko, the plants that grow from these seeds will 
tend to develop in the conditions in which the process finished: they 
will no longer have the Œnormal¹ requirements of Lutescens 0329; 
they will have new requirements, those of the conditions imposed on 
them at the end of the phase of vernalization. Hence Lysenko concluded 
that its heredity has been destabilized and that therefore one 
has a generalizable means to change and direct the heredity of 
plants at will.

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 43 
ŒBroken heredity¹, Œdestabilized heredity¹ - these were formulae 
of the most famous Russian horticulturalist, the man to the formation 
of whose legend Lysenko was then to contribute by 
presenting his own works as the continuation of his: Ivan Michurin.8 
Already in 1929, Lysenko had seized on Michurin¹s name. The 
Congress of Genetics held in that year had made it known to a large 
audience by the solemn homage it had paid this gardener, whose 
skill was respected, who was given his due in the evening of his 
life for having lifted agriculture from its age-old rut and who was 
thanked for having always loyally collaborated with the Soviet 
power. Lysenko was able to use this homage to his advantage: for 
many years Michurin had worked on the acclimatization of 
Southern plants in Central Russia. He had therefore insisted on the 
importance of the conditions of life of plants for their development: 
ŒIf you want to make use of my achievements,¹ he said, ŒTry 
to use pre-prepared Michurinist species as rarely as possible. These 
species have been formed in the conditions of the province of 
8 Michurin¹s life has been told, celebrated, fictionalized a hundred times. It has even been 
made into a film of the same name. Hence it is rather difficult to sort out what is true from 
what is legendary in it. However we do have one exceptional document which was used 
in the Michurin Œcult¹, but had not been prepared to that end: the ŒAutobiographical Data¹ 
translated at the beginning of Michurin¹s Selected Works (Foreign Languages Publishing 
House, Moscow 1949). 
It tells us that Michurin (1855-1935), the sole descendant of a noble family brought low 
by ruin and disease, was first a clerk in a railway office, then a watchmaker. We also know 
that he had made horticulture his hobby and at that time cultivated a small neglected garden 
rented in his home province of Tambov in Central Russia. 
When he was thirty-five Michurin decided to leave the railways and concern himself 
only with arboriculture. For this purpose he prepared thirty acres of land and began 
experimenting on hybridization and grafting. From then on his life became the story of his 
long vain efforts to obtain the directorship of an experimental station. Despite a telegram 
of congratulations sent to him by Lenin in 1922 and his participation in the first Soviet 
agricultural exhibition in 1923, his fame really dates from 1929. Only after 1935, the year 
of his death, did he become the true symbol of Soviet agriculture . . . thanks to Lysenko. 
Michurin¹s theoretical positions have subsequently been the object of endless disputes - 
all the sharper in that Michurin himself was very little concerned with theory and only 
left a few illusive pages on the question of ŒMendelism¹ in his nonetheless voluminous 
writings. Moreover, it is striking that, going by these pages, Michurin was by no means the 
Œanti-Mendelist¹ the Lysenkoists would have him be. On the contrary, he spoke straightforwardly 
about Œgenes¹ and Mendel¹s laws, which, it is true, he called Œpea laws¹ to 
emphasize the difficulty he had found in discovering and applying them to fruit trees. 
Reading other texts - the ones reporting Michurin¹s Œexperiments¹ - one rather has the 
feeling that what underpinned his techniques was at once an unshakable belief in men¹s 
capacities to change the nature of plants to their advantage and a Œvitalist¹ conception of 
the superabundance of living forms - which no doubt made him suspicious of Mendelist 
mathematics. In other words, the Œspontaneous philosophy of a gardener¹.

44 
Tamba, and it is to these conditions that they are best adapted.¹ 
No more was necessary to Lysenko for him to use these general 
precepts - which were never anything but those of an experienced 
plant breeder - as a justification for claiming Michurin as the father 
of the theory of the phasic development of plants. 
From a large number of methodically conducted experiments, 
Michurin had concluded that, thanks to hybridization, the organism 
was destabilized and thereby became more malleable, more sensitive 
to its life conditions, that, because of this sensitivity, qualities 
and characters often made their appearance in the hybrids which 
neither of the parents chosen for the cross possessed. He therefore 
added that, if the breeder makes sure to place the hybrid in adequate 
life conditions, he can eventually create the vegetable form he 
desires. 
As he had shown, all this necessitated a profound knowledge of 
the conditions of development of the plants chosen for crossing and 
a very precise adjustment of the conditions in which the hybrid 
had to be Œtrained¹ to inflect its development. Lysenko was to use 
these comments as anticipations of his theory of adaptive heredity. 
In addition, Michurin had made hundreds of grafts, and as a 
result thought he could claim that there was definite proof of the 
possibility of a Œvegetative hybridization¹.9 He established, indeed, 
that there was a Œmutual influence between stock and scion¹, and 
that one could thus create new species. 
The classic example: the hybrid of the pear and the apple called 
the Œreinette-bergamote¹. But also citrous pears, melon-pumpkins 
and dozens of other hybrids. Lysenko saw this as an argument 
against the exclusively sexual path of inheritance postulated, 
according to him, by Mendelism; a new refutation of the notion 
of a Œhereditary substance¹. 
Lysenko thus turned Michurin into a quite legendary figure. 
Read the texts of the period - beginning with Safonov¹s Land in 
Bloom (op. cit.) in which Michurin is successively compared to 
Mayakovskii (p. 168), Darwin (p. 174), Pushkin (p. 176), Tolstoi 
(p. 176), Pavlov (p. 176). . . . 
9 At the end of his pamphlet Stoletov gave a glossary which includes the term hybridization. 
This is what he wrote: Hybridization: the procurement by natural or artificial 
means of a living organism issuing from parents of different species, breeds or varieties. 
Sexual hybridization (by fertilization) is often found in nature, whereas vegetative hybridization 
(by grafting) can only be artificial. It is called interspecific when the cross takes place between 
different species, as opposed to intraspecific hybridization, i.e., hybridization between 
varieties belonging to the same species (op. cit.).

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 45 
His achievements were qualified as Œmiraculous¹ and his garden 
described in these terms: ŒDuring all these years there had been a 
regular pilgrimage from all parts of the country to Michurin¹s 
wonderful orchard: thousands of scientists, agronomists and horticulturalists, 
students¹ excursions, research workers from kolkhoz 
laboratories, and rank-and-file kolkhozniks. At the gates the 
visitors were obliged to leave their baggage of accustomed conceptions 
and traditional knowledge as one leaves one¹s umbrella 
and galoshes in the hall. It seemed as though the very power of the 
frowning sky and of stern winter ceased at these gates. A motley 
crowd of hitherto unseen plants welcomed the visitors. The 
branches of apple and pear trees were barely able to carry the weight 
of enormous fruits. The winding stems of Far Eastern Actinidia 
clung to poles in the ground, but here they bore large, heavy, sweet, 
amber-coloured berries that smelt and tasted like pineapple. 
Peaches fraternized with apricots. In one year almonds threw out 
shoots seven feet long. What looked like bunches of grapes hung 
from the branches of a strange tree - a blend of the sweet and sour 
cherry. And next to it a capricious southerner - a grape vine - 
waved its tendrils with their scalloped leaves in the light breeze¹ 
(ibid., pp. 156-7).10 
Ignoring, for the moment, the accuracy or otherwise of all 
these Œfacts¹, the validity of the interpretation given of them and 
the effectiveness of the techniques derived from them, it is clear 
that it was from here that Lysenko drew Œhis¹ general definition of 
heredity; the one he was to counterpose to Mendelism: ŒHeredity 
is the property of a living body to require definite conditions for 
its life and development and to respond in a definite way to various 
conditions¹ (Verbatim Report, p. 35). 
This definition is not, as it might seem simply from a reading of 
the 1948 Report, the consequence of a deliberate, theoretically 
10 It may be asked what interest Lysenko had in thus sheltering behind the character of 
Michurin. No doubt one should, with Joravsky, invoke the impact of this character and his 
procedures on the peasant masses: in the extremely destitute state in which Russian peasants 
then lived, unable to deal with the waves of famine regularly sweeping the country, equipped 
with archaic tools, a set of very strong superstitious beliefs were traditionally linked in the 
countryside to all sorts of Œdevices,¹ Œrecipes¹ or Œsecrets¹ which smacked of magic and 
were supposed to have the power to increase the fertility of plants and to accelerate their 
growth from one day to the next. 
It is very striking to note that Michurin is in fact presented more than once as the very 
type of one of those sages who Œunderstood the mute language of plants¹ (Safonov op. cit. 
p. 157). The character Michurin has certainly Œworked¹ as a symbolic instrument for the 
mobilization of the peasant masses around Soviet power.

46 
motivated Œreturn¹ to Lamarck:11 nor, in these years, 1929-34, was 
it the result of deducing philosophically from the principles of 
dialectical materialism, mechanistically interpreted, a definition of 
living nature and its properties. On the contrary, what is striking 
about the Lysenkoist texts in this second period is the pragmatic 
character of the theoretical extrapolations their author ventured: 
the critique of Mendelist genetics beginning to appear in them was 
formulated from day to day according to - and on a level with - 
the agronomic experiments attempted. 
t t t 
As all commentators agree, 1935 marked a Œturning-point¹ in the 
history of Lysenkoism. A new period was beginning (1935-48). 
Not in the sense that a new Œdiscovery¹ had upset the economy of 
the doctrine or a new technique forced Lysenko to review or 
abandon any of his principles, nor in the sense that his principles 
might have needed to be corrected as a result of the researches 
which had been based on them so far, but in the sense of a general 
rearrangement: in the sense in which all his earlier themes, originally 
scattered, were suddenly reorganized and redistributed into a 
rigorously adjusted theoretical system. The master of ceremonies 
at this profound reorganization: Œdialectical materialism¹. 
In fact, dialectical materialism would from now on be made 
responsible for the unification of the ŒMichurinist¹ doctrine of 
heredity and the foundation of the set of anti-Mendelist arguments 
that the pragmatic theorization of the vernalization experiments 
had gradually brought out. 
An unexpected intervention, an intervention after the event, but 
one of great importance: this is what gave the Œnew biology¹ its 
definitive features, beginning with its claim to be in itself a science 
and thus to set itself up as a rival to Œclassical¹ genetics. At the same 
time, it was this intervention that fixed the Lysenkoists¹ objectives 
for the years to come: if all the points at which the Lysenkoist 
techniques conflicted with or challenged Mendelism could be 
assembled into a coherent doctrine of living nature, if the ties link- 
11 Lysenko¹s theory has often been interpreted as a Œreturn to Lamarck¹ particularly in 
France because he used the expression Œinheritance of acquired characters¹ which Lamarck 
had used too. But, as we shall see later, this is no more than a verbal coincidence for 
Lysenko did not give the term Œacquired characters¹ the same conceptual content as 
Lamarck.

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 47 
ing them could in addition be installed and guaranteed by dialectical 
materialism, the official philosophy of the Soviet state, there would 
obviously no longer be any possibility of coexistence between 
Œclassical¹ genetics and the new doctrine: Mendelism would have 
to give way both as a Œfalse science¹ and as a Œbourgeois¹ doctrine, 
opposed in its theoretical foundation to the nature of a socialist 
state like the Soviet Union. 
From here it was only a step to treating geneticists as traitors 
and agents of imperialism infiltrated into the state apparatus. This 
step was soon taken, at a time and in a country where Œspy fever¹ 
was endemic. For the geneticists began the period of harrassment, 
soon to be followed by that of persecution. 
So, a turning-point, occasioned if not produced by a meeting, 
signalled by the publication of a manifesto-article, the first text of 
mature Lysenkoism. 
The meeting: that of Lysenko with I. I. Prezent, an Academician 
specializing in the methodology and pedagogy of the sciences, 
and a member of the Communist Party. Prezent¹s intervention at 
the 1948 session was a clear reflection of his role in the Œcreative 
association¹ he had formed with Lysenko in 1935; he it was who 
developed the philosophical aspects of Lysenkoism; he who moved 
quickly on from the details of agronomic practice to lay down the 
perspectives and disengage the critical implications of Lysenkoist 
theory. 
The article: ŒPlant Breeding and the Theory of the Phasic 
Development of Plants¹, signed jointly by both men. Its title is 
an emphatic declaration of the continuity between this new stage 
of Lysenkoism and the previous works. But under the title, which 
is a direct extension of the articles in the Byulleten¹ Yarovizatsii, 
the content is mostly novel: as in the past, classical genetics is 
attacked for its inability to help agriculturalists fulfil the production 
targets set by the Party and the Government, but for the first 
time this inability is attributed to the Œbourgeois character of this 
science¹s methodology¹. This is how the theme of the Œtwo sciences¹ 
and the explanation that the theory of heredity which had been 
based in Darwin on the practical knowledge of breeders had forgotten 
its origin in Mendelist genetics, appeared in Lysenkoist 
texts: Mendelism was pure speculation, an academic discipline 
tainted with metaphysics. Inversely, Lysenkoist Œscience¹ was presented 
as a direct emanation of the age-old practical wisdom of

48 
the Russian peasantry: it could boast that it was a living science 
linked with practice. 
Up to this point the geneticists had only had to put up with 
skirmishes in the press and harrassment in institutions. From this 
day on, the Lysenkoists launched a regular offensive following a 
carefully considered plan of battle. A continuous offensive whose 
aim, declared from the outset, was the prohibition of teaching and 
research in genetics. As we know, this aim was attained in 1948. 
But it is now clear that, far from having imposed themselves or 
been imposed by surprise, on the basis of a pre-prepared mystification, 
the Lysenkoists were only able to reach their goal after ten 
years of merciless combat. 
The first open confrontation between the two Œtendencies¹ constituted 
as such took place between December 19th and 27th 1936 
at a Session of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences which in 
retrospect looks like a dress rehearsal for 1948. 
Significantly, however, this Session had been called to attempt 
to reconcile the two types of research. The result was the reverse: 
the forces regrouped into two irredeemably opposed camps: on 
the one hand the majority of the directors of institutes of genetics, 
cytology and breeding, grouping themselves around Vavilov and 
the American H. J. Muller,12 scientists of international repute; on 
the other, around Lysenko and Prezent, the young research 
workers of the Odessa institute, pupils of Michurin, and specialists 
in animal reproduction. The discussion was violent, the oppositions 
clear-cut: the Mendelist notion of heredity was already the centre 
of dispute.13 As for the balance of forces, it remained very uncertain 
at the end of the Session. 
What is certain is the fact that the Lysenkoists¹ attacks doubled 
12 Exceptionally for a foreigner H. J. Muller was a member of the USSR Academy of 
Sciences. Out of sympathy for socialism he had gone to work in Moscow from 1933 to 
1937. He was later to go to Spain to help the Republicans to organize their health service. 
His work on the effect of X-rays on genes won him the Nobel Prize in 1946. Violently 
attacked as an Œimperialist lackey¹ and Œbourgeois scientist¹ he resigned from the Soviet 
Academy in 1948. Loren Graham¹s book Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (Alfred 
Knopf New York and Allen Lane London 1972) has in an appendix a remarkable article 
by him (first published in 1934) which is well worth reading: ŒLenin¹s Doctrine in Relation 
to Genetics¹. Graham¹s is one of the few well-documented books on the question which is 
not blinded by anti-Marxist bias. 
13 On this occasion Lysenko stated ŒWe deny . . . particles, corpuscles of heredity. If 
man denies the existence of ³particles of temperature², denies the existence of a ³specific 
thermal substance², does that mean he denies the existence of temperature as a property

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 49 
in violence in the following months. Thus a little later, Prezent 
published in Lysenko¹s magazine a long article accusing the 
geneticists of being ŒTrotskyite saboteurs fawning on the latest 
reactionary proposals of foreign scientists¹. Terrible words which 
called openly for repression. The more so in that the article came a 
few days after Stalin¹s intervention in the Central Committee on 
ŒDefects in Party Work and Measures for Liquidating Trotskyite 
and other Double-Dealers¹. The magazine had, moreover, decided 
to reprint the text of this speech at the beginning of the number in 
which the geneticists were attacked in the terms given above. . . . 
The appeal did not fall on deaf ears: the International Congress 
of Genetics planned to take place at Moscow in 1937 was postponed. 
Meister, Levit, Gorbunov and Muratov were arrested in 1938. 
Lysenko was made President of the Academy of Agricultural 
Sciences on February 28th 1938. 
Encouraged by these first successes, Lysenko and his friends 
redoubled the virulence of their polemic. Their main target was 
now Vavilov, the most prestigious of Soviet geneticists, who had 
given a resolutely anti-Michurinist thrust to teaching at the Moscow 
Institute of Genetics of which he was still the director. Once 
again Prezent was in the forefront: ŒOur native geneticists,¹ he 
wrote, Œthose attempting to defend the ³truths² of Mendelism- 
Morganism, should take pause over the significant fact that the 
philosophical foundations of the theory they defend have already 
found a place in the history of pseudo-science, in Dühring¹s pseudophilosophy, 
exposed by Engels¹ (cit. Medvedev, op. cit., p. 55). 
As for Lysenko, he was concerned to Œclean up¹ the Academy 
whose presidency he had conquered: ŒIt is necessary to expel from 
the institutes and stations the methods of bourgeois science which 
were cultivated in every possible way by the enemies of the people, 
the Trotskyite-Bukharinist diversionists who operated in the All- 
Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences¹ (cit. ibid., p. 54). 
This campaign ended with the arrest of Vavilov (1940) and his 
death in deportation shortly thereafter.14 However, by the outof 
matter? We deny the existence of corpuscles and molecules of a special ³hereditary 
substance² but at the same time we not only recognize the existence of a hereditary nature, 
a hereditary basis, of plant forms, but, in our opinion, understand it far better than you 
geneticists do¹ (Agrobiology, op. cit., p. 188). 
14 Medvedev, who dedicates his book to him, gives an excellent portrait of N. I. Vavilov, 
and a moving account of the conditions of his death. Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was the

50 
break of the War, the game was far from won by the Lysenkoists: 
their positions were still weak in the various biological research, 
institutes, and in the educational establishments. The school books 
still expounded the bases of ŒMendelism-Morganism¹ and breathed 
not a word about Michurinism. The only domain which they 
controlled was thus still that of the institutions of education and 
research which depended on the Ministry of Agriculture, in which 
they held the key posts. 
As for the Central Committee of the Party, once the four 
Œsaboteurs¹ had been arrested, it remained silent, non-committal. 
Despite Lysenkoist pressure, it refused to take sides on the theory. 
This was clear in 1939 when the magazine Pod Znamenem Marksizma 
(Under the Banner of Marxism), the organ that published official 
Party positions on ideological and cultural matters, organized a 
conference on the question of the biological sciences. It might have 
been expected that this meeting would sign the geneticists¹ death 
warrant. This was not the case. The philosopher Mitin, Stalin¹s 
authorized spokesman, implied unambiguously that the aim of 
the conference was to work out a compromise between the two 
tendencies. Mitin went so far as to qualify the Lysenkoists¹ intransigence 
as Œanti-intellectualism¹. The meeting closed with a 
reconfirmation of the status quo. 
But at the same time the Lysenkoists¹ strength in the agricultural 
institutions was increased by the support of the partisans of a 
system of pedology (the science of soils): the system of V. R. 
Vil¹yams (or Williams), which in fact had no theoretical relationship 
with Lysenko¹s theory, except for its voluntarist character and 
the philosophical principles on which it claimed to rest. Indeed, 
Vil¹yams claimed that, by applying dialectical materialism to the 
science of soils it is possible to change their nature - and thereby 
the climate - at will. 
And he proved it methodically. This Œproof¹ and his practical 
founder of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Science. He long directed, as we shall see, 
the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the All-Union Institute of 
Plant Breeding. 
It is in this capacity that he was known to the whole world: from 1920, he had proposed 
and begun to carry out a plan for the reorganization of the plant resources of the country. 
His methodical investigations took him everywhere in the USSR and to many foreign 
countries. He was thus able to gather together more than 150,000 plant varieties and species, 
constituting an experimental material unique in the world. Lenin having personally 
encouraged Vavilov¹s work, he enjoyed a double prestige, scientific and political.

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 51 
conclusions constituted what has been called the grassland system or 
system of Œlea rotation¹. ŒSystem¹ because it was from the grandiose 
genesis of soils that the practical agronomic methods proposed 
were deduced.15 
Vil¹yams established deductively that the Œgolden age¹ of the 
soils is that of the chernozems, the black earths. What is the peculiar 
characteristic of the chernozems? They are structured. What is the 
origin of the impoverishment of the Russian steppes, so spectacular 
and so tragic? The progressive loss of this structure: the destructuration 
of the soils. Thus Œrestructuration¹ came to be Vil¹yams¹ 
slogan. 
Hence the techniques deduced to reconstitute the soils. What has 
to be achieved, Vil¹yams said, is in sum to Œreturn to grassland¹ - to 
return to the age of the soils¹ fertility. To retrace the path that has 
degraded turf into steppe. The solution: to plant not Œsteppe plants¹ 
15 Vil¹yams presented his Pedology as the Œtable of the single and gigantic life of the 
Earth from the poles to the equator, the table of the single process of the constitution of the 
planet¹s soils¹. 
Here is a rapid survey of its broad outlines. 
The start of this genesis: in the beginning is the Rock the Earth¹s skeleton. The Wind 
comes and attacks it; the storms and whip it; the rain and washes it. The Rock cracks; 
the frosts of the winter nights only have to do their work. The Rock crumbles, collapses. 
ŒThe stony ridge of the Earth is transformed into a heap of marl. . . .¹ 
Whenever marl appears on the surface, in the wrinkles of rock, from under shifting 
sands or under melting and retreating glaciers, Life starts its work in the marl: it creates soil. 
The first to appear is an alga: a small, black alga - ŒDermatacaulon juvenalis¹. Then 
come the lichens. This is the Earth¹s youngest soil stage: the lichenous tundra: the 
Œprotosol¹. 
Centuries pass millenium follows millenium. And gradually organic matter accumulates, 
immense pine forests succeed the tundra. At the foot of the trees the damp ground gathers 
fallen needles, dead leaves, rotting wood: a grey, heavy soil forms under the forest carpet: 
Œpodzol¹. It is a dull, lifeless soil; even air fails to penetrate it, but in its depths the bacteria 
are at work. 
Years pass and the time-gnawed forests grow lighter: grass appears. A new period has 
set in: the turf period. This is one of the most important periods on Earth, because for the 
first time the soil acquires that exceptionally important property: it acquires structure. 
The zenith of this structuration is reached with chernozems, black earths, which have an 
ideal crumble structure. 
Through the crumbs the rain penetrates deep into the soil; no matter how much rain falls, 
chernozem absorbs it all. The crumbs absorb the water by capillarity when it percolates 
through the spaces between them, and somewhere in the depths feed the ground water - 
that is why the level of rivers never sinks very low. Chernozem provides plants with 
everything they need. 
Yet a new change takes place: all the spaces between the crumbs are filled with humus. 
The crumbs are glued together; what is called structure disappears; the earth no longer 
absorbs water. The land is scarred with ravines. The meagre stock of water in the soil 
scarcely suffices until the middle of the summer: the steppe period is ushered in. 
And the steppe soon gives way to the desert.

52 
such as cereals, industrial plants, fodder plants and potatoes, which 
inevitably force on to the soil a Œsteppe process¹, but Œmeadow 
plants¹: vivaceous plants, open bushy plants and mixtures of 
graminaceae and legumes. 
Hence the system of Œlea rotation¹ and the prescriptions accompanying 
it: 
‹ the constitution of forest shelterbelts, the reafforestation of 
watersheds, ravines and sands, and the creation of green breaks 
around areas of water; 
‹ the feeding of plants with organic and mineral manures; 
‹ the selection of seeds appropriate to local conditions; 
‹ finally, water: irrigation, the mobilization of moisture 
resources, the creation of ponds, water reservoirs. . . . 
Of this system, Vil¹yams had stated in 1931 that it was Œthe new 
technical basis needed by socialist agriculture¹. After 1935, his 
supporters¹ arguments were a replica in their domain of those of 
the Lysenkoists: their pedological doctrine was presented as the 
only active method that could ensure Œman¹s power over the land¹; 
it was counterposed to bourgeois doctrines and methods, Œpassive 
in the face of nature¹.16 The material junction between the two 
doctrines was, moreover, established just before the War, via the 
Œcluster planting¹ of forest trees proposed, as is well known, by 
Lysenko as a consequence of his denial of struggle within a single 
species. When Stalin came to work out his ŒGreat Plan for the 
Transformation of Nature¹ in 1949, he ordered the constitution of 
immense shelterbelts (Vil¹yams) sown in clusters (Lysenko). 
But this Œmaterial junction¹ was only achieved as a result of the 
official recognition of the theoretical kinship of the two doctrines, 
approved in 1948 as twin Œapplications¹ of dialectical materialism: 
to the unity between organism and environment proposed by 
Lysenko as the foundation for hereditary phenomena corresponded 
the postulated unity of organisms and soil in the process of formation 
and evolution of the latter in Vil¹yams¹s system. 
The final resolution of the meeting of the Presidium of the 
Academy of Sciences that followed the Œhistoric¹ Session in August 
1948 stated: ŒThe eminent scientists of our country V. Dokuchaev17 
and V. R. Vil¹yams have worked out a vanguard theory of the 
formation and development of the soil. The great Soviet scientist 
16 Typically Michurinist expressions, as we have seen. 
17 V. Dokuchaev, authentic founder of pedology, was Vil¹yams¹ Michurin.

The Long Fight of Lysenkoism 53 
V. R. Vil¹yams has laid the foundations of a fruitful theory concerning 
the unity of the organism and the soil in which its existence 
unfolds, has created the theory of the ceaseless elevation of the 
fertility of the land.¹ 
This solidarity in triumph was, when the time was ripe, to have 
its pendant in failure: the misfortunes of Vil¹yams¹s grassland 
system when it was generally applied were to weigh heavy on the 
later fate of Lysenkoism.
t t t 
Thus, the history of Lysenkoism before 1948, broadly summarized 
above, is not so simple as is often suggested: it is not the history of 
a doctrine which emerged delirious and emerged constituted and 
whose supporters progressively conquered positions in the state 
apparatus, eventually becoming strong enough to eliminate their 
opponents and impose their charlatanism as state doctrine. 
On the contrary, the different periods of this history reveal one 
after another a series of different elements which finally combine 
as so many presuppositions into the complex ideological formation 
that is ŒMichurinist biology¹ as it appeared in 1948. 
But the interesting thing is that the character of this sequence 
is not a simple development from a theoretical kernel which was 
well formed from the start, either: the external profile of the actual 
history is rather a series of more and more marked oblique shifts 
away from the reality of agricultural practice. From the technique 
of vernalization to the theory of the development of plants, from 
the theory of the development of plants to the critique of Mendelism, 
from this critique to the ŒMichurinist¹ theory of heredity as 
an Œapplication¹ of dialectical materialism, the delirium was installed 
and consolidated at an ever increasing distance from the 
terrain in which Lysenko had first been successful. The alliance 
between the Lysenkoist theory of heredity and Vil¹yams¹s quasimythical 
pedological theory can be regarded as the symptomatic 
apogee of this accelerated movement of flight into speculation. 
To have described this movement obviously does not suffice to 
understand it; no more than does the registering of the different 
periods in this history and the identification of the elements added 
on in it one by one. But it is an indispensable precondition, for only 
on this basis can the true questions of Lysenkoism be posed. 
As a first approximation these questions can be summed up in

54 
the problem of the 'logic' of these oblique shifts. Why, first, the 
hurry to turn Lysenko's initial techniques into prototypes proposed 
as models for the whole of Soviet agriculture? That it was immediately 
felt necessary to elaborate a general agronomic theory to 
account for these techniques and guide them already poses a serious 
'problem'. But why be rushed into deriving from it more and more 
numerous and hazardous 'applications'? And why the Lysenkoists' 
precipitation and obstinacy in drawing from their theory the 
effects of a radical critique of classical genetics? 
And the 'dialectical materialism' invoked after the event to 
justify this theory and which, after 1935, seems to have governed 
the movement of these applications and critiques - is the 'Lysenko 
affair' the sign of its 'epistemological bankruptcy' (Monod)? 
Finally, by what political necessity did the Soviet Party and 
Government, not content with having approved and imposed 
Lysenko's techniques for twenty years, decide to adopt his theory 
and his philosophical pretensions in 1948, paying for this 'recognition' 
the price of halting genetic research and gambling Marxist 
philosophy - the state philosophy - on the fate of a nonetheless 
bitterly controversial doctrine?

3 
The Peasant Question: 
Stalinist Technicism 
When the ŒLysenko Affair¹ began outside the Soviet Union in 1948, 
attention was immediately concentrated on Lysenkoist theory. It 
was the radical rejection of the principles of the Mendelist theory 
of heredity that was striking, scandalous or embarrassing. It was 
the fate of research and teaching in genetics that caused disquiet, 
the personal and professional future of the geneticists that aroused 
alarm. Finally it was Lysenko¹s claim to base his own concepts on 
the essential theses of dialectical materialism that stirred the passions. 
In fact, as we have seen, it was biologists and philosophers who then 
joined in a discussion of Darwinism, Lamarckism and dialectical 
materialism. 
And not without good reason: Lysenko¹s Report, presented as 
the Œcharter¹ of the new science, deals essentially with the theoretical 
principles of the doctrine. All its argument is built on the refutation 
of Mendelism: heredity, adaptation, selection, competition, the 
nature of the gene. . . . It is more or less the basic concepts of the 
theory of heredity that are at the centre of the text. It is also accurate 
to say that this refutation is presented as the application of categories 
of Marxist philosophy: dialectics, contradiction, the criterion of 
practice . . . , the whole Œclassical¹ vocabulary of dialectical materialism 
was mobilized by Lysenko to arrange and unify his arguments. 
Propaganda was only to emphasize this feature. 
Without escaping from this image, which was impossible for 
some time for lack of adequate documentation, Lysenkoism can be 
nothing but a matter of conceptual teratology: the pseudoscientific 
outgrowth of an intrinsically corrupt philosophy, the 
deformed offspring of a delirious politics, the theoretical version of 
a monstrosity at that same moment taking other, much more 
sinister forms in politics. 
55

56
Thus in 1970 Monod explains that ŒLysenko¹s own writings 
demonstrated without any possible hesitation for anyone with a 
minimum of general scientific culture that their author was not a 
man of science but a charlatan or a paranoiac - probably both¹. 
A paranoiac who, taking advantage of Œideological terrorism¹, was 
able to lead millions of people into his delirium. ŒA case, truly 
unique in our time and almost prodigious, of collective ideological 
delirium.¹ The perversion of a regime expressing itself in, among 
other things, the madness of one man. 
However, the history of Lysenkoism forces us to correct this 
Œexplanation¹ seriously. It leads us to unearth a link which is not 
immediately perceivable in Lysenko¹s Report: the original link 
between his doctrine and, not Marxist philosophy but agronomic 
practice. 
Theoretical delirium? Certainly. But before this delirium, whose 
power was multiplied tenfold by the intervention of the authorities, 
there was the period in which an agro-biologist called Lysenko 
made himself known for a number of discoveries in agricultural 
technique. At that time he was neither the Œtheoretician¹ nor the 
Œphilosopher¹ he later became, and not apparently delirious. Without 
this technical basis, without its persistence, the Lysenkoists¹ 
success would be incomprehensible. This necessary reason for the 
success is obviously not sufficient to explain the unprecedented 
forms it took. But without it the rest is incomprehensible. 
Hence to have any chance of discovering Œhow it was possible¹ 
one must look first to the fields, the kolkhozes and sovkhozes of 
the Œnew socialist agriculture¹, the state farms and breeding stations. 
The first question about Lysenkoism, the decisive one for its overall 
interpretation, is not that of the pertinence of its criticisms of 
Mendelism, nor that of the correctness of the theories worked out 
by Lysenko, but the question of the effectiveness of Mendelism 
when applied to agriculture as compared with the ŒMichurinist¹ 
techniques propagated by the Soviet Academician. 
To my knowledge, historians have not seriously tried to answer 
this question: either they have taken the manifestly mythical 
character of certain of the achievements celebrated in 1948 to 
discredit all the techniques promoted by Lysenko, as Joravsky 
does; or they have felt justified in concluding from the falsity of 
the theory to the futility of the techniques supposedly based on it, 
like Medvedev.

The Peasant Question 57 
But should one not be more prudent and scrupulous? One cannot 
legitimately conclude from the extravagance of a theory the 
ineffectivensss of the techniques of which it is a pseudo-rationalization, 
especially when, as in this particular case, the theory was 
essentially constituted after the event and stage by stage to account 
for pre-existing techniques and facts. There is nothing to prohibit 
the view that an erroneous theory can be the fallacious correlate 
of a technique which is nonetheless effective.1 
Moreover, can it be correct to conclude from some aberrant 
cases that all the techniques proposed were aberrant? This move 
from the particular to the universal is all the less legitimate in that 
the techniques in question can be divided into two groups which 
are quite distinct chronologically: those which were set to work 
before the new Œtheory¹ had been formulated (1929-35), and those 
which were presented along with them as Œapplications¹ of that 
theory. 
Were there really effective agricultural procedures among the 
Lysenkoist techniques? Why were they so and within what limits? 
Inversely, what were the Mendelists proposing at the same time? 
Could they explain the successes - and eventual failures - of the 
Michurinist techniques with the concepts of their science? Such 
are the questions preliminary to any understanding of one of the 
essential aspects of the ŒLysenko affair¹. 
t t t 
It will be objected that the archives are inaccessible and that the 
results cannot be Œchecked¹ (Monod). 
At least we do have one exceptional document which, in its 
five hundred and more pages, draws up an exhaustive balance of all 
Lysenkoist work for twenty years. A document which into the 
bargain confronts those achievements point by point with those of 
the Mendelist geneticists. Finally a document in which each camp 
presents its own arguments itself and has every opportunity to 
dispute those of its opponent. This document is the Verbatim 
Record of the discussions which followed Lysenko¹s Report. 
Now, one cannot but note that the Lysenkoists¹ main argument 
is precisely that of effectiveness. Our methods, they said in substance 
1 The history of technology teems with examples of the kind. But it is particularly plain 
in the case of agricultural techniques, in which theory is still often struggling to explain 
procedures which have certainly demonstrated their effectiveness.

58 
to their opponents, have at least the advantage over yours that they 
are effective. And this constantly recurring challenge: explain to 
us the effectiveness of our techniques by your science. . . . But what 
is astonishing is the fact that in their replies the geneticists were 
silent on this crucial point: they discussed neither the methods nor the 
facts put forward by their opponents. 
The Michurinists, aware of their advantage, drove the point 
home. Turbin: ŒIt is, therefore, no accident that the criticism we 
Michurinists have heard from the representatives of Mendelist- 
Morganist genetics has one common feature, namely, nothing is 
said about the facts obtained by Michurin genetics¹ (p. 479). And 
Lobanov, the chairman at the sittings: ŒIt is not a mere accident 
that advocates of the Mendel-Morgan trend prefer not to mention 
Michurin, minimize the great theoretical and practical significance 
of his works¹ (p. 551). 
This strange silence becomes particularly significant when one 
notices that it is repeated at another sensitive point in the discussion. 
Lysenko had accused Mendelism Œsterility¹ in general terms, and 
the Œnew academicians¹ all echoed him in a very precise sense: they 
stressed the uselessness, even the harmfulness of Mendelism for the 
breeder¹s work. The question which was thus central to the debate 
is not that of Œnatural selection¹ but that of the practice of artificial 
selection. It is from this standpoint that the bankruptcy of Mendelism 
was most often denounced. ŒUnlike the followers of the 
Michurin trend,¹ stated Lobanov, Œthe anti-Michurinists have come 
to this Session without any real, tangible, practical results, with 
mere promises of ³great² discoveries to come - promises which 
we have heard many times before. This in itself is indisputable 
evidence of the fallaciousness of their theory¹ (p. 547). 
And Krylov, director of the Dokuchaev Institute of Agriculture 
from the central chernozem region, admonished them in these 
terms: ŒWould not a little more modesty be in place? It is not 
Lysenko, but you, that have excessive pretension to infallibility 
and a craving to be the foremost teacher of biologists and agronomists. 
But what grounds have you for this? What scientific 
discoveries does Soviet biology owe to you? What have you new 
to offer the theory and practice of agriculture?¹ (p. 384). 
ŒYou have not kept your promises!¹ was the constant cry. ŒYou 
had all the resources you needed in the 1930¹s and you led our 
selection centres to bankruptcy: maize, wheat, rye, sheep, cattle

The Peasant Question 59 
have all suffered from your methods. . . . When results have been 
obtained, it has in fact always been independently of Mendelist 
theory, by merely conforming to age-old empirical breeders¹ 
methods¹. 
Dolgushin: ŒIt must first of all be noted that the achievements of 
Soviet selection in the field of creating grain culture strains (and 
not only such strains) have not the slightest connection with the 
theoretical propositions of Mendelism-Morganism, as is so often 
asserted by the adherents of this trend in biology. Indeed, if we 
analyze the fundamental principles by which the vast majority of 
plant breeders, including those who call themselves Morganists, 
were guided when they bred new varieties of agricultural plants, 
we find that they are the same principles and methods that breeders 
used long before the ³laws² of Mendel and even the laws of Darwin 
were discovered¹ (p. 248). 
And Lobanov, who stated that ŒWe do not know of any results 
valuable from the practical standpoint which have been obtained 
by the formal geneticists on the basis of Mendelism-Morganism¹, 
described the Mendelist breeder as a Œtreasure hunter¹, Œa man who 
passively waits for the appearance of desirable forms of plants and 
animals¹ (p. 552). 
And once again, the Mendelist geneticists neither replied nor 
explained themselves as to their failures in selection. 
As for their practical achievements, the application of their 
science to agriculture, they cited only one, always the same: 
polyploidy.2 
But when Zhebrak, under Lysenko¹s interrogation, had to give 
figures, he was obliged to concede that this method was still in its 
infancy and the experiments too recent, and therefore too restricted, 
for the results of the latter to be significant and, above all, for the 
former to be able to provide new varieties of cereals to the breeding 
stations immediately. 
Here is the exchange, which in a few words illustrates the 
geneticists¹ situation in August 1948: 
ŒA. R. Zhebrak: At the present time some of the polyploid hybrids 
yield as much as 1500 seeds per plant and about 108 grains to a 
spike. The variety that we handed over to the State Cereal Variety 
2 A method which consists of increasing the number of chromosomes in the cell by the 
action of certain substances such as colchicine. This increase brings with it changes in 
whole series of characters.

60 
Trial Commission and which showed up fairly well is of a much 
poorer quality than our polyploid types. 
ŒVoice from the audience: How many centners to a hectare does the 
polyploid yield? 
ŒA. R. Zhebrak: I said that our polyploids have been bred only up 
to the fifth generation. (Commotion in the hall) We have 96 forms; 
about 50 of them are promising inasmuch as they excel our standard 
types. 
ŒS. S. Perov: In how many years do you intend to hand them over? 
ŒA. R. Zhebrak: Next year we intend to hand over to the State 
Cereal Variety Trial Commission the material concerning several 
of our types. This year we shall reproduce them¹ (pp. 473-4). 
t t t 
These events are now historically remote from us, and we know 
what striking results have been achieved by ŒMendelist¹ genetics; 
the situation of the Soviet geneticists therefore seems peculiarly 
tragic. For now we know why they could not but be silent about 
the Michurinist Œfacts¹, could not but recognize their temporary 
impotence where selection was concerned. They were objectively 
caught in the trap of the development of genetics: in the historical 
Œsqueeze¹ of a genetics incapable right up to the 1940¹s of moving 
on to the stage of application to the selection of plants and animals. 
If you want to be convinced, look at the agronomic magazines 
of the period. For example, the excellent English magazine Farmer 
and Stock-Breeder, in its number of December 2nd 1947 (Vol. LXI 
No. 3034, p. 2741): ŒWe have, in this country, produced great 
and useful breeds of both cattle and sheep, indeed of all kinds of 
farm live stock. Let it be at once admitted that genetical science 
has played no part whatsoever in their differentiation and establishment. 
. . . More seriously, the science of genetics has not yet the 
practical achievements to its credit to afford to be dogmatic.¹ And 
in 1949, in Europe (no. 37, January, p. 141), Jacques Blamont¹s 
remark, vis-à-vis viniculture: ŒOnly a hesitant practice guides us. 
It must be admitted that our methods of improving the qualities 
of the vine have not improved in the last century: we have solved 
problems but without any coherent theory having enabled us to 
predict the results of our experiments.¹ 
No doubt the situation was slightly different where cereals were 
concerned - wheat and maize notably. But even Marcel Prenant

The Peasant Question 61 
in his articles on Lysenko in La Pensée recognized that improvements 
had been nothing if not very slow where the attempt had 
been made to apply Mendelism, i.e., essentially in the USA3 
Meanwhile, genetics today can explain this ineffectiveness of 
Mendelism in agronomy precisely from its later developments: 
only with help from cytology and biochemistry could sufficient 
information on the structure of cells be obtained to make possible 
the induction of directional chromosome changes in them. In the 
1930¹s and 1940¹s there was no such help. The only available 
experiments in this respect were Muller¹s on the effects of X-rays 
on genes (1937) and . . . colchicine. 
All this in an experimental stage in research laboratories, with 
no possibility of a wide diffusion of the results. 
Very unfortunately for Soviet genetics and Soviet agriculture, it 
was just at the moment when it was beginning to become operational 
in this domain (witness polyploidy) that genetics was 
condemned. . . . 
A remarkable Œirony¹ of history, in which the Œtime¹ of a science 
was Œoutstripped¹ by the demands of ideology and politics. . . . 
t t t 
It remains to determine the effectiveness of the Michurinist techniques 
that the Lysenkoists counterposed to the practical impotence 
of Mendelism. Medvedev and Joravsky radically dispute it. They 
regard the Lysenkoists¹ statements as vain boasts; they maintain 
that their Œexperiments¹ were fictional and their results invented. . . . 
They claim that the celebration of Michurinist successes was part 
of the scenario staged by Lysenko and had no other purpose than 
to give a Œtechnical¹ alibi for the theory he wished to impose. 
Yet it should be noted that, looking again at the discussion that 
followed his Report, the vast majority of the new academicians who 
had just announced their faith in ŒMichurinism¹ were by no means 
3 There is no history strictly speaking of the applications of genetics to agriculture. 
Here one can consult in excellent article by R. Mayer, ŒL¹Amélioration des plantes en France¹, 
which appeared in Annales de l¹amélioration des plantes in 1962, and gives a very precise 
picture of the different institutions which have been successively responsible for experimentation 
in France. There is also a brief chronology of the subject by Kenneth J. Frey 
(ŒPlant Breeding¹ in A Symposium Held at lowa State University 1966). Finally, a volume in 
the ŒQue sais-je?¹ series published in 1975, Jean Michel Goux¹s Les Applications de la génétique, 
which approaches the question in its introduction, without making any allusion to the 
Lysenko episode, however.

62 
fanatical ideologists or armchair theoreticians: they were the directors 
of some forty selection and breeding stations scattered all over 
the USSR, and they were expounding in a wealth of detail the 
results of work they had begun ten or fifteen years earlier. . . . 
But let us even admit the extreme hypotheses that through 
careerism or lack of political courage they were all willing to 
participate in an operation of mystification organized in favour of 
the extreme centralization of the Soviet state apparatus; that, 
unlikely though this seems, hundreds of research workers in breeding 
stations and hundreds of thousands of peasants using the 
products and techniques propagated by those stations could have 
remained silent about such an imposture. . . . 
Nevertheless, there remains one fact with which this interpretation 
is unable to deal, a fact inexplicable in the hypothesis of such 
a conspiracy of silence. This is the fact that the Mendelist geneticists 
who, during the 1948 Session, went with the utmost rigour into 
all the erroneous versions of the Mendelist theory of heredity, who 
unequivocally denounced the conceptual amalgams Lysenko had 
perpetrated in his Report, who did not miss an opportunity to 
point out, sometimes even with corrosive irony (Rapoport), the 
scientific inconsistencies of the theory counterposed to theirs . . . , 
did not cast the slightest doubt on the reality of the Lysenkoist experiments, 
did not in the slightest dispute their Œeffectiveness¹. Can one reasonably 
believe that they would have renounced the use of such an 
argument to strengthen their defences? Could they have been 
ignorant of the fact that their silence about the Lysenkoist achievements 
was in itself alone an argument that told against them in the 
debate? Must one assume that they had adopted an absurd system 
of defence and therefore stubbornly refused ever to discuss anything 
but the theoretical interpretation of the experiments set 
before them, never attacking either the reality or the effectiveness 
of these experiments themselves, when that was their opponents¹ 
main weapon? 
Is it credible that the terror which did not prevent them from 
opposing all the Lysenkoist theses in theory prevented them from 
saying a word on the technique those theses were supposed to 
justify? 
The seriousness of the theoretical and practical consequences of 
the decisions taken as a result of the Session of August 1948, the 
open absurdity of the Lysenkoist Œtheory¹ of heredity have led the

The Peasant Question 63 
historians (Medvedev, Joravsky, Graham) to reject without 
examination all the techniques defended and applied by the 
Michurinists as ineffective or to ignore them as uncheckable 
(Monod). 
This one-sidedness nevertheless gets them into a number of 
difficulties, other than the lack of plausibility I have noted and the 
strangeness of the Mendelists¹ silence on the point. 
The first of these difficulties concerns the vernalization of wheat, 
i.e., the essence of Lysenkoism for more than ten years and what 
made its fortune. There is no historian of agronomy who would 
deny that this technique really is effective, at least when it is applied 
in determinate conditions, in particular in regions with a dry 
climate. Medvedev and Joravsky are so aware of this that they 
wriggle out of the question by reasoning which is consistent 
with their premises but really turns back against the point of their 
argument. They concede that vernalization can be effective. But 
it is precisely not a specifically Lysenkoist or Michurinist technique 
since Œanalogous experiments have been carried out in Russia in the 
middle of the last century with the same results¹. And moreover 
Œthe century-old formula for the technique . . . was given by an 
American, J. H. Klippart, in the annual report of the Ohio State 
Board of Agriculture for 1857¹. Medvedev then cites Klippart: ŒTo 
convert winter wheat into spring wheat, nothing more is necessary 
than that the winter wheat should be allowed to germinate slightly 
in the fall or winter, but kept from vegetation by a low temperature 
or freezing, until it can be sown in the spring. This is usually done 
by soaking and sprouting the seed, and freezing it while in this state 
and keeping it frozen until the season for spring sowing has arrived.¹ 
Only, adds Medvedev, the technique was immediately forgotten, 
in the USA as well as in Russia. . . . (Medvedev, op. cit., p. 152). 
But you cannot have it both ways: either the technique works or 
it does not. And if, as it seems, it does, what is the point of imaginarily 
stripping Lysenko of his discovery or rediscovery and his 
practical achievement, except to pull back together an interpretation 
which is crumbling in contact with the facts: the interpretation 
that Lysenkoism is just pure ideological delirium? If, on 
the contrary, one assumes for a start that Lysenko did discover, 
or rediscover, reactualize and systematize the application of an 
agronomic technique which had already proved itself, then one 
has a real material basis by which to explain his rise, and even to

64 
elucidate part of the riddle of his ultimate triumph. 
Truly, there is nothing aberrant about the Œvernalization¹ described 
by the Lysenkoist texts of the 1930¹s: it is a matter of 
changing the Œvegetative cycle¹ of a plant so that it is no longer 
subject to the seasons. By placing the seeds in an agronomic station 
at a suitable temperature, by regulating the humidity, it is possible 
to induce disturbances that rebound on the whole development of 
the plant when the seeds so treated have been planted. 
It will be said that this is a crude method, that however Œrationalized¹ 
the form in which it is presented, it remains empirical, that 
today, thanks to plant enzymology and hormonology, and notably 
to the discovery of the role of the Œauxines¹, the growth factors of 
the plant, we know that the mechanisms of germination and 
development of plants are much more complex than Lysenko 
realized in his theory of Œphasic development¹. It will be added that 
these same knowledges allow us to state that the success of the 
vernalization technique also depended on a climatic factor which 
Lysenko did not perceive. All this is quite true. 
But this is not the point. We cannot vault over history. The 
point is how to evaluate the results Lysenko managed to obtain in 
the 1930¹s and 1940¹s and the results he was able to counterpose to 
his opponents. 
Now, from this point of view, is it disputable that Œvernalization¹ 
was not an imaginary but a real and even spectacular solution to a 
problem rendered agonizing by a succession of bad harvests? 
The problem presented itself in quite simple terms: winter 
wheat was available; but this wheat was easily destroyed by frost if 
it was sown before the depths of winter and did not fructify if sown 
later. Thus it is clear why vernalization should have seemed a great 
achievement. It was indeed a great achievement since it ensured 
fructification while forestalling frost damage. 
The same kind of comments can be made about the second great 
Lysenkoist technique: the summer planting of potatoes. This 
technique was proposed by Lysenko in 1935 to solve the problem 
of the cultivation of potatoes in the steppes of Southern Russia. 
This cultivation had long been abandoned because of the Œdegeneration¹ 
of the tubers in these hot dry regions. 
Joravsky, who devotes several pages to this question, waxes 
indignant: first, there is nothing especially Lysenkoist about this 
technique; it had long been practised in Oklahoma, in France and

The Peasant Question 65 
even in the Ukraine. And, he immediately adds, we know today 
that this degeneration is caused by a virus and that a technique of 
this kind could not get at the root of the trouble since it remained 
ignorant of its nature. 
Once again, it has to be stated that, out of zeal to prove everything 
against Lysenko, arguments have been adduced that militate 
in the opposite sense. Experience proved that planting potatoes in 
the middle of the summer made them more resistant to the disease 
from which they suffered. Hence it made available a technique 
which allowed the alleviation of what had been a real scourge. 
This is the crucial point. The systematic extension of this technique 
by the Lysenkoists had remarkable results in the South. It enabled 
more than one Soviet citizen to fill his belly. 
That the theoretical justification offered by Lysenko was in this 
case not just crude and approximate but plainly false is a very 
important matter, but a different one. Once again it should be 
noted that when it was proposed virology was still in its infancy 
(the first virological laboratory in the USSR dates from 1930) and 
that the viral cause of the infection had not yet been clearly 
established. 
The third technique propagated by Lysenko, the most ŒMichurinist¹, 
perhaps the most famous, at any rate the one discussed at 
greatest length during the 1948 session: vegetative hybridization. 
The same misunderstanding recurs, already making itself felt 
at the 1948 discussion. Isaev, holder of the chair in the section of 
fruit and vegetable cultures at the Saratov agronomic institute, 
announced the creation by the Michurinist method of improved 
varieties of apple trees, very resistant to the cold. Yakovlev added: 
ŒIn the past nine or ten years, numerous experimenters working 
under the guidance of Academician T. D. Lysenko in various parts 
of the Soviet Union have done splendid work on the vegetative 
hybridization of annual herbaceous plants with sharply contrasting 
features. In these nine or ten years, the school has accumulated 
more data on vegetative hybridization than had been accumulated 
all over the world in the past 150 years¹ (p. 102). Here too, geneticists 
such as Zhebrak did not argue about the facts, but only disputed 
the interpretation: if there was hybridization it could only be 
sexual - without being able to provide a convincing explanation 
in this perspective of the influence of the scion on the stock. 
Medvedev, discussing this matter, writes calmly: ŒVegetative

66 
hybridization is the doctrine that grafting one plant onto another, 
which ensures the transfer of heredity by the sap, is equivalent to 
sexual hybridization¹ (op. cit., p. 175). He concludes that it is just 
another imposture. 
But before it became a Œdoctrine¹, vegetative hybridization was 
a technique: it was as a technique and not as a doctrine that Michurin 
defended it and Lysenko applied it. That the purely Œvegetative¹ 
character of the inheritance in the sense claimed by Lysenko is very 
dubious, that the theory subsequently adduced was hesitant and 
eventually false is another matter. Michurin¹s apple trees certainly 
existed, the reinette-bergamote was not a fruit of his imagination, 
couchgrass-wheat was a reality. . . . 
If it is added that in the end many of the Michurinist techniques, 
horticulturalists¹ recipes, were not at all original since they had 
their equivalents in California with Luther Burbank,4 and even in 
France, at Rennes, with Lucien Daniel,5 once again the effectiveness 
of these techniques is recognized de facto. It is a supplementary 
argument for the thesis I am maintaining here, which grants 
Lysenkoism a material basis rather than seeing in it no more than 
ideological fantasies. 
Furthermore, by forcing the issue to this extent one is ignoring 
the real historical place of Michurin in the history of fructiculture 
and horticulture: Michurin, who first set out on the road of plant 
creation, lifted botany out of the routine imposed on it by its 
taxonomic traditions. He was the first to achieve the systematic 
hybridization of remote species.6 
t t t 
Vernalization, summer planting of potatoes, Œvegetative hybridization¹: 
here are three ŒMichurinist-Lysenkoist¹ techniques whose 
4 Luther Burbank, the ŒCalifornian wizard¹, was presented by the Lysenkoists as the 
American Michurin. A Michurin who in the absence of a socialist regime could not find 
his Lysenko. The son of a Massachussets farmer, he had become a specialist in grafting and 
hybridizing fruit trees. Safonov wrote: ŒBut his science, the wizard¹s new, unprecedented 
science ,did not become ³OK². Not a single professor gave it recognition. The whole of 
America talked about Burbank but the ³serious scientists² of America were not in the least 
interested either in him or in his plants¹ (op. cit., p. 142). Burbank died in 1926. 
5 Lucien Daniel, a teacher at Rennes, is famous above all for having opposed Viala on 
the technique for defeating Phylloxera. The Lysenkoists referred to his thesis on ŒThe 
Influence of the Mode of Life on the Structure of Dicotyledons¹ (1916) to inscribe him in 
the ŒMichurinist¹ tradition Daniel¹s works were included in the library of the ŒAmis de 
Mitchourine¹. Lucien Daniel died in 1940. 
6 On this point see François Dagognet who accords Michurin his due place in Les 
Révolutions vertes, Hermann, Paris 1973, pp. 130ff.

The Peasant Question 67 
real effectiveness in agricultural practice must be recognized. Even 
if this effectiveness is subject to certain conditions and hence 
contained within determinate limits which Lysenko and his supporters 
neither saw nor checked; even if the reasons for this effectiveness 
have little to do with the ones they proposed and were so 
imprudent as to give the form of a Œtheory¹. 
Now these three techniques are precisely the ones on whose 
success Lysenkoism depended in the ten years of its rise (1929-40); 
to them too must be attributed most of the facts invoked by Lysenko 
and his supporters in the 1948 battle against the Mendelists. 
But Lysenko¹s arguments in 1948 were simply a systematic and 
amplified repetition of the themes which ensured him the support 
of Party and government in securing a hegemony in the institutions 
of agricultural research and education, in taking over the 
direction of state farms, model kolkhozes and sovkhozes. Is it not 
obvious that without these practical results Lysenkoism would 
never have got beyond the borders of the Gandzha district? 
This dissipates some of the mystery surrounding the strong and 
constant support given by the authorities to Lysenko¹s agronomic 
technique, but two points remain to be cleared up, two questions 
which could constitute two objections to this interpretation. 
In particular, how does one explain the government¹s haste to 
approve and have applied all the techniques proposed in the name 
of Lysenkoism? How does one explain this rush to generalize the 
use of these methods before serious studies had been made as to the 
conditions under which they are successful? In fact, no sooner had 
Lysenko announced a success than the press rushed to make it a 
model for the whole Soviet Union; immediately a technique had 
been recognized as effective in the Ukraine, for example, the 
Ministry of Agriculture imposed it throughout the country, without 
apparently taking any notice of the extreme climatic and 
pedological diversity of its different regions. Thus the vernalization 
of wheats was very rapidly imposed over vast cultivated areas, 
including the North of the country, in wet regions where it could 
only lead to failures. The same was true of the summer planting of 
potatoes. 
How, too, does one explain the government¹s lack of discrimination, 
the way it systematically endorsed every proposal of Lysenko¹s? 
It often looks like an absolute and blind a priori favour. Everything 
was accepted and approved: the real, the hypothetical and the 
imaginary. From this point of view, 1948 represented a culmina

68 
tion: all the methods Œinvented¹ by Lysenko over twenty years 
received solemn and unreserved approval. It was also a turningpoint: 
from that day the imaginary component definitively 
triumphed over the real. 
For there is no denying it, Lysenkoism was also, alongside the 
techniques I have just discussed, a summum of unprecedented 
agronomic aberrations such as no country in the world could 
afford to indulge, to this day. It was the system of fantastic recipes 
proposed around 1945-8 as applications of the new Œtheory¹ of heredity 
that encouraged the most grandiose government plans and led to 
the most tragic agricultural disasters. 
Of these fantastic recipes, the most resounding both in the hopes 
and dreams it aroused and in the failure to which it led was certainly 
the planting of winter wheat in Siberia. This is how Vysokos, 
director of the Siberian Scientific Research Institute of Grain 
Husbandry, expounded the technique in question: 
ŒIn 1942, Academician Lysenko made a momentous scientific 
discovery - namely that winter wheat could overwinter in the 
steppe part of Siberia if sown in the entirely unploughed stubble of 
spring crops. 
ŒSix years of tests of sowing winter wheat in the stubble on the 
open steppe fields of our Institute near the city of Omsk have 
shown that not only varieties like Lutescens 0329, Alabasskaya, etc., 
with a high winter-hardiness, but also the less winter-hardy 
varieties of winter wheat, such as Ukrainka, Novokrymka, 
Erythrospermum 015, and the like, can over-winter in Siberia¹ 
(Verbatim Report, op. cit., p. 206). 
Next came the explanation for this prowess: ŒIn the case of 
sowing in stubble the soil is compact and structural, and the 
freezing in the winter does not lead to the formation of numerous 
cracks, which is what occurs in the case of sowing on fallow. That 
is why the roots and the tillering nodes of winter wheat are not 
injured during the winter when sown in stubble. The stubble of the 
spring crop, in which the winter wheat is sown, excellently protects 
the young plants against the fierce Siberian winds and holds the 
snow.¹ And Vysokos concluded: ŒWe have scored against the severe 
Siberian climate¹ (ibid., p. 207). 
It was a long way from these delirious speeches to reality. Witness 
an article appearing a few years later, in 1956, when Lysenko 
was still at the head of Soviet agronomy: ŒIt also happens that the

The Peasant Question 69 
recommendations of a leading scientist fail under actual conditions 
of practice, but scientific workers lack the courage to admit it . . . 
practice has proved that recommendations [for Lysenko¹s method] 
are completely inapplicable under the conditions of Omsk and 
other Western Siberian regions. Nevertheless, members of the 
Siberian Agricultural Research Institute in Omsk, in order to 
please Lysenko, and ignoring obvious facts, proved the unprovable 
on the plots of the institute, under hot-house conditions. . . . As a 
result, in the Omsk region alone, in the course of several years, 
tens of thousands of hectares of winter wheat were sown according 
to this method and failed to return even the amount of seed originally 
expended¹ (cit. Medvedev, op. cit., p. 165). 
Another delirious and catastrophic example: the planting in 
Œclusters¹ of forest trees according to the method deduced from the 
conjuncture of Lysenko¹s doctrines and those of Vil¹yams. This 
was by unanimous admission one of the reasons for the failure of 
the ŒGreat Plan for the Transformation of Nature¹ worked out by 
Stalin in 1949. 
To deceptive statistics manipulated by over zealous officials, 
cooked balance-sheets only revealing the successes and omitting 
the failures, Œquestionnaires¹ drafted so that results obtained under 
the impact of other factors could be attributed to the application 
of the given technique and uneven comparisons between the yields 
in some highly equipped experimental station and those of an 
average kolkhoz of the region, it is necessary to add the imaginary 
facts announced by Lysenko himself. 
In fact, Lysenko invented a whole system of chimeras, the 
results of Œorientated¹ metamorphoses of species: he flattered himself 
as able to transform wheat into rye, barley into oats, cabbages 
into swedes, pines into firs, hazelnuts into hornbeams . . . A whole 
mythology to which each number of the magazine Agrobiologiya 
was soon adding its contribution. A fantastic poem in which nature, 
infinitely malleable, bends to the whims of the Michurinist 
demiurge. 
Undiscerning applications of techniques the precise conditions 
of whose effectiveness were unknown, the invention of procedures 
whose failures were camouflaged for years, the celebration of 
invented Œfacts¹ with more to do with literary fiction than with 
agricultural practice - this is the side of Lysenkoism that is most 
willingly remembered today, in order to condemn it. This is what

70 
is stressed in order to denounce it as Œcharlatanism¹ pure and simple. 
But if this aspect was certainly there, if it was even dominant in the 
final years, Lysenko¹s work cannot be reduced to these aberrations. 
Once again, this mystery cannot be dissipated unless the sequence 
of several stages in the history of Lysenkoism is taken seriously and 
it is asked under what conditions did it twice change its status. 
t t t 
What did Lysenko¹s techniques and recipes represent in 1929? A set 
of practical solutions, initially located in and restricted to certain 
areas of cereal cultivation, to the problems posed by a succession 
of bad harvests. It was as such that they were encouraged and 
popularized. But by no means exclusively: along with other 
techniques taken from the agriculture of capitalist countries. The 
attention paid to them was in fact part and parcel of a whole policy 
towards technical equipment which Stalin reiterated on many 
occasions. 
Take for example the speech he made at a Conference of Marxist 
Students of the Agrarian Question on December 27th 1929: what 
he emphasized was the need to provide modern technical equipment 
to the peasants in the kolkhozes, so that, thanks to this 
equipment which their size would allow them to concentrate and 
use on a vast scale, they could take advantage of their investment 
capacity and their rational forms of labour organization to prove, 
Stalin claimed, Œthe superiority of the kolkhozes over the individual 
peasant economy¹. 
A technique such as vernalization, which requires the construction 
of hot-houses, complex sheds whose hygrometric levels can 
be checked, and needs constant supervision, was unattainable for 
the individual peasant; on the contrary, it could be set to work in 
collective farms and help to establish their Œsuperiority¹. 
Subsequent years, which saw the failure of the ŒMendelist¹ 
breeders whose mission it had been, along the same lines, to apply 
in the experimental stations the most highly rationalized technique 
for the improvement of seed, enabled Lysenko to impose his 
methods as the only effective ones in this domain. That is why 
Lysenkoist directors steadily replaced Vavilov¹s pupils. 
t t t

The Peasant Question 71 
After 1935 a new element made a decisive change in the status of 
Lysenkoism. Lysenko no longer claimed the exclusive propagation 
of his methods on merely factual grounds, grounds of comparative 
effectiveness, but also on grounds of quite another kind, grounds 
of a theoretical and political nature: because his techniques were 
the only ones that corresponded to the collectivist structure of 
socialist agriculture. A new structure of agricultural production 
must have a correspondingly new type of agronomy - such is one 
of the themes of the campaign then launched against Vavilov and 
his school. A theme echoed in 1948 by Vodkov, who stated: ŒThe 
collectivization of agriculture was a profound revolution, equal in 
consequences to the revolution in October 1917. A new, mass 
form of husbandry arose - kolkhozes. Such a form of husbandry 
had never before been witnessed in the history of agriculture. The 
old agricultural science that had taken shape under capitalism was 
unable to satisfy the requirements of the kolkhozes. It was necessary 
to elaborate a new theory of agronomics based on the teachings of 
Lenin and Stalin¹ (Verbatim Report, pp. 182-3). 
This casts a first light on the remarkable logic that simultaneously 
governed the adventurous extension of the initial recipes, their 
theorization, the fantastic applications that followed, their approval 
by the Party and the government and their triumph in 1948. 
Remember the question I posed: how is one to explain the 
Government¹s haste to approve and have applied all the techniques 
proposed in the name of Lysenkoism? How is one to explain the 
rush to generalize the use of all these methods before serious studies 
had been made on the conditions under which they could be 
successfully applied? Vodkov answered this question in his own 
way and can serve as our guide: ŒA new, mass form of husbandry 
arose - kolkhozes. . . . It was necessary to elaborate a new theory of 
agronomics based on the teachings of Lenin and Stalin.¹ 
I believe it is possible to suggest that there is a historical relationship 
between this requirement (ŒIt was necessary to elaborate a 
new theory of agronomics . . .¹) and the role systematically accorded 
to Lysenkoism by the Soviet state. If this is so, then the relationship 
goes beyond the personality of Lysenko the individual, his immoderate 
taste for speculation and his ambition, just as it goes 
beyond the theoretical claims of a doctrine constructed at a certain 
moment to proclaim Œthe phasic development of plants¹. Whatever 
part Lysenko played in his own destiny, its outcome was fixed for

72 
him outside him, by the requirements of a policy that surpassed him. 
This imperative (Œit was necessary to elaborate a new theory of 
agronomics . . .¹) refers in fact to an economic situation and a political 
desire. It is implicit in precise historical conditions on a determinate 
political line. 
It was no accident that Vodkov spoke of the Œrevolution¹ of the 
kolkhozes. For it is indeed to the Œturn¹ of 1929 that one should 
look for a characterization of this line: to the great debate about 
the roads to the construction of socialism that then divided the 
Bolshevik Party. It is well known that the Œpeasant question¹ was 
then central to the confrontation between Stalin and the representatives 
of the ŒRight Deviation¹. Of the difficult and urgent theoretical 
and political questions which were then settled we need only 
consider their main result, the result with the most serious consequences 
as to the organization of Œsocialist agriculture¹: that 
collectivization was ultimately conceived and put into practice 
with notorious violence as a technical means whereby to increase 
yields, notably in cereal production.7 
This conception and this practice went hand in hand with the 
notion of the subordination of the development of agriculture to that 
of heavy industry and found its clearest expression in the theory of 
the tribute that agriculture would have to pay to industry (Stalin, 
July 1928). 
This economistic-technicist conception and practice flowed from 
7 In a speech made to a meeting of the electors of the Stalin District of Moscow on 
February 9th 1946, Stalin looked back to the policy adopted in 1928 and made the following 
statement about agriculture a statement which has at least the merit of clarity: 
In order to put an end to the backwardness of our Agriculture and give the country 
more marketable grain, more cotton, etc., it was necessary to pass from small peasant 
farming to large-scale farming, because only a large farm is able to use new machinery, to take 
advantage of all the achievements of agronomic science and to yield more marketable produce. 
There are, however, two kinds of large-scale farming - capitalist and collective. The 
Communist Party could not adopt the capitalist path of development of agriculture, and 
not as a matter of principle alone but also because it implies too prolonged a development 
and involves preliminary ruination of the peasants and their transformation into farm hands. 
Therefore, the Communist Party took the path of the collectivization of agriculture. . . . 
The method of collectivization proved a highly progressive method not only because it 
did not involve the ruination of the peasants but especially because it permitted within 
a few years, the covering of the entire country with large collective farms which were able 
to use new machinery, take advantage of all the achievements of agronomic science and 
give the country greater quantities of marketable produce (my emphasis D.L.). 
It will be noted that Stalin¹s Œtechnicism¹, blatant in this passage also led him to a 
completely false idea of capitalist agriculture, its history and the effects of the size of farms 
on their yields. . . .

The Peasant Question 73 
the analysis then made of the Œcrisis¹ of the New Economic Policy, 
an Œeconomistic¹ analysis which explained everything by the coexistence 
of two different Œtechnical bases¹ of production: big 
modern industrial units on the one hand and backward agricultural 
petty production on the other. 
Re-establish the symmetry, unite these two technical bases by 
suppressing agricultural petty production and constituting large 
collective farms in the countryside and you will have solved the 
problem, because you will find that Œcollectivization opens up the 
possibility of a limitless development of the productive forces in 
the countryside¹ (Stalin). The problem of the Œtribute¹ will also be 
solved at the same time: the market for foodstuffs will be stabilized 
and the development of heavy industry, the crucial priority, will 
be guaranteed. 
t t t 
But this is not all: in the background of this analysis and the concrete 
measures that followed from it, there is an economistic 
assumption, shared, their circumstantial opposition notwithstanding, 
by the supporters of both of the two Œlines¹ then represented 
within the Party - Stalin¹s and Bukharin¹s: the development of the 
productive forces itself would transform the Œmentality¹ of the 
peasants who would be brought closer to the working class by it; 
and thus a technological revolution linked to collectivization would 
be the beginning of a final solution to the crucial political question 
of the unity of peasants and workers. . . . 
Stalin stated: ŒThe reconstruction of agriculture on a new 
technological basis produces a revolution in the peasants¹ minds and 
helps them to get rid of their conservatism and routine. . . .¹ Charles 
Bettelheim very correctly comments: ŒWhat acts here is technology 
and the peasant is what this action is carried out on.¹ 
Having failed to analyse promptly the reasons for the aggravation 
of the agricultural crisis at the end of the NEP, the reasons for 
the fall in productivity organically linked to a slow-down in the 
delivery of grain, having failed to inquire promptly into the 
undoubtedly social and political causes that had induced the slowdown, 
i.e., had distanced the mass of middle peasants, arbitrarily 
assimilated to the kulaks and treated as such, from the Soviet 
power, Stalinist politics was finally driven into an authoritarian 
Œchoice¹ which reduced politics to a tragic caricature. It carried out

74 
the collectivization of the land by force and at the same time made 
the enormous short-circuit of relying on a Œtechnological¹ revolution 
to produce an ideological revolution. On the one hand technology, 
on the other ideology: this duo from which real politics 
has been expelled stands in derisorily for a politics which is no more 
than violence and repression. 
But did this Œline¹ at least have the expected effects on agricultural 
production? The facts soon had to be accepted: the yields which 
aroused all these expectations, far from rising in proportion to the 
extension of the kolkhoz system, were found to have stagnated or 
even declined. The result was a real theoretical dead-end: after 
Œdekulakization¹ these bad results could no longer be imputed to a 
kulak Œplot¹. Logically, indeed, Stalin¹s speech introducing the 
draft of the 1936 Constitution stated that Œthe dividing-lines between 
the working class and the peasantry, and between these classes and 
the intelligentsia are being obliterated and . . . the old class exclusiveness 
is disappearing¹, that Œthe distance between these social groups 
is steadily diminishing¹, that Œthe economic contradictions between 
these social groups are declining¹ and that Œthe political contradictions 
between them are also declining and being obliterated¹ 
(Problems of Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 
Moscow 1947, p. 546). 
With such an analysis of the situation it was no longer possible 
to think new difficulties in agricultural production in political or 
economic terms: they could only be conceived in Œtechnical¹ 
terms. Thus the series of bad harvests from 1931-4, particularly in 
cereals, was perceived - and thought - as the consequence of a 
new technological inadequacy, the last remaining, between the 
new base - collective farms - and the Œtechniques¹ employed, which 
had been taken from capitalist countries. The agricultural revolution 
achieved in potentia by collectivization presupposed for its realization 
in actu a revolution in agricultural science. Hence the imperative: 
Œto elaborate a new theory of agronomics. . . .¹ 
Now it so happened that Lysenkoism, because of the limited but 
real successes it had just achieved, because of the immediate solution 
it claimed to provide for the problem of grain selection that the 
ŒMendelist¹ breeders had been unable to resolve, was in a position 
to claim (and to appear) to be becoming this new technique. It is 
no accident that it was in 1935 that Lysenko, with Prezent¹s assistance, 
worked out a general agronomic theory capable of fulfilling 
the expectations of the political authorities.

The Peasant Question 75 
This was perhaps the ultimate hidden motor of Lysenkoism, 
what gave it its strength and guaranteed its support: it had appeared 
at the right moment in response to a problem and a demand 
produced by a Œtechnicist¹ economic conception and practice of 
the construction of socialism. 
This conception implied the notion that technology is omnipotent, 
and Lysenko offered it an agronomic theory which justified 
the claims to omnipotence of his own techniques, a theory which 
responded to the thesis of the omnipotence of technology by outlining 
an omnipotent agricultural technique. 
It goes without saying that once it was caught in the wheels of 
this historical conjuncture with the Soviet authorities expecting a 
demonstration of its technical capacity, Lysenkoism could only 
fulfill the expectations it had aroused by multiplying and eventually 
inventing proofs of its effectiveness. Now burdened with a general 
agronomic theory quite out of proportion to its original effective 
techniques, it was supposed to be able to solve all the problems and 
answer all the questions posed by agriculture one by one. . . . Thus 
dragged into the hyperbolae of Stalin¹s politics, Lysenkoism was 
forced in its turn into a hyperbolic practice of imaginary successes. 
This very quickly gave rise to the adventurous extrapolations, 
abusive technical extensions and, in the last analysis, agronomic 
fantasies and frauds. 
This implacable process had very little to do with Lysenko¹s 
supposed paranoia, nor even with Stalin¹s simple capriciousness. 
It is the process itself which was delirious. And insofar as it was 
politically induced and publicly endorsed, the Lysenkoist Œdelirium¹ 
was rather, as a historical phenomenon considered in the broadest 
sense, the imaginary consequence of, and hence the imaginary 
solution to, a real but falsely posed political problem. A problem 
confronted in terms that could not fail to produce, among other 
tragic effects to which millions of peasants fell victim, the ŒLysenko 
consequence¹. 
t t t 
But Lysenkoism did not just play the part of a largely imaginary 
Œtechnical¹ solution to the USSR¹s agricultural problems. As an 
imaginary formation it also took on an important ideological 
function in the social formation of the 1940¹s, thus discovering in 
its duplication of function and in this transposition reasons why it 
should persist.

76
During the 1948 Session it was Kislovkii who stated: ŒWherein 
lies the strength of T. D. Lysenko? In that he has become the 
ideological leader of the workers in socialist agriculture¹ (Verbatim 
Report, p. 522). And the Œnew academicians¹ all echoed him, adding 
that Michurinist theory was the theory needed by our best practitioners, 
the Œshock workers of the collective farms¹ (Mikhalevich, 
p. 418); only Michurinism could produce Œfaith in the possibility 
of communism¹ (Dmitriev, p. 309). 
All these are ritual formulas, stereotyped responses in the official 
rhetoric. No doubt. But it would be wrong to treat them as 
meaningless. On the contrary, they are highly significant insofar 
as they translate into propaganda terms a fact which is of supreme 
importance for the interpretation of Lysenkoism, i.e., the fact that 
it was the ideological cement for the Œmost advanced¹ elements of 
socialist agriculture. One term should hold our attention here: 
that of ŒStakhanovites¹, a term constantly used to designate the 
Lysenkoists in 1948. 
Stakhanovites? Initially these were workers who, like the miner 
Stakhanov, surpassed production norms and helped improve 
technique in heavy industry: but they were soon also workers who 
had gained the privileges of a wage considerably higher than the 
average, technical training and the functions of experts in the 
organization of production. 
To describe the Lysenkoists as Œagricultural Stakhanovites¹ thus 
had a precise meaning: it designated a very special social stratum, 
that of cadres of agricultural production in state farms, breeding stations 
and model kolkhozes. To say that Lysenko was their ideological 
leader was to say that Lysenkoist theory represented the systematic 
form of the ideology of this social stratum. 
The archives which would reveal what posts were occupied by 
the Lysenkoists have not yet been opened, but work such as 
Joravsky¹s has already established that these new cadres had 
managed to conquer the key positions in the Ministry of Agriculture. 
Moreover, it is enough to read the interventions of 1948 to 
be convinced of this interpretation. Pukhal¹skii, the Minister of 
Agriculture, stated that the Lysenkoists¹ essential task was to form 
Œvernalization experts . . . among collective farmers¹ (p. 291); and 
Lobanov praised Lysenko in these terms: ŒWe in the Ministry 
know mare than anyone else what great help Academician Lysenko 
renders the practical workers, how he organizes their forces for the

The Peasant Question 77 
speedy application of the achievements of advanced science¹ (p. 552). 
It is clear that this stratum of administrators, experts and technicians 
could have represented a sufficient social and ideological 
power to give Lysenkoism, on which their careers depended, an 
appearance of truth, and historical persistence. 
Lysenko seems to have understood very well the advantages he 
could draw from such a situation by organizing Œsurveys¹ as to the 
effectiveness of his techniques via questionnaires addressed directly 
to these very production experts, who did everything to conceal 
failures wherever they had occurred. These questionnaires obtained 
the expected answers and thus closed the circle of an ideology 
which was Œverified¹ while itself cementing the agreement of the 
social stratum that profited by it. 
This ensemble was not just the fruit of terror and corruption as 
Joravsky thinks, for example: it was the product of a determinate 
political line which, having posed the peasant question in unilaterally 
Œtechnical¹ terms, had as a result encouraged a new type of social 
differentiation in the countryside between the Œordinary¹ kolkhozniks 
and the experts and technicians whose ideology crystallized 
around two successive slogans of Stalin¹s: Œtechnique decides 
everything¹, and then Œcadres decide everything¹. The Œagricultural¹ 
form of this ideology was ŒLysenkoism¹.

4 
The Theory of Heredity: 
Biological Finalism 
1948 marked the defeat of the ŒMendelist¹ geneticists. But they were 
not just denounced for the ineffectiveness of the selection techniques 
they had sponsored; the Lysenkoist criticism did not only attack 
the Œsterility¹ of Mendelism in practice, it radically challenged the 
basic concepts of the theory: it denied them any scientific validity. 
Mendelist theory is nothing but metaphysics and scholasticism, 
said Lysenko. The laboratory research conducted on these lines is 
just a waste of time and energy, money thrown out of the window. 
Hence the ironic asides ponderously echoed by his disciples in the 
discussion: maybe a capitalist country can afford to invest in minute 
research into the eye colour of flies - such aberrations are what it 
has to pay for the contradictions gnawing at its vitals - but a 
socialist country! 
As we know, the final resolution was to ratify these assessments: 
all research into genetics was long to be officially banned. 
To the Œformalism¹ of Mendelist theory Lysenko counterposed a 
new theory to explain hereditary phenomena. A theory built on 
the basis of the silences of Mendelism, interpreted not as results of 
its incompleteness, but as so many confessions of conceptual 
impotence, symptoms of a fundamental theoretical weakness 
rooted in the very principles of the doctrine. This peremptory 
position was, as can be imagined, not without its influence on 
Lysenko¹s representation of Mendelism. 
His Report and the interventions that followed built up a remarkable 
image of Mendelist work: a caricature whose pronounced 
features were formed from an interpretation of its lacunae. All 
Lysenko¹s Œarguments¹ were aimed at the composition of this 
falsified image. It is clear that they never touch Mendelism itself. 
But it is also plain why the debate between Lysenkoists and 
78

The Theory of Heredity 79 
Mendelists was only a dialogue of the deaf, so far as theory is concerned: 
the former attributed to the latter theses they had never 
held; the latter replied in the name of a theory their opponents 
deliberately Œignored¹ . . . 
t t t 
I shall not retrace here the history of Mendel¹s discovery or that 
of the Œrediscovery¹ of his work at the beginning of this century,1 
or summarize his researches and their results; sufficient light will 
be cast on the extraordinary misunderstanding clouding the 1948 
discussion if I emphasize the revolutionary innovation made in the 
Memoir Mendel presented in 1865. 
Indeed, Mendel revolutionized the terms in which vain attempts 
had been made to solve the riddle of heredity for centuries. He 
rejected the theoretical schema which Darwin was still using at the 
same period to explain the hereditary process: when, once he had 
established that Œnatural selection¹ operates as a Œsieve¹ for appearances 
of directly hereditary individual variations, he had needed to 
explain the mechanism of the appearance and transmission of these 
variations. 
1 As is well known, in 1865 Gregor Mendel, a monk in the monastery of Brünn, had 
presented to the town¹s Natural History Society a Memoir assessing the results of experiments 
on the hybridization of sweet peas which he had begun in 1856. This Memoir - 
Versuche über Pfanzen-Hybriden - set out what later came to be called ŒMendel¹s Laws¹, 
the principles of a scientific theory of heredity. As is also well known this memoir was 
read amid general indifference. Here is François Jacob¹s description of the session: ŒWhen 
Mendel read his first communication to the local society of natural sciences one evening 
in February 1865, there were about forty people in the Realschule in Brno. They included 
naturalists, astronomers, physicists and chemists - in other words, a knowledgeable 
audience. Mendel spoke for an hour about the hybridization of peas. His audience felt 
kindly towards the lecturer himself. Although surprised that arithmetic and calculation of 
probabilities entered into the question of heredity, they listened patiently and applauded 
politely. When Mendel had finished his report, everyone went home without expressing 
the slightest curiosity. . . . When Mendel died a few years later he was honoured for his 
social functions but ignored as a scientist¹ (The Logic of Living Systems, A History of Heredity, 
translated by Betty E. Spillman, Allen Lane, London 1974, p. 208). Only in 1900 did the 
Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries, then tha German Correns and the Viennese Tschermak 
establish independently of one another and in ignorance of Mendel¹s work a Œlaw of 
segregation¹ of characters in heredity which was soon discovered to have been already 
formulated more than thirty years earlier by the Czech monk. In 1900 Mendel made his 
posthumous entry into the history of the sciences. On the Œepistemological¹ questions raised 
by this Œrediscovery¹ see Georges Canguilhem¹s intervention at the 22nd International 
Congress on the History of the Sciences held at Moscow in 1971, Sur l¹histoire des sciences 
de la vie depuis Darwin: an unequalled paper.

80 
century and can be called the myth of fusion-heredity, consisted of 
the hypothesis that each fragment of the living body produced 
during its growth a tiny germ of itself which then lodged in the 
germ cells in order to reproduce that fragment in the next generation. 
From all parts of each parent¹s body emissaries were thus 
supposed to come to influence the body of the child, Œlike stones in 
a mosaic¹ (François Jacob, ibid., p. 207). 
This Œtheory¹, which could explain both the possibility of the 
appearance of spontaneous variations without any influence from 
external factors and that of variations due to acquired characters, 
was called the Œhypothesis of pangenesis¹ by Darwin. He openly 
admitted that he had inherited it from tradition: ŒBuffon . . . supposed 
that organic molecules exist in the food consumed by every 
living creature; and that these molecules are analogous in nature 
with the various organs by which they are absorbed. When the 
organs thus become fully developed, the molecules being no longer 
required collect and form buds or the sexual elements. If Buffon 
had assumed that his organic molecules had been formed by each 
separate unit throughout the body, his view and mine would have 
been closely similar.¹2 
It was the very principle of such explanations that Mendel dismissed. 
A real break which was made by bringing out at that time 
the unsuspected link between the solution to the riddle of heredity 
2 Charles Darwin: The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication, London 1868 
Vol. II, p. 375n. Darwin¹s essential discussion of this question is to be found in the same 
work: ŒIt is almost universally admitted that cells, or the units of the body, propagate 
themselves by self-division or proliferation, retaining the same nature, and ultimately 
becoming converted into the various tissues and substances of the body. But besides this 
means of increase I assume that cells before their conversion into completely passive or 
³formed material² throw off minute granules or atoms which circulate freely throughout 
the system, and when supplied with proper nutriment multiply by self-division, subsequently 
becoming developed into cells like those from which they were derived. These 
granules for the sake of distinctness may be called cell-granules, or, as the cellular theory is 
not fully established, simply gemmules. They are supposed to be transmitted from the 
parents to the offspring, and are generally developed in the generation which immediately 
succeeds, but are often transmitted in a dormant state during many generations and are 
then developed. . . . Gemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every cell or unit, not 
only during the adult state, but during all the stages of development. Lastly, I assume that 
the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual affinity for each other leading to their 
aggregation either into buds or into the sexual elements. Hence, speaking strictly, it is not 
the reproductive elements, nor the buds, which generate new organisms, but the cells 
themselves throughout the body. These assumptions constitute the provisional hypothesis 
which I have called Pangenesis¹ (ibid.. Vol. II, p. 374).

The Theory of Heredity 81 
and the problems of hybridization - by asking unprecedented 
questions about the process of plant hybridization.3 
Before him Œhybridologists¹ had been concerned to establish what 
Jacques Piquemal rightly calls Œthe relation between the species¹: 
by crossing them, it was thought, one had a privileged method by 
which their distance from one another and their relative powers 
could be evaluated, and one could eventually discover if it would be 
possible to produce a new form. Hence in successive generations of 
hybrids attention was paid above all to the constancy of a given type. 
Naudin,4 often incorrectly presented as a Œprecursor¹ of Mendel¹s, 
had certainly noted that, in the first generation of hybrids (called 
F1 today), an intermediate type appeared, in between the two 
forms from which it came, but that subsequent generations manifested 
an Œextreme confusion¹ of characters. However, what 
interested him in this sequence was that he had established that the 
Œtype¹ which appeared in the F1 was really only the illusion of a 
type since it was dislocated in the next generation and then definitively 
disappeared in the Œconfusion¹ of characters; he was also 
interested in establishing for each hybridization the speed with 
which the type of the parent forms reappeared in the descendants. 
Mendel too was interested in the first generation of hybrids. But 
in a quite different sense: in order to study what had made Naudin 
call it Œintermediate¹, in between the two parent forms. He noticed 
that the hybrid is sometimes Œmore like one of the species in some 
parts, and the other in others¹. Hence the idea of Œsegregating¹ 
within the hybrid the characters of different provenance whose 
combination gives the global and approximate picture of an Œintermediate¹ 
form. Hence too the idea that there are Œdominant¹ and 
3 On this point I refer to the text of a lecture given at the Palais de la Découverte by 
Jacques Piquemal in 1965 under the title ŒAspects de la pensée de Mendel¹. François Jacob 
sees three novel elements in Mendel¹s work: Œthe way of envisaging experiments and 
choosing appropriate material; the introduction of discontinuity and the use of large 
populations, which meant that results could be expressed numerically and treated 
mathematically; the use of a simple symbolism, which permitted a continuous interchange 
between experiment and theory¹ (op. cit., p. 203). These novel elements are indisputable, 
and Jacob¹s demonstration is irrefutable, especially about the break between Mendel and 
his supposed precursors (Maupertius, Buffon, Naudin). But it seems to me that these novel 
elements are no more than the small change of the radical novelty on which Piquemal 
focusses all his attention: the change of problematic achieved by Mendel. 
4 Charles Naudin (1815-99) carried out many hybridization experiments in the Paris 
Jardin des Plantes.

82 
Œrecessive¹ characteristics. Similarly, the series of generations of 
hybrids that Naudin and his predecessors had reduced to the 
obscurity of an Œextreme confusion of forms¹ until one of the 
primitive types reappeared, was carefully studied by Mendel in 
order to follow the distribution of the characters thus segregated. It 
seemed to him that this distribution should be handled by statistical 
calculation. 
Hence the three Œprinciples¹ stated by Mendel in his Memoir: 
that characters are independent of one another in their transmission; 
that male and female are equivalent in hybridization and equally 
determine every character; that in the sexual cells the two components 
of male and female origin are segregated and that in fertilization 
the components of either origin are united at random for 
each character. 
This was undoubtedly to institute a new problematic replacing 
the circle of questions traditionally asked about heredity; it was 
to set research on new roads. Indeed, to abandon the idea implicit 
in the myth of Œfusion¹ that the theory of the mechanisms of 
heredity is by rights a part of embryogeny was to break decisively 
with a notion heavy with a whole theological and philosophical 
past, the notion that the species is a reality transcending the 
individual. . . . 
This dual break opened up a completely new field of problems 
for scientific investigation. In particular, the cellular structure of 
heredity, postulated but not explained by Mendel, suggested that 
cytology might one day attain and determine the material agents 
of the transmission of characters. 
And even before the end of the century, before Mendel¹s 
principles had been Œrediscovered¹ and his Memoir exhumed, hence 
before Mendelism had made its Œofficial¹ - and real - entry into the 
history of the sciences, the investigation of cell structure had profited 
by Œby-products¹ of the development of the chemistry of dyestuffs5 
and advances in optical technology:6 it had been possible to 
5 Canguilhem has made this point on several occasions. Thus at the Moscow Congress: 
ŒWhen, around 1930, it was confirmed that DNA and RNA were characteristic of chromosome 
and cytoplasm respectively, it had long been forgotten that, in giving the name 
chromosome to the nuclear formation he had observed in 1880, Flemming was recognizing 
the debt that cytology owed to staining techniques. Without aniline-based synthetic stains 
there would have been no object to christen according to its affinity for a stain.¹ This is 
certainly a Œby-product¹: research into synthetic dyes was obviously not intended to be 
used in cytology. It was a response to the requirements of industry. 
6 François Jacob has shown how the history of contemporary genetics has depended 
on improvements in the microscope.

The Theory of Heredity 83 
identify in the nucleus of the cell certain filaments (Œchromosomes¹) 
made easily observable by their constancy in number and form. 
Attention to phenomena such as meiosis7 has made it possible 
to identify and localize in the chromosome the material support 
for heredity: what Mendel still abstractly called the Œfactors¹ 
responsible for the Œcharacters¹ whose segregations and descent 
lines he had studied and which were now called Œgenes¹ (Johannsen). 
Thus it was known that the characters only Œtranslated¹ the hidden 
presence of particles or units independent of one another, and 
that it was thus appropriate to distinguish between what are therefore 
called the Œphenotype¹, the arrangement of characters as they 
appear, and the Œgenotype¹, the grouping of the Œgenes¹ that 
determine this arrangement. 
The work of T. H. Morgan, the Œinventor¹ of Drosophila (the 
fruit or vinegar fly) as an experimental material,8 made it possible 
to specify the Œchromosomal¹ mechanism at work in genetic transmission 
and confirmed experimentally de Vries¹s suggestion that 
variations in characters do not come about through a series of 
imperceptible modifications but by sudden changes.9 ŒSpecies,¹ 
wrote de Vries, Œdo not change gradually, but remain unaltered 
through all succeeding generations. Suddenly they produce new 
forms which differ sharply from their parents and which are 
immediately as perfect, as constant, as well defined and as pure as 
can be expected from a given species.¹ 
Schematic and incomplete as these few indications are, they let 
us understand Œthe progressive and co-ordinated conjunction of 
7 Meiosis is the name for the reduction division of the chromosomes during fertilization. 
During this process the number of chromosomes is divided by two. This reduction by half 
compensates for the doubling of the number of chromosomes as a result of the fertilization 
of the ovum by the sperm. 
8 The choice of material is of crucial importance in genetics. What was required was an 
organism capable of being raised in a laboratory, large populations of which could be 
handled in a small space, with a rapid rate of reproduction, easily observable characters and 
a small number of chromosomes. Drosophila (the fruit or vinegar fly) answered to all 
these specifications. It rapidly imposed itself as the ideal experimental material. It is plain 
how ridiculous was the sarcasm of the Lysenkoists who saw the attention the geneticists 
paid to flies as a proof of their contempt for practice. . . . 
Thomas Hunt Morgan received the Nobel Prize in 1933 for having directly established 
experimentally the location of Mendelist units in chromosomes, thanks to his studies of 
Drosophila. See especially The Physical Basis of Heredity, London 1919, and, in French, 
presented by Jean Rostand, Embryologie et Génétique. Paris 1936. 
9 De Vries¹s investigations were essentially devoted to a plant indigenous to America, 
the evening primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana. According to de Vries, a new species is 
born all at once, with all its characters, without going through intermediate forms. A 
rare event that came to be called a Œmutation¹.

84 
the results of several biological disciplines with those of formal 
genetics¹ (Canguilhem) from which stemmed the geneticists¹ knowledge 
in the 1940¹s. They bring out all the meaning of the intervention 
of Marcel Prenant who wrote, in the heat of the Lysenko 
affair: ŒThe chromosomes are indubitable realities which anyone 
can see under the microscope, and even in a living state in the 
cinema. Genes are realities, too, and if abstract and idealist definitions 
of them have sometimes been given, others can be which 
are perfectly concrete and experimental, such as this: in a given 
region of the chromosome the gene is the smallest fraction that is 
ever found in isolation during a genetic experiment. Certainly an 
isolated gene has never been seen, but its existence has been 
deduced from its consequences, just as happens with other realities, 
such as atoms, the earth¹s rotation, atmospheric pressure, weight, 
electricity, energy, etc.¹ 
Meanwhile, in 1946 H. J. Muller had received the Nobel Prize 
for a series of experiments already carried out in 1937 which gave 
additional sanction to the Morganist theory since they showed 
that it was possible to favour mutations and increase their frequency 
by exposing the sperm of Drosophila to X-rays. 
Indisputably, many phenomena of heredity were still unexplained 
in the 1940¹s: the complexity of the processes of grafts 
and hybridization of fruit trees still defied ŒMendelist¹ explanation: 
it is also true, as we have seen, that the application of the theory to 
selection technique was then still in its earliest infancy. But this 
does not alter the fact that at that time the Mendelist theory was 
by no means, as Lysenko claimed, an abstract and formal speculation 
which, feebly propped up by principles still tainted with 
metaphysics, was undergoing a Œcrisis¹ of growth. It had for several 
years been a coherent and tested scientific theory, giving rise to 
precise experimental tasks in which all geneticists - including 
Soviet ones - were taking an active part. 
t t t 
If we now turn to the representation of Mendelist genetics presented 
by Lysenko in his Report, it will be clear that it is a serious distortion 
of all the essential points. 
First of all it should be noted that no precise reference is ever 
made to Mendel himself or his works, except with a kind of 
insinuation attributable to an utterly dishonest epistemological

The Theory of Heredity 85 
anti-clericalism, stating that he was a monk or ridiculing his 
experiments on the pretext that he worked on peas. Morgan 
receives no better treatment: he is constantly called an ŒAmerican 
scientist¹ and lampooned for wasting his time watching flies. . . . 
But, more serious, ŒMendelism-Morganism¹ is reduced at 
Lysenko¹s hands to two extremely general propositions and what 
he called a Œscholasticism¹ which is simply abstract and formal 
deduction from these two propositions. 
According to Lysenko, Œclassical¹ genetic theory claims that 
Œchromosomes contain a special ³hereditary substance² which 
resides in the body of the organism as though in a case and is transmitted 
to succeeding generations irrespective of the qualitative 
features of the body and its conditions of life¹ (op. cit. p. 19). 
Hence it follows that Œthe Mendelist-Morganist theory does not 
include in the scientific concept ³living body² the conditions of 
the body¹s life. To the Morganists, environment is only the background 
- indispensable, they admit - for the manifestation and 
operation of the various characteristics of the living body, in 
accordance with its heredity. They therefore hold that qualitative 
variations in the heredity (nature) of living bodies are entirely 
independent of the environment, of the conditions of life¹ (p. 19). 
It is just about possible to argue that these formulations might 
be made to fit some of the earliest definitions of the gene, such as 
that of Johannsen, or certain idealist philosophical extrapolations 
which then found support in this new concept, such as those of 
Karl Pearson.10 But they conflict with the living practice of 
geneticists who, like Muller, sought with success to change genes 
by external agents (X-rays, but also heat and chemical products 
such as colchicine) and who had even established that Drosophila 
could transmit hereditarily a special sensitivity to carbon dioxide. 
To undertake such experiments obviously implied a quite different 
conception of the Œhereditary substance¹ and the gene from the one 
attributed to them by Lysenko. 
So where did this Œerror¹ come from? 
Reading the Lysenkoists¹ texts closely, there is no apparent 
difficulty in answering: it derived from their systematic assimilation 
10 Karl Pearson the author of The Grammar of Science, one of Lenin¹s targets in Materialism 
and Empirio-criticism, who was a statistician, had worked out a purely formal (statistical) 
theory of heredity based on Mendel¹s laws. See his articles in Biometrika, the journal published 
in Cambridge that he founded in 1902.

86 
of the Morganist-Mendelist theses to those of August Weismann. 
Lysenko went so far as to speak of ŒWeismannism-Mendelism¹ and 
at the end of the history of biology as he summarized it in his 
Report, he could quote Weismann at length and conclude: ŒHence, 
according to Weismann, there can be no new formations of the 
hereditary substance; it does not develop with the development of 
the individual, and is not subject to any dependent changes. An 
immortal hereditary substance, independent of the qualitative 
features attending the development of the living body, directing 
the mortal body, but not produced by the latter - that is Weismann¹s 
frankly idealistic, essentially mystical conception, which he disguised 
as ³Neo-Darwinism². Weismann¹s conception has been 
fully accepted and, we might say, carried further by Mendelism- 
Morganism¹ (p. 17). 
A passage like this, which has its parallels in all the Lysenkoists¹ 
statements, contains in reality two mutually supporting errors: 
besides the fact that the terms in which Weismann¹s theory is 
presented make its actual role in the history of biology inexplicable, 
the simple identification of Mendel¹s theses with those of Weismann 
fails to recognize the radically novel character of the Mendelist 
works. 
Weismann¹s theory, which had a wide resonance in its day, and 
one going far beyond the bounds of biology,11 was a very complex 
and frequently changing set of experimental works and often 
adventurous speculations on the nature of life and the destiny of 
man. 
11 Notably in Freud¹s work, as Jacques Lacan quite rightly emphasises in his seminar on 
Les Écrits techniques de Freud (Le Séminaire livre I, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1975): ŒFreud 
props up his theory of the libido with what the biology of his day suggests to him. The 
theory of the instincts cannot fail to take into account a fundamental bipartition between 
the purposes of the preservation of the individual and those of the continuity of the species. 
What is in the background is none other than Weismann¹s theory, some memory of which 
you should have retained from your time in philosophy classes. This theory, which has 
not been definitively proved, posits the existence of an immortal substance of the sexual 
cells. They constitute a unique sexual line by continuous reproduction. The germ plasm¹ 
is what perpetuates the species and persists from one individual to another. On the contrary, 
the somatic plasm is a sort of individual parasite which, from the point of view of the 
reproduction of the species, has sprouted laterally solely to be the bearer of the eternal 
germ plasm¹ (p. 139) One can refer for example to Freud¹s article ŒOn Narcissism: an 
Introduction¹ (Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 
Hogarth, London 1953-74, Vol. XIV). 
Butler¹s summary of Weismann is well-known: ŒThe egg has found in the chicken the 
way to remake an egg.¹

The Theory of Heredity 87 
Adapting a notion of Naegeli¹s, Weismann, whom Mendel - 
need it be said? - could never have known,12 argued that every 
organism is made up of two sorts of cells: the germ cells (or 
Œgermen¹, or Œgerm plasm¹) and the somatic cells (or Œsoma¹). 
According to this theory, the germ cells contain a substance composed 
of a series of hierarchized particles - the Œides¹ - of which 
the chromosomes are the biggest. Each Œide¹ in turn conceals 
smaller parts each of which holds some organ within its dependence: 
Weismann therefore called them Œdeterminants¹. The individual¹s 
germ plasm, inherited from its ancestors, already complete 
in the fertilized egg which gave it birth, produces during the 
development of every living being the somatic cells which constitute 
the whole of the organism as the result of a very complicated 
mechanism of diffusion of the Œdeterminants¹, the fictional details 
of which Weismann more than once indulged in describing. 
But the important thing is the fact that the cells which give 
birth to the future sexual cells of the adult are exceptional and 
retain the whole germ plasm in themselves. These sexual cells can 
thus transmit the plasm intact to the sexual cells which are to begin 
the cycle again in the next generation. 
What emerges from this theoretical structure, erected almost 
exclusively by deductive methods, is the fact that there is a continuity, 
even an Œeternity¹ of the germ plasm, and living organisms 
can be regarded as each in its turn no more than a Œvehicle¹ for this 
plasm: a mere temporary, ephemeral excrescence on the seminal 
lineage. 
Hence finally the idea of heredity that summed up ŒWeismannism¹ 
for his contemporaries: an organism can only inherit characters 
innate in its parents. Transmission passing from germ cell to germ 
cell, the somatic tissues being absolutely separate from the germ 
cells from the beginning of each development, nothing that affects 
the Œsoma¹ can rebound on the Œgermen¹: so the characters acquired 
by the organism during its existence cannot be transmitted to the 
next generation. 
Thus what was remembered above all about Weismann was his 
declared anti-Lamarckism, and his work was Œnaturally¹ inscribed 
in the battle still raging at the end of the last century about the 
12Weismann¹s works post-date 1865. See especially the collection of articles translated 
as Essays an Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems, 2nd edition, two volumes, 1891-2.

88 
question of acquired characters. But, paradoxically, it is in a quite 
different connection that it has in fact retained a positive place in 
the actual history of the sciences, via a less immediately apparent 
aspect of the doctrine, but one which a knowledge of Mendel¹s 
work allows us today, recursively, to accord its true value. In fact, 
by paths of his own, and ones which proved much less fruitful, 
Weismann, too, had abandoned, as Mendel had done without anyone 
yet having realized it, the theoretical schema of Œfusion-heredity¹. He 
thus removed the main obstacle to the constitution of a scientific 
theory of heredity, the object which, as we have seen, had blocked 
Darwin himself. That is why these writings, obscure and involved 
as they are, and manifestly delirious too in some places, were able 
to help make possible the Œrediscovery¹ of Mendel¹s theses.13 
But here is the other side of the coin: Weismann, and many 
others subsequently, following his example, felt justified in drawing 
from his distinction between Œgermen¹ and Œsoma¹ frankly mystical 
considerations about the eternity of human nature which were 
readopted in the racist propaganda of the Nazis. Rosenberg, for 
example, did not hesitate to make the Œracial soul¹ which, according 
to him, had been transmitted unaltered from ancient Germany to 
our day, the equivalent of the Œgerm plasm¹ transmitted unchanged 
down the generations.14 
It is this last aspect of Weismann that Lysenko emphasized: the 
accusation that it is a Œracist¹ theory often recurs in his denunciations 
of Weismannism. It is to this last aspect that he assimilated Mendel¹s 
theory when he spoke of ŒWeismannism-Mendelism¹. By 
this means he could denounce Œthe mystical basis and the racial 
implications¹ of classical genetics. But the price was a double 
13 Examples of work which without producing a single scientific concept have thus 
allowed, through their critical effects, by Œdislodging¹ an essential element of a dominant 
scientific ideology, the formation of a concept to which that ideology was an obstacle, 
are not uncommon in the history of the sciences. It is obviously a more uncommon case 
for a work to contribute by such a mechanism to the rediscovery of already constituted 
scientific concepts which it then prove to have Œlagged behind¹ . . . but such is the ŒWeismann 
case¹. 
14 The English Marxist biologist J. B. S. Haldane had stood out against the racist uses of 
the results of genetic research in 1937. In his remarkable book Heredity and Politics, he revelled 
the hyperbolae such an exploitation depends on. Marcel Prenant, too, had published an 
article on the same theme in La Pensée, July-August 1939. He wrote, notably, ŒTrue 
genetics is not racist. It does not set up a mythical image of the gene related to the racial 
soul. It knows perfectly well and never forgets that between the genotype and the real 
phenotype there is all the difference that results from the influence of the environment. 
It also knows all the difficulties in its own application to the human domain.¹

The Theory of Heredity 89 
mystification, since Weismann¹s work cannot be reduced to the 
ideological exploitations it has been subjected to, and there is no 
natural identity between it and Mendel¹s theory. 
I said: Lysenko gave a distorted picture of Mendelism. It is now 
possible to specify: by subjecting Mendel¹s work to a veritable 
theoretical regression which took it back into its ideological prehistory. 
t t t 
Paradoxically, Darwin was no better treated. 
To counter what they thought - or pretended to think - is 
Mendelist genetics, the Lysenkoists presented themselves as defenders 
of ŒDarwinism¹. They constantly repeated that Mendelist 
genetics is a deviation from Darwinism, that it betrays its spirit. 
Hence it is not enough to have established that their conception of 
genetics was no better than a crude caricature. The question remains 
open as to whether they set against this caricature arguments which 
can, as they claimed, be called ŒDarwinist¹ in some respect or other. 
If so, the misunderstanding would have been simple and localized: 
it would only have been a misunderstanding about Mendelism. 
Lysenko, relying on Darwin, would have been bringing his 
criticism to bear on a distorted image of Mendel while using arguments 
which are in fact perfectly compatible with Mendelist 
theory, which we know is indeed itself not just compatible with 
but complementary to the Darwinist theory of natural selection. 
One might then think that Lysenko, for ideological and political 
reasons, had repeated in another language what Mendel had said, 
turning concepts which are authentically his though disguised in 
an adopted terminology against a deliberately or unconsciously 
falsified version of Mendelist science. 
This is the interpretation of the Lysenkoist theory that seems, 
incidentally, to have been adopted by certain Soviet geneticists, 
probably for tactical reasons: they thought that to defend themselves 
they needed only to agree wholeheartedly with Lysenko and 
criticize the ŒWeismannist¹ image of genetics, to dissociate their 
own work from that image and show that there was no opposition 
between it and the Lysenkoist theses. It is also the procedure used 
in 1948 by the geneticist Zhukovskii: ŒYou say that you have 
succeeded in converting hard wheat into soft . . . this is training, it 
is possible, but I will call it mutation, and let Professor Polyakov

90 
call me a mutationist¹ (Verbatim Report, p. 461). And later, during 
a brief exchange with Lysenko, who offered to bring to the platform 
scores of plants whose parents were vegetative hybrids to 
prove the truth of his statements, Zhukovskii answered: ŒI believe 
you about those plants. . . . Trofim Denisovich, you never use the 
term ³mutation², you refuse to recognize it. But we do recognize 
it. And nature supplies the organic world with mutations almost 
without limit. What causes mutations? On this point, I am 
entirely with you, Academician Lysenko: environment, external 
conditions, cause mutations. You call it training¹ (pp. 463-4). 
A merely verbal quarrel? The hypothesis will not withstand the 
beginnings of a close analysis. And at the same time such an analysis 
will show why Academician Zhukovskii¹s Œtactic¹ was a tragic 
illusion. 
Remember the terms in which Lysenko presented The Origin of 
Species: ŒThe leading idea of Darwin¹s theory is the teaching on 
natural and artificial selection. Selection of variations favourable 
to the organism has produced, and continues to produce, the fitness 
which we observe in living nature; in the structure of organisms 
and their adaptation to their conditions of life. Darwin¹s theory of 
selection provided a rational explanation of the fitness observable 
in living nature. His idea of selection is scientific and true¹ (ibid., 
p. 11). Remember, too, that there immediately followed a series 
of reservations about Darwin¹s Œerrors . . . already pointed out by 
Engels¹: ŒDarwin¹s theory, though unquestionably materialist in 
its main features, is not free of some serious errors¹ (p. 12). The 
first of these: ŒAlong with the materialist principle, Darwin introduced 
into his theory of evolution reactionary Malthusian ideas¹ 
(p. 12).15 
Lysenko thus proceeded to a division within Darwin¹s theory: 
on the one hand, its materialist content, i.e., Œhis idea of selection¹ 
Œhis theory of evolution, which explained the natural causes of the 
15 Among other texts Lysenko quoted Engels¹s letter to Lavrov of November 12th to 
17th 1875: ŒThe whole Darwinist teaching of the struggle for existence is simply a transference 
from society to living nature of Hobbes¹s doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes 
and of the bourgeois-economic doctrine of competition together with Malthus¹s theory of 
population. When this conjurer¹s trick has been performed (and I question its absolute 
permissibility, as I have indicated in point 1, particularly as far as the Malthusian theory 
is concerned) the same theories are transferred back again from organic nature into history 
and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved.¹ 
On the same point see also Anti-Dühring, op. cit. pp. 97-9 and Dialectics of Nature, op. cit. 
pp. 208-9, 235-6.

The Theory of Heredity 91 
purposiveness we see in the structure of the organic world¹ (p. 12); 
on the other, his theory of the struggle for existence and his 
conception of variation, elements of foreign extraction. The 
materialist element is Œa summation of the age-old practical experience 
of plant and animal breeders¹ (pp. 11-12), the idealist element: 
a trace of the dominant bourgeois ideology in the form of a 
principle of Malthusian origin. 
According to the Lysenkoists, who could appeal on this point to 
the violent polemics sparked off by the publication of Darwin¹s 
book, the materialist element of the theory had become the target 
for a vigorous bourgeois ideological counter-offensive. Result: this 
element had rapidly been lost sight of by biologists themselves, and 
in consequence ŒWeismannist-Mendelists¹ had developed unilaterally 
the idealist element, to the point of giving it the consistency of 
a Œtheory¹. 
Thus Lysenko declared: we are the true Darwinists, the heirs to 
what is materialist and revolutionary in Darwin¹s work. We want 
to develop and rectify Darwin. The Mendelists¹ presentation of 
themselves as adepts of a ŒNeo-Darwinism¹ which in their case is 
no more than a pseudo-scientific system of biological Malthusianism 
is abusive. 
Lysenko¹s argument might seem strong and his procedure a 
formally legitimate one for a Marxist. Darwin¹s borrowing from 
Malthus was not just a daring hypothesis of Engels¹s, it could be 
backed up by Darwin¹s own testimony: in his Autobiography 
Darwin stated that he had indeed taken the concept of the struggle 
for existence from the author of An Essay on the Principle of Population. 
As for the conclusion Lysenko drew from this - that a Œdivision¹ 
has to be made between two heterogeneous elements within 
Darwin¹s theory - it might seem in conformity with Lenin¹s 
position on the sciences of nature: is not the Œspontaneous¹ philosophy 
of scientists a compromise formation of this kind between 
contradictory elements?16 
However, the Leninist descent of the Lysenkoist intervention in 
biology is no more than formal and apparent. 
Lysenko relied on Engels; Engels reproduced the letter of 
Darwin¹s Autobiography. But it is, to say the least, imprudent, if 
16 Cf. the explanation of this proposed by Althusser in Philosophie et Philosophie spontanée 
des savants ( 1967), François Maspero, Paris 1974, and the illustration vis-à-vis Jacques 
Monod that appears in an appendix to it.

92 
one is attempting to think the process of a scientific discovery, to 
trust blindly the account given of it by the scientist who was its 
agent, above all when, as here, it is a matter of a retrospective text. 
In fact, recent studies have shown that, in Darwin¹s work, the 
concept of a struggle for existence pre-existed his reading of 
Malthus.17 But above all, however decisive a part one supposes 
that Malthus¹s theory did play in the formation of Darwin¹s concept 
of the struggle for existence, it cannot be inferred, as Lysenko 
inferred, that this concept is ipso facto a mere Œtransposition¹ of the 
Malthusian principle. For that would be to confuse the process of a 
discovery and the theory which is its result. The only conclusion 
that could legitimately be drawn from Darwin¹s remarks about 
Malthus is that the Malthusian doctrine served him as a theoretical 
instrument. But this by no means implies the presence as such of 
the instrument in the product. The history of the sciences offers 
many examples to prove that there need be no natural continuity, 
no theoretical homogeneity between the scientific concept produced 
and the theoretical instrument which allowed it to be 
manufactured. A concept does not necessarily carry inscribed 
indelibly in it the traces of its origin, nor does it reproduce in the 
domain in which it has been imported its primitive meaning. 
This is easily confirmed by a direct comparison between 
Malthus¹s principle and Darwin¹s concept. What in fact is the 
object of Malthus¹s demonstration? Malthus aimed to prove, in 
contradistinction to the Ideologists of the eighteenth century 
(notably Condorcet) that the intensity and necessity of the struggle 
prevent any progress of the human species. No doubt in Malthus¹s 
mind this proposition had a universal value and would, transposed 
from the human species to others, have led to the affirmation that 
there is a natural quantitative elimination, without any selection. 
Moreover, whenever Malthus appealed to the notion of the struggle 
for existence it was not to claim that the superior triumphs: in his 
eyes the struggle for existence leads to no improvement in a 
population.18 So Lysenko was mistaken, as was Engels: Darwin¹s 
17 I am alluding to the research of Camille Limoges, notably to his important book 
La Sélection naturelle, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1970. 
18 On this point see Yvette Conry¹s article: ŒDarwin et Mendel dans la biologie contemporain,¹ 
Revue de l¹enseignment philosophique, October-November 1972, and also 
Camille Limoges¹s summary: ŒDarwinisme et adaptation,¹ Revue des questions scientifiques, 
July 1970.

The Theory of Heredity 93 
principle of the survival of the fittest is clearly anti-Malthusian, 
even if its conception did require the theoretical detour via 
Malthus.19 
This mistake of Lysenko¹s included another: it caused him to 
miss the unity of the theory of evolution, i.e., the fact that the 
concepts of adaptation and struggle for existence are interdependent 
in it. He thus emptied the Darwinian concept of adaptation of its 
revolutionary content. A theoretically disastrous mistake, since 
it was precisely in this concept that Darwinism had made its 
Œbreak¹ with the natural history of previous centuries. 
In fact, in the Linnaean tradition and even in Lamarck, the 
notion of adaptation was closely linked to the conception of a 
Œnatural economy¹. It was therefore an integral part of a finalist 
conception of the natural order. Thus, when Lamarck used the 
notion of adaptation he did so to designate the organism¹s appropriate 
response to changes in the environment; but a successful 
response is predetermined by the Œplan of nature¹, which, in its 
Œwisdom¹, foresees the development of the linear Œchain¹ of beings 
organized according to a progressive increase in complexity. 
Darwin¹s notion of adaptation, too, is interdependent with a 
notion of an equilibrium in nature; but (and this is the decisive 
point) as this equilibrium is achieved in and by the struggle for the 
appropriation of the environment, it excludes all predetermination. 
In other words, the Darwinist concept was revolutionary in that 
it is non-teleological. It has even proved possible to show that, 
historically, it was constructed through a long effort to reject the 
classical notion of a Œnatural economy¹.20 As is clear, what constitutes 
the non-finalism of Darwin¹s theory is its coupling of the 
notion of adaptation to that of struggle: its thinking adaptation as 
a process in struggle.21 
But Lysenko said: the struggle for existence is Malthusianism 
in biology, it is the idealist element in Darwin¹s theory. Only the 
19 François Jacob himself as well as other historians has fallen victim to the same mistake 
(cf. The Logic of Living Systems, op. cit., pp. 169-70). 
20 In the article referred to above Limoges shows how Darwin was able to make this 
rejection by working on the contradictions which Œoverdetermined¹ the notion in William 
Paley¹s natural theology. 
21 Georges Canguilhem wrote: ŒFor Darwin to live is to submit to the judgement of 
the totality of living beings an individual difference. This judgement can have two outcomes: 
either one dies or in one¹s turn one becomes, for a time, a member of the jury. But 
so long as one lives one is always jury and judged¹ (La Connaissance de la vie, Vrin, Paris, 
2nd edition 1965, p. 137).

94 
notion of adaptation should be retained. As a result he defined 
adaptation, in abstraction from struggle, as an 'adjustment' of the 
organism to conditions in the external environment in conformity 
with its needs and nature. But to dissociate adaptation and struggle 
for existence in this way is to miss what was new in the Darwinist 
concept of adaptation, to 'forget' what constitutes its scientific 
character proper; thus it is to make the theory of evolution regress 
into its ideological pre-history, to a finalist conception of the 
relationship between the living being and its environment. 
t t t 
Lysenko's infidelity to Darwin does not stop there. He wrote: 'The 
scientific ideas of Darwinism are a summation of the age-old 
practical experience of plant and animal breeders' (pp. 11-12), and 
his supporters constantly made this thesis an argument against their 
opponents who they attacked for the academic character of their 
researches, remote from practice. Now, so formulated, this thesis 
contains a dual historical and theoretical ambiguity which can also 
find some support in references to the letter of Darwin's texts. 
It is indeed true that on several occasions Darwin acknowledged 
his debt to 'breeders'; we also know that he accumulated a lot of 
documentation about the artificial selection of animals and plants. 
But it has also been established that all this documentation only 
affected the elaboration of the concept of 'natural selection' after 
the event, as confirmation of an already formed theory. To say 
that this theory was a 'summation' of the experience of breeders 
is to commit oneself to an empiricist conception of the formation 
of scientific concepts which does not explain Darwin's actual efforts. 
The ambiguity is all the more serious in that it led to an implicit 
assimilation of the mechanism of natural 'selection' to that of 
artificial selection. Since the breeder's work is simply to make as 
judicious as possible a choice amongst the organisms subject to 
selection as a function of the use to which he intends them, if 
natural selection is assimilated to artificial selection, if the concept 
of 'natural selection' becomes a mere generalization of empirical 
observations made during the work, however 'age-old', of 
breeders, the idea of such a choice is inevitably introduced into 
nature. Now Darwin, when he defined 'natural selection' - 'This 
preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious 
variations I call Natural Selection' - was very careful to explain.

The Theory of Heredity 95 
that this mechanism implies no choice, that unlike artificial selection 
this is a matter of a non-purposive process. It is clear that Darwin 
only used the term 'selection' because he lacked a better term and, 
essentially, as a convenient pedagogic analogy.22 To give this 
analogy, understood in the strict sense, a theoretical function was, 
against Darwin's own explicit warnings, to reintroduce purposiveness 
into a process which does not contain it. This is the path that 
Lysenko took. It converges with his finalist interpretation of the 
notion of adaptation and strengthens it. Lysenkoism, whatever it 
claimed, is thus not a Darwinism. It is even an anti-Darwinism 
insofar as on the central issue - the rejection of finalism - it betrays 
Darwin. 
Indeed, theoretical regression and return to finalism crystallize 
in the decisive point at which Lysenko came, very 'logically' to 
contradict Darwin openly: the question of competition within a 
single species. 
As we know, Lysenko denied the existence of such a competition 
with the utmost energy, seeing in it nothing but a 'fiction' invented 
by the bourgeoisie to justify the class division of society. Let us 
recall his specifically 'biological' arguments: 'The rabbit is eaten 
by the wolf but does not eat other rabbits; it eats grass. Likewise 
wheat does not crowd wheat out of existence' (Agrobiology, op. cit., 
pp. 512-3). The wolf not being a wolf for the wolf, man could 
not by nature be a wolf for man. . . . 
From this 'theory' Lysenko deduced one of his most famous 
techniques, the planting in 'clusters' or 'hills' of kok-sagyz (Russian 
rubber dandelion) or forest trees, which the 'Great Plan for the 
Transformation of Nature' drawn up by Stalin in 1949 was to 
impose on a vast scale, to the great detriment of Soviet agriculture. 
It is worth stopping to look at the texts devoted to this techniquenot 
to sneer complacently at the speculative delirium in which 
they were eventually trapped but because there Lysenko's finalism 
reveals all its effects, in such an acute form that it is almost religious. 
In this sense these texts tell the 'truth' about the whole Lysenkoist 
theoretical construction. 
22 It obviously remains open why Darwin allowed this ambiguity to survive at the 
terminological level. It certainly seems that it is not a purely verbal question but one which 
reveals in index of the fact that the work of the break with finalism was not complete in 
The Origin of Species. The theory of pangenesis and its ideological extensions are there for 
confirmation.

96
ŒIn order that the weak kok-sagyz plants may be able not only 
to hold their own in this severe inter-specific struggle but to produce 
greater crops we have come to their assistance. The collectivefarm 
members have begun to sow kok-sagyz in hills: 100-200 
kok-sagyz seeds are placed in one hole and around it 
 sq. m. of free 
space is left. The weed attacks the hill but on encountering a mighty 
wall of resistance on the part of the numerous kok-sagyz plants it 
cannot make its way into the hill. And the kok-sagyz, having rid 
itself of its worst enemy, keeps on growing in bunches (association) 
by using up the nutriment and moisture of the entire free space 
given to it¹ (ibid., p. 513). 
Reporting in 1957 on a conversation he had had with Lysenko on 
this point in 1949, Marcel Prenant wrote: ŒI allowed myself to 
put a question to him: ³I admit that young trees should be planted 
in a cluster; they may thus be better protected at first; but is it not 
necessary to remove some of them after a few years?² ³No,² 
replied Lysenko, explaining: ³They will sacrifice themselves for 
one.² ³Do you mean,² I replied, ³that one will turn out to be 
stronger and the others will weaken or perish?² ³No,² he repeated, 
³they will sacrifice themselves for the good of the species²¹ (La 
Pensée no. 72, 1957, pp. 23-6; cit. Medvedev, op. cit., p. 168). 
For struggle, Lysenko substituted sacrifice: theology is decidedly 
the inseparable companion of teleology. The apparently Marxist 
justifications cannot mask the religious character of these passages. 
Professor Gustav Wetter, obviously very sensitive to this aspect 
of the doctrine, correctly links it to another central notion of 
mature Lysenkoism, that of the Œmarriage for love¹ invoked to 
explain fertilization.23 Here is a passage from Safonov about wheat: 
ŒThe wind carried a cloud of pollen. And from this cloud the plant 
elects the pollen suitable for it. It does not pollinate itself with 
just any kind of pollen. It chooses its pollen. Only organisms that 
suit and strengthen each other combine if nature is given a free 
hand. In this field, among the clipped ears marked with red thread, 
we, as it were, stood on the threshold across which we could clearly 
and distinctly see the operation of the most profound, important 
and beautiful laws that govern all living things on Earth - both 
23 Gustav Wetter¹s book Dialectical Materialism. A Historical and Systematic Survey of 
Philosophy in the Soviet Union (translated by Peter Heath, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 
London 1958) which is presented as a well-documented history of Soviet philosophy is 
a version of lectures given at the Pontificio Instituto Orientale.

The Theory of Heredity 97 
animals and plants. We were not surprised at the bold and beautiful 
words with which Lysenko described what was going on among 
his wheats: ³Marriage for love!²¹ (op. cit., pp. 237-9). 
t t t 
In conclusion, may I emphasize the astonishing consistency of 
Lysenko¹s Œerrors¹ in the theory of heredity? 
Contrary to what has been claimed, this consistency is by no 
means due to the inspiration of a clearly understood doctrine such 
as Lamarckism, the latter supposedly providing the Lysenkoists 
with a positive reference point in their critique of other theories 
and in their own investigations. Lamarckism, about which they 
were strangely discreet, was no better handled by the Lysenkoists 
than Mendelism or Darwinism: they were completely alien to it.24 
24 There have been many attempts to see a supposed ŒLamarckism¹ of Lysenko as the 
grounds for his deliberate or accidental theoretical Œderailment¹. Did he not make the 
Œinheritance of acquired characters¹ the emblem of his doctrine? 
If we leave the verbal surface for only a moment it becomes clear that in fact Lysenko 
was no more a Lamarckist then he was a Darwinist. 
In the classical Lamarckist sense, in fact, it was reckoned that there is the inheritance of an 
acquired character when this character, acquired by one generation under the influence of 
the environment, is transmitted to the next generation whatever the environment in which 
the latter grows up. Hence to claim that there really has been the transmission of an 
Œacquired¹ character, it is necessary at each generation to choose for evidence certain individuals 
and make them live in conditions other than those in which the new character has been 
acquired; one can then verify whether the character is manifested, and hence whether it has 
been acquired by the organism. 
Now the Lysenkoists gave a very different definition of what an acquired character is: 
ŒWhen an organism finds in its environment the conditions suitable to its heredity,¹ wrote 
Lysenko, Œits development proceeds in the same way as it proceeded in previous generations. 
When, however, organisms do not find the conditions they require and are forced to 
assimilate environmental conditions, which to some degree or other, do not accord with 
their nature, then the organisms or sections of their bodies become more or less different 
from the preceding generation¹ (Report, p. 35). This passage yields the conclusion that, 
if they are left in the same environmental conditions that enabled them to Œacquire¹ a new 
character, this character will be transmitted to their descendants. 
An example: the explanation given by the Lysenkoist Shaumyan for the creation of a 
new high-yield breed of cows, the famous Kostroma cows of the ŒKaravaevo¹ sovkhoz: 
ŒFor a period of over twenty years the Karavaevo herd received abundant and diversified 
feed, particularly during the last 10-13 years. Thus in 1928 the total fodder expenditure 
per forage-fed cow amounted to 3,256 Russian food units and in the best years was in 
excess of 6,000 food units. The expenditure of concentrated fodder per cow was 1,000- 
2,500 kg. Milkings per forage-fed cow were correspondingly 3,389 kg, reaching a 
maximum in 1940 of 6,310 kg. The live body weight of cows averaged 649 kg for the entire 
herd¹ (Verbatim Report, p. 254). I will cut short the description of these fabulous cows to 
jump to Shaumyan¹s conclusion: ŒIn the light of these facts, one question is raised: can one 
accept the Morganists¹ claim as to the immutability of the sexual cells and the impossibility

98
The consistency of the Lysenkoists¹ Œerrors¹ is to be found in the 
overall system of their misconceptions of the doctrines, in the overall 
system of the falsifications they imposed on the theories which 
served them both as positive points of reference (Darwin) and as 
foils (Mendel, Weismann). It is not just their positions vis-à-vis 
each of these theories taken singly which is pertinent, but rather, 
throughout these conjugated positions, the relationship posited 
between these theories that becomes significant. To understand 
the true inspiration of the Lysenkoist theory where heredity is 
concerned, the logic of this diabolical interplay of reference, 
exclusion and amalgamation must be recognized. 
It all fits together, indeed. Lysenkoism claimed to be Darwinist 
in order to condemn Mendelist genetics. Certainly. But this 
opposition was completely misplaced from the start, for not only 
did Lysenkoism attack a misrepresentation of Mendelist genetics, 
it did so in the name of a profoundly adulterated version of 
Darwinist theory. All the elements were falsified from the start, 
and it is understandable that they made any communication impossible 
between Lysenko and the geneticists in 1948. Yet it was 
on this basis that Lysenko Œargued¹, i.e., in fact developed the logic 
of his aberrant presuppositions: he had to identify an essential part 
of Darwin¹s work arbitrarily with that of Malthus to achieve an 
amalgamation of Mendel and Weismann. He thus identified Darwin¹s 
Œstruggle¹ for existence with Malthus¹s Œprinciple of population¹. 
He claimed that Weismann merely developed this supposedly 
Œidealist¹ side of Darwin. This eventually allowed him to amalgamate 
Mendel and Weismann. Darwin, Lysenko¹s stated positive 
theoretical point of reference, thus only serves him in his falsified 
of the inheritance of acquired characters? . . . How can one explain the significance of 
genes which enable cows millenia in advance to give up to 15,000 kgs of milk a year? . . . 
The development of the cows¹ udders is indisputable proof of the inheritance of characters 
acquired under the influence of the surrounding environment. The protracted selection of 
conditions of existence has made quantitative modifications which, hereditarily transmitted, 
transform the qualities of the original species¹ (ibid. pp. 258-60 cit. according to the 
abridged French version published in Europe nos. 33-4, September-October 1948, pp. 86-8). 
A more flagrant confusion is unimaginable: all this has nothing to do with the inheritance 
of acquired characters in the Lamarckist sense, in order to establish the latter, it would 
precisely have been necessary to have raised some of the second generation of these illustrious 
cows in quite different conditions to see if the yield persisted. Besides, contrary to 
what Shaumyan stated, a Mendelist geneticist would have no trouble explaining this case. 
He could say: however good the genotype may be in some of its possible phenotypes, the 
phenotype realized will only be really good if it is given sufficient appropriate care.

The Theory of Heredity 97 
representation as an appropriate Œtheoretical¹ operator by which to 
achieve the amalgamation which enabled him to condemn Mendel 
in the guise of Weismann. . . . 
And, since Darwin is the centre of what must really be called 
this Œoperation¹ literally mounted against Mendel and genetics, since 
Darwin is the Lysenkoists¹ sole positive point of reference, it is his 
treatment that reveals to us not only the logic of the operation, 
but also the Lysenkoists¹ ultimate inspiration. As we have seen, it 
is no accident that Lysenko marked himself off from Darwin in the 
matter of the theory of the Œstruggle for existence¹: once this notion 
has been removed, the road is wide open to a finalist conception of 
living nature, and, as the history of modern biology has been made 
against this conception, the road is wide open for the restoration of 
finalism, which, scientifically, cannot but be a regression. 
It is Lysenko himself who bears witness to this interpretation 
in the extravagant theory of heredity he constantly proposed: 
ŒHeredity is the property of a living body to require definite conditions 
for its life and development and to respond in a definite way 
to various conditions¹ (ibid., p. 35). This definition, which 
Marcel Prenant rightly noted in 1948 is literally incomprehensible 
(heredity as a Œproperty¹? and also as a Œrequirement¹?), can only 
be deciphered as the repercussion of a finalist conception of living 
nature. 
Naturally, this finalism, conscious or unconscious, is philosophically 
charged. And here a new drama comes into play. For 
after the meeting between Lysenko and Prezent (1935), Lysenko¹s 
Œtheory¹ was no longer presented as the interpretation of certain 
technical results, nor even as one doctrine of finalist inspiration 
among others; it was presented as the direct application, in the 
domain of biology, of a determinate philosophy, the official 
philosophy of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state, dialectical 
materialism. No serious examination of the Lysenkoist theory of 
heredity and its fortunes can elude this fact: between 1935 and 1940 
recourse to an established conception of dialectical materialism, 
to its ideological and political powers, played a theoretically and 
historically decisive part in the constitution and justification of the 
doctrine. And it was this Œpedigree¹ that was recognized and made 
official by the decisions of 1948. 
We must therefore now confront this question, which is the 
one that arouses the most lively controversy.

5 
The Theory of the 
ŒTwo Sciences¹ and 
State Ideology 
In his preface to the French edition of Medvedev¹s book, Monod 
writes: 
ŒWhat for me was the most revealing aspect of these astonishing 
documents was the fact that the real debate did not concern 
experimental biology itself, but almost exclusively ideology or 
rather dogmatics. The essential argument (ultimately the only one) 
tirelessly repeated by Lysenko and his supporters against classical 
genetics was its incompatibility with dialectical materialism. This was 
the real debate, the heart of the problem, and on this terrain chosen 
by Lysenko but which they could not avoid, the Russian geneticists 
were clearly beaten from the start. For it is perfectly true that the 
ultimate basis of classical genetics, the theory of the gene, invariant 
from generation to generation and even through hybridizations, is 
incompatible with the spirit and the letter of the dialectics of nature 
according to Engels. So, moreover, is the purely selective theory of 
evolution, already formally denied by Engels himself. It was easy, 
on the contrary, to show - and Lysenko tirelessly returned to this 
too - that Michurinist biology, by ³proving² the inheritance of 
acquired characters and the influence of the environment on 
material heredity, precisely paralleled materialist dialectics, glorified 
it with new and fabulous discoveries, and made way for a real 
biological ³parousia².¹ 
This passage is echoed in Chance and Necessity when Monod 
denounces in Marxism an up-to-date form of Œanimism¹. To support 
this condemnation factually and illustrate the Œepistemological 
disaster¹ to which he thinks Marxist philosophy would inevitably 
expose the natural sciences, he resorts once again to the ŒLysenko 
affair: 
ŒLysenko accused geneticists of maintaining a theory radically 
100

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 101 
opposed to dialectical materialism, and therefore necessarily false. 
Despite the disclaimers of Soviet geneticists, Lysenko was perfectly 
right: the theory of the gene as the hereditary determinant, 
invariant from generation to generation and even through 
hybridizations, is indeed completely irreconcilable with dialectical 
principles.¹1 
During the great debate which followed the appearance of this 
book, the Marxists did not to my knowledge reply on this point. 
It was easy to criticize his Œnatural philosophy¹2 for its effects, 
denouncing the political implications of his theoretical positions; 
especially so since Monod had made no mystery of them and had 
frankly and clearly stated them in the last chapter of his work. In 
fact, a whole army of commentators, Marxists in the forefront, 
have dissected and attacked the few pages Monod devotes to his 
conception of socialism. But what has one achieved when one has 
Œbrought out¹ the anti-Marxism of an author . . . who states it 
plainly? Who does one hope to convince by this kind of exorcism? 
It was more difficult to sort out in Monod¹s philosophical 
apparatus the theses which derived from his actual scientific practice 
and those which were no more than the shadow cast by his 
ideological positions; and to study their original combination 
within it. A few have ventured this, with the idea that they might 
make scientists - and especially biologists - realize the Œspontaneous¹ 
materialism of their scientific practice and thus enable them to 
resist the idealist exploitation of the results of the new biology by 
the ruling ideology.3 
However, there remain his factual arguments. And foremost 
among them: Lysenko. Willy-nilly, these arguments give Monod¹s 
positions force and an audience. Not to answer them is to allow 
real and not imaginary motives for scientists¹ persistent distrust of 
Marxist philosophy to survive intact. 
Yes, it must be conceded to Monod (and all those who share his 
position) that he has hit the nail on the head: it was indeed in the 
name of a conception of dialectical materialism that the Michurinist 
theory of heredity was erected after 1935; it was indeed this con- 
1 Chance and Necessity, translated by Austryn Wainhouse, Collins, London 1972, p. 46. 
2 The work¹s sub-title is ŒAn Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology¹. 
3 This is what Louis Althusser, for example, had attempted, basing his argument an the 
text of Monod¹s inaugural lecture at the Collège de France. The text of this analysis as to 
be found in Philosophie de Philosophie spontanée des savants, op. cit.

102 
ception of Marxist philosophy which was charged to unify its 
criticisms of Mendelism, to provide a foundation for its own 
concepts and to give a theoretical form to this delirious doctrine. 
Need I quote more texts? 
Lysenko himself never missed an opportunity to stress the organic 
link between his materialist philosophical positions and his 
Œscientific¹ concepts. ŒStalin¹s teaching about gradual, concealed, 
unnoticeable quantitative changes leading to rapid, radical qualitative 
changes permitted Soviet biologists to discover in plants the 
realization of such qualitative transitions, the transformation of 
one species into another,¹ he wrote in 1953 (cit. Medvedev, op. cit., 
p. 134). And already, in his 1948 Report, he had stated: ŒThe 
materialist theory of the evolution of living nature necessarily presupposes 
the recognition of hereditary transmission of individual 
characteristics acquired by the organism under definite conditions 
of its life; it is unthinkable without recognition of the inheritance 
of acquired characters¹ (Report, p. 15). Glushchenko went further: 
ŒSoviet biologists, mastering the science of all sciences, the Marxist 
dialectical method, and accumulating experimental material, are 
exposing the idealist essence of the Morgan teaching¹ (Verbatim 
Report, p. 218). The philosopher Mitin, who built his intervention 
on a criticism of a book by the geneticist Shmal¹gauzen (or 
Schmalhausen), set out to prove that Œthe entire methodology upon 
which this book rests has nothing in common with dialectical 
materialism¹ (ibid., p. 269), and on the contrary Œdemonstrated¹ 
that ŒMichurin¹s theory is a striking illustration of the application 
of materialist dialectics in scientific research¹ (p. 275). 
Stoletov ended his pamphlet4 with the words: ŒIn their researches, 
the Michurinists are guided by the only correct conception of the 
world, the conception of dialectical materialism, the great doctrine 
of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. This is where lie both the factor 
behind the past successes of the Michurinists and the promise of 
even more important successes for Michurinist biology in the 
future.¹ 
Is there, finally, any need to recall that outside the Soviet Union 
it was philosophical arguments that were put forward to defend 
or impose Lysenkoism? Thus, to take only one example, in 1950 
Francis Cohen justified the rejection of the concept of mutation by 
4 Mendel ou Lyssenko, op. cit., p. 58.

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 103 
subjecting it directly to the judgement of a certain conception of 
dialectics: ŒSuddenly,¹ he wrote, Œa gene changes, and as a result, a 
character changes too. There has been a sudden leap, a discontinuity, 
a dialectical phenomenon. But where is the accumulation of 
quantitative changes leading to the sudden qualitative leap, since 
the mutation is fortuitous, unpredictable, undirectable? . . . Perfectly 
accurate phenomena observed by Mendelist scientists are converted 
into nonsense because they refuse to place them in the environment 
of surrounding conditions.¹5 
t t t 
There is no escape from this undeniable statement of fact; it could be 
bolstered by many more quotations. But it is also evident that this 
statement of fact implies that we Marxist philosophers have a duty 
to settle accounts with the past we have inherited; and are under 
an imperious necessity, if we simply want to be heard in the ideological 
battle, to prove that we are capable of analyzing in our 
own concepts the errors that were committed in this past, risking 
all that we know or think that we know about Marxist philosophy 
in so doing. 
This being so, we cannot be satisfied with the incredible silence 
that has surrounded Lysenko¹s name in the Soviet Union in the 
more than ten years since he left the centre of the stage. For, with 
the exception of the polemical articles written in the 1960¹s by the 
geneticists, at considerable risk to themselves, to hasten the end 
of the misadventure, with the exception of the catastrophic assessments 
then published by the agronomists of the results of the 
experiments made under Lysenko¹s leadership since the War, there 
has been no overall critical examination of the doctrine in the USSR. 
In particular, no philosopher, as far as I know, has undertaken to 
draw the lessons for dialectical materialism itself of the interpretation 
then given of it and the practice it inspired. 
This silence is disastrous, for not only does it provide arguments 
to the opponents of Marxism, it also has profound effects on the 
contemporary practice of Marxist philosophy, which is still, even 
in the form of the most sincere denials, haunted and marked by a 
past which it has been unable or ill-equipped to liquidate theoretically. 
5 In the collection Science bourgeoise et science prolétarienne, op. cit.

104 
I shall therefore take a hard look, at the cost of restricting myself 
for the time being to another statement of fact. 
Here it is. 
We must admit that, if historical materialism, the science of the 
history of social formations the Œcornerstones¹ (Lenin) of which 
were laid down by Marx in Capital, has been tested, developed and 
corrected by the political practice and theoretical reflection of the 
workers¹ movement to the point at which it can present itself 
today as a body of concepts consistent enough to receive every day 
the sanction of the gigantic Œexperimentation¹ constituted in its 
various forms by the class struggle of the proletariat against 
imperialism, Marxist philosophy, dialectical materialism, is in a 
quite different situation: one hundred years after the Eleventh 
Thesis on Feuerbach, it remains in a state of theoretical nonelaboration 
such that the question of its (theoretical) existence can 
still be asked. The diagnosis made by Althusser in the introduction 
to For Marx ten years ago now - is still correct in essentials: ŒMarxist 
philosophy, founded by Marx in the very act of founding his theory 
of history, has still largely to be constituted¹ (NLB, London 1977, 
pp. 30‹31). 
Certainly it is not on a blank page that I shall have to inscribe 
the first words of a doctrine still in intellectual limbo. I know that 
there are works of Marxist philosophy, some of them written by 
leaders of the workers¹ movement, too; far be it from me to belittle 
Engels¹s books dealing with philosophy, Lenin¹s interventions or 
Mao¹s essays, to cite only those examples. I know that there are 
also Œtextbooks¹ of Marxist philosophy (such as Politzer¹s in France); 
nor is it a question of denying the function they have had in the 
theoretical and political formation of the best working-class 
militants, who have found in them and still do find in them an 
approach to questions which the bourgeois forms of the division 
of manual and intellectual labour close to them. 
What I mean is that the expression Œdialectical materialism¹, far 
from designating a unified theoretical whole, has covered and still 
covers profoundly contradictory philosophical conceptions. 
Let me specify. 
The materialist and dialectical philosophical theses set to work 
by Marx in the elaboration of the basic concepts of historical 
materialism, by Engels in his polemic against Dühring, by Lenin in 
the heat of ideological and political battle against Bogdanov and

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 105 
the ŒOtzovists¹ and then in the constitution of the theory of imperialism, 
by Gramsci in his tireless debate with Croce¹s spiritualism, 
by Mao in his struggle against dogmatist and empiricist tendencies 
in the Chinese Communist Party . . . have always had manifestly 
critical effects: they all used them as Œweapons¹ to Œknock away¹ the 
obstacles in theory which were, in a particular conjuncture, 
blocking the process of scientific and political practice. In each case 
the role of these theses was to open to theory the space of a Œplay¹ 
that allowed them to master in thought the nature and the displacement 
of contradictions to which practice had to adjust in order to 
transform its object. 
But it must be recognized that alongside this interpretation of 
the theses of dialectical materialism, the Marxist tradition has 
handed down to us another, which I shall call not just Œdogmatic¹, in 
the sense that it fixes thought around immutable and inactive 
notions, but also ontological,6 in the sense that it Œrealizes¹ the determinations 
of philosophy itself in Œbeing¹. 
This interpretation is not a late avatar or even only a historically 
dated version of dialectical materialism; in reality it has accompanied 
it throughout its history and often coexists with the first in the same 
works.7 But what is more serious, for more than forty years it has been 
imposed as the dominant version of Marxist philosophy, to the point 
that it has been identified with it and poses as a veritable Œorthodoxy¹. 
I say Œorthodoxy¹ not to pronounce a judgement for the sake of 
vain polemic but to take cognisance of a fact: this interpretation 
was codified and put on record by Stalin in 1938 in a book which 
very quickly came to be used as the only real text book of Marxist 
philosophy in the Soviet Union and the whole world, and served 
for years as an almost exclusive reference for works of philosophy, 
which were very often no more than commentaries on it or illustrations 
of it: this is the chapter of The History of the Communist 
Party (Bolshevik) entitled ŒDialectical and Historical Materialism¹. 
Nothing is more instructive for grasping the essence of what I 
have called the Œontological¹ interpretation of dialectical materialism 
6 This terminology was already used by Étienne Balibar in the lecture he gave last year 
(1975) at the Centre d¹Etudes et de Recherches Marxistes on ŒDialectique des luttes de classes 
et lutte de classe dans la dialectique¹ (to be published by the CERM). 
7 This is the case with several of Engels¹s writings and especially the incomplete developments 
of Dialectics of Nature, the formulae of which constitute the main reservoir of the 
Œquotations¹ which the ontological interpretation of dialectical materialism has deployed 
as arguments for nearly half a century.

106 
than to compare Stalin¹s statements with the Leninist theses from 
which he claims authorization. I shall do it on one particular point, 
though obviously a crucial one: the conception of dialectics. 
In his notes On the Question of Dialectics (1915), Lenin wrote, 
summarizing once again the lessons he had drawn from reading 
Hegel: ŒThe condition for the knowledge of all processes of the 
world in their ³self-movement², in their spontaneous development, 
in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. 
Development is the ³struggle² of opposites¹ (Collected Works, Vol. 
38, Lawrence and Wishart, London 1961, p. 360). Stalin on the 
other hand wrote: ŒThe dialectical method of apprehending 
nature . . . regards the phenomena of nature as being in constant 
movement and undergoing constant change, and the development 
of nature as the result of the interaction of opposed forces in nature¹ 
(Problems of Leninism, op. cit., p. 570). 
Here are two apparently concordant texts: Stalin¹s fidelity to 
Lenin¹s philosophical positions seems indubitable at first glance. 
Yet a closer examination reveals that the passage from Stalin makes 
a slide from one conception of dialectical materialism - the critical 
conception of the practice of its theses - to another: the ontological 
conception of its supposed Œlaws¹. 
What Lenin stated as Œa condition for knowledge¹ of the processes 
of the world has been turned by Stalin into a law of the world itself, 
inscribing in being the (philosophical) presupposition of its knowledge. 
The fundamental dialectical thesis of the unity of opposites, 
whose function, according to Lenin, is to enable the process of the 
scientific knowledge of nature (and society) to overcome the idealist 
mystifications that tend to fix its results in so many Œabsolutes¹, 
which thus enables knowledge to advance, has become in Stalin a 
law of nature itself (and society) which human knowledge only 
has to Œmirror¹ to be Œvalid¹. 
In other words, a dialectical philosophical thesis which opens to 
objective knowledge the field of its own investigation according to 
its own modalities, is turned by the ŒStalinist¹ ontological interpretation 
of dialectical materialism into a general Œlaw¹ which is 
supposed to state the universal form of the laws established by the 
sciences of nature. It is called a Œlaw¹ (Œlaw of dialectics¹) because 
it is held to be theoretically homogeneous with the laws stated by 
the sciences, and is conceived with them as the model. In return, 
each of these laws - notably those of historical materialism - is

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 107 
supposed to give a Œconcrete¹ content to this form vis-à-vis its own 
object; each actual science thus presenting itself as the application 
to a special domain of the general Œlaw¹. In short, the thesis governing 
the contradictory movement of the appropriation of being by 
thought on the basis of their respective movements is transformed, 
in these circumstances, into a law of movement of being which, 
according to an empiricist conception of knowledge, will be uncovered 
by reflection in thought.8 
The first incalculable consequence of this transition to an ontological 
conception of dialectical materialism was clearly stated in 
Dialectical and Historical Materialism: the dialectics installed in 
being is transformed into a principle of evolution. As a result, 
Stalin¹s text, formulating the Œprincipal features of the dialectical 
method¹ under four heads, really outlined the pattern of an 
evolutionist conception of dialectics. 
ŒThe dialectical method . . . holds that the process of development 
should be understood not as movement in a circle, not as a simple 
repetition of what has already occurred, but as an onward and 
upward movement, as a transition from an old qualitative state to 
a new qualitative state, as a development from the simple to the 
complex, from the lower to the higher¹ (op. cit., p. 571). 
It is clear how Lysenko, who relied on this interpretation of 
dialectical materialism, could have found in it a philosophical 
foundation for his biological Œfinalism¹; it is understandable that 
from 1935 on he could have presented his Œtheory of the phasic 
development of plants¹ as a direct Œapplication¹ of dialectical 
materialism. For indeed his agronomic theory and this version of 
8 The correlate to this empiricist conception of knowledge is a pragmatist conception of 
truth which misses the point of the Leninist thesis of the Œcriterion of practice¹ to find in the 
immediacy of success a guarantee of the truth and in the immediacy of failure an assurance 
of the falsity of a theory. In the name of this thesis, as we have seen, the Mendelist science of 
heredity was required to authenticate its scientific status by applications it was not yet in a 
position to provide, not through any internal vice, but for lack of sufficiently developed 
conceptual instruments; it was refused the time that every science needs to become effective. 
Inversely, if a technique has proved more or less effective, the theory claiming to account 
for it, ill-founded as it may be, is immediately graced with the name of science (Lysenko). 
Lenin had a quite different conception of the criterion of practice and of the relation 
between theory and practice: by thinking them as a process in which the time of verification 
plays an essential part, he disengaged them from the arbitrary immediacy which can sanctify 
any imposture. Moreover by constantly returning to the idea of the fruitfulness of failure, 
by granting an undoubted privilege to failure over success by thus unbalancing the successfailure 
couple he went against the stream not only of any pragmatism but also of any 
positivism of practice.

108 
dialectical materialism were in harmony, both being based on the 
same finalism. 
t t t 
But this is not all: his notion of heredity, too, could find justification 
in this same philosophical conception. Read on in Stalin: ŒContrary 
to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental 
agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, 
isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected 
and integral whole, in which things, phenomena are organically 
connected with, dependent on and determined by, each other. 
The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in 
nature can be understood if taken by itself, isolated from surrounding 
phenomena, inasmuch as any phenomenon in any realm of nature 
may become meaningless to us if it is not considered in connection 
with surrounding conditions, but divorced from them¹ (ibid., 
p. 570). 
The expression Œsurrounding conditions¹, which constantly recurs 
in Stalin¹s writings, could not but be taken as the philosophical 
justification for the Lysenkoist conception of the relation between 
the environment (the surrounding condition in the biological 
domain) and the organism. Can it be denied that such a concept of 
dialectics did indeed underly the Michurinist theory of heredity? 
Francis Cohen was perfectly right when, quoting these lines of 
Stalin¹s, he Œapplied¹ it to Lysenkoism, demonstrating their agreement: 
ŒIn this way perfectly accurate phenomena observed by 
Mendelist scientists are converted into nonsense because they 
refuse to place them in the environment of surrounding conditions. 
In this way Mendelist heredity is incapable of explaining evolution, 
because it refuses to make it depend on the environment except 
via the sieving of already existing forms, whereas the Michurinists, 
studying and using the fact that the organism and its environment 
are dependent on, determined by each other, cannot only explain 
evolution but make species evolve.¹ 
Yes, Lysenkoism is the most illuminating example of an Œapplication¹ 
of dialectical materialism to the sciences of nature: it is 
precisely the truth of this conception of dialectical materialism that 
conceives its philosophical theses as Œlaws¹ to Œapply¹ . . . that, against 
the living practice of materialist and dialectical theses, sets itself up 
as a judge of actual scientific practice, i.e., inexorably subjects

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 109 
scientific concepts to the jurisdiction of philosophical categories 
conceived as Œlaws¹. 
t t t 
So true is this that it is easy to show how this conception of dialectical 
materialism was able to unify theoretically the biological finalism 
of the Lysenkoist theory of heredity and the technicism of Stalinist 
politics which, as we have seen, Œcalled forth¹ the constitution of 
such a theory. 
This is made even clearer if we return to Stalin¹s text: once he 
had presented the essential principles of dialectical materialism (the 
Œgeneral theory of the Marxist-Leninist Party¹), he demonstrated 
their Œextension¹ and Œapplication¹ to Œsocial life¹ and the Œhistory of 
societies¹. 
The picture given of the succession of Œsocial systems¹ is, in 
conformity with the principle recalled above, presented as a 
development running from lower to higher: Œthe slave system 
would be senseless, stupid and unnatural under modern conditions,¹ 
but it represented an Œadvance¹ on the primitive communal system. 
Similarly, Œwhen tsarism . . . existed, . . . a bourgeois, democratic 
republic would have meant a step forward¹ (ibid., p. 573). 
As we see, the law of the evolution (the law of the Œadvances¹) 
of history is based in nature (a regression would be Œunnatural¹). 
But what is this Œnature¹ which thus orients the movement of 
history and gives it its purposiveness, what are the material Œconditions¹ 
which make its achievement irreversible? 
They are to be sought, answered Stalin, not in Œmen¹s ideas¹, in 
their Œconsciousness¹ or in their Œtheories¹, nor in the Œenvironment¹ 
constituted by the Œnature which surrounds society¹, nor finally in 
the Œgrowth of population¹. For although all these conditions 
influence Œthe development of society¹, Œfacilitate or retard¹ it, they 
are not the determining force. 
The determining force is Œthe method of procuring the means of 
life necessary for human existence, the mode of production of 
material values - food, clothing, footwear, houses, fuel, instruments 
of production, etc. - which are indispensable for the life 
and development of society¹ (ibid., p. 583). 
It will be said that a more Œclassical¹ position than this one could 
not be proposed, that it does no more than summarize in a popular 
manner the principles of historical materialism as they appear in

110 
Capital. Of course. But what is important is the analysis Stalin 
made of this Œmode of production of material values¹; to be precise 
of the relationship within it between the two Œelements¹ in play in 
it: the Œproductive forces¹ and the Œrelations of production¹. Now, 
relying on an interpretation that accentuates the already theoretically 
ambiguous character of the Preface to A Contribution to the 
Critique of Political Economy (Marx, 1859), he proposed that it is 
the productive forces which are Œthe most mobile and revolutionary 
element of production¹ (ibid., p. 585) and that Œwhile their development 
is dependent on the development of the productive forces, 
the relations of production in their turn react upon the development 
of the productive forces, accelerating or retarding it¹ (ibid., 
p. 586). 
Stalin exploited the ambiguity of Marx¹s text9 to establish a 
9 The passage from Marx that Stalin quotes at length at the end of his exposition certainly 
is ambiguous. The mode in which it presents the relationship between productive forces 
and relations of production is that of content and form, which suggests at once that there is 
determination of the form by the content: the content acquiring an adequate Œcorresponding¹ 
form; that there is a relative stability and autonomy of the form within which the content 
changes; and that this natural difference (development of the content, stability of the forms 
which this content has acquired) induces the revolutionary contradiction. This being so, 
one cannot but wonder what is this content that develops by nature and this form that remains 
stable by nature unless it is revolutionized by the content. The terms of the question contain 
those of the answer: it will be the Œspontaneous development¹ of the productive forces that 
will be mentioned as the Œmotor¹ of social revolutions and hence of history. In fact this 
Œbrilliant definition¹ of historical materialism given by Marx in the Preface to A Contribution 
to the Critique of Political Economy has the, to say the least, curious characteristic that it 
accounts for historical development without saying a word about social classes! and only 
evokes the class struggle in veiled terms, restricting it to the superstructure and Œbecoming 
conscious¹. This insistence on the evolutionist dialectics of content and form, the silence 
about social classes and the class struggle in the infrastructure produce an almost inevitable 
reading effect: it is not the class struggle discussed in the Manifesto that is the motor of 
history but via the content/form dialectics, the Œdevelopment of the productive forces¹. 
Here we are on the terrain of the Œeconomistic-evolutionist¹ interpretation of Marxism. For 
in reality the form-content couple accounts very poorly for the relationship between the 
productive forces and the relations of production, simply because it does not account for 
the fact that the productive forces too have the character of social relations and the relations 
of production are not just forms external to their content. 
To escape the theoretical dead-end of the content/form contradiction, a different conception 
of the unity of the relations of production and the productive forces must be 
found and the point at which this unity locks together must be grasped: in class exploitation. 
Then not only do the relations of production appear as what they are, class relations putting 
their mark on all the processes of production and the productive forces themselves (the 
division of labour, labour organization) but also exploitation emerges as the basis for all 
class struggle and the class struggle, no longer a derived phenomenon, becomes the site 
at which the contradiction productive forces/relations of production locks together and 
can be unlocked. 
This is what Capital is able to demonstrate precisely by abandoning the contradiction 
between form and content . . .

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 111 
relationship of content to form between the productive forces and 
the relations of production: the development of the content coming 
into contradiction with the form in an almost Hegelian manner, 
Œrequires¹ (a Lysenkoist term) a new form. All he now had to explain 
was the development of the content itself, its Œmotor¹: this is Œthe 
development and improvement of the instruments of production¹, technical 
progress. The general movement of history is thus explained, from 
this standpoint, by the progressive improvement of the instruments 
of production which men use to appropriate Œsurrounding nature¹. 
Evolutionism and technicism thus constitute a theoretical circle, 
and this circle accounts at once for the birth, the survival and the 
precise theoretical form taken by the Lysenkoist theory of heredity. 
The edifice finds a satisfactory keystone in an ontological conception 
of dialectical materialism, the dominant version of Marxist 
philosophy which in its categories justifies the Œapplication¹ to 
particular sciences of general Œlaws¹ which are themselves reflected 
in an evolutionist-finalist theory of nature and history. 
t t t 
Yet if it went no further than this statement of fact - that there is 
a harmony, even a dual one, between Lysenkoism and a determinate 
conception of dialectical materialism - our analysis would still be 
insufficient, since it would ignore what everyone saw as the original 
(and for many, shocking) philosophical character of Lysenko¹s 
theory, i.e., the fact that this theory, an Œapplication¹ of dialectical 
materialism, was also immediately presented as a Œscience of a new 
type¹ and claimed the status of a Œproletarian science¹, linking the 
ontological version of the materialist and dialectical theses to the 
ideological theme of the class character of science in what might 
be called an Œepistemological voluntarism¹ in which application is 
converted into Œcreation¹. 
Once again, it must be recognized that the Lysenkoists did not 
have to Œforce¹ the texts or Œtwist¹ the theses they took as their 
authorization: the interpretation of dialectical materialism that 
they invoked does imply a normative conception of the relationship 
between Marxist philosophy and the sciences - a conception one 
of the logical conclusions from which is indeed the absurd theory 
of the Œtwo sciences¹. 
If indeed the Œlaws¹ of dialectics are conceived as the Œlaws¹ of 
all scientific laws, because dialectics - Œobject¹ of the Œscience¹ with 
the same name - is inscribed in being as its Œlaw¹, all objective

112 
knowledges have to be accepted as Œapplications¹ of these Œlaws¹, 
even if this application has quite obviously been carried out unconsciously 
in most cases. Hence two complementary philosophical 
tasks. The first is to put all the sciences through an Œexamination¹ 
by dialectical materialism to correct, if need be, the scientific 
Œinconsistencies¹ which may have arisen from their philosophical 
Œunconsciousness¹. The second: when a constituted scientific 
discipline proves resistant to translation into the schemata of the 
supposed Œlaws¹ of dialectics - as was the case with ŒMendelist¹ 
genetics - to (re)construct that science on the basis of those Œlaws¹, 
forging new Œscientific¹ concepts adequately Œdeduced¹ from Marxist 
philosophical categories.10 
It is then enough to Œcomplement¹ this theoretical construction, 
which applies to the sciences and treats philosophy as the Œscience 
of sciences¹, with the Œclassical¹ thesis that sees in the philosophical 
opposition between materialism and idealism an expression of a 
class contradiction and to add that dialectical materialism represents 
the Œpoint of view¹ of the proletariat in philosophy, for the thesis 
of the class character of science itself to impose itself straightaway as 
the inevitable conclusion to the argument: an intrinsic class 
character which does not now appear as the Œenrolment of science¹ 
(Marx) in the service of capital, but is attached to the essential 
principles of its methodology and thus has effects in the constitution 
of its basic concepts and its theory. In these conditions, this thesis, 
too, has an inevitable corollary: Œproletarian science¹ has to be 
counterposed to Œbourgeois science¹ as the true science, conscious 
of its progress, to Œpseudo-science¹, limited in its advances by the 
class horizons within which it emerged. 
In fact, it was one of the constant themes of Lysenkoist propaganda 
after 1935 to proclaim Lysenkoism as the Œsole authentic 
science¹ of hereditary phenomena, arguing at once both from its 
conformity to dialectical materialism and from its character as a 
10 As is well known Lenin always and with the utmost rigour opposed such Œdeductions¹. 
In Materialism and Empirio-criticism he was concerned to show vis-à-vis the question of 
matter that the philosophical category of matter (which appears in the fundamental materialist 
philosophical thesis of the primacy of being over thought) must be distinguished from the 
scientific concept of matter studied by specialists in the physico-chemical sciences. He 
showed that confusion between concept and category was the cause of the supposed Œcrisis¹ 
of modern physics. Later, reading Deborin¹s statement that Œdialectical materialism provides 
an answer . . . to the question of the structure of matter¹ Lenin underlined Œof the structure 
of matter¹ and wrote in the margin Œinexact¹ (Collected Works, Vol. 38, op. cit., p. 477).

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 113 
Œproletarian science¹, which came to the same thing in this completely 
integrated Œlogic¹. We can also now understand the tactic 
used by Lysenko against the ŒMendelists¹ and later adopted by 
others in other domains: proceeding by appeals and injunctions 
he demanded of them Œpartisanship in science¹ and the renunciation 
of their Œobjectivity¹, echoing but misconceiving two formulae of 
Lenin¹s.11 
It is clear that this argument is generally applicable and that if 
its premises are accepted, the applicability must be extended to 
all the sciences of nature. This was seen in June 1947 when, on the 
occasion of an examination by the Central Committee of Aleksandrov¹s 
textbook A History of Western European Philosophy, the 
Party leadership, represented in this case by A. Zhdanov, demonstrated 
its acceptance of all these philosophical positions. 
The most direct and spectacular result of this decision was the 
Œhistoric¹ Session of August 1948 and the adoption of Lysenkoism 
as the official doctrine where heredity is concerned. But the result 
was also to install Lysenko¹s theory as the prototype of a general 
reconstruction of scientific disciplines on the same philosophical 
foundations. All the ideological powers of the state apparatus were 
mobilized to this effect. 
Naturally, philosophers and philosophy teachers were in the 
forefront. 
A few days after the Session of the Academy of Agricultural 
Sciences, the Academy of Sciences¹ Institute of Philosophy met, 
11 Lenin never used the words partisanshp in science as the Lysenkoists did but only 
partisanship in philosophy: he called on scientists to be partisan in philosophy in order to 
disengage the materialist content of their actual practice from the idealist philosophical 
exploitations to which it is subjected by the dominant ideology. The Lysenkoists, regarding 
science as a Œhistorically relative ideology¹ (J. T. Desanti), interpreted the history of the 
sciences as a progressive evolution of the objectivity of knowledges linked to the class 
conditions of their production. That is why Œbourgeois science¹ could never be more than 
approximately a science. By this means they fell into the relativism for which Lenin denounced 
Bogdanov. These are not inconsequential Œnuances¹. When he criticized the Œobjectivism¹ 
of bourgeois sociology, e.g., in ŒWhat the Friends of the People Are¹ (Collected Works, 
Vol. 1, Lawrence and Wishart, London 1960) Lenin was very careful to distinguish between 
the materialist philosophical thesis of objectivity which states that scientific knowledges are 
objective and that they develop, correct and complement one another in the element of 
objectivity (a thesis whose function is to prohibit any relativism) on the one hand, and on 
the other the Œobjectivist¹ conception of social phenomena by which the ideologists of the 
bourgeoisie attribute an unduly objective value to their (class) Œperception¹ of reality. As I 
have just recalled, Lysenkoists deny the absolute character of the objectivity thesis under 
cover of denouncing the objectivism of the scientists.

114 
with several of the most eminent Lysenkoist agronomists present. 
On the agenda of the meeting: the elaboration of a programme of 
publications to popularize Œthe philosophical basis of the results of 
the Session¹ that had just ended. Aleksandrov, the director of the 
Institute, emphasized Œthe enormous scope of this conference¹ and 
set out to prove that the Œnew Soviet biology¹ corresponded completely 
with the spirit of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. This 
meeting was followed in 1949 by an ŒAll-Union Conference of 
Teachers of Marxism-Leninism and Philosophy in Establishments 
of Higher Education in all the Republics of the Soviet Union¹. 
Its official object: ŒOn the Situation in the Teaching of Marxism- 
Leninism and Philosophy and on the Measures Necessary for its 
Improvement¹. But starting with the Report presented by Kaftanov, 
the Minister of Higher Education, almost the only subject of 
discussion was biology. Philosophy teachers were criticized for 
having failed to intervene with sufficient energy on Lysenko¹s side, 
having failed to grasp what was really at stake in the debate, and 
having erred in the direction of Œobjectivism¹ and Œcosmopolitanism¹. 
The same terms recurred in the final resolution of the Conference, 
addressed to Stalin: ŒWe shall allow ourselves to be guided 
unfailingly by your directives on the strict maintenance of the 
unity between theory and practice, philosophy and politics, on the 
Bolshevist principle of the party spirit in theory. . . . We promise 
you to demonstrate our Bolshevik and intransigent vigilance 
towards any manifestation of bourgeois objectivism and cosmopolitanism.¹ 
These declarations did not remain mere words. As is well known, 
indeed, in subsequent months there developed as applications of 
these principles, in the name of the same philosophical theses, a 
Lysenkoist movement which rapidly affected all scientific disciplines. 
In biology itself, in 1950 Olga Lepeshinskaya¹s studies of the 
origin of cells, begun in 1933, were approved by the Academy of 
Sciences and her critique of cellular theory as an Œidealist bourgeois 
theory¹ was officially endorsed.12 At the same time a violent dispute 
12 Olga Lepeshinskaya had undertaken to study the birth of cells from acellular living 
matter. Her work, inspired by the few passages on the question in Engels¹s Anti-Dühring 
and Dialectics of Nature - passages copied from Haeckel, incidentally - concerned the 
development of the chicken embryo. Lepeshinskaya thought she had shown the formation 
in the yoke of a fertilized egg of protein granules which aggregated into spherulae and

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 115 
arose about quantum mechanics: Markov, who had propagated 
the works of the Copenhagen school in the Soviet Union, was 
treated as a Œphilosophical centaur¹ wishing to reconcile materialism 
and idealism.13 Next the theory of relativity was attacked: Einstein 
was treated as a ŒMachist¹ and as late as 1953 it was still possible to 
find Maksimov writing that Œthe theory of relativity is manifestly 
anti-scientific¹!14 Cybernetics was denounced in the same year in 
the Literaturnaya Gazeta as a Œscience of obscurantists¹. Pauling¹s 
studies on the nature of the chemical bond and molecular structure 
which gained him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954 were also 
taxed with ŒMachism¹ starting in the Autumn of 1949. Chelintsev, 
who aimed to become the Lysenko of chemistry, therefore undertook 
to reconstruct the whole of organic chemistry on the basis 
of dialectical materialism. . . .15 
In 1950, the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Academy of 
Sciences published a Report which stated: ŒThe crisis of bourgeois 
science, connected with the general crisis of the capitalistic system, 
has been illustrated by the theoretical concepts of organic chemistry 
now being developed by bourgeois scientists and has led to the 
appearance of methodologically faulty concepts, which are slowing 
down the further development of science¹ (cit. Graham, op. cit., 
p. 305). 
This whole campaign was orchestrated by the journal Voprosy 
Filosoflii (Problems of Philosophy) which had recently replaced Pod 
then developed towards the form of nucleated cells. It is obvious why these studies were 
exhumed and celebrated in this way in 1950: they added one more argument against the 
Weismannist notion of the continuity and independence of the germ plasm; hence they 
were grist to the Lysenkoists mill, in their opinion at least, against Mendelism. 
13 Apart from Maksimov¹s texts against Markov in the Literaturnaya Gazeta which 
indicted the bourgeois Œanthropomorphism¹ of quantum mechanics, it seems, as Graham 
suggests, that the discussions set off by the works of the Copenhagen school were of a 
high scientific and philosophical calibre, analogous to those that took place in other 
countries. 
14 A. A. Maksimov, carried away by his zeal and a victim to his own ignorance, went 
so far as to reject in the name of dialectical materialism any notion of relativity, including 
Galilean relativity. ŒThis judgement that a body does not have an objective, given trajectory, 
existing independently from the choice of system of coordinates,¹ he wrote, Œis completely 
anti-scientific . . .¹! (Voprosy Filosofii, 1948 no. 3, cit. Graham, op. cit., p. 116). 
15 Graham goes into great detail on Chelintsev¹s Œnew chemistry¹ (ibid., pp. 297-323). 
It should be added that this is the only case in the sciences of nature in which, as in biology, 
a new theory with scientific pretensions was constructed at this time. But, as Graham 
shows, this theory was no more than a reproduction of Pauling¹s with a different terminology.

116 
Znamenem Marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism). Its editorial 
board had been reorganized for this purpose, and its editor, Bonifatii 
Kedrov, removed for having permitted the publication not 
only of an article by Markov in support of the Copenhagen school, 
but also of a text by Shmal¹gauzen, one of the most famous of the 
Mendelists, probably the one most violently attacked at the Session 
of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. 
Thus a general movement of Œcritical re-examination¹ of the 
sciences was launched by the official adoption of the Œepistemological 
voluntarism of application¹ implied by Stalin¹s ontological 
version of dialectical materialism. This is hardly surprising: it was 
an inevitable consequence. 
t t t 
Yet there remains a question which might seem to form an objection 
to the preceding analyses. For it could rightly be noted that 
this movement was only suddenly set in motion by decision of the 
political power nearly ten years after the publication of Dialectical 
and Historical Materialism, more than fifteen years after the Stalinist 
interpretation of Marxist philosophy had been officially endorsed 
(by Mitin in 1932). If, as I have claimed, Œepistemological voluntarism¹ 
is a Œconclusion¹ from these philosophical theses, how could 
there be such a long interval between their formulation and its 
appearance? Moreover, how can this hypothesis explain why, 
despite the pressures exerted on them, Party and Government 
refused until 1948 to back Lysenko¹s doctrine and its philosophical 
presuppositions, while in other respects approving his agronomic 
techniques? 
This question would be a decisive objection if the Œlogic¹ of a 
philosophical argument were of the same kind as that of a scientific 
proof; if the necessity of its Œconclusions¹ conformed to an internal 
determination of its conceptual apparatus. But this is not the case: 
the organization of the theses of a given philosophy may also be 
governed by a Œlogic¹ of its own, but it only develops its effects as 
a function of something at stake outside the play of its categories 
determined by the social practice in which this philosophy occupies 
a position: this explains why a single philosophical apparatus may 
draw out all the effects of its theses, but also why one or other of its 
implications may be Œsuspended¹, one or other of its positions 
temporarily or permanently Œneutralized¹, or why the philosophical

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 117 
charge may be displaced or condensed on to one or other of its 
theses at the expense of the others. . . .16 
In the case which concerns us, the ontological version of dialectical 
materialism, the extreme implication of which, as we have seen, 
is the theory of the two sciences, can also, given the right conjuncture, 
function only in a minor mode, or simultaneously in a minor 
mode: Œsuspending¹ the epistemological voluntarism it contains, 
neutralizing, i.e., camouflaging the normative character of the 
conception of the Œlaws¹ of dialectics. We all know the drab 
scholasticism that then results: all too many works by ŒMarxist¹ 
philosophers set out to discover in the various sciences, after the 
event, Œapplications¹ of dialectical materialism; Œapplications¹ which, 
given their external and a posteriori relation to the science, now 
have the peculiarity that they in no way change their Œobject¹. Such 
was the practice deduced before 1948 from the Stalinist version 
of dialectical materialism. It is also, it must be said, the one rediscovered 
with lazy and conformist relief by the majority of 
Marxist philosophers after the end of the Lysenkoist misadventure. 
. . . 
These Marxist philosophers may well display all the outward 
marks of the most scrupulous respect for scientific work, in a 
manner which would not be disavowed by the most convinced 
positivist, but their philosophical enterprise is nonetheless still 
marked with the Œnormativity¹ implied by their conception of 
dialectics. Their language alone is enough to prove it and to 
arouse the suspicions of practitioners of the science if they were not 
already alerted; every scientific discovery is celebrated - i.e. 
buried - solely as a Œconfirmation¹ of dialectical materialism, if 
not as a Œbrilliant illustration¹ of a Œprediction¹ of Engels or 
Lenin. . . .17 
16 The history of philosophy provides hundreds of examples of such a Œplay¹ within the 
framework of a basic apparatus. For example, the Œplay¹ of the minor Cartesians with 
respect to Descartes¹ apparatus, that of the post-Kantians with respect to Kant¹s, that of 
the neo-Hegelians with respect to Hegel. . . . 
17 I have already signalled (Une Crise et son enjeu, François Maspero, Paris 1973, p. 101n.) 
the monstrous tour de force performed by Bonifatii Kedrov, who undertakes (Recherches 
Internationales, 1971, Nos. 65-6, p. 32) without irony, to prove that Lenin foresaw the 
results . . . of Mendelist genetics: When the enemies of genetics treated the recognition 
of the specific material supports of heredity as idealism and mysticism they were openly 
attacking the geneticist biologists, but they also went against principles that Lenin had 
laid down as the basis for the whole problem, i.e., that the difference between matter 
deprived of this determinate biological property (sensitivity) and matter endowed with it

118
This aberrant practice of Marxist philosophy amounts, according 
to the 'classical' device of idealist philosophies, to a real misappropriation 
of the sciences to the glory of a determinate philosophy 
- the state philosophy in the Soviet Union and the Eastern 
countries. 
Just as evolutionism is merely the 'poor man's Hegelianism' 
(Althusser), this drab scholasticism is, beneath its modest positivist 
exterior, merely the poor man's voluntarism: a mere conformist 
tailism of the Stalinist voluntarist philosophy triumphally 'applied' 
in 1948. In philosophy, misery and triumph always share the 
same skin. 
t t t 
So what happened in 1948 to make dialectical materialism swing 
irreversibly to its 'voluntarist' variant in the official consecration 
of Lysenkoism?18 
As we have seen, a formidable propaganda campaign was then 
mounted, propelled and generalized by the state apparatus. And 
on this occasion the campaign was deliberately and openly conlies 
solely in the mode of organization of the matter, i.e., in the difference between the 
bonds established between the same particles of matter (atoms, electrons).' 
In a special number of Recherches Internationales recently devoted to 'Philosophical Studies 
in the Socialist Countries' (1975, No. 82), all the articles in which are deeply marked by 
the positivist variant of the ontological conception of dialectical materialism there is one 
by Il'in and Frolov called 'Scientific Research and the Philosophical Confrontation in 
Biology' which manages to avoid even mentioning Lysenko's name and opens with a 
quotation from Engels's Dialectics of Nature which the contemporary development of 
biology is supposed to illustrate. . . The reader will be able to judge for him or herself as 
to the effectiveness of such texts in the ideological battle. 
18 The event was seen as a sudden turn: a late as December 1947, Mitin, who can be 
regarded as having been Stalin's spokesman in philosophy since 1931, stuck to the idea of 
a compromise: while condemning the attacks on Lysenko, he flatly refused to denounce 
Mendelist genetics as a bourgeois pseudo-science as the Lysenkoists demanded. But six 
months later the same Mitin intervened during the discussion at the Academy of Agricultural 
Sciences to state: 'The methodology of the Michurin trend is based on the principles 
of dialectical materialism; it constructively develops Darwin's theory of evolution. . . . The 
Mendelist-Morganist trend in biology, on the contrary, is continuing and developing the 
thoroughly idealistic and metaphysical theory of Weismann. . . . No matter what reservations 
concerning Weismann's theory the representatives of the Mendel-Morgan trend 
in this country may attach to their statements, in substance, their theoretical foundation, 
their theoretical point of departure, is Weismannism, that reactionary and utterly bankrupt 
theory which denies that man can actively influence directed alteration of plant and animal 
organisms' (Verbatim Report, op. cit., p. 263). In short Mitin had rallied completely to 
Lysenko's position on the theory of heredity. 
What had happened?

The Theory of the 'Two Sciences' 119 
ducted under the banner of the theory of the 'two sciences': it 
seized on Lysenko's doctrine, transforming it into a state doctrine 
and celebrating it as the illustration of the superiority of the Soviet 
regime over capitalist regimes in the domain of science and culture. 
As we know, the fate of 'classical' genetics was thereby determined: 
a 'bourgeois science' objectively representing the interests 
of imperialism, it could not continue to exist in the 'land of 
socialism'. As we also know, it was on the same arguments that 
intellectuals outside the socialist camp were to be summoned to 
support Lysenko and that it was to become a political duty for 
Communists in all countries to defend and disseminate the Michurinist 
theory and the thesis of the 'two sciences'. 
Under these conditions it is hardly surprising that Lysenko's 
name has remained linked to this alternative ('bourgeois science' 
or 'proletarian science') and that for many people, especially outside 
the USSR, but in the USSR too (as far as I can tell), Lysenkoism 
can be reduced to an amalgam of scientific charlatanism and state 
imposture. Only the epistemological monstrosities and the arbitrary 
intervention of the authorities have been remembered, the 
former have been seen as the effects of the latter, and the inopportune 
measures of a state which violated the freedom of scientific 
research denounced.19 In other words, Lysenkoism has nearly 
always been treated in terms of truth and error, and the origin of 
their reversal has been sought in the intervention of the authorities 
legislating, as if it had that 'right', in matters of philosophy and 
scientific research. Hence the general indignation. 
I do not dispute that this reduction is comprehensible as an 
immediate reaction to the fait accompli of the propaganda launched 
in 1948. Indignation, like rebellion, is also a political 'virtue'. But 
it should now be clear that this reduction is not enough to explain 
the real history of Lysenkoism. That real history cannot be conceived 
solely in terms of truth and error, i.e., in terms of a mere 
result subjected to a mere scientific judgement. The history of an 
ideological formation, even when it manipulates certain scientific 
concepts, is of another order of complexity. We have seen in fact 
that the history of Lysenkoism is that of a quite unique ideological 
19 This is the interpretation given by Vincent Labeyrie, for example, in La Recherche, 
April 1972. In essentials his argument amounted to a demonstration, against Jacques Monod, 
that the problem posed by the Lysenko affair was the universal problem of the 'objectivity 
of the organs responsible for the financing of research'.

120 
formation which, like every ideological formation, had a material 
basis from the start. And this was the case with the first Lysenko 
providing a few precious recipes to Soviet agronomy. Even when 
the first techniques were Œseized¹ by theory (that of the phasic 
development of plants), they continued to play their part in the 
insertion of Lysenkoism into its social basis in the countryside 
where it served the Stalinist Œpolitical line¹ of the Œtechnical¹ 
development of the productive forces. When dialectical materialism, 
in its Stalinist version, came to take over Lysenkoist theory, 
things began to change: yet it remained the case that it was on the 
dual basis of positions conquered in practice and of state intervention 
that the Œdelirium¹ was to begin and grow, culminating 
in the official consecration in 1948. 
Thus for a long time Lysenkoism can be seen as the condensation 
into a unified system of a consistent set of Œanswers¹ given to a 
series of serious problems posed in social practice in the Soviet 
Union since the October Revolution, problems which were not 
scientifically mastered (for a variety of reasons, some scientific, 
some political).20 Thus if one wants to explain the whole complex 
process in which empiricism sustained arbitrary theoretical propositions 
and the state intervened with varying objectives, one cannot 
pronounce in terms of error and truth. 
On the other hand, it is legitimate to denounce the state¹s intervention, 
imposing the thesis of the Œtwo sciences¹. For just as we 
have seen dialectical materialism seize on Lysenko¹s theory from 
outside, so we see the state intervene from outside to impose the 
ideology of the Œtwo sciences¹ on Lysenkoism and extend that 
ideology far beyond it. This was a new phenomenon. And it is 
very important to make it clear that it was for no reason inside 
Lysenko¹s theory that it attained its universal destiny in 1948. In 
20 The reader will already have noted that this analysis of Lysenkoism as a ŒStalinist 
phenomenon¹ contradicts the axiom that Jean Elleinstein has made the starting-point for 
his interpretation of the history of the Soviet Union (The Stalin Phenomenon, Lawrence 
and Wishart, London 1976). Elleinstein claims that what is called ŒStalinism¹ is a set of 
incorrect answers given to questions which were always correctly posed. It is clear that 
this is wrong: an the contrary it is because they were incorrectly posed that the questions 
received the answers they did. The effect (or should I say the aim?) of Elleinstein¹s axiom 
is to restrict the explanation of the Stalinist deviation to superstructural phenomena; the 
explanation I am proposing for Lysenkoism - apparently a phenomenon strictly confined 
to the superstructure - shows that in reality one has to refer in the last instance to the 
infrastructure if one hopes to cast light an its formation. Nor incidentally, should a 
Marxist find this surprising.

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 121 
particular, it would be illusory to see in what happened then no 
more than an unwinding of the implications of a philosophical 
Œlogic¹ to yield the theme of the Œtwo sciences¹ as the extreme consequence 
of previously established and practised official philosophical 
positions. 
I should like here to suggest that, even if the theory of the Œtwo 
sciences¹ was implicitly inscribed in the Stalinist interpretation of 
dialectical materialism, and even if, even more paradoxically, it 
was the essential conclusion of a philosophy whose peculiar mixture 
of technocracy and humanism has constantly obsessed the Soviet 
intelligentsia - the philosophy of A. A. Bogdanov - when the 
thesis of the Œtwo sciences¹ was adopted and promoted in 1947-8, 
it was not, it was no longer, a philosophical matter.21 
21 Bogdanov¹s philosophy which contained more than the empirio-monist theses fought 
by Lenin deserves a special study. Here I shall only note one essential point. 
The theory of the Œtwo sciences¹ appeared in Bogdanov¹s work as one of the main 
conclusions from the general conception of history that constituted the keystone of his 
system of Œtectology¹ (the science of organization) 
The history of human societies has according to Bogdanov always been governed by 
a principle of organization, i.e., in conformity with the biological sense of this sociological 
metaphor, by a principle of mutual complementarity in the relations between the whole 
and its parts. According to this theory, through the struggles and dramas of real history, 
organization has always been attempting to realize itself, so that the division of society 
into classes only features in it as a provisional accident, a temporary postponement, always 
already overcome in principle in the line of an inwardly purposeful movement. Class 
societies - in particular bourgeois society - are thought as imperfect realizations or incomplete 
drafts of organization: organizations whose principle - disorganization or anarchy - 
betrays their own essence; they appear as unstable realizations undermined from the first 
by the mute contradiction which will sweep them away. 
The proletarian revolution which has to put an end to this contradiction (organization/ 
disorganization) at once becomes a Œparousia¹, a manifestation of the originary essence of 
society in the actual presence of a new society, the triumphant coming of organization. 
As for the proletariat, the agent of this coming, far from being defined by its place in 
capitalist relations of production, it is conceived as the bearer - or incarnation - of a project 
already inscribed from the beginning in the most embryonic forms of association between 
men: its historical mission is to accomplish this project and thus all its reality is summed up 
in its being the instrument of this accomplishment. 
Here it is of little consequence by what conceptual juggling Bogdanov Œmanaged¹ to 
reconcile this idealist philosophy of history with historical materialism. Lenin showed 
that the cost was theoretical inconsistencies made all the more serious by Bogdanov¹s claim 
to base Marxist materialist theses on his idealist philosophical positions. . . . 
It should just be noted that the theory of the Œtwo sciences¹ is an integral part of this 
doctrine, via the idea of a proletarian science yet to be created. 
Indeed it is clear that this theory follows Œlogically¹ from the speculative construction 
outlined above: the proletariat, agent of social reorganization, has among other tasks, that 
of Œreorganizing ideas¹ on a new basis and constructing a Œscience of a new type¹ which will 
be adequate to the new social organization. This Œproletarian science¹, explained Bogdanov,

122 
I want to argue that, behind the mask of the generalization of 
Lysenkoism, proposed as ideology to all intellectual workers, 
order and register were being shifted. It was no longer a question 
of Œscientific¹ or Œphilosophical¹ theory; in fact what was happening 
was the consecration of a state ideological system: a state ideology in 
which the Œtheory¹ of the two sciences is the crucial component - 
at once privileged instrument, functional model and theoretical 
Œtouchstone¹. 
In short, we can say of the final avatar of Lysenkoism, the one 
in which it found its final form and status, what we have said about 
the earlier ones: that an event seized on it from the outside to assign 
it a role in the Soviet social formation. 
Or else, if we wish to give these remarks the spice of paradox, 
will be different by nature from bourgeois science because resting on a non-contradictory 
material basis it will open up unbounded horizons to human knowledge. . . . 
Thus he could write: ŒTo say that the class character of science resides in the defence of 
the interests of a given class is only a pamphleteer¹s argument or a falsification pure and 
simple. In reality, science may be bourgeois or proletarian by its very ³nature², notably in 
its origins, its conceptions, its methods of study and exposition. In this fundamental sense, all 
the sciences, including mathematics and logic, can have and really do have a class character.¹ 
The mission of the proletariat in this domain followed immediately: to proceed Œto the 
critical re-examination of all the sciences¹ which are in essential Œbourgeois¹, to the constitution 
of new disciplines and the elaboration of an Encyclopaedia modelled on Diderot¹s 
(bourgeois) Encyclopaedia. 
But this is the decisive point: inverting the technocratic tendency to which he was pushed 
by the ambiguous theme of organization and which led him to describe socialism as the 
rationalization, centralization and planning of labour, Bogdanov went in another direction 
where ideology was concerned. When he had to describe the revolution which would be 
produced by the proletariat¹s accession to power, the same theme of organization led 
him to the utopian celebration of the appearance of a Œnew type of humanity¹: all human 
relations, he explained, will be called to be Œreorganized¹ on the basis of the new relations 
of production. The very essence of the human species would, he argued, have to be changed 
in the process. 
Thus Bogdanov¹s historical evolutionism presented the spectacle of culminating in a 
Œvoluntarist humanism¹ of political and ideological practice. And it is precisely because it 
was inscribed in this general perspective that the theory of the Œtwo sciences¹ was one of the 
essential arguments of Bogdanovist propaganda even before 1905 (from the moment he 
founded with Gorkii, Lunacharskii and several others, the first workers¹ schools in Capri 
and Bologna). ŒProletarian science¹, a science of a Œnew type¹, was to be the science of 
the Œnew man¹. 
I have called this Œvoluntarist humanism¹ to suggest that it is a Œhumanism¹, since the 
aims of the revolution (and hence of history) are subordinate in it to a notion of the human 
essence; but also to mark the specific nuance which distinguishes this variant of humanism 
from its classical bourgeois forms - and their supposedly Marxist echoes - since here it 
is not a question of the reappropriation by man of an essence that has been lost - in ŒMarxist¹ 
terminology, alienated - during the historical process, but rather one of the very creation 
of a new and as yet unknown human essence (see Appendix).

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 123 
we can say that the 1948 Session only officially consecrated the 
success of Lysenko¹s theories - brushing aside all the objections and 
taking all the risks - because it was no longer a question either of 
Lysenko or of his theories but of something quite different which 
had constantly been practised previously in partial forms and 
finally achieved its general and systematic form at that date: a 
declared, obligatory state ideology which imposed on all intellectuals 
the Stalinist version of dialectical materialism beneath the 
rule of the supposed antagonism of Œbourgeois science¹ and Œproletarian 
science¹. 
t t t 
Hence to explain the 1948 consecration is also to clarify the constitution 
of this state ideological system, to inquire into the 
mechanism by which it functioned and the reasons for its triumph. 
Now it is clear that this ideology was not strictly speaking a 
mass ideology, not one addressed to the masses of the people: it 
was an ideology addressed to a definite social stratum, that of the 
intellectuals existing as a distinct social stratum, distinct because 
it was socially differentiated, not just by the intact if not reinforced 
division between manual and intellectual labour, but also by its 
status and social and material advantages. An idea of the composition 
of this social stratum can be obtained from what we have 
glimpsed of Lysenko¹s Œclientele¹ in the 1930¹s: it included not just 
scientists, researchers and intellectual workers in the different 
scientific and literary disciplines, but all those responsible for the 
intervention of science and its applications in production, managers 
and experts in the industrial and agricultural production units, 
experimental and machine units, to which should of course be 
added all cadres in the Party and the state apparatuses, who were 
intellectuals. 
Thus this state ideology was aimed at that very important social 
stratum designated by the Russian term Œintelligentsia¹, which 
groups together all those who have economic, social, political and 
ideological responsibilities in the existence of the Soviet state - a 
social stratum (some have called it a social class) which has organic 
relations with the Party and state from which it draws its material 
privileges and its power; and on which in turn Party and state 
depend for the maintenance of their domination over the mass of 
workers and peasants.

124 
But we must go further, because it is not enough to say that this 
ideology Œwas addressed¹ to this social stratum or Œaimed¹ at it: 
it must be added that it was imposed on it in modalities that throw 
a vivid light on one of the most enigmatic aspects of Stalinist 
practice. 
The facts here can serve as indices. 
In 1948, under cover of the ŒCold War¹, the Party and the 
government announced that a class struggle of unprecedented 
intensity had begun in the Soviet Union and they made it obligatory 
on all intellectuals to conduct this struggle to the total victory 
of the proletarian point of view in all branches of learning and 
culture. 
Class struggle: twelve years after 1936, when it was proclaimed 
and inscribed in the very Constitution that in the USSR the class 
struggle had . . . disappeared! Thus a country where Stalin claimed 
the class struggle had been surpassed and was therefore absent - 
where it was agreed that it had withered away during the Œconstruction 
of socialism¹ - saw continuously from 1935 and strikingly in 
1948 the proclamation of an ideology formulated in terms of class 
struggle which did not hesitate to express itself in the extremism 
of a military vocabulary! 
In other words, the class struggle, banished from the infrastructure 
(no more economic class struggle, no more social conflicts, 
no more strikes, etc.), banished from politics (no more parties 
other than the Communist Party, class enemies banished or shot), 
had thus taken refuge in pure ideology alone: science, letters, the 
arts and philosophy! 
From this contradiction: the class struggle has disappeared in 
the USSR but the class struggle must be unleashed among the 
intellectuals, it seems to me that only one conclusion can be drawn: 
i.e., that there really was class struggle somewhere (and the deportations, 
imprisonments and mass murders are also proof of this, not 
to speak of the constantly re-emerging Œeconomic¹ difficulties), 
but in order to deal with it it was decided that it must take place 
among the intellectuals where it should be pursued to the bitter 
end, by all possible means. Behind this operation it is easy to discern 
both the complete conjuring away of the real class struggle and 
its transposition into a restricted social stratum: that of the 
Œintellectuals¹. 
t t t

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 125 
But this is not all: the formulation of this supposed class struggle 
among the intellectuals took a form which must seem very strange 
to anyone with a minimum of Marxist culture. Knowing to what 
extent Marx and Engels, Lenin and Gramsci, not to speak of Mao, 
too, have insisted on the extreme complexity of the class struggle 
in ideology, not just on the complexity of its necessary relationship 
with material class conditions, but also on the complexity of its 
internal contradictions, one cannot but be stupefied by the crude 
and definitive schematism of the opposition between Œbourgeois 
science¹ and Œproletarian science¹. Not only is this formula crude, 
it is also peremptory; not only does it, literally speaking, have no 
meaning, but what is infinitely more serious, it imposes one which 
is not really a meaning but rather an injunction. 
This injunction is not difficult to decipher, knowing that it was 
addressed to intellectuals, and not forgetting that the term included 
all Party and state cadres as well as scientists, production experts 
and other higher technicians. The formula summed up the injunction 
imposed on them to join one camp or the other: either the 
camp of proletarian science (i.e., of the authorities) or the camp of 
bourgeois science (i.e., of the enemies of the authorities). And at 
the same time this injunction was a warning: either one camp or the 
other; he who is not with the authorities is against them, there is no 
third camp.22 Thus at the same time the warning was a solemn 
threat. He who has not understood that he has to choose, and to 
choose to submit, will be treated as what he is: an enemy of the 
state and the Party. 
An ideology of blackmail, intimidation and, eventually, repression, 
such was the terrible practical effect of this generalized formula 
of the Œtwo sciences¹ which only aped the class struggle the better 
to impose the reign of repression and, by means of this repression, 
to mobilize Œintellectuals¹ in the interests of the state¹s domination - 
and of their own domination - over the masses of the people: such 
is the kernel of the state ideological system which seized on 
Lysenkoism in 1948 to impose it on all intellectuals, with the 
academic ceremonial we have witnessed. 
It will be said that it is strange to argue simultaneously that a 
social stratum had been formed which, because it had secured, then 
maintained the dictatorship of the state apparatus over the masses 
22 The pseudo-third camp was the one then denounced, especially in the genetics debate, 
as that of Œcosmopolitanism¹ and bourgeois Œobjectivism¹.

126 
of the people, drew from it material advantages which ensured its 
solidarity with and dependence on the authorities, and also that this 
same social stratum had had imposed on it (to tell the truth, over a 
long period, during which the argument had received a high polish) 
as its own ideology an ideology of injunction, warning and threat. 
For as we know, at the end of this ideology were the trials and the 
camps, torture and deaths from exhaustion, hunger and ill-treatment. 
Thus it will be asked, how could a social stratum have allowed 
such an ideology, trapping it in a fatal alternative, to be imposed 
on it and even accept it, i.e., practise it itself? 
Yet this is precisely what happened; and what is even more 
astonishing, this ideology managed to work in this way by the well 
regulated Œplay¹ of its internal organization. 
I am obviously not so thoughtless as to suppose that such an 
ideology could have worked by virtue of its Œideas¹ alone. If it is 
true that all ideology exists in its practices and that its practices can 
be those of a state apparatus (Althusser), then this cynical ideology 
did not have to look far for its practices and its apparatus: it found 
them on the spot in the state police, the emergency tribunals, the 
prisons, the expeditive measures, the trials, the executions and the 
camps. Thus this terribly practical threat, used every day, was the 
first precondition for the victory and then maintenance of this 
ideology. 
But what I am trying to draw attention to is the fact that, thus 
sustained by this apparatus of terror, the ideology of the Œtwo 
sciences¹ (which obviously had effects far outside the unfortunate 
sciences alone . . .) had in its form the wherewithal to work by itself 
as well. As it enjoined on every intellectual the ineluctable destiny 
of occupying either the place of the authorities or the place of 
the enemy (and hence that of the victim), and as, in the implacable 
abstraction of the terms that designated them, neither of the two 
places was the object of an objective, fixed definition, no one could 
ever be certain in advance (experience proved this for numerous 
cadres, not just in the police, but also in politics) that they were in 
the safe place. They could only gain this certainty by rallying to the 
official positions of the day and changing when they changed (just 
one example: Mitin). But in this way they helped to strengthen 
both their servitude and the ideology in which they had to find their 
place, constantly exposed as they were to the risk of being caught 
in the trap of their conformism, since these positions were changing.

The Theory of the ŒTwo Sciences¹ 127 
Everything we know about the Stalinist prison system (and the 
great trials) proves that with few exceptions, it was diabolically 
successful in making its prisoners accept their own captivity, its 
martyrs their own Œguilt¹. At its own level, the ideology of the 
Œtwo sciences¹, as a complement to this repression, worked along 
the same lines: it was so constituted that it was fuelled by the verbal 
consent and practical conformism of those enjoined to submit to it.23 
And, like the convicts and dying who could preserve some excuse 
for Stalin in their hearts during their agony, the intellectuals 
condemned to the dilemma of the two sciences and the practices 
of repression were able to find the sinister consolation of thinking 
that they were participating in the Œclass struggle¹ nonetheless: the 
ideology of the two sciences thus cemented their unity in power 
as well as in servitude and death. 
t t t 
It will be argued that these are no more than indications, and indices. 
I agree. It will be argued that they do not explain the whole social 
situation of the USSR, its social and political conflicts and the causes 
that finally produced a gigantic dictatorship of a state apparatus 
fused with the Party under the slogans of Marxism-Leninism. Of 
course. It will be argued that the ideology of the Œtwo sciences¹ was 
only valid for the intellectuals and not for the masses of the people, 
23 Reread the statements of Œself-criticism¹ by three of the most noteworthy Mendelists 
at the end of the 1948 Session. They are all the more poignant in that the contrast with 
their previous speeches is accentuated by the temporal proximity (two days!). They 
illustrate, if that is the word, the incredible power of the ideological mechanism I am 
describing. 
Here is Zhukovskii: 
ŒThe speech I made the day before yesterday at a time when the Central Committee 
of the Party had drawn a dividing line between the two trends in biological science was 
unworthy of a member of the Communist Party and of a Soviet scientist. I admit that the 
position I held was wrong. Academician Lobanov¹s noteworthy speech yesterday, and I 
esteem P. P. Lobanov as a fine statesman, his words directly addressed to me - our ways 
must part - moved me deeply. His speech agitated me profoundly. A sleepless night helped 
me to think over my behaviour. Academician Vasilenko¹s speech also made a deep impression 
upon me, for he showed how closely the Michurinists are connected with the 
people, and how important it is at this juncture to cherish the prestige of our President. 
The exceptional unity displayed by the members and guests at this Session, the demonstration 
of the power of this unity and the bonds with the people and on the contrary, 
the demonstration of the weakness of the opponents are to me so obvious that I declare 
that I shall fight - and there are times when I can fight - for the Michurinian biological 
science. (Prolonged applause)¹ (Verbatim Report, op. cit. p. 618). 
The interventions of Alikhanyan and Polyakov reproduced the same terms.

128 
to whom Stalin spoke simultaneously in a different language, that 
of the construction of socialism, the coming of the Œnew man¹, the 
mobilization against imperialism, etc., meanwhile imposing on 
them the practice of mass repression. I completely agree. But I am 
taking the few elements at our disposal from a history the sources 
of which are deliberately closed, from a history completely mute 
about itself, in order to obtain from them as much light as possible 
and to cast it on the ideology of the Œtwo sciences¹ which presided 
over Lysenko¹s triumph in 1948. And it seems to me that by 
restricting its use to intellectuals as I have done and situating this 
social stratum on the side of the power whose instrument it was, it 
becomes possible to understand the effects the Soviet authorities, 
with Stalin at their head, drew from it. This social stratum that 
they held by material privileges and the power they granted it, 
they subjected ideologically to themselves in the name of an 
imaginary class struggle between the two sciences. And the logic 
of this ideology was such that no one could disavow it without 
ranking themselves in the category of enemies of the authorities, 
hence in a place inscribed in advance in this ideology opening 
directly onto repression. It was an infernal circle in that it could not 
be exercized without confirming and reinforcing itself, allowing no 
other initiative to individuals than the enthusiasm of conformism 
or the banality of commentary - in all cases servitude. Through 
this ideology those who participated in the power of the authorities 
and its privileges were at the mercy of the authorities they served 
from the start. . . . 
The reasons for the victory of Lysenkoism in 1948 were also 
reasons why it should last: they also explain the incredible resistance 
it subsequently put up against its opponents and . . . against practical 
disproofs.

6 
In Memoriam 
From 1948 to 1952, Lysenko¹s power was absolute: none of his 
decisions was disputed any longer, none of his theses criticized. 
Every hostile publication was banned. He undertook to reorganize 
biology teaching from top to bottom, imposed new textbooks and 
Œretrained¹ teachers. There was a systematic purge of the various 
biological institutes under the umbrella of the Academy of Sciences. 
As for the Mendelists, their laboratories were confiscated; they were 
denied the right to pursue their teaching and their research. 
But Lysenkoism did not depend for its fate on academic 
educational institutions. Agricultural technicians had made Lysenko¹s 
fortune; he had achieved his fame on the basis of a few 
spectacular successes obtained in agronomy; he had been able to 
face up to all his critics and defeat the Mendelist geneticists thanks 
to the favour his theories enjoyed in the experimental stations. And 
it was also here that the test of time led to his decline: when the 
more fantastic applications of the new theory of heredity had 
ended in spectacular failures that could no longer be concealed. 
In 1952 a series of setbacks amounting to a minor disaster in this 
area made decisive inroads into Lysenko¹s power. These failures 
occurred in the implementation of what was then called the ŒGreat 
Plan for the Transformation of Nature¹ or the ŒOctober 20th 
Plan¹, laid down in its broad lines by Stalin as a combination of the 
theses of Vil¹yams and Lysenko. 
Here are the terms in which Francis Cohen described this plan in 
L¹Europe no. 39, March 1949, under the symptomatic title ŒThe 
Golden Age: Objective No. 1 in the USSR¹: ŒThe Bolshevik Party 
and the Soviet Government, basing themselves on the experience 
of scientists and collective-farm workers, have drawn up the 
³October 20th Plan², whose implementation should in fifteen 
129

130 
years transform the steppe into a veritable park extending over an 
area of 120 million hectares - twice the area of France. The first 
point of the plan is to plant a network of windbreaks and forest 
shelterbelts. These trees will stop the winds, hold in moisture, 
prevent the snow from melting too quickly and force it to feed the 
ground with water, suppress surface drainage and hence destructive 
erosion. Eight main belts will be planted by the state. One, following 
the Ural River, will stretch from the Caspian Sea to the Ural 
Mountains. Three others, along the Volga, on the East and the 
West of the great river, form a second and third barrier. Along the 
Don, the Donets and between the Don and the Volga, the last four 
belts will complete the system: in all 5,300 kms in length (about the 
perimeter of France) and 540,000 hectares in area (about one 
hundred times the area of the Forest of Fontainebleau). 
ŒAt the same time, the state farms and collective farms will plant 
windbreaks on their lands of a ten times larger total area: 5,700,000 
ha. The banks of watercourses will be planted with trees; the slopes 
of ravines, the edges of ponds will be wooded, the sands of the 
Caspian region will be fixed. Each ³break², i.e., each field containing 
the same crop, will be separated from its neighbours by trees¹ 
(pp. 100-101). The plan included many other measures of the same 
kind and noted that all this could only be realized by the use of 
Lysenkoist methods (cluster planting) and Lysenkoist seeds. 
It was customary to celebrate this plan as a Œgrandiose¹ initiative. 
It is clear that this was no exaggeration. 
By, 1952 the failures had become so significant as to make the 
Ministry of Agriculture send new directives on shelterbelts which 
implicitly abandoned the Lysenkoist method of cluster planting of 
trees.1 Even before Stalin¹s death in March 1953, the implementation 
of the ŒGrand Plan¹ had in fact been abandoned in the form in 
which it had been announced. 
Simultaneously, in 1952, the ŒMendelist¹ geneticists initiated a 
counter-attack, based on the failures in practice of the Lysenkoist 
methods. They began to turn against Lysenko the arguments of 
effectiveness he had used against them in 1948. One journal 
provided them with a rallying point: the Botanicheskii Zhurnal 
(Botanical Journal). Medvedev well describes the episodes in this 
campaign, which culminated in 1955 in Lysenko¹s resignation as 
1 Joravsky, op. cit., p. 154.

In Memoriam 131 
President of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and his replacement 
by Lobanov. 
But the essential point is that after 1952, experts and cadres in 
agricultural production - the backbone of the Lysenkoist troops - 
began to lose confidence in Lysenko: the crucial element of his 
strength was thus slipping away. We possess only clues to this 
withdrawal, but they are irrefutable. The first is a speech to the 
19th Party Congress on behalf of the Central Committee by 
Malenkov in October 1952, which spoke for cadres in agriculture 
and plainly stated that although Œall anti-scientific, reactionary 
ideas have been exposed and destroyed in agricultural science, and 
it is developing now on the only correct, materialist, Michurinist 
basis . . ., nevertheless it is still lagging behind the requirements of 
production on the collective and state farms¹ (cit. Joravsky, op. cit., 
p. 155). The second is Lysenko¹s own recriminations; from 1953 
on, he constantly complained, with the support of concrete 
examples, that his directives were only being applied incompletely, 
slowly and without enthusiasm. 
The fact that this retreat was gradual and even very slow is 
easily explained along the lines of the preceding analyses: Lysenkoism 
had been organically linked to the political line followed by 
the Party in agricultural matters for twenty years; precisely to the 
line which had Œproduced¹ the social stratum of experts, managers 
and cadres for which Lysenkoist theory had provided an ideological 
cement. 
So there is nothing surprising in the fact that Stalin¹s death did 
not lead to Lysenko¹s fall: only those who see Lysenko as an 
emanation of Stalin¹s Œmadness¹ or of the Œcult of personality¹ and 
ignore the real historical and social roots of Lysenkoism can find it 
disconcerting. 
Moreover, the situation was complicated by the fact that in 1948 
those with ideological and political responsibility in the Party had 
publicly and unreservedly committed themselves to Lysenko and 
applied to his doctrine the label Œdialectical materialism¹. Hence, 
without a general re-examination of the question of Lysenkoism, 
which must have led to an interrogation not only of the nature of 
Marxist philosophy and its practice in the preceding years, but also 
that of the question of the forms of ideological struggle and 
agricultural policy overall since 1917; hence a re-examination 
which would be inseparable from a critical analysis of all the

132 
problems posed by the Œconstruction of socialism¹ in the USSR, 
it was not possible to Œdrop¹ Lysenko. 
As we know, this great re-examination never occurred - so 
Lysenko still had to be supported. Given the repeated attacks made 
on him, the authorities had to commit themselves in his favour 
once again: on September 29th 1958, Pravda announced the award 
of the Order of Lenin to Lysenko and unreservedly praised his 
work and doctrine. In December of the same year, a plenary session 
of the Central Committee of the Party was convened which 
solemnly reiterated its confidence in Lysenko, reaffirmed its 
approval for the methods and theories of Michurinist biology and 
firmly invited Lysenko¹s opponents to stop their attacks. The 
editorial board of the Botanicheskii Zhurnal were removed and a 
Lysenkoist team took it over. 
For all that, Lysenkoist techniques of selection were being abandoned 
in practice at the same time. And as a culminating paradox, 
in consequence of the great revolution which genetics had undergone 
since the work of Watson and Crick on the structure of DNA 
and which was beginning to make Œapplications¹ of it actually 
possible and effective in agriculture, Lysenko¹s methods were 
tending to be replaced by openly ŒMendelist¹ techniques. 
Khrushchev¹s political astuteness is demonstrated by his understanding 
that there was only one way out of this untenable situation: 
to get Lysenko to adopt officially agricultural programmes which 
no longer had anything essential to do with Lysenkoism. Joravsky 
correctly notes that the famous campaign organized by Khrushchev 
for the massive planting of maize was based on the use of Œheterosis¹, 
a Mendelist method that Lysenko had expressly fought for many 
years. . . .2 
Lysenko lent himself to this device with astonishing compliance 
considering the dogmatic arguments he had previously put forward 
in favour of his positions: he was rewarded in 1961 when he was 
restored to the Presidency of the Academy of Agricultural 
Sciences. 
However, it was more and more urgently necessary every day 
that teaching and research in Œclassical¹ genetics be officially restored. 
But here too appearances had to be kept up. This was the double 
2 A method which consists, by means of polyploidy, of exploiting hybrid vigour in 
cases of quantitative characters in order to increase yields. The average increase obtained 
by this method for maize has been estimated at 37%.

In Memoriam 133 
imperative to which the decisions taken by the Central Committee 
and the Council of Ministers in June 1963 were a response: while 
emphasizing the interest of Michurinist biology, in fact they 
restored the compromise situation of before 1948, since they 
encouraged Œall¹ research in biology, medicine and the agronomic 
sciences. 
Medvedev¹s book provides a detailed account of the battle 
then joined about this decree. Each of the tendencies attempted to 
exploit it to its own advantage. The important thing, however, is 
that the process of the re-establishment of genetics was irreversibly 
under way. 
Khrushchev had personally committed himself to Lysenko on 
several further occasions. Khrushchev¹s Œresignation¹ provided the 
opportunity for forcing Lysenko¹s retirement at the beginning of 
1965. 
As the result of a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, he had to 
leave his post as Director of the Institute of Genetics. At the same 
time, commissions began to work out new biology textbooks and 
to organize courses for teachers to bring them up to date with the 
latest developments of genetics in the West. 
The official end of Lysenkoism was occasioned by a symbolic 
demonstration on the centenary of Mendel¹s Memoir (1865), celebrated 
with great pomp at Brno in the presence of a large Soviet 
delegation composed of the most noteworthy of those who had 
been Lysenko¹s opponents in 1948. . . . 
t t t 
On October 10th 1975, Le Monde reported on the solemn session 
of the USSR Academy of Sciences in celebration of its 250th 
anniversary. The report contained the following lines: 
ŒThe Academicians, numbering 245, are elected by secret ballot, 
which is by no means usual here. More astonishing, Academicians 
are elected for life and cannot be removed from their work except 
by a decision of the Presidium of the Academy. Of course, there 
are a few exceptions to this rule: the most noteworthy was that 
of Molotov, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, condemned 
by Khrushchev in 1957 for anti-Party activities, and expelled from 
the Academy. On the other hand, Andrei Sakharov is still a member. 
So, moreover, is Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, the ³charlatan² 
of genetics, even though he fell into disgrace at the same time

134 
as his protector, Mr. ³K². Lysenko, who succeeded in getting his 
absurd theory of the existence of a bourgeois genetics and a 
proletarian genetics proclaimed as dogma, was also a participant 
at the Session in the Palace of Congresses.¹ 
A few days later, a speech by the Minister of Agriculture involuntarily 
revealed the catastrophic figures for cereal production in 
1974. 
The concatenation of these two facts alone illustrates what I 
hope has been one of the main lessons of this essay in historical 
analysis: a politics that retreats from the criticism of its own errors 
remains willy-nilly subject to the effects of their causes.

Appendix 
135


Bogdanov, Mirror of the 
Soviet Intelligentsiat 
1 Lenin versus Bogdanov 
If one were to speculate as to the reasons for the oblivion into which 
the works of Aleksandr Bogdanov have fallen for more than half a 
century, the first that comes to mind seems to provide a sufficient 
explanation on its own: on two occasions, ten years apart, Bogdanov 
was theoretically and politically condemned by Lenin. An 
uncompromizing refutation of his philosophical theses in Materialism 
and Empirio-criticism (1909) and a vigorous struggle against the 
Œultra-left¹ political positions of that fraction of the Bolshevik 
Party (the ŒOtzovists¹) which had formed around him in the reflux 
following the unsuccessful revolution of 1905; then a number of 
lapidary criticisms of the notion of Œproletarian culture¹ (1920) 
which Bogdanov had adopted as the emblem for his theoretical 
and political work, and, finally, political opposition to the forms 
of organization of the Proletkult, the cultural mass movement 
inspired by Bogdanovism which embraced many revolutionary 
intellectuals, Bolshevik or otherwise, in Russia after the October 
Revolution. 
So it is hardly surprising that Bogdanov¹s oeuvre should have 
joined so many others in the hell of Soviet libraries and not reemerged 
to this day; that very soon all that was known of Bogdanov¹s 
writings became the few quotations from them produced 
for refutation by Lenin and Plekhanov; and that Bogdanov¹s name 
was assigned, along with other more famous ones, to the arsenal of 
incriminating epithets which provided ammunition for the 
tThis appendix appeared in French as an introduction to a selection of Bogdanov¹s 
writings entitled La Science, l¹art et la class ouvrière, translated and annotated by Blanche 
Grinbaum, presented by Dominique Lecourt and Henri Deluy; published by François 
Maspero, Paris 1977. (Translator¹s note.) 
137

138 
Stalinist practice of ideological and political struggle. The Soviet 
state¹s permanent exaltation of an Œofficial¹ version of Leninism 
presented as a corpus of definitive answers to supposedly settled 
questions, i.e., as detached from the contradictions and torments of 
the real history during which Lenin¹s thought was actually hammered 
out and tested, could only assign one fate to a twice condemned 
opponent of Lenin¹s: that he be no longer read. 
Thus the first, most immediate and obvious interest of a translation 
of some of Bogdanov¹s essential writings, is to restore to 
historians and philosophers a document which is indispensable both 
to the knowledge of a period in the history of the Bolshevik revolution 
(1905-20), the one that largely sealed its fate, and to the 
understanding of the Leninist practice of philosophy whose 
principles we are only now, after so many years, beginning to be 
able to extract from the dogmatic matrix in which they are held in 
the reigning version of dialectical materialism. 
But these texts do not have only a documentary interest, for the 
remarkable persistence of the basic theoretical positions which 
Bogdanov defended from Empirio-monism (1904-6) to Tectology 
(1912-16) itself poses a question which has implications going far 
beyond the Œcase¹ of the intellectual and political history of the 
prolific theoretician and indefatigable activist that Bogdanov was; 
a question which ultimately allows us to throw an unexpected light 
on to the theoretical and ideological bases of the ŒStalinist deviation¹. 
This question is that of the resistance of the Bogdanovist 
themes to Lenin¹s criticisms. 
Anyone who has read Materialism and Empirio-criticism would 
be justified in thinking that Bogdanov could hardly survive such 
an onslaught and that his system, dismantled and denounced by 
Lenin as an eclectic assemblage of Œunspeakable nonsense¹ could be 
expected to have disappeared promptly from the theoretical stage 
of the Bolshevik revolution, or at least to have had to undergo 
profound reorganization in order to survive. In fact the opposite 
was the case: not only did the Bogdanov system, despite a progressive 
decentring of its main themes, continue to develop on its 
own terms, without apparently taking the slightest notice of the 
destructive refutation it had been subjected to, but in addition, 
Bogdanov reappeared at the centre of the political stage in the 
middle of the October Revolution as the inspiration and organizer 
of a movement infinitely more powerful than the tiny fraction of

Appendix 139 
the ŒOtzovists¹ had ever been, a genuine mass movement for a 
Œcultural revolution¹ which in three years was to reach several 
hundreds of thousands of people organized in the institutions of the 
Proletkult (workers¹ schools, libraries, proletarian theatres . . .). 
The very fact demands explanation: how was it that, although 
he had been pulverized theoretically and defeated politically, 
Bogdanov¹s audience increased in the years following the publication 
of Materialism and Empirio-criticism and the dispute about 
boycotting the Duma?1 But what is even odder is Lenin¹s attitude 
to this rise of Bogdanovism. When asked to take up a position 
towards Bogdanov¹s later productions, he was irritated and impatient. 
ŒBogdanov is not a Marxist,¹ he repeated in justification of 
the refusal to print any further articles by him in Pravda. ŒUnder 
the guise of ³proletarian culture² A. A. Bogdanov is imparting 
bourgeois and reactionary views,¹ he noted drily in 1920 in the 
Preface to the Second Edition of Materialism and Empirio-criticism, 
alluding to Tectology, which he admitted he had not read. There 
followed the administrative measures which were a decisive blow 
for the Proletkult, subordinating it to the Commissariat for 
Education (Narkompros)2 and finally driving Bogdanov out of 
political activity.3 Clearly, Lenin did not understand the persistent 
favour ŒBogdanovism¹ found with Bolshevik intellectuals. He 
neglected to analyse its causes and attempted to counteract its 
effects by violent means, in sharp contrast to what was his constant 
practice in the treatment of ideological and theoretical differences: 
a practice of argument, which, although always conducted with 
passion, showed no reluctance to go into the minute details of the 
opponents¹ positions in order to convince. 
I believe that one and the same reason, to be found plainly 
inscribed in Bogdanov¹s writings, will explain both the response to 
Bogdanov¹s theses and Lenin¹s unusual reaction, brutal in practice 
and summary in its theoretical justifications. 
1 As will be well-known, Bogdanov and his comrades drew from the defeat of 1905 the 
conclusion that nothing more was to be expected from legal action. They were therefore 
hostile to the Bolsheviks participating in the Duma (the Russian parliament). It was against 
this political position that Lenin intervened, and in order to destroy the theoretical foundations 
they claimed to have given it that he took up his pen against ŒMach¹s Russian disciples¹. 
2 Lunacharskii, the ŒGod Builder¹ and former comrade of Bogdanov¹s headed this 
Commissariat. 
3 Bogdanov returned to his profession as a doctor, founded the first Blood Transfusion 
Centre, and died in 1928 as a result of an experimental injection he had made on himself.

140 
The reader of Bogdanov¹s texts cannot fail to note that in them 
the slogan of the construction of a Œproletarian culture¹ which 
gradually became the Bogdanovist theme par excellence, the key to 
his political career, is directly linked to an aspect of his doctrine 
already found in Empirio-monism but playing a larger and larger 
part in the later writings, to the point of becoming the unifying 
element of the final system of Tectology; an aspect in which 
Bogdanov believed and stated as early as 1904 that he had marked 
himself off from the positivist philosophy (the Œempirio-criticism¹ 
of the scientist Ernst Mach)4 the essentials of whose conceptual 
apparatus he thought it necessary to take over for reasons relating 
to his idea of the theoretical conjuncture; an aspect of his doctrine 
which he held justified him in saying he was a Marxist, a claim he 
was never to renounce. This aspect is what I shall call a real metaphysics 
of labour as Absolute Origin of entities and thoughts which 
claimed to find its empirical guarantees in the imaginary Œfacts¹ of a 
biologistic-evolutionistic ideology of Organization.5 
The texts leave no doubt at all on this point: it is this metaphysics 
that unites the ideological themes and the political positions 
of Bogdanovism, at first sight spectacularly contradictory; Œultraleft¹ 
themes - the best known - expressed and exalted in a mysticism 
of the modern industrial labourer, supporting Œouvrierist¹ political 
positions of a sectarianism that is sometimes lyrical; themes that 
must be described as Œrightist¹ which appear in his theoretical 
edifice not just as the correlate but also as the foundation for the 
former and are reflected in a mysticism of machinery - of Œmechanized 
production¹. A mysticism which in its turn justifies an openly 
technocratic conception of the socialist organization of production 
and a mechanistic theory of ideological transformations. 
It is this metaphysics of labour and its implications that constitute 
the ultimate explanation for the extraordinary responsiveness of 
the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia to a theory so abstract and 
4 Later we shall see what it was in this philosophy, which Bogdanov described as Œthe 
most rigorous form of positivism¹, that let him regard it as a scientific philosophy and one 
capable of being brought into concordance with Marxist philosophy. 
5 The system Bogdanov finally came up with was called Œtectology¹, meaning literally 
(and this is the sub-title of the book he devoted to it) Œuniversal science of organization¹. The 
biological metaphor of Organization was not new in social theory: formed in the eighteenth 
century, Saint-Simon had adopted it and Auguste Comte had made a systematic use of it, 
in a new sense, in the Cours de philosophie positiviste. A use which was to give rise to bourgeois 
sociology.

Appendix 141 
obscure that it was hardly predestined to popularity for any other 
reason. Bogdanov relayed to this intelligentsia, and they immediately 
and enthusiastically recognized themselves in it, a systematized 
representation of their own Œspontaneous¹ ideology, dignified 
by the authority of Marx. An ideology in which the ouvrierism 
was no more than the other side of a disappointed populism6 giving 
these intellectuals the opportunity to express all their pettybourgeois 
hostility to the peasantry; an ideology in which the 
Œtechnicism¹ was sustained by an idealist conception of the Revolution, 
descending in a straight line from the eighteenth century, as 
the advent of Reason. 
Now, Lenin was very well aware of the danger represented in 
the political battle of Bogdanovism¹s Œultra-left¹ positions. He did 
his utmost to combat what he correctly saw as the anti-peasant 
aspect of the slogan of Œproletarian culture¹. The increasing difficulties 
of the years from 1918, which had a serious effect on the 
relations of the Party and the State with the peasantry, dictated to 
him that he put as rapid as possible a stop to this undertaking, which 
involved many Bolsheviks. Hence the brutal decision of 1920, 
which completely disoriented a number of well-meaning militants 
who could not make out the reasons for it.7 
But on the other hand, if he did denounce the reactionary ideas 
conveyed by Bogdanov Œunder the guise of proletarian culture¹, he 
gave no analysis as a basis for this diagnosis. Why? Obviously, the 
lack of time Lenin invokes in the preface to the second edition of 
Materialism and Empirio-criticism does not provide an adequate 
explanation. I shall interpret his evasion of an argued refutation of 
the later Bogdanov as implying quite simply that he did not have 
the theoretical means to carry it out. Or more precisely: that in the 
central matter of labour and its organization he shared with a whole 
generation of Bolsheviks some of the ideological presuppositions 
that Bogdanov systematized in his metaphysical theory. 
Consider, for example, Lenin¹s conception of the organization of 
6 Bogdanov himself had started out as a populist, as he recalls himself in his text on the 
Proletarian University. In 1896 he left the Narodnaya Vol¹ya movement to join the Social- 
Democrats. For biographical details, the reader should refer either to D. Grille¹s monograph 
Lenins Rivale: Bogdanov une seine Philosophie, Abhandlungen des Bundesinstituts für 
ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien, Band XII, Köln 1966, or to the biographical 
documents in La Science, l¹art et la classe ouvrière, op. cit. 
7 See for example the contemporary article by A. Dodonova, translated into French in 
Action poétique no. 59.

142 
labour in the units of production of modem industry under the 
dictatorship of the proletariat. As is well known, from 1918 on, 
Lenin demanded the systematic introduction of Taylorism in 
Russia. Robert Linhart has recently brilliantly demonstrated the 
short and long term implications of this position of Lenin¹s.8 And 
he has shown that, based on an incorrect conception of the labour 
process, it presupposed that ŒTaylorism can be dissociated from its 
function in capitalist exploitation¹ and seen solely as the constitution 
of a Œscience of the organization of labour¹, socially neutral 
because it is purely rational, and hence applicable in any mode of 
production. In fact, contrasting this Œrational and reasoned distribution 
of labour inside the factory¹ with the anarchy reigning in 
capitalist society, Lenin came to consider it as a prototype of the 
rational overall organization of a socialist society. 
Now, these positions, which imply a naturalist conception of 
technique as such and a technicist conception of the relations of 
production, are precisely, point by point and almost word for word, 
the positions held by Bogdanov in his Œuniversal science of organization¹. 
Bogdanov, who, as we shall see, cites Taylorism as the 
type of a rational organization of labour and who was among the 
first to devote an article to the Taylor system, in 1913, celebrating 
it as the anticipation in a capitalist regime, as a result of the development 
of the productive forces, of what would tomorrow be the 
organization of socialist society. Bogdanov, who, at the same 
period, in two political science-fiction novels9 presented a utopian 
picture of the future society as the Triumph of Reason in the form 
of the universal extension to all the spheres of social life of the 
system of the Œsocialist rationalization¹ of production. 
This explains Lenin¹s embarrassment in 1920, his irritation and 
his evasions in the face of the theoretical Bogdanovism of the 
Proletkult: even if he did remain radically hostile to Bogdanov¹s 
doctrine as such, for the reasons he had given in 1909, there is no 
doubt that there was a very profound concordance between some 
of his positions on the Œconstruction of socialism¹ which reveal the 
Œunperceived limits of his thought¹ (Linhart) and certain basic 
ideological themes theorized and popularized by Bogdanov.10 
8 See this genuinely Leninist book analysing the living contradictions of Lenin¹s thought, 
referring them to the concrete conjuncture it had to confront: Lénine, les paysans, Taylor, 
Editions du Seuil, Paris 1976. 
9 Red Star and Engineer Menni. 
10 In his book, Linhart correctly emphasizes the fact that this was not a unilaterally

Appendix 143 
The reader should make no mistake: the preceding remarks are 
not of interest just as a scholarly re-assessment of a point in the 
theoretical and political history of Leninism; as I have suggested, 
they make it possible to cast an unexpected light on the ideological 
and theoretical bases of the ŒStalinist deviation¹. For the peculiar 
fate still in store for Bogdanovist themes in Soviet ideology is only 
explicable once they have been established. 
It will be clear from my argument that these themes did not 
indeed vanish overnight with the end of the Proletkult, but, 
denounced rather than analysed and searchingly criticized by Lenin, 
they continued on the contrary to lead a subterranean life in Soviet 
ideology. To the extent that, paradoxically, the Bogdanovist 
system remained an inexhaustible reservoir for the verbally Œleftwing¹ 
themes of Stalinist propaganda in which they became constitutive 
elements. From the voluntarist humanism whose hymn 
to the Œnew man¹ was intoned in 1935 and later, to become with 
Stakhanovism11 the central motif in a grandiose mythology of the 
working class and technical progress, to the theory of the Œtwo 
sciences¹ which in 1948, at Zhdanov¹s instigation,12 became a 
redoubtable weapon in the Party¹s hands to close the ranks of 
intellectuals around it in a moment of crisis . . . , all these themes 
are, as will be observed, present as such in Bogdanov¹s writings, 
whose unadmitted offspring they are. 
In the last analysis, there is nothing surprising about this, insofar 
as, basically in accord with the economistic line adopted by the 
Bolshevik Party in and after 1928-30, they could easily be constituted 
as the utopian counterpoint that this line and the repressive 
practices that accompanied it needed for their implementation. 
And as these themes simply reflected the Œspontaneous¹ ideology of 
the Proletkultist intellectuals from whose ranks many cadres and 
Œtechnicist¹ position: Lenin expected that the application of Œrationalized¹ labour methods 
would have educational effects on a labour force whose origins were massively peasant and 
whose inexperience of factory work was having a seriously damaging effect on nascent 
Soviet industry. 
11 The Stakhanovites were initially in the image of the miner Stakhanov workers who 
had surpassed production norms and introduced technical improvements in machine 
industry; but they were soon also workers privileged by an appreciably higher than average 
wage, technical training and cadre functions in the organization of production. 
12 As is well known, it was A. Zhdanov who, on the publication on June 24th 1947 of the 
History of Western Philosophy edited by G. F. Aleksandrov, launched the movement of 
Œideological struggle¹ which was to lead in the following year to the official adoption of 
Lysenko¹s Œagrobiological¹ theories and to affect all scientific, literary and artistic disciplines.

144 
organizers of production and education were drawn,13 they could 
continue silently as the ideological cement of their unity around the 
Party leadership. Stalin realized this and played on it to mobilize 
them in every period of tension that the Soviet Union traversed. 
I opened by discussing the oblivion into which Bogdanov¹s works 
have fallen for half a century. It now takes on a new and deeper 
meaning: it is the oblivion of what is inadmissible about Soviet 
ideology, of the presence in its heart of what Lenin, without being 
able to deal with them fully, called Œbourgeois and reactionary 
views¹. 
It is this Œoblivion¹ and the relationship to the past which it contains, 
that it is now time to break. 
We need to read Bogdanov. 
2 Bogdanov¹s Philosophical Positions 
After 1904, when the first part of Empirio-monism was published, 
all Bogdanov¹s work was organized on the basis of a fundamental 
philosophical armature which was never to be reconsidered. Thus 
a few basic theses were to remain characteristic of his philosophy. 
They are precisely the theses that Lenin attacked in Materialism and 
Empirio-criticism. They can all be summarized as borrowings from 
the then fashionable doctrine14 of the German scientist Ernst Mach; 
a doctrine customarily designated as Œempirio-criticism¹, although 
Mach himself never used the term. 
Mach¹s philosophy15 was a scientist¹s philosophy: it was presented 
as a response, supposedly one based on scientific results obtained 
in psycho-physiology, to the Œstate of crisis¹ which contemporary 
physics was then claimed to have entered as a result of the formulation 
of the second law of thermodynamics;16 on this basis, it 
13 The case of A. Gastev, a Proletkultist put in charge of an institute of labour organization, 
is probably the most typical. Texts by Gastev can be found in French translation in 
Action poétique no. 59. 
14 In his book on Dialectical Materialism (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1958), 
Gustav Wetter emphasized that this fashion was the more influential in Russia in that, since 
the 1850¹s, many Russian intellectuals had followed the movement Œback to Kant¹ - and 
beyond Kant to Hume - which had influenced German philosophy in an anti-Hegelian 
direction, a movement which directly gave rise to Mach¹s doctrine. 
15 Robert S. Cohen has given an excellent systematic examination of Mach¹s philosophy, 
reproduced as ŒErnst Mach Physics, Perception and the Philosophy of Science,¹ Synthèse 
no. 18, 1908, pp. 132-70; this article is followed by an appendix on Bogdanov. A good 
summary of the doctrine can be found in Leszek Kolakowski¹s Positivist Philosophy from 
Hume to the Vienna Circle, translated by N. Guterman, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 
1972. 
16 In my book Une Crise et son enjue, Essai sur la position de Lénine en philosophie (collection 
ŒThéorie¹, François Maspero, Paris 1973), I have tried to explain the constitution of this

Appendix 145 
developed a general theory of knowledge and of the history of the 
sciences. It thus vaunted itself as the first scientific philosophy ever 
produced, and proclaimed its ability to free the sciences from the 
illusions of metaphysics, to which it imputed the theoretical difficulties 
physics was undergoing. 
Now, the main metaphysical illusion, according to Mach, was 
the philosophical distinction, uncritically accepted by most 
scientists, between matter and mind. It was this distinction that he 
claimed to be in a position to dismiss. The results of his work on 
the Analysis of Sensations,17 he said, justified him in maintaining 
that every sensation is the result of a more or less complex combination 
of Œelements¹18 about which it would be vain to ask whether 
they are Œphysical¹ or Œmental¹, if they belong to Œmatter¹ or to 
Œmind¹, since they are, he claimed, Œneutral¹, prior to matter or to 
mind. 
In this way, by presenting his philosophy as Œthe philosophy of 
the contemporary sciences of nature¹, Mach could claim to have 
overcome to his own satisfaction the fundamental philosophical 
opposition between materialism and idealism: the question of the 
primacy of matter over thought, or of thought over matter, no 
longer arises, he claimed, once the common, indeterminate element 
that constitutes the ultimate horizon of all our knowledge has been 
registered.19 
supposed Œstate of crisis¹. Since the Œclassical¹ concept of matter, in harmony with the presuppositions 
of analytical mechanics, could not explain the irreversible character of thermodynamic 
phenomena, the openly idealist philosophical conclusion that Œmatter had disappeared¹ 
was drawn, instead of noting, as Lenin suggested, that the scientific concept of 
matter was changing in form and working to establish its new determinations. 
17 Bogdanov wrote a preface for the Russian edition of the book with this title. 
18 The notion of the Œelement¹, a key one in Mach¹s philosophy, referred to contemporary 
studies in Œpsycho-physics¹ in which Mach himself had participated. He believed that the 
scientific authority of the works of Helmholtz could be adduced in its favour, for the latter, 
in his famous studies of acoustic phenomena, had decomposed musical sounds into their 
ultimate Œelements¹ Helmholtz had believed that in the tone he had discovered Œthe 
rigorously simple sonic sensation¹ out of which all sounds could be reconstructed by progressive 
combination. Mach¹s definition of the Œelements¹ is a philosophical extrapolation 
from these results: ŒPhysical nature is composed of the elements given by the senses. It is 
not things, objects, bodies, but rather colours, tones, pressures, spaces, times (what we 
usually call sensations) that are the true elements of the world,¹ from which he concluded: 
ŒEverything mental is or will be divisible into elementary sensations. Now these elements 
of the inner world and those of the outer world are the same.¹ 
One can see why Mach claimed on this basis to have resolved the question posed by the 
so-called Œdisappearance of matter¹. The question does not exist he stated since Œmatter¹ 
has never in fact existed outside the brains of metaphysicians 
19 This philosophy is indeed both empiricist and criticist: empiricist insofar as Mach claims

146 
Bogdanov took Mach at his word and stated: since this philosophy 
Œreconciles¹ materialism and idealism, by destroying the 
distinction between them, it is compatible with Marx¹s materialism. 
But the scientific conjuncture demands that Marxist philosophy be 
Œrejuvenated¹ if it is to be capable of explaining the latest results of 
the natural sciences. Hence one should have the courage to follow 
Engels¹s slogan that Œat each great scientific discovery materialism 
must change its form¹, and Œmarry¹ it with empirio-criticism. 
As is well known, this is the decisive point at which Lenin 
attacked in 1909 the division of philosophy between two tendencies 
is eternal, he recalled, also appealing to Engels, for, in the 
last analysis, it is based on the division of society into classes. Hence 
whatever he may say, Mach has in no way put an end to the conflict 
between materialism and idealism. Really, he is seeking to 
confuse the issue and conceal the fact that he is actually rallying to 
the idealist tendency in the history of philosophy, content to readopt 
its most worn-out themes beneath an apparently scientific 
modernist terminology. Moreover, his philosophy is by no means 
based on the results of the contemporary sciences, on the contrary, 
it is incompatible with the dominant tendency in them and should, 
along with its competitors among the other variants of idealist 
philosophy, be held responsible for the supposed Œstate of crisis¹ of 
physics, which is no more than a philosophical crisis which has 
infected a few physicists at the moment when their science is undergoing 
a revolutionary change. And to complete his refutation, 
Lenin set out to prove that, inversely, the basic theses of dialectical 
materialism could help the physicists to formulate new concepts by 
enabling them to resist the encroachments of idealist philosophy 
onto their practice. 
But there is one point in Bogdanov¹s system that Lenin is led to 
ignore by the logic of his argument,20 a point which is of the 
greatest interest to us: that is the aspect in which this ŒRussian 
that all our knowledge ,both of the external world and of ourselves, comes to us via our 
sensations, from experience; criticist because, having posed this principle, he claims that our 
knowledge is limited to this content of our sensuous experience; it is therefore superfluous 
to imagine some cause for these sensation outside ourselves; the hypothesis is illegitimate, 
for under no circumstances could we know that cause save by our sensations; so it is to 
transgress our human condition in an illusory metaphysical movement to suppose that the 
external world is anything but an Œaspect¹ of our sensations. 
20 Lenin attacked in principle the notion of a possible adjustment of Marxist philosophy 
to empirio-criticism; he therefore ignored the differences there are between Bogdanov and

Appendix 147 
disciple of Mach¹ states that he disagrees with his master. For if 
Bogdanov never failed to admit his debt to Mach, he never 
accepted the label ŒMachist¹ for all that. 
Now, Bogdanov saw the difference between his own system and 
that of Mach in what he called his Œmonism¹. In fact, throughout 
his work he constantly restated the ambition to Œcomplete¹ the 
Œmonism¹ of which empirio-criticism was, for him, the most convincing 
although still inconsistent realization. It should be realized 
that this theme of Œmonism¹ and the word for it go right back to his 
earliest philosophical options which he quite rightly linked to the 
Œmaterialism of the natural sciences¹ to which he had rallied initially 
and whose grip he was never fully to throw off.21 
Monism was indeed the philosophical emblem and, it might be 
said, the Œslogan¹ of those whom Marx and Engels designated as 
Œvulgar materialists¹, most of them naturalists, adepts and popularisers 
of Darwinism, who had seen the theory of evolutionism as 
a source for anti-religious (even anti-clerical) and anti-metaphysical 
arguments.22 These scientists and philosophers held in fact 
that everything in nature can be explained as a property of matter, 
without there being any need to resort to any transcendent element 
at all. Despite the fine differences between them, they had all made 
their own the famous maxim of the French doctor and ideologist 
Cabanis: ŒThe brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile¹. 
From this Œmonism¹, Bogdanov retained the project of presenting 
in his own philosophy (precisely empirio-monism) a Œgeneral 
picture of the world¹ resting on a single principle of explanation 
based on a single origin for beings and things. It is by virtue of this 
Mach, which are philosophically inessential anyway, to concentrate his analysis on Mach¹s 
philosophy and show why it is irreconcilable with Marxism because utterly idealist. 
21 In the preface to Empirio-monism Bogdanov himself admits that it is a Œphilosophy from 
which it is not easy to separate oneself¹. 
22 The names of the main German Œvulgar materialists¹ are well known: Büchner, Vogt, 
Molachott. ŒMonism¹ was also proclaimed by Ernst Haeckel, the famous naturalist and 
Darwinist propagandist who exercised a profound influence on a whole generation. 
Because of its anti-religious aspect, Œmonism¹ had been very popular in Russian populist 
milieux. As the reader will know, Plekhanov took up the terminology of monism to 
describe the Marxist conception of history. Stalin himself in Anarchism or Socialism, presented 
Marxism as a monism. In the 1960¹s, Roger Garaudy, Gilbert Mury and Guy Besse 
believed that Marx¹s Œmonism¹ could still be counterposed to Althusser¹s work, denounced 
as dualist. Really, as Dechezlepêtre has shown in an unpublished memoir, the mask of 
Œmonism¹ has always concealed one of the constant attempts of the Œevolutionism¹ which has 
been linked with it from the beginning to insinuate itself into Marxism.

148 
presupposition that he undertook to criticize the empirio-criticist 
notion of experience, which he believed to be still afflicted with 
dualist contaminations. 
Mach, he explained, was on the right lines when he emphasized 
in his notion of the Œelement¹ the primary lack of differentiation 
between the Œphysical¹ and the Œmental¹. But he only went half-way 
and, a victim of his positivism, held to a narrowly descriptive point 
of view, observing the fact without seeking to explain the why, thus 
ultimately letting the principle of the unity of matter and mind 
escape him. 
Bogdanov therefore attacked the question of the Œwhy¹ and 
altered the ŒMachist¹ notion of experience accordingly, defining it 
as Œexperience of labour¹. This is the neuralgic point of Bogdanov¹s 
system, its secret spring, the key in the last analysis, although this is 
hardly yet foreseeable in Empirio-monism, to its subsequent political 
career. This Œcorrection¹ of Mach¹s thesis is indeed of some consequence, 
for it introduced into Bogdanov¹s system an element of 
internal imbalance which was to carry on developing its contradictory 
effects right up to Tectology. 
In fact it is obvious, if one thinks about it, that the introduction 
of the notion of Œlabour¹ as the Origin of experience is in brutal 
conflict with the very foundations of empirio-criticism, which was 
based on a sensualist conception of experience as a complex of 
sensations and which saw its philosophical triumph and its scientific 
guarantee in its successful disengagement of the notion of element 
from a pure analysis of simple sensations. To regard this Œanalysis¹ 
as inadequate, as Bogdanov did, is thus to go against the very 
principle of empirio-criticism. So in a sense Bogdanov was not 
unjustified in his annoyance that his opponents simply assimilated 
his system to Mach¹s philosophy. 
By my Œmonism¹, by the construction of the unprecedented 
notion of Œexperience of labour¹, I am, he claimed, in a position to 
base my doctrine on the Œsocial materialism¹ of Marx, which I 
regard as the scientific theory of the historical development of the 
forms of labour. 
Here it is essential to pay close attention, for once again in a sense 
it can be said that Bogdanov was not unjustified: by introducing 
the notion of labour as basis for his conception of knowledge, he 
took a path that might have let him recognize, as a materialist, the 
primacy of practice over theory, and then forced him to abandon

Appendix 149 
the empiricist category of experience which was his starting point 
and conceive knowledge as a practice; a theoretical practice in 
which, as Marxists do in fact maintain, primacy is accorded to 
practical (technical) knowledge over theoretical knowledge; a 
theoretical practice which itself, in its relative autonomy, is determined 
in the last instance by the practice of the production of 
material goods. 
And in fact, Bogdanov, Œforgetting¹ his Machist philosophy - as 
Lenin remarked - quite often subsequently allowed himself to be 
won over by this tendency of his theoretical apparatus. To corroborate 
this, read the concrete analyses he made of the history of the 
sciences, particularly that of astronomy; or his remarkable critical 
analyses of the capitalist division of scientific labour and its effects: 
pages whose astonishing up-to-dateness has quite rightly been 
pointed out;23 these pages in which the empiricism dwindles to the 
point of imperceptibility are in the last analysis an after-effect of the 
philosophical violence done to Mach¹s theses by the introduction 
of the notion of labour Œinto¹ them. 
But if on occasion he did in this way forget his basic philosophical 
reference point (Mach), Bogdanov never abandoned it. Which 
produced a really astounding result; it turns out in fact that this 
self-proclaimed Marxist theorist, who had written the preface to 
the first Russian edition of Capital (1909), was forced to turn his 
back on Marxism and think the notion of labour not in the Marxist 
terms of a labour process inserted into a production process which 
takes place in certain relations of production and is hence always 
marked by the class struggle, but in the Machist terms of a biological 
process of the adaptation of the organism to its environment.24 So that in 
his works the main theoretical emphasis in the expression Œexperience 
of labour¹ is always ultimately on the term Œexperience¹. 
Hence the presence in Bogdanov¹s work, Œalongside¹ the concrete 
analyses I have just mentioned, but surmounting them 
theoretically and Œtaking over¹ all their results in a resolutely idealist 
sense, of a genetic theory of scientific concepts and a continuistevolutionist 
theory of the history of the sciences. 
23 As by Giulio Giorello in the preface he has written to the Italian translation of the 
pamphlet on Science and the Working Class, Bompiani, Milan 1974. 
24 Via the notion of adaptation, king-pin of the Machist theory of history, Bogdanov¹s 
Œmonist¹ evolutionism can easily be brought into harmony with Mach¹s pragmatist 
Œevolutionism¹.

150 
The article called ŒMethods of Labour and Methods of Knowledge¹ 
(1918) is probably the best illustration of this Œreturn¹ of 
Machism in Bogdanov¹s work. 
What, he asks, is the Œsoul¹ of science? Answer: its methods: ŒThe 
methods of science, i.e., the means thanks to which it works out 
the truth, are the soul of science, the basis of its achievements.¹25 
Now, though apparently diverse, these methods can all be reduced 
to one fundamental method: induction.26 But what is the origin of 
induction, asks Bogdanov? It is, he claims, the organism¹s adaptational 
response to its environment, proceeding from a mere reflex 
movement to what he calls a Œpractical generalization¹. This 
generalization remains embryonic in the animal, but in man it 
undergoes an extraordinary development, because man is a Œbeing 
of labour¹ who has to organize means to an end. . . . 
But clearly this explanation is not enough to explain how one 
gets from practical generalization to theoretical generalization, 
which is what induction really means. So we find Bogdanov 
endeavouring to cobble together a theory of the common origin of 
language and thought in the act of labour. Basing himself on the 
works of the German monist philologist Noiré - the Œbrilliant 
Noiré¹, Œa Marxist in philology without knowing it¹27 - he defends 
the notion that every word is always already from the beginning a 
Œword-concept¹ in the rudimentary form of a Œlabour interjection¹28 
which constitutes Œthe intelligible designation of the act of labour 
to which it relates and which is natural to all the members of the 
collectivity¹. From which, finally, he can conclude that Œsince the 
original word signifies an action, a series of words already constituted 
a technical rule¹. He has brought it off: all that now has to be 
done is to describe the development of man¹s struggle against the 
25 As is well known, this positivist thesis of the primacy of method over concepts and 
theories was to have an illustrious future in Marxist philosophy itself, where it is expressed 
in the idealist thesis of the primacy of dialectics conceived as the Universal Method over 
materialism. 
26 As we shall see, Bogdanov presents deduction as a derived form of induction. 
27 Thanks to the generosity, erudition and sagacity of Mlle. Y. Conry, I can identify 
Ludwig Noiré (1829-89), who, as Bogdanov greatly regretted, has failed to leave an 
imperishable name in the history of philology. A philosopher and philologist, he taught at 
Mainz. He was the author of several works on the monist philosophy of language, of an 
essay on Max Müller, from whom he took the term interjection, and of a historical introduction 
to an edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1883). 
28 See the extraordinary pages of anthropology-fiction that Bogdanov devotes to this 
question, such as Methods of Labour and Methods of Knowledge (1918).

Appendix 151 
environment to move from a lower stage of generalization to a 
higher stage, science thus appearing as the ultimate term in a 
continuous and progressive series. 
Hence Bogdanov¹s doubly anti-dialectical thesis that Œordinary 
thought¹ and Œscientific¹ thought are essentially the same, that there 
is no Œleap¹ between them and that Œscientific thought is only distinguished 
by its more organized aspect, i.e., by systematically 
rejecting everything which is contradictory¹. 
Logically one can but draw from this thesis relativistic epistemological 
conclusions as to the status of the truths produced by science. 
And this is what Bogdanov does, without hesitation; as the 
theoretician of the Universal System of all possible systems, he 
knows what consistency means. So he does not hesitate to write: 
the notion of Œobjective truth¹ is a (metaphysical) Œfetish¹, for science 
has only ever produced Œepochal truths¹. And when Plekhanov 
sharply reminded him that Engels had written exactly the opposite, 
maintaining that scientific truths are objective truths, he bridles, 
denounces bourgeois objectivism, maintains that his position is a 
Marxist one and attempts to prove that Engels could not have 
meant what he wrote! So true is it, for him, that the only Marxist 
definition of science is his one which Œre-establishes the continuity 
of the bond between labour and science¹: Œscience is the collective 
experience of organized labour¹. Whence follows immediately a 
definition of truth as the Œorganizing form of experience¹, obviously 
subject to the historical relativity of the Œdata¹ of that Œexperience¹. 
Sworn enemy of all contradiction, Bogdanov was never able to 
understand the Marxist position on this question. Despite Lenin¹s 
repeated explanations in Materialism and Empirio-criticism, he always 
refused to see the dialectical bond that unites, in what is in fact a 
contradictory unity, the relative and the absolute in dialecticalmaterialist 
theses; the theses that propose that the process of knowledge 
produces truths each of which, with respect to absolute truth, 
is historically only a relative truth, but is still absolutely a truth for 
all that. 
We shall se how it was this anti-dialectical position that was to 
make Bogdanov the first to hold the theory of the Œtwo sciences¹ - 
bourgeois and proletarian - whose subsequent destiny is only too 
well known. . . . 
But before turning to this burning issue, it is worth noting how 
Bogdanov¹s epistemological relativism is, as I have said, built onto

152 
a continuist and evolutionist theory of the history of the sciences. 
If the soul of science is its methods; if these methods can all be 
reduced to their origin in methods of labour, the development of 
science must be related to that of the methods of labour. Once 
again ignoring the abstract character of the Marxist notion of the 
Œlabour process¹, Bogdanov reduces the process of production to a 
progressively improving handling of the material elements of the 
productive forces alone; the level of improvement - Œorganization¹ 
- of these elements expressing that of man¹s adaptation to his 
environment. The reference he makes on several occasions in this 
connection to Darwin should not conceal the fact that this is no 
more than a hybrid evolutionism, appealed to simply to justify 
Bogdanov¹s continuist and teleological thesis about the history of 
the sciences: that it is Œan uninterrupted chain of developments that 
runs from the elementary organizational procedures of labour to 
the summit of scientific methods¹. 
This thesis finds a place in what has to be called the idealist 
philosophy of history constructed by Bogdanov after Empiriomonism, 
which is itself an evolutionist philosophy of a quasi- 
Spencerian type, and which attempts to pass itself off as Marxist by 
making a mechanistic interpretation of the conceptions advanced 
by Marx of the productive forces, the relations of production and 
the relations between them. Indeed, it is very striking that in 
amputating the Marxist concept of Œproductive forces¹ from its 
social-human element - labour power - and thus destroying the 
specific difference that separates this concept once and for all from 
any bourgeois technicist notion of technique, Bogdanov reduced 
the relations of production in their turn to purely technical relations 
of organization of labour. From then on, in his picture of the world, it 
is no longer, as it is with Marx, the class struggle which is the motor 
of all history, but rather the development of technique.29 It has to 
be said that for Bogdanov, as later for Stalin, Œtechnique decides 
everything¹. As a result, the division of society into classes seems 
only a transitory and inessential obstacle to the harmonious 
development of society in a temporally continuous and homogeneous 
line, endowed with an inner purpose in the shadow cast by 
its Origin. 
29 Like Stalin later, and so many others since, Bogdanov bases himself on a mechanistic 
interpretation of the famous but theoretically ambiguous 1859 Preface to A Contribution to 
the Critique of Political Economy.

Appendix 153 
Thus the theoretical elements come together to form the 
grandiose system of Tectology that crowns this philosophy of history 
by describing the history of human societies as governed from 
the moment they emerged by a hitherto unnoticed principle of 
organization. Through the struggles and tragedies of real history,30 
Organization, an atemporal ordering principle, is what is seeking 
its realization. So that class societies - in particular, bourgeois 
society - are conceived as imperfect realizations or rough drafts of 
Organization; organizations whose principle - disorganization or 
Œanarchy¹ - betrays their own essence. By the same token they are 
revealed as fragile, unstable social formations, destined to disappear, 
because they were undermined from the very first by the 
silent contradiction which will carry them off. 
Hence the Bogdanovist theory of proletarian revolution conceived 
not as a process of suppression of class struggle by class 
struggle, but as the advent of the originary essence of Œsociety as 
such¹, in the actual presence of a society of a new type, realizing in 
the end of all ends the Idea which had inhabited every previous 
society unbeknownst. As for the proletariat, far from being defined 
in this advent by the place that capitalist relations of production 
assign it in the class struggle, it is conceived as the bearer - I will go 
so far as to say the Œincarnation¹, for this is pure mysticism - of a 
project inscribed from the very beginning in the most embryonic 
forms of association between men. Its historical mission is to be, in 
Bogdanov¹s words, Œthe class of organization¹. 
Hence finally an expressive conception of the social whole, 
whose essence - the technical forms of organization of labour - is 
equally manifested in each of its component parts. It is this expressive 
conception that governs the Bogdanovist theory of ideology; 
a theory Bogdanov always regarded as one of his essential contributions 
to the development of Œhistorical materialism¹; a theory which 
did, indeed, in its way, seem to fill a gap in Marx¹s edifice.31 
This theory is constructed around one central thesis, which the 
reader will already have guessed: ideology is the organization of 
30 Thus Bogdanov interprets Œhot-foot¹ the imperialist war of 1914 and the October 
Revolution in the same terms: as Œcrises¹ of disorganization which should give rise to an 
organic period. We are very close to Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, to utopian technocracy 
and bourgeois sociology. 
31 Many Marxists have been taken in by this theory, and not just minor ones, for Bukharin 
adopted it in his textbook Historical Materialism, citing Bogdanov on a number of occasions.

154 
ideas that expresses at each moment of history the forms of organization 
of labour. It is understandable, given this basis, that Bogdanov 
should have proposed a mechanistic theory of ideological 
transformations which found a response in the idealist conception 
of ideology whose bearers had been the revolutionary intellectuals 
in Russia.32 
3 The Bogdanovist Theory of the 
ŒTwo Sciences¹ 
leave it to the reader to discover and appreciate the tenacity and 
agility with which Bogdanov manages to assemble the disparate 
elements of his philosophical system into a theory which, as a good 
idealist, he makes applicable, willy-nilly, to everything either real or 
possible. 
It is now time to examine one of his theses in a little more detail, 
an essential one, or at any rate the one which was destined to have 
the most resounding future: the thesis of the Œtwo sciences¹. One 
cannot fail to note that the pages he devotes to it are profoundly 
marked by the contradiction which, as I have suggested, affects his 
basic philosophical armature. The introduction of the notion of 
labour into this armature as a foundation for the ŒMachist¹ category 
of experience does allow him to break in one essential respect with 
the empiricist-positivist conception of science and produces in his 
theory the materialist effects which make his writings still absorbing 
today. But on the other hand, all his critical analyses of the bourgeois 
practice and conception of science are Œtaken over¹ by his 
relativist conception of truth and his evolutionist conception of 
history, and it was precisely this takeover that gave rise to the 
construction of the notion of Œproletarian science¹. 
His criticism of Œbourgeois science¹ is developed on the basis of 
concrete examples in a pamphlet on Science and the Working Class. 
As one might have expected, the criticism of contemporary 
32 If ideology is an expression of the forms of organization of labour, and if the workers 
of modern industry therefore express in their ideology the Œcollectivist¹ essence of mechanized 
production, anticipations of the organization of the whole society and its ideology, then 
the ideology of the classes in alliance with them, notably the peasantry, which is profoundly 
individualistic, has to be destroyed. These theses simultaneously justify an economistic 
practice of ideological struggle which waits for the technical transformation of agricultural 
units to change peasant ideology (Bukharin¹s position, and, to a certain extent, Stalin¹s) and 
coercive methods against the peasants, especially in religious matters.

Appendix 155 
scientific practice is developed from the standpoint of its relation to 
labour. The bond originally, i.e., in his perspective by nature, linking 
science with labour has been broken in class societies, Bogdanov 
explains. Bourgeois science goes so far as to forget its origins completely, 
and all its faults and all its troubles should be imputed to 
this forgetfulness. 
The first effect of this forgetfulness is that science has lost sight 
even of the idea of the unity of its methods and disintegrated into a 
disparate body of specialized disciplines each of which develops in 
ignorance of its neighbours, deprived of the concourse by which 
they could mutually reinforce one another. This specialization, 
which Bogdanov prosecutes at every opportunity, is denounced 
both as an effect and as an image within science of the anarchy 
reigning in capitalist production and little by little affecting the 
whole of bourgeois society. This specialization reinforces a tendency 
inherent in the status of science in all class societies which 
Œfetishizes¹ the results it obtains as so many Œsacred mysteries¹, 
stating them in an esoteric language inaccessible to the mass of the 
people. And these mysteries, adds Bogdanov, are all the more protected 
insofar as scientific methods, grudgingly revealed in a profoundly 
Œelitist¹ pedagogy, are jealously kept secret by those who 
know them. All this, he concludes, has helped to constitute a caste 
of Œmental aristocrats¹, academic grandees in the service of the 
holders of power.33 Science has thus become an Œauthoritarian¹ 
instrument of the rule of the exploiting classes. 
So true is this that all those from among the oppressed who, by 
superhuman efforts, chance to get to share in these Œmysteries¹ are 
ipso facto distanced from their class brothers and often turned 
against them. ŒBourgeois science,¹ as Bogdanov constantly repeats, 
clearly obsessed by the question, Œis a science which makes bourgeois.¹ 
The tasks of the proletariat where science is concerned are defined 
by these conditions. The slogan is, of course, first to re-establish the 
33 It is not surprising that this thesis received such a warm welcome from the revolutionary 
intelligentsia during the early years of the revolution, for most famous Russian scientists 
were hostile to the Soviet regime. This was the case in the natural sciences, for example 
where, as A. Haudricourt recalled, a man such as Vavilov, who was devoted to the Soviet 
regime, was surrounded by specialists originating from the aristocracy who had nothing 
but hostility for the rabble. One of the reasons for Lysenko¹s rise was that he could play on 
the resultant mistrust of the academic authorities. He achieved this by placing himself under 
the banner of Ivan Michurin, whom he called the Œbarefoot scientist¹.

156 
link between science and labour, which means in particular to rely 
on the collective basis of labour in mechanized production so as to 
fight the individualist ideology of the possessors of knowledge, to 
reform the language of science, simplifying and unifying it, so as to 
secure, not its vulgarization - for vulgarization always distorts its 
content as a function of the ideological aims of the ruling class - but 
its real diffusion; to recast pedagogy, lastly, simplifying it and 
bringing it into contact with practice. The result will be what 
Bogdanov calls a Œsocialization¹ of scientific learning, promising an 
unprecedented future growth of knowledge. 
These are fascinating pages, in which Bogdanov is not afraid to 
go into the technical - and notably pedagogic - details of the 
reforms he is putting forward, and in which we can still all find 
something useful to us today; they describe concretely what Marx 
abstractly designated in Capital as the Œenrolment of science in the 
service of capital¹; they outline precisely the tasks of a possible 
Œproletarian organization of scientific research¹ as the effect on that 
research of a cultural revolution. 
It must be admitted that the essence of the theses Bogdanov 
sustains on the effects of the capitalist division of scientific labour 
within that labour itself; on the conditions of its reproduction and 
the forms of its diffusion, and hence on its ideological function in 
the service of the dominant ideology, are perfectly compatible with 
the classical Marxist thesis of the objectivity of scientific knowledges. 
For this objectivity thesis must not be confused with the 
positivist thesis of the neutrality of science, as it is by some people, so 
eager to dispense with Marxism that they fail to understand its 
simplest philosophical statements. It should even be added that 
only the thesis of objectivity, insofar as it is a thesis that poses the 
objectivity of scientific truths against idealist bourgeois philosophies 
which make that objectivity subject to the legal question of its 
Œtitle¹ and its Œfoundation¹, only this thesis enables one to formulate 
scientifically the problems of the history of scientific practice in its 
relations with other practices, and hence with the various forms of 
the class struggle. 
The example of Bogdanov himself proves this a contrario: for 
hardly had he picked the fruits of the thesis of the primacy of practice 
over theory implied by his beginnings of a break with the 
ŒMachist¹ category of Œexperience¹; hardly had he thus opened up to 
investigation the field of problems made thinkable by the thesis of

Appendix 157 
objectivity, an objectivity that the first thesis contains as an 
obligatory consequence, than he was forced by his attachment to 
Mach¹s basic philosophical apparatus and the relativism linked to it 
into a contradiction with his own positions and the evasion of an 
Œultra-left¹ idealist conception of Œproletarian science¹ as the only 
science in the full sense of the term. 
In fact, it can be said that all the effects of Bogdanov¹s idealist 
positions converged to Œproduce¹ this theory: if there are only 
Œepochal truths¹, all of the objectivity of which amounts to an 
expression of the level of development of the productive forces; if 
that level of development is always conveyed in the form of 
organization of the elements of the technique of labour; if those 
forms of organization are historically arranged according to a process 
of increasing rationalization and expansion in conformity with 
an evolution naturally based in Œbiological¹ data; if, with Œmechanized 
production¹, the collectivism of those forms of organization 
seems to promise an extension of this finally universalized rationality 
to the whole of society; then it must be admitted that the working 
class is by itself, through its position in production and the vision 
allowed it of the whole of nature and society, the bearer of a new - 
Œuniversal¹ - Œpoint of view¹ which should enable it to recast completely 
the conceptual edifice of all the existing sciences. 
Hence the famous lines from the pamphlet Science and the 
Working Class: ŒTo say that the class character of science resides in 
the defence of the interests of a given class is only a pamphleteer¹s 
argument or a falsification pure and simple. In reality, science may 
be bourgeois or proletarian in its very ³nature², notably in its 
origins, its conceptions, its methods of study and exposition. In this fundamental 
sense, all the sciences, social or otherwise, including mathematics 
and logic, can have and really do have a class character.¹ 
Hence, finally, the plan for a Proletarian University, and the 
attempts to realize it in the Socialist Academy, and then the projected 
edition of a Workers¹ Encyclopedia. A plan, attempts and a 
project that depend on the notion that the working class, the only 
class capable of theorizing on the basis of its practice the new 
collective-rational methods of mechanized production, is the bearer 
of a Œnew logic¹, and hence promises a new science.34 
34 This Bogdanovist theme of a proletarian logic is a stubborn growth: it has sprung up 
again recently and simultaneously in the works of Jacques Rancière, Jean-Marc Lévy- 
Leblond and Alain Badiou.

158 
4 Bogdanovism in Stalinist Ideology 
The history, most of it subterranean, of Bogdanovist themes is, I 
believe, indispensable to anyone who wishes to understand the 
constitution of the Soviet ideological system and the springs of the 
Stalinist practice of ideological struggle. 
This history coincides at first with the Œpublic¹ history of the 
Proletkult. Now, as I have already said, it was because it successfully 
systematized the Œspontaneous¹ ideology of the Russian 
revolutionary intelligentsia, because it bound together, in a theory 
which claimed to range itself in the camp of Marxism, the sectarian, 
anti-peasant tendencies and the economistic-technocratic tendencies 
of this intelligentsia, that it made an immense and durable 
impression, Lenin notwithstanding. It adequately expressed the 
specific form of the petty-bourgeois ideology that Russian intellectuals 
received from their history. 
But that is not all, for we have to add a supplementary reason 
helping to strengthen its audience and to extend the range of its 
appeal beyond the social stratum of the intellectuals into the masses 
themselves; a reason which also in a sense helped to assure the 
survival of its essential themes. This reason is a simple, but strong 
one: it is that many of the questions that Bogdanov posed in a 
mystified and contradictory way in his Œtectological¹ system 
reflected in their own way questions which the revolutionary process 
objectively put on the agenda at the same moment: the questions 
posed by the necessity for a Œcultural revolution¹, as Lenin called it, 
in order to pursue the socialist transition towards communism after 
the seizure of state power by the proletariat. 
Listen for a moment to the Proletkult militants. How, they ask, 
are we to construct a new culture which Œcorresponds¹ to the new 
relations of production? Should we or should we not make a 
Œtabula rasa¹ of the works of the past, or would it be better, as Marx 
suggested enigmatically, to appropriate its Œheritage¹ in a critical 
way? And a question which dominated the rest and was at stake in 
struggles of unprecedented bitterness in these days when all seemed 
possible: what new forms should be invented for education and 
pedagogy? Was it enough to send the children of workers to the 
schools instituted in the Tsarist regime? Should not educational 
institutions be modified and pedagogic methods be recast in the 
perspective of an end to the division between manual and mental 
labour, the perspective of communism? More generally, how

Appendix 159 
should the effects of the revolution be brought to bear on the everyday 
life of the masses, how should one practically challenge what in 
Russia is called Œbyt¹, i.e., in Marxist terms, the set of concrete 
ideological relations? 
Now, in all these burning issues, Marxist theory fell dramatically 
short, deprived as it still was of a sufficiently developed notion of 
ideological transformations. Bogdanov thus filled a gap with his 
doctrine; in these questions left unanswered by Marxism he found 
the necessary theoretical basis for his success. 
Lenin was perfectly well aware of this situation, and if, as we 
have seen, he was not sparing in his criticisms of the Bogdanovist 
notion of Œproletarian culture¹; if, for the reasons and in the forms I 
have described, he took measures to bring the Proletkult¹s expansion 
to a stop, he never failed to stress that the questions of Œcultural 
revolution¹ and in particular of the reorganization of the educational 
apparatus were open questions vitally interesting and urgent 
for the revolution. 
Stalin¹s procedure, on the other hand, was quite different: he 
simply buried these questions, before officially burying the 
Proletkult itself. But at the same time he managed to take advantage 
of the ambiguities implicit in their formulation and hence in 
the Bogdanovist perspective. He thus enclosed all ideological and 
cultural questions in the theoretical limits which had restricted the 
Proletkult itself. And as these theoretical limits were ultimately an 
expression of the petty-bourgeois ideology of the theoreticians of 
that movement, he was able to use the answers as a means to unify 
the stratum of intellectuals, production specialists and cadres in the 
state apparatus which was constantly reinforced by his economistictechnicist 
policy and required by his practices of repression. The 
Proletkult¹s themes were thus confiscated to serve an Œofficial¹ 
propaganda whose pragmatic aims were remote from the dreams 
of those well-meaning militants. This was already illustrated in 
1928 at the time of the trial at Shakty in the Donbass of some 
engineers, bourgeois specialists accused of sabotage. The government 
decided, in its own words, to Œloosen the reins¹ on the cultural 
front - i.e., after years of silence imposed in the interests of the NEP, 
to allow former ŒProletkultists¹ to speak out. The movement this 
gave rise to was largely a spontaneous one, but the government was 
quickly able to take it over as a means of mobilizing the masses 
ideologically around its policy of collectivization. The fact is that

160 
for three years the Bogdanovist themes of voluntarist humanism 
re-emerged; but this time as elements of the official ideological 
discourse. The questions which had fuelled the movement of 1918 
re-emerged at the same time, among them, naturally enough, that 
of the constitution of a Œproletarian science¹. Thus, in the magazine 
Pod Znamenem Marksizma, for example, there is an article by 
V. P. Egorshin containing the following passage: ŒThe modern 
science of nature is also a class phenomenon, just as much as 
philosophy and art. . . . It is bourgeois in its theoretical foundations.¹ 
There then follows, word for word, the Bogdanovist project of a 
doctrinal and institutional Œrecasting¹ of the sciences of nature 
subsequent to their critical re-examination; it constitutes the object 
of the specially created Institute of Red Professors.35 
The outcome of this movement is revealing. It was a ban and a 
trick: in 1932, hardly had they redeployed on the Œfront¹ of the 
ideological battle, the combatants were called on to withdraw in 
good order. The projects for a Œproletarianization¹ of the educational 
apparatus, which meant to the Komsomols and Pioneers 
who had adopted them the destruction of the old system and its 
replacement by a new type of institution which would have begun 
to reunite manual labour and intellectual labour, in fact resulted in 
decrees which subjected the existing educational system (with a few 
minor reforms) more closely to the authority of the Party. All that 
was alive in the attempts and organizations of the Œproletarian¹ 
writers was destroyed: there then began the period of the conformism 
and sectarianism of the Union of Writers. As for the 
natural sciences, the only original institution, officially set up in 
1918 as the Socialist Academy and becoming the Communist 
Academy in 1923, was integrated into the Academy of Sciences as 
one of its specialized sections in 1936. 
But the interesting thing about this is that hardly had Stalin 
proceeded to this bringing to heel than he accorded the ideological 
themes around which the movement had regrouped itself a kind of 
verbal resurrection. In 1935, he set the tone for the celebration of 
ŒSocialist Man¹, Œa new man of a hitherto unknown species¹; and 
from 1936 these themes were to become an integral and essential 
35 On all these points one can refer to the works of the American historian Sheila Fitzpatrick 
on the ŒSoviet cultural revolution¹.

Appendix 161 
part of the official ideology of the Soviet state. Until the War the 
real or imaginary exploits of the Stakhanovites provided ever new 
occasions for their reactivation and amplification. I have suggested 
elsewhere36 how these themes were then made the Œfoundation¹ for 
the veritable flight forward that Stalinist policy performed when 
confronted with the unprecedented problems posed by the forms 
of the class struggle in a transition period, and a mask, by denying 
the very existence of that struggle, for the coercive answers they 
were given. 
The final official adoption, in 1948, of the theory of the Œtwo 
sciences¹ as a theme in the campaign which endorsed Lysenko¹s 
scientific frauds as state doctrine and in a few months spread to all 
cultural spheres, is surprising at first glance when one realizes that 
the Zhdanovists unleashed what they themselves called a ŒMachist 
hunt¹, while taking their slogan (Œbourgeois science or proletarian 
science¹), without saying so, obviously, and probably without 
knowing it, from the theory of the man whom Lenin had denounced 
as ŒMach¹s Russian disciple¹! But we can now understand what 
lay behind this apparent irony of history. The same ideological 
mechanism is at work in it. In a moment of crisis37 when the Soviet 
Party and state needed to tighten the ranks of intellectuals around 
them in order that they fulfill their Œorganic¹ function, and the 
ranks of the Communist Parties of the whole world around the 
Soviet Union in order to counter the plans of American imperialism, 
they revived the Œultra-left¹ variant of the intellectuals¹ 
Œspontaneous¹ Bogdanovist ideology, now stowing it in the official 
version of Marxist philosophy.38 With the notorious effects of 
intimidation, threat and repression within the Soviet Union and in 
the various Communist Parties of the Œimperialist camp¹ (even if in 
the latter the tragic consequences for individuals could not be so 
fateful as they were in the former). 
36 See pp. 75-77 above. 
37 An internal crisis affecting the Party¹s relationship with the masses once the patriotic 
fervour of the war years had died down and resort had once again been made to repressive 
practices; an external crisis overdetermining the internal one and corresponding to the 
Œturn¹ in Stalin¹s policy vis-à-vis his wartime Œallies¹. A turn initiated by Zhdanov¹s report 
on the international situation of February 1947 which was to install the Soviet Union in the 
ŒCold War¹. 
38 In my remarks on Lysenko above, I have briefly demonstrated how this Œontological¹ 
version of dialectical materialism was in principle perfectly compatible with the ŒBogdanovist¹ 
theme of the two sciences, although the latter need not necessarily be deduced from it.

162 
t t t 
Can it be said that in this sort of petrified cultural revolution we 
have the last avatar of Bogdanovism in Soviet ideology, and that it 
then disappeared for ever along with the great Zhdanovist masquerade? 
Maybe. Yet is it really certain that the theme of Œthe 
scientific and technical revolution¹ which is one of the main themes 
of official Soviet ideology today and which, as an essential component 
of the so-called theory of Œstate monopoly capitalism¹, 
wreaks its political and theoretical havoc in the Western Communist 
Parties, is alien to the presuppositions of this system? A 
system still the victim of a Œforgetfulness¹ whose tenacity, it must be 
admitted, is still decidedly symptomatic.

Aleksandrov, Georgii Fedorovich, 113f., 
143n 
Alikhanyan, Sos Isaakovich, 127n 
Althusser, Louis, 23, 91n, 101n, 104, 118, 
126, 147n 
Aragon, Louis, 23f., 26 
Aristotle, 13 
Badiou, Alain, 157n 
Balibar, Étienne, 105n 
Besse, Guy, 147n 
Bettelheim, Charles, 8n, 73 
Blamont, Jacques, 60 
Bogdanov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, 104, 
113n, 121, 121n, 137-44, 137n, 139n, 
140n, 141n, 144n, 145n, 146-59, 146n, 
147n, 149n, 150n, 152n, 153n 
Büchner, Ludwig, 147n 
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, 80, 81n 
Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich, 73, 153n, 
154n 
Burbank, Luther, 66, 66n 
Butler, Samuel, 86n 
Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges, 147 
Canguilhem, Georges, 79n, 82n, 84, 93n 
Casanova, Laurent, 24n 
Champenoix, Jean, 18 
Chelintsev, G. V., 115, 115n 
Claudin, Ferdinand, 8n 
Cogniot, Georges, 23 
Cohen, Francis, 24n, 102f., 108, 129 
Cohen, Robert S., 144n 
Comte, Auguste, 140n, 153n 
Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas 
Caritat, marquis de, 92 
Conry, Yvette, 92n, 150n 
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 21 
Index 
Correns, Carl Franz Joseph Erich, 79n 
Crick, Francis, 132 
Croce, Benedetto, 105 
Cuvier, Georges, 21 
Dagognet, François, 66n 
Daniel, Lucien, 66, 66n 
Darwin, Charles, 22f., 26ff., 31f., 44, 47, 59, 
79f., 80n, 88-95, 93n, 95n, 98f., 118n, 152 
Daumas, Maurice, 20, 20n 
Deborin, Abram Moiseevich, 112n 
Dechezlepêtre, 147n 
Desanti, Jean Toussaint, 24n, 113n 
Descartes, René, 117n 
Diderot, Denis, 121n 
Dmitriev, V. S., 76 
Dodonova, A., 141n 
Dokuchaev, Vasilu Vasil'evich, 52, 52n 
Dolgushin, Donat' Aleksandrovich, 59 
Dubinin, Nikolai Petrovich, 30 
Dühring, Eugen Karl, 49, 104 
Dumas, Charles, 22, 22n 
Egorshin, V. P., 160 
Einstein, Albert, 115 
Elleinstein, Jean, 120n 
Engels, Friedrich, 14, 22, 27f., 27n, 49, 90ff., 
90n, 100, 102, 104, 105n, 114n, 117, 117n, 
125, 146f., 151 
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 160n 
Flemming, Walther, 82n 
Freud, Sigmund, 86n 
Frey, Kenneth J., 61n 
Frolov, Ivan Timofeevich, 117n 
Galilei, Galileo, 20f. 
Garaudy, Roger, 147n 
163

164 
Gastev, Aleksei Kapitonovich, 144n 
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Étienne, 21 
Giorello, Giulio, 149n 
Glushchenko, Ivan Evdokimovich, 102 
Gorbumov, Nikolai Petrovich, 49 
Gor'kii, Maksim, 121n 
Goux, Jean Michel, 61n 
Graham, Loren, 38, 48n, 63, 115n 
Gramsci, Antonio, 105,125 
Grille, Dietrich, 141n 
Guyot, Raymond, 24n 
Haeckel Ernst, 114n, 147n 
Haldane, John Scott, 88n 
Haudricourt, André G., 155n 
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 106, 117n 
Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand 
von, 145n 
Hitler, Adolf, 19 
Hobbes, Thomas 28, 90n 
Hume, David, 144n 
Il'in, A. Ya., 117n 
Isaev, Sergei Ivanovich, 65 
Jacob, François, 79n, 81n, 82n, 93n 
Johanssen, Wilhelm Ludwig, 83, 85 
Joravsky, David, 36, 36n, 38, 45n, 56, 61, 
63ff., 76f., 132 
Kaftznov, Sergei Vasil'evich, 114 
Kant, Immanuel, 117n, 144n 
Kedrov, Bonifatii Mikhailovich, 116, 117n 
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 11, 132ff. 
Kislovskii, D. A., 76 
Klippart, John Hancock, 63 
Kolakowski, Leszek, 144n 
Kol'tsov, Nikolai Konstantinovich, 18 
Kovalevskii, Vladimir Onufrievich, 28 
Krylov, A. V., 58 
Labeyrie, Vincent, 119n 
Lacan, Jacques, 86n 
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de 
Monet de, 46, 46n, 93, 97, 97n 
Lavrov, Pavel Lavrovich, 27n, 90n 
Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich, 8-11, 24n, 43n, 
48n, 49n, 71, 91, 102, 104, 106, 107n, 
112n, 113, 113n, 117, 117n, 121n, 125, 
137ff., 139n, 141-4, 142n, 144n, 146, 
146n, 149, 151, 148f., 161 
Lepeshinskaya, Ol'ga Vasil'evna, 114, 114n 
Lévy-Leblond, Jean-Marc, 157n 
Levit, Solomon Grigor'evich, 18, 49 
Limoges, Camille, 92n, 93n 
Linhart, Robert, 142, 142n 
Lobanov, Pavel Pavlovich, 58f., 76, 127n, 
131 
Lunacharskii, Anatolii Vasil'evich, 121n, 
139n 
Lysenko, Denis N., 40 
Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich, 7, 13-24, 
21n, 26-51, 36n, 37n, 38n, 39n, 43n, 45n, 
46n, 48n, 52-9, 61-71, 61n, 74-8, 84-103, 
97n, 107, 107n, 111, 113-6, 117n, 118n, 
119f., 119n, 123, 128-34, 143n, 155n, 
161, 161n 
Mach, Ernst, 140, 144-9, 144n, 145n, 146n, 
149n, 157, 161 
Maksimov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, 115, 
115n 
Malenkov, Georgii Maksimilianovich, 131 
Malthus, Thomas Robert, 27f., 90n, 92f., 98 
Mao Tse-tung, 104f., 125 
Markov, Moisei Aleksandrovich, 115f., 
115n 
Marx, Karl, 8, 14f., 22, 102, 104, 110, 110n, 
112, 125, 141, 146ff., 147n, 152f., 156 
Mathon, Claude Charles, 23n 
Maupertius, Pierre Louis Moreau de, 81n 
Mayakovskii, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 44 
Mayer, R., 61n 
Mechnikov, Il'ya Il'ich, 28 
Medvedev, Zhores Aleksandrovich, 7n, 21, 
21n, 36, 36n, 38, 49n, 56, 61, 63, 65f., 100, 
130, 133 
Meister, Georgii Karlovich, 49 
Mendel, Gregor, 19f., 28, 32, 43n, 59, 
79-89, 79n, 81n, 85n, 98f., 118n, 133 
Michurin, Ivan Vladimirovich, 22, 23n, 24, 
30, 33f., 43ff., 43n, 45n, 48, 52n, 58, 66, 
66n, 102, 118n, 155n 
Mikhalevich, Aleksandr Vladimirovich, 76 
Mitin, Mark Bonsovich, 50, 102, 116, 118n, 
126 
Moleschott, Jacob, 147n 
Molière, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 19 
Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, 133 
Monod, Jacques, 21, 21n, 54, 56f., 63, 91n, 
100f., 101n, 119n 
Morgan, Thomas Hunt, 19, 28, 83, 83n, 85, 
102, 118n 
Muller, Hermann Joseph, 48, 48n, 61, 84f. 
Müller, Max, 150n 
Muralov, Aleksandr Ivanovich, 49

Mury, Gilbert, 147n 
Naegeli, Karl Wilhelm, 87 
Naudin, Charles, 81f., 81n 
Newton, Isaac, 21 
Noiré, Ludwig, 150, 150n 
Paley, William, 93n 
Pauling, Linus, 115, 115n 
Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich, 44 
Pearson, Karl, 85, 85n 
Perov, S. S., 60 
Piquemal, Jacques, 81, 81n 
Plekhanov, Georgii Valentinovich, 137, 
147n, 151 
Politzer, Georges, 104 
Polyakov, Il'ya Mikhailovich, 89, 127n 
Prenant, Marcel, 22f., 60f., 84, 88n, 96, 99 
Prezent, Isaak Izrailovich, 47ff., 74, 99 
Ptolemy, 21 
Pukhal'skii, A. V., 76 
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 44 
Rancière, Jacques, 157n 
Rapoport, I. A., 62 
Rosenberg, Alfred, 88 
Rostand, Jean, 20, 83n 
Safonov, Vadim Andreevich, 38n, 41, 44, 
66n, 96 
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri, comte de, 
140n, 153n 
Sakharov, Andrei Dmitrievich, 133 
Schmalhausen, I. I., see Shmal'gauzen 
Scopes, John Thomas, 23 
Sechenov, Ivan Mikhailovich, 28 
Shaumyan, V. A, 97n 
Shmal'gauzen, Ivan Ivanovich, 102, 116 
Stakhanov, Aleksei Grigor'evich, 76, 143n 
165 
Stalin, Josef Vissarionovich, 7, 12ff., 21, 33f., 
37, 49f., 52, 69-75, 72n, 77, 95, 102, 
105-10, 100n, 114, 116, 118n, 124, 
127-31, 147n, 152, 152n, 154n, 159f., 
161n 
Stoletov, Vsevolod Nikolaevich, 41f., 41n, 
44n, 102 
Stroun, Maurice, 23n 
Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 142 
Timiryazev, Kliment Arkadicvich, 22, 28 
Tolstoi, Lev Nikolaevich, 44 
Tschermak von Seysenegg, Erich, 79n 
Turbin, Nikolai Vasil'evich, 58 
Vasilenko, Ivan Fomich, 127n 
Vassails, Gérard, 24n 
Vavilov, Nikolai Ivanovich, 21, 48f., 49n, 
70, 155n 
Viala, Pierre, 66n 
Vil'yams, Vasilii Robertovich, 34, 50-53, 
51n, 52n, 69, 129 
Vodkov, A. P., 71f. 
Vogt, Karl Christoph, 147n 
Vries, Hugo de, 79n, 83, 83n 
Vysokos, Grigorii Potapovich, 68 
Watson, James Dewey, 132 
Weismann, August, 28f., 32, 86-9, 86n, 
87n, 88n, 98f., 118n 
Wetter, Gustav, 96, 96n, 144n 
Williams, V. R., see Vil'yams 
Yakovlev, Pavel Nikanovovich, 65 
Zhdanov, Andrei Aleksandrovich, 113, 
143, 143n, 161n 
Zhebrak, Anton Romanovich, 59f., 65 
Zhukovskii, Petr Mikhailovich, 89f., 127n