Source: The Situation in the Science of Biology (Address delivered by Academician Trofim Denisovich Lysenko at a session of the All-Union Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 31 July--7 August 1948);
Published: Birch Book Unlimited, 1950;
Online Version: Sally Ryan for the T. D. Lysenko Reference Archive (marxists.org) 2002.

2. THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY: A HISTORY OF IDEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY

THE appearance of Darwin's teaching, expounded in his book, The Origin of Species, marked the beginning of scientific biology.

The classics of Marxism, while fully appreciating the significance of the Darwinian theory, pointed out the errors of which Darwin was guilty. Darwin's theory, though unquestionably materialist in its main features, is not free from some serious errors. A major fault, for example, is the fact that, along with the materialist principle, Darwin introduced into his theory of evolution reactionary Malthusian ideas. In our days this major fault is being aggravated by reactionary biologists.

Darwin himself recorded the fact that he accepted the Malthusian idea. In his Autobiography we read:

"In 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 these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. Here then I had last got a theory by which to work." [My emphasis--T. L.]

Many are still apt to slur over Darwin's error in transferring into his teaching Malthus's preposterous reactionary ideas on population. The true scientist cannot and must not overlook the erroneous aspects of Darwin's teaching.

Biologists should always ponder these words of Engels: "The entire Darwinian teaching on the struggle for existence merely transfers from society to the realm of living nature Hobbes's teaching on bellum omnium contra omnes and the bourgeois economic teaching on competition, along with Malthus's population theory. After this trick (the absolute justification for which I deny, particularly in regard to Malthus's theory) has been performed, the same theories are transferred back from organic nature to history and the claim is then made that it has been proved that they have the force of eternal laws of human society. The childishness of this procedure is obvious, and it is not worth while wasting words on it. But if I were to dwell on this at greater length, I should have started out by showing that they are poor economists first, and only then that they are poor naturalists and philosophers."[2]

...Darwin himself, in his day, was unable to fight free of the theoretical errors of which he was guilty. It was the classics of Marxism that revealed those errors and pointed them out. Today there is absolutely no justification for accepting the erroneous aspects of the Darwinian theory, those based on Malthus's theory of overpopulation with the inference of a struggle presumably going on within species. And it is all the more inadmissible to represent these erroneous aspects as the cornerstone of Darwinism (as I. I. Schmalhausen, B. M. Zavadovsky, and P. M. Zhukovsky do). Such an approach to Darwin's theory prejudices the creative development of its scientific core.

In the post-Darwinian period the overwhelming majority of biologists--far from further developing Darwin's teaching--did all they could to debase Darwinism, to smother its scientific foundation. The most glaring manifestation of such debasement of Darwinism is to be found in the teachings of Weismann, Mendel, and Morgan, the founders of modern reactionary genetics.

3. TWO WORLDS--TWO IDEOLOGIES IN BIOLOGY

The materialist theory of the evolution of living nature involves recognition of the necessity of hereditary transmission of individual characteristics acquired by the organism under the conditions of its life; it is unthinkable without recognition of the inheritance of acquired characters.

Weismann denied the inheritability of acquired characters and elaborated the idea of a special hereditary substance to be sought for in the nucleus. "The sought for bearer of heredity ", he stated, "is contained in the chromosome material." The chromosomes, he said, contain units, each of which "determines a definite part of the organism in its appearance and final form ".

...

It is no exaggeration to state that Morgan's feeble metaphysical "science" concerning the nature of living bodies can stand no comparison with our effective Michurinist agro-biological science.

The new vigorous trend in biology, or more truly the new Soviet biology, agro-biology, has met with strong opposition on the part of representatives of reactionary biology abroad, as well as of some scientists in our country.

We, the representatives of the Soviet Michurin trend, contend that inheritance of characters acquired by plants and animals in the process of their development is possible and necessary. Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin mastered these possibilities in his experiments and practical activities. The most important point is that Michurin's teaching, expounded in his works, shows every biologist the way to regulating the nature of vegetable and animal organisms, the way of altering it in a direction required for practical purposes by regulating the conditions of life, i.e., by physiological means.

4. THE SCHOLASTICISM OF MENDELISM-MORGANISM

The Mendelist-Morganists have thus thrown overboard one of the greatest acquisitions in the history of biological science--the principle of the inheritance of acquired characters.

To the materialist teaching that it is possible for plants and animals to inherit individual variations of characters acquired under the influence of conditions of life, Mendelism-Morganism opposes an idealistic assertion, dividing the living body into two separate substances: the mortal body (or soma) and an immortal hereditary substance, germ-plasm. It is further categorically maintained that changes in the soma, i.e., in the living body, have no effect whatever upon the hereditary substance.

7. MICHURIN'S TEACHING, FOUNDATION OF SCIENTTFIC BIOLOGY

CONTRARY to Mendelism-Morganism, with its assertion that the causes of variation in the nature of organisms are unknowable and its denial of the possibility of directed changes in the nature of plants and animals, I. V. Michurin's motto, was: "We must not wait for favours from Nature; our task is to wrest them from her."

His studies and investigations led I. V. Michurin to the following important conclusion: "It is possible, with man's 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 most useful for him."[16]

8. YOUNG SOVIET BIOLOGISTS SHOULD STUDY THE MICHURIN TEACHING

UNFORTUNATELY, the Michurin teaching is not so far taught in our universities and colleges. We Michurinists are greatly to blame for this. But it will be no mistake to say that it is also the fault of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Higher Education.

To this day Morganism-Mendelism is taught in the majority of our universities and colleges in the chairs of genetics and selection, and in many cases also in the chairs of Darwinism, whereas the Michurin teaching, the Michurin trend in science, fostered by the Bolshevik Party and by Soviet reality, remains in the shade.

We must realise that the formation of a species is a transition--in the course of historical process--from quantitative to qualitative variations. Such a leap is prepared by the vital activity of organic forms themselves, as the result of quantitative accumulations of responses to the action of definite conditions of life, and that is something that can definitely be studied and directed.

I am coming to the end. Now, Comrades, as regards the theoretical line in biology, Soviet biologists hold that the Michurin principles are the only scientific principles. The Weismannists and their followers, who deny the heritability of acquired characters, are not worth dwelling on at too great length. The future belongs to Michurin.

V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin discovered I. V. Michurin and made his teaching the possession of the Soviet people. By their great paternal attention to his work they saved for biology the remarkable Michurin teaching. The Party, the Government, and J. V. Stalin personally, have taken an unflagging interest in the further development of the Michurin teaching. There is no more honourable task for us Soviet biologists than to develop creatively Michurin's teaching and to follow in all our activities Michurin's style in the investigation of the nature of the evolution of living beings.

Our Academy must work to develop the Michurin teaching. In this it ought to follow the personal example of interest in the activity of I. V. Michurin shown by our great teachers--V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin.
CONCLUDING REMARKS

BEFORE I pass on to my concluding remarks I consider it my duty to make the following statement.

We recognise the chromosomes. We do not deny their presence. But we do not recognise the chromosome theory of heredity. We do not recognise Mendelism-Morganism.

Weismannism-Morganism has never been, nor can it be, a science conducive to the systematic production of new forms of plants and animals.

It is significant that abroad, in the United States for example, which is the home of Morganism and where it is so highly extolled as a theory, this teaching, because of its inadequacy, has no room in practical farming. Morganism as a theory is being developed per se, while practical farmers go their own way.

Weismannism-Morganism does not reveal the real laws of living nature; on the contrary, since it is a thoroughly idealistic teaching, it creates an absolutely false idea about natural laws.

For instance, the Weismannist conception that the hereditary characteristics of an organism are independent of environmental conditions has led scientists to affirm that the property of heredity (i.e., the specific nature of an organism) is subject only to chance. All the so-called laws of Mendelism-Morganism are based entirely on the idea of chance.

Here are a few examples.

"Gene" mutations, according to the theory of Mendelism-Morganism, appear fortuitously. Chromosome mutations are also fortuitous. Due to this, the direction of the process of mutation is also fortuitous. Proceeding from these invented fortuities, the Morganists base their experiments too on a fortuitous choice of substances that might act as mutation factors, believing that they are thereby acting on their postulated hereditary substance, which is just a figment of their imagination, and hoping to obtain fortuitously what may by chance prove to be of use.

According to Morganism, the separation of the so-called maternal and paternal chromosomes at reduction division is also a matter of pure chance. Fertilisation, according to Morganism, does not occur selectively, but by the chance meeting of germ cells. Hence the splitting of characters in the hybrid progeny is also a matter of chance, etc.

According to this sort of "science" the development of an organism does not proceed on the basis of the selectivity of conditions of life from the environment, but again on the basis of the assimilation of substances fortuitously entering from without.

On the whole, living nature appears to the Morganists as a medley of fortuitous, isolated phenomena, without any necessary connections and subject to no laws. Chance reigns supreme.

Unable to reveal the laws of living nature, the Morganists have to resort to the theory of probabilities, and, since they fail to grasp the concrete content of biological processes, they reduce biological science to mere statistics. It is not for nothing that statisticians, like Galton, Pearson, and latterly Fisher and Wright, are also regarded as founders of Mendelism-Morganism. Probably, that is also the reason why Academician Nemchinov has told us here that, as a statistician, he had no difficulty in mastering the chromosome theory of heredity.

Physics and chemistry have been rid of fortuities. That is why they have become exact sciences.

Living nature has been developing and is developing on the basis of strict laws inherent in it. Organisms and species develop in line with natural necessities inherent in them.

By ridding our science of Mendelism-Morganism-Weismannism we will expel fortuities from biological science. We must firmly remember that science is the enemy of chance. That is why Michurin, who was a transformer of nature, put forward the slogan: "We must not wait for favours [i.e., lucky chances--T.L.] from nature; our task is to wrest them from her."

Our system of collective farming and our socialist agriculture created the conditions for the flowering of the Michurin teaching. Let us recall Michurin's words: "In the person of the collective farmer the history of agriculture of all times and all nations has an entirely new type of farmer, one who has joined issue with the elements marvellously armed technically and acting on nature as a man with the aims of a renovator."[20]

"I see", wrote I. V. Michurin, "that the system of collective farming, by means of which the Communist Party is inaugurating the great work of renovating the land, will lead labouring humanity to real power over the forces of nature.

The great future of our entire natural science is in the collective farms and state farms."[21]

The Michurin teaching is inseparable from the practical collective farm and State farm activity. It is the best form of unity of theory and practice in agricultural science.

It is clear to us that the Michurian movement could not extensively develop, if there were no collective farms and State farms.

Without the Soviet system I. V. Michurin would have been, as he himself wrote, " an obscure hermit of experimental horticulture in Tsarist Russia "[22]

I call upon all Academicians, scientific workers, agronomists, and animal breeders to bend all their efforts and work in close unity with the foremost men and women in socialist farming to achieve these great and noble aims.

Long live the Michurin teaching, which shows how to transform living nature for the benefit of the Soviet people!

Long live the Party of Lenin and Stalin, which discovered Michurin for the world and created all the conditions for the progress of advanced materialist biology in our country.

Glory to the great friend and protagonist of science, our leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin!