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power of scientific prevision, that my heart stood still with pride.
Pride that there is on this large planet a man intimate and dear, for
whom all complex questions and problems are an open book, for
whom, in all detail, the path of development of Soviet progressive
science is clear.
Clearly, when such a leader speaks, two times two will equal what–
ever he wants it to-at least for those within the reach of his secret
police. Indeed, under Stalin scientists with the temerity to oppose the
Party line were dismissed from their positions, often imprisoned, some–
times executed. Not only genetics, but other sciences, even physics, were
attacked: Einstein's relativity theory, Bohr's complementary principle,
Linus Pauling's theory of resonance, and other landmark discoveries of
modern science were, Zhores Medvedev points out in his exemplary his–
tory,
The Rise and Fall of
T.
D.
Lysenko,
denounced as reactionary and
"idealistic"-that is, not compatible with dialectical materialism. But
genetics, because it relates more directly to human behavior, fell under
the greatest interdiction: during Lysenko's supremacy there was a virtual
ban on the study of human genetics. Human heredity had become a
taboo subject. (The first post-Stalinist book on human genetics was
published, in fact, only in
1964!)
The Lysenko phenomenon suggested to Orwell the totalitarian denial
of objective truth that O'Brien expresses so melodramatically: his sadis–
tic catechism of Winston Smith distilled decades of Soviet subversion of
the concept of objective scientific knowledge. But as that era passed and
Marxist totalitarianism itself, in most of the world, receded into history,
its practice of collective solipsism assumed its postmodern form. A spec–
tre is haunting culture studies, the spectre of Comrade O'Brien.
AT THE HEIGHT of Lysenko's reign, the Minister of Education, Kaftanov,
ridiculed the very idea that there were heredity diseases: what kind of
progressive socialist society would it be that conceded so immutable a
role to genes? This position was part of the campaign
to
represent the
study of human genetics as a reactionary, fascistic scheme designed to
preserve the inequities of capitalism. Geneticists were depicted as allied
with Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and other virulent racists, working against
the efforts of progressive elements to abolish inequality and empower the
working class. Articles on genetics in the popular Soviet press were illus–
trated with pictures of Storm Troopers, hooded Klansmen, lynched
