Lysenko And The Tragedy Of Soviet Science

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Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science

Author : Valerii Soifer
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780813520872
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science by : Valerii Soifer

Download or read book Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science written by Valerii Soifer and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Dr. Soyfer, a former Soviet scientist who had met Lysenko, documents the destruction of science and scientists under the influence of Lysenko. Contrary to numerous opinions, Lysenko was an poorly educated agronomist who happened to have been in the right place at the right time: In the '30s, "Pravda" wrote him up as a pioneering scientist. Recognizing that newspapers and popular support could fuel his rise to the top of Soviet society, he set about making a name for himself as a scientist in non-academic journals and periodicals. His peasant upbringing and miraculous findings--never empirically proven or duplicated--made him a star proletarian scientist, the kind needed to bring about true Communism. Along his way to the top, he was assisted by many people who thought him a sincere, but ill preparted, scientist; he later had many of these people purged after gaining the almost total support of Stalin and Khrushchev. His grand claims of producing superior cattle and wheat, among other things, consistently failed, yet no one dared oppose or even question his policies. Whether to propel himself upward, bring down the academics he apparently detested, or protect himself and his "science", Lysenko nearly eliminated all serious work in genetics, agriculture, and biology from the '30s into the '60s. Numerous scientists were exiled, fired, or executed during his reign as the people's scientist; according to the author, the effects still linger in Russia. An amazing story of how, when politics decrees what science is acceptable and how it is going to work in the political paradigm, the results can be tragic.

Critical Encounters

Author : Cathy Caruth
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780813520889
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Critical Encounters by : Cathy Caruth

Download or read book Critical Encounters written by Cathy Caruth and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Lysenko’s Ghost

Author : Loren Graham
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674969049
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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Book Synopsis Lysenko’s Ghost by : Loren Graham

Download or read book Lysenko’s Ghost written by Loren Graham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko became one of the most notorious figures in twentieth-century science after his genetic theories were discredited decades ago. Yet some scientists, even in the West, now claim that discoveries in the field of epigenetics prove that he was right after all. Seeking to get to the bottom of Lysenko’s rehabilitation in certain Russian scientific circles, Loren Graham reopens the case, granting his theories an impartial hearing to determine whether new developments in molecular biology validate his claims. In the 1930s Lysenko advanced a “theory of nutrients” to explain plant development, basing his insights on experiments which, he claimed, showed one could manipulate environmental conditions such as temperature to convert a winter wheat variety into a spring variety. He considered the inheritance of acquired characteristics—which he called the “internalization of environmental conditions”—the primary mechanism of heredity. Although his methods were slipshod and his results were never duplicated, his ideas fell on fertile ground during a time of widespread famine in the Soviet Union. Recently, a hypothesis called epigenetic transgenerational inheritance has suggested that acquired characteristics may indeed occasionally be passed on to offspring. Some biologists dispute the evidence for this hypothesis. Loren Graham examines these arguments, both in Russia and the West, and shows how, in Russia, political currents are particularly significant in affecting the debates.

Stalin and the Scientists

Author : Simon Ings
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN 13 : 0802189865
Total Pages : 491 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (21 download)

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Book Synopsis Stalin and the Scientists by : Simon Ings

Download or read book Stalin and the Scientists written by Simon Ings and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century.” —Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine. But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2016 A New York Times Book Review “Paperback Row” selection “Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid . . . Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today.” —The New York Times Book Review “A must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union.” —The Washington Post

The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov

Author : Peter Pringle
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416566023
Total Pages : 387 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov by : Peter Pringle

Download or read book The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov written by Peter Pringle and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov, acclaimed journalist and author Peter Pringle recreates the extraordinary life and tragic end of one of the great scientists of the twentieth century. In a drama of love, revolution, and war that rivals Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, Pringle tells the story of a young Russian scientist, Nikolai Vavilov, who had a dream of ending hunger and famine in the world. Vavilov's plan would use the emerging science of genetics to breed super plants that could grow anywhere, in any climate, in sandy deserts and freezing tundra, in drought and flood. He would launch botanical expeditions to find these vanishing genes, overlooked by early farmers ignorant of Mendel's laws of heredity. He called it a "mission for all humanity." To the leaders of the young Soviet state, Vavilov's dream fitted perfectly into their larger scheme for a socialist utopia. Lenin supported the adventurous Vavilov, a handsome and seductive young professor, as he became an Indiana Jones, hunting lost botanical treasures on five continents. In a former tsarist palace in what is now St. Petersburg, Vavilov built the world's first seed bank, a quarter of a million specimens, a magnificent living museum of plant diversity that was the envy of scientists everywhere and remains so today. But when Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin took over, Vavilov's dream turned into a nightmare. This son of science was from a bourgeois background, the class of society most despised and distrusted by the Bolsheviks. The new cadres of comrade scientists taunted and insulted him, and Stalin's dreaded secret police built up false charges of sabotage and espionage. Stalin's collectivization of farmland caused chaos in Soviet food production, and millions died in widespread famine. Vavilov's master plan for improving Soviet crops was designed to work over decades, not a few years, and he could not meet Stalin's impossible demands for immediate results. In Stalin's Terror of the 1930s, Russian geneticists were systematically repressed in favor of the peasant horticulturalist Trofim Lysenko, with his fraudulent claims and speculative theories. Vavilov was the most famous victim of this purge, which set back Russian biology by a generation and caused the country untold harm. He was sentenced to death, but unlike Galileo, he refused to recant his beliefs and, in the most cruel twist, this humanitarian pioneer scientist was starved to death in the gulag. Pringle uses newly opened Soviet archives, including Vavilov's secret police file, official correspondence, vivid expedition reports, previously unpublished family letters and diaries, and the reminiscences of eyewitnesses to bring us this intensely human story of a brilliant life cut short by anti-science demagogues, ideology, censorship, and political expedience.

Agrobiology

Author : Trofim Lysenko
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 658 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Agrobiology by : Trofim Lysenko

Download or read book Agrobiology written by Trofim Lysenko and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theoretical principles of vernalization; Plant breeding and the theory of phasic development of plants; The reorganization of seed growing; The intravarietal crossing of self-pollinating plants; Two trends in genetics; Collective-farm laboratories and agronomic science; Intravarietal crossing and mendel's so-called "law" of segregation; The creator of soviet agrobiology (On the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the death of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin); Michurin's theory at the all-union agricultural exhibition; Ways of controlling plant organisms; New achievements in controlling the nature of plants; Organism and environment; Engels and certain problems of darwinism; What is michurin genetics?; K. A. Timiryazev and the tasks of our agrobiology; Hered ity and its variability; Natural selection and intraspecific competition; Genetics; The tasks of the lenin academy of agricultural sciences of the U.S.S.R.; Why bourgeois science is up in arms against the works of soviet scientists; The situation in biological science; Experimental hill sowing of forest belts; New developments in the science of biological species; Vitality of plant and animal organisms; The conversion of nonwintering spring varieties into winterhardy winter varieties.

Science and Ideology

Author : Mark Walker
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136466622
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (364 download)

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Book Synopsis Science and Ideology by : Mark Walker

Download or read book Science and Ideology written by Mark Walker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does science work best in a democracy? Were 'Soviet' or 'Nazi' science fundamentally different from science in the USA? These questions have been passionately debated in the recent past. Particular developments in science took place under particular political regimes, but they may or may not have been directly determined by them. Science and Ideology brings together a number of comparative case studies to examine the relationship between science and the dominant ideology of a state. Cybernetics in the USA is compared to France and the Soviet Union. Postwar Allied science policy in occupied Germany is juxtaposed to that in Japan. The essays are narrowly focussed, yet cover a wide range of countries and ideologies. The collection provides a unique comparative history of scientific policies and practices in the 20th century.

The Perversion Of Knowledge

Author : Dr. Vadim J. Birstein
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 078675186X
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis The Perversion Of Knowledge by : Dr. Vadim J. Birstein

Download or read book The Perversion Of Knowledge written by Dr. Vadim J. Birstein and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-09-09 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Soviet years, Russian science was touted as one of the greatest successes of the regime. Russian science was considered to be equal, if not superior, to that of the wealthy western nations. The Perversion of Knowledge, a history of Soviet science that focuses on its control by the KGB and the Communist Party, reveals the dark side of this glittering achievement. Based on the author's firsthand experience as a Soviet scientist, and drawing on extensive Russian language sources not easily available to the Western reader, the book includes shocking new information on biomedical experimentation on humans as well as an examination of the pernicious effects of Trofim Lysenko's pseudo-biology. Also included are many poignant case histories of those who collaborated and those who managed to resist, focusing on the moral choices and consequences. The text is accompanied by the author's own translations of key archival materials, making this work an essential resource for all those with a serious interest in Russian history.

The Lysenko Affair

Author : David Joravsky
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226410323
Total Pages : 474 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lysenko Affair by : David Joravsky

Download or read book The Lysenko Affair written by David Joravsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lysenko affair was perhaps the most bizarre chapter in the history of modern science. For thirty years, until 1965, Soviet genetics was dominated by a fanatical agronomist who achieved dictatorial power over genetics and plant science as well as agronomy. "A standard source both for Soviet specialists and for sociologists of science."—American Journal of Sociology "Joravsky has produced . . . the most detailed and authoritative treatment of Lysenko and his view on genetics."—New York Times Book Review

From Newspeak to Cyberspeak

Author : Slava Gerovitch
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262572255
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (722 download)

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Book Synopsis From Newspeak to Cyberspeak by : Slava Gerovitch

Download or read book From Newspeak to Cyberspeak written by Slava Gerovitch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Slava Gerovitch argues that Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With this new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in science. The history of Soviet cybernetics followed a curious arc. In the 1950s it was labeled a reactionary pseudoscience and a weapon of imperialist ideology. With the arrival of Khrushchev's political "thaw," however, it was seen as an innocent victim of political oppression, and it evolved into a movement for radical reform of the Stalinist system of science. In the early 1960s it was hailed as "science in the service of communism," but by the end of the decade it had turned into a shallow fashionable trend. Using extensive new archival materials, Gerovitch argues that these fluctuating attitudes reflected profound changes in scientific language and research methodology across disciplines, in power relations within the scientific community, and in the political role of scientists and engineers in Soviet society. His detailed analysis of scientific discourse shows how the Newspeak of the late Stalinist period and the Cyberspeak that challenged it eventually blended into "CyberNewspeak."

Naming Infinity

Author : Loren Graham
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674032934
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Naming Infinity by : Loren Graham

Download or read book Naming Infinity written by Loren Graham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.

Buried Glory

Author : Istvan Hargittai
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199985596
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis Buried Glory by : Istvan Hargittai

Download or read book Buried Glory written by Istvan Hargittai and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of the lives of twelve notable and celebrated Soviet scientists from the Cold War era, a time of great scientific achievement in the USSR.

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

Author : James Von Geldern
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253209696
Total Pages : 548 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass Culture in Soviet Russia by : James Von Geldern

Download or read book Mass Culture in Soviet Russia written by James Von Geldern and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995-12-22 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology offers a rich array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, comic routines, and folklore to offer a close look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. Both state-sponsored cultural forms and the unofficial culture that flourished beneath the surface are represented. The focus is on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses. The period covered encompasses the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the mixed economy and culture of the 1920s, the tightly controlled Stalinist 1930s, the looser atmosphere of the Great Patriotic War, and the postwar era ending with the death of Stalin. Much of the material appears here in English for the first time. A companion 45-minute audio tape (ISBN 0-253-32911-6) features contemporaneous performances of fifteen popular songs of the time, with such favorites as "Bublichki," "The Blue Kerchief," and "Katyusha." Russian texts of the songs are included in the book.

Kyiv as Regime City

Author : Martin J. Blackwell
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1580465587
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Kyiv as Regime City by : Martin J. Blackwell

Download or read book Kyiv as Regime City written by Martin J. Blackwell and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charts the resettlement of the Ukrainian capital after Nazi occupation and the returning Soviet rulers' efforts to retain political legitimacy.

Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems

Author : Jerome R. Ravetz
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000159841
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems by : Jerome R. Ravetz

Download or read book Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems written by Jerome R. Ravetz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is continually confronted by new and difficult social and ethical problems. Some of these problems have arisen from the transformation of the academic science of the prewar period into the industrialized science of the present. Traditional theories of science are now widely recognized as obsolete. In Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (originally published in 1971), Jerome R. Ravetz analyzes the work of science as the creation and investigation of problems. He demonstrates the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error, in scientific research. Ravetz's new introductory essay is a masterful statement of how our understanding of science has evolved over the last two decades.

Energiya-Buran

Author : Bart Hendrickx
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 038773984X
Total Pages : 541 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (877 download)

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Book Synopsis Energiya-Buran by : Bart Hendrickx

Download or read book Energiya-Buran written by Bart Hendrickx and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-12-05 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This absorbing book describes the long development of the Soviet space shuttle system, its infrastructure and the space agency’s plans to follow up the first historic unmanned mission. The book includes comparisons with the American shuttle system and offers accounts of the Soviet test pilots chosen for training to fly the system, and the operational, political and engineering problems that finally sealed the fate of Buran and ultimately of NASA’s Shuttle fleet.

New Atlantis Revisited

Author : Paul R. Josephson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780691044545
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (445 download)

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Book Synopsis New Atlantis Revisited by : Paul R. Josephson

Download or read book New Atlantis Revisited written by Paul R. Josephson and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1958 construction began on Akademgorodok, a scientific utopian community modeled after Francis Bacon's vision of a "New Atlantis." The city, carved out of a Siberian forest 2,500 miles east of Moscow, was formed by Soviet scientists with Khrushchev's full support. They believed that their rational science, liberated from ideological and economic constraints, would help their country surpass the West in all fields. In a lively history of this city, a symbol of de-Stalinization, Paul Josephson offers the most complete analysis available of the reasons behind the successes and failures of Soviet science--from advances in nuclear physics to politically induced setbacks in research on recombinant DNA. Josephson presents case studies of high energy physics, genetics, computer science, environmentalism, and social sciences. He reveals that persistent ideological interference by the Communist Party, financial uncertainties, and pressures to do big science endemic in the USSR contributed to the failure of Akademgorodok to live up to its promise. Still, a kind of openness reigned that presaged the glasnost of Gorbachev's administration decades later. The openness was rooted in the geographical and psychological distance from Moscow and in the informal culture of exchange intended to foster the creative impulse. Akademgorodok is still an important research center, having exposed physics, biology, sociology, economics, and computer science to new investigations, distinct in pace and scope from those performed elsewhere in the Soviet scientific establishment.