LENIN, ULTRA-LEFTISM AND SCIENCE:
THE POLITICAL CLIMATE TO SCIENCE AND AGRICULTURE IN THE USSR 1917-36.
 

The State did not simply adopt a "laissez-faire" attitude to science organisation, but the academics and scientists were critically involved in the new bodies and the planning of initiatives. This did not mean that the scientists for their part did not simply keep their mouths shut. Some, particularly Pavlov and Vernadskii were quite proudly anti-Communist, in their philosophical and political differences with the Communists, as we shall see.

But, in short, Lenin's injunction regarding the Academy of Sciences to A.V.Lunacharskii (Commissar for education), was being followed. This was to ensure:
 

Proletkul't was a general cultural and literary movement of a generally Ultra-Left orientation. In September 1922, its Chairman, V.Pletnev, wrote in Pravda an article entitled: "On the Ideological Front". Here he charged the USSR to create a new Proletarian culture. For him science and technology were part of the cultural artifacts that needed to be overhauled. But the movement concentrated on art and poetry in its inital phases.

The following long passage from Graham, deserves full quotation, because it is highly reminiscent of many of the attitudes struck verbally later. These attitudes would be used to justify the very bellicose approaches of some of the Lysenkoists :

It is of interest that Iakovlev later became a key force, behind Lysenko's increasingly virulent attacks upon other types of non-Lysenkoist science. We will see, that it would appear that Iakovlev 'forgot' his earlier words, and Lenin's injunctions, at a later critical stage. For now in 1922, Iakovlev simply reiterated Lenin's line saying:

But clearly, on the whole there was a concerted attempt to enrol the scientists and the technicians into a societal drive forwards. In general there was not an attempt to strait jacket the scientists. In general irrespective of a scientists political view point, so long as they contributed to the societal effort to build socialism, they were valued.

Kalinin himself, who had defended "barbarization" against the specialists in 1922, later spoke highly of agriculturists in 1924 at a conference:

It should not be thought that his devotion to the Bolsheviks was a sham. Vavilov is on record as having pleaded with the emigre geneticist Dobzhansky to "go home and help the great cause" (p.36 Joravsky). He was later harassed and removed from his positions of eminence.

But he was publicly attacked by Lysenko for "impracticality"; "idealism"; and for maintaining close ties with Western scholars.
Shortly after, in 1940 he was arrested on charges of spying. In July 1941, he was tried on charges of spying for England and deliberate sabotage. He died during his life term, in 1943.

Up to the years 1928-29 then, it is widely agreed that the specialists were allowed their free hand. The controversy around what took place in the Soviet Union starts from this point. There is first a claim that the views of Lenin and Stalin diverged on the issue. Namely on how to work with what were effectively the psychological remnants of the old bourgeois inclined scientific community. It will become important to this work to ask:

Indeed as Fitzpatrick suggests, there was an increasingly bitter class battle going on. But she and the bourgeois historians only see the smoke and hear the gun. They do not see which sides many of the camouflaged fighters were on. It is assumed as always that if anyone was firing it had to be Stalin.

Unless this basic wrong assumption is appreciated, then the shifting sands of Soviet politics over the period leading up to Stalin's death cannot be safely traversed. This will become clearer as we examine the Leningrad Affair, later.

In fact it was Lunacharskii, not Stalin, who fired the first shots at the scientists by calling them "supercilious mandarins in science", for not voting A.M.Deborin, N.M.Lukin, and V.M.Friche into the Academy of Sciences as full members. Lunacharskii's advocacy of these members ensured that they were duly elected, following a newly ordered election. (p.126, Vucinich, Ibid).

It appears that after this, there was a purge of the members of the Academy of Sciences. Many members were relieved of their titles, and some were exiled, a few were apparently not heard from again. In the latter category were such medieval historians S.F.Platonov, M.K.Liubavskii, and V.N.Peretts (See Vucinich, Ibid, p.127).

Certainly Deborin was groomed by and was a member of the "Communist Academy". After Lenin's reply to Proletkul't, this organisation clearly could not become the most effective vehicle for Ultra-Left views on the intelligentsia.
For the scientists this became the organisation known as The Communist Academy.

CONCLUSION :

During the early period of the Bolshevik Revolution and during Lenin's leadership, there was a conscious policy of drawing the bourgeois specialists into the fray. In fact the CPSU (B) established a precedent of working well with bourgeois specialists. The relationship was successful in the goal of aiding socialist progress. By 1929, the stage was set for an intensification of a hidden battle to overcome the political agenda of Socialism.

But socialist development meant relations in the countryside with the peasantry as well. Naturally the nature of this relationship would change over time.

Moreover the whole harnessing of the intelligentsia, hinged on how the relation of science to society would evolve over time.

ULTRA-LEFTISM IN LINGUISTICS, AND THE COMMUNIST ACADEMY

As discussed above, the conventional wisdom is that Stalin imposed a dogmatic "Communist structured proletarian science". But in fact Stalin stopped attempts to build up a "Pure Communist" rival to the "Bourgeois" Academy of Sciences:

We suggest that the Communist Academy developed an anti-Marxist line that was openly (and not in subterfuge as suggested by most of the bourgeois literature) fought by Stalin.

The direct evidence for this is the attacks that Stalin launched on the Linguistic school centred upon the Theories of N.Y.Marr. Stalin's attitude to this and the timing of his critique of Marr, are a valuable source of evidence on his reasoning upon science.

The Communist Academy of the Social Science was founded in 1918, and was heavily associated with E.A.Preobrazhenskii, who proclaimed:

In truth, the Communist Academy had great difficulty in obtaining a unified approach amongst its members as to the correct way in which to interpret the modern developments in the sciences from Marxist perspective. It was itself riven between those castigated as "Mechanists" led by L.I.Aksel'rod and A.K.Timiriazev and the self styled "Dialecticians", led by A.M. Deborin.

The battle between the two wings drew not only the attention of Stalin, but also that of Vernadskii. This old "relic" of a scientist, who was actively still studying and fighting for his vision saw the two orientations from the perspective  only from that which would help science. It seemed that he:

Not for the first time, it became obvious that simply using the terms Dialectical Materialism in an analysis did not make it dialectical, nor materialist. Clearly Stalin cannot have been in support of attacks launched upon Vernadskii.

The CC of the CPSU(B), at that time still under the control of a predominantly Marxist-Leninist group, led an open attack upon Deborin in the pages of the theoretical journal: "Under the Banner of Marxism":

Despite this, the Communist Academy, continued to develop an Ultra-leftist line on several issues. The figure of M.B.Mitin now begins to surface repeatedly, especially in the debates on Lysenko himself (See below). Here it should be noted that he became now a leading "interpreter" of the relevance of dialectics to natural science. The thrust he used at this stage was to emphasise Lenin's view in "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism", that "too much mathematics" was equivalent to "formalism". (Vucinich, Ibid, p. 154).

It is hardly necessary to point out that a tactic was being used that would later become a concious strategy, of hiding an attack behind a Personalty Cult.
Here the Cult erected was of Lenin, later this would be of Stalin.

This enshrined a supposed view, and took it completely out of context to justify its application to unwarranted situations. For clearly Lenin, the author of "Empirio-criticism" had not had fundamental objections to mathematicians.

That Stalin at least, appreciated the significance of the build up of the personality Cult is clear when he pointed out to Lion Feuchtwangler in an interview, that the Cult was being built without his participation by "those who would use it to discredit me". In fact the most nauseating toady in all the effusions surrounding the Cult, was Nikita Khrushchev. His role in the disintegration and hidden attacks on th Soviet sate are discussed below. For a brief catalogue of Stalin's comments on the Cult, please see Appendix.

BUT What was Stalin's attitude to the Communist Academy?
Why do we assert thta Stlain repudiated Deborin?
Well fortunately, we have a very good Test Case, one that even begins to look beyond the fact (significant just in itself) that in 1938 the Communist Academy was closed.
This is the school of linguistics that was built up within the Communist Academy.

The critique levelled at it by Stalin has received too little attention within the debate on Lysenko. Perhaps, because this entails actually reading Stalin (Naturally the heavens forbid that scholars should read Stalin as they might then be contaminated somehow).

For his work "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", does pose problems for the key underlying paradigm of most current historians.
Stalin's text is very far from a doctrinaire and shrill attack on a "Classless" science. In fact the pamphlet is a sharp attack on the mindless, mechanical introduction of Class issues into a scientific debate on the origins of languages.

This trend had been started by N.Ia.Marr (also translated as N.Y.Marr), who was a member of the Academy of Science from 1912-1934 when he died. In 1930 he became a party member and in 1931 became a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and achieved the Lenin medal for achievement in science.

Firstly How "rigid" was Stalin on his application of principles of dialectical materialism to a general scientific problem ?

Secondly, how "rigid" was Stalin in conceding that in science there has to be back and forth, debate, full intellectual cut and thrust ?

The discourse "Concerning Problems in Linguistics," was written in the form of questions from "younger comrades", and Stalin's responses. It would appear that Stalin had been approached by students to enter the debate.

As regards to the matter of the general behaviour to be followed in science, Stalin's point is quite clear.
It must be remembered that this work was originally published in Pravda in 1950.
This timing is extremely significant, for it came after Lysenko was effectively and exclusively ruling the roost in genetics (See below). Stalin's words in linguistics, are pertinent to understanding how he may, or may not have supported Lysenko:

Stalin asked "Wherein did Marr's errors lie "? And he answered as follows:

There is not a little in the "arrogant tone" of the linguistics regime, that reminds one of the tone of the Lysenko Biology debates.

But unlike Vucinich and Loren, we cannot stop here. Vucinich, for instance sees an economics debate in which Stalin was overtly taking sides. However he states that the positions taken in the debate "were immaterial" (See below).

Both Vucinich and Graham, and for that matter Joravsky, acknowledge that Stalin did take an open position on the Linguistics debates. But only Joravsky recognises that the admontion on "The Arakcheyev Regime," may be significant. However, even he does not explain the nature of the debate itself, and the underlying links to the Ultra-Leftist Communist Academy - and its real significance in the class battles within the USSR.

But to illustrate that Stalin was not a crude "Reducer to A Single Class Reality", we have to discuss his actual concrete objections to the Japhetic School of Marr.
Only by understanding this, can it be seen that Stalin did not advocate a crude "Marxist Levelling".
Firstly Marr, argued that language was a "superstructure on the base". This was a mechanical translation of the Marxist view that all the phenomena of a class society reflect the underlying economic structures. Stallin analyses this by the question and answer method:

From the pure bourgeois paradigm, the whole episode on Linguistics cannot be explained. After all, Marr's views, by rights should have been so congenial to the "Mythical Stalin" - the one these historians have erected. After all, what could be more plain to the "dogmatic" and "Mythical Stalin", than that everything in society was a product of class warfare ?

Those who castigate Stalin's understanding of philosophy as Class Reductionist do not, and cannot explain his refusal to jump onto Marr's bandwagon. This would appear to be a perfect one from the standpoint of the usual Paradigm.

It cannot be irrelevant that one of Stalin's first theoretical books had been : "Marxism and the National Question."

Indeed it had been this book written in 1913, that had fbeen praised by Lenin. One could be forgiven for guessing that this work, allowed Stalin the critical scientific insights into the technicalities that allowed him to open an attack.

BUT - In biology, he did not have the critical insights. But he saw the debate proceeding. The complexity of this debate has already been outlined, both "sides" had good points. Ultimately, Stalin would commission assessments, as discussed below from specialists in the field such as Sukachev.

CONCLUSION

Undoubtedly there was a natural and fertile basis for Ultra-left tendencies in USSR society. It appears that both Lenin and Stalin actively fought off the worst of these. These tendencies had the objective effect, of alienating significant sections of the populace. Thereby weakening the alliance that the working class and the Bolsheviks had constructed, with the peasantry, and also the intelligentsia.

Collectivisation was potentially destructive of the link with the peasants. Work in the Sciences potentially jeopardised the link with the intelligentsia.

Both Lenin and Stalin fought the excesses in both arenas. But these excesses represented forces that would at times overwhelm a correct policy.

THE PERIOD OF COLLECTIVIZATION - ROLE OF LEFTISM

Collectivization during the period 1928 onwards, faced obstacles from several sources, including economists. Stalin:

The general climate was prone to an Ultra-Leftist deviation. As Stalin himself pointed out in "Dizzy With Success", there was a drift towards excess zeal. Stalin's strictures were directed against enforced collectivization and attacks on the peasantry mounted by a few party workers.

In addition vastly exaggerated, and impossible claims were being promulgated for agricultural possibilities. If these forecasts could not be achieved, a danger of discrediting the Party was possible.

Moreover it cannot be discounted that there was a more active sabotage proceeding. Undoubtedly the manner in which Collectivisation was performed displayed a high degree of Ultra-leftist excess. The manner in which the peasantry were sometimes maltreated, was not according to the manner in which Lenin and Stalin had wanted.

It is very clear that it was Stalin who called a halt to this potentially explosive process, one that was alienating the peasantry from the Bolshevik party.

It was Stalin who drew the Party back from this danger. Instead he drew it back to the prior stated path of a Voluntary collectivisation. This required the demonstration in practice of the superiority of the collective system. As opposed to what was happening - an enforced collectivisation of even small scale farmers. The reservoir of the poor peasantry support for the Bolsheviks was potentially being subverted into an active antagonism. Stalin ended this by his speech "Dizzy With Success".

CONCLUSION :
One of the manifestations of Leftism was excessive projections of agricultural yields. This may have aided the enemies of socialism, by alienating peasants, and by showing "failure".

COLLECTIVISATION- YEARS OF FAMINE ?

The alliance between the proletariat and the poorest section of the peasantry was critical to forming the mass that would win the socialist revolution. In the minds of the leaders of the Bolshevik party, revolution depended upon the alliance, a strategy designed by Lenin. Stalin saw the situation as follows:

But, with the revolution and then the Civil War over, there came a retrenchment. The Retreat, as Lenin called the New Economic Policy (NEP), allowed a stocktaking. Despite this, a new reality existed in the USSR, moving towards socialism. Stalin cites Lenin in the years of the NEP, to point out that Lenin had by this time thought that a full scale socialised society was imminent and possible in the USSR:

Firstly, there was a great reservoir of rather richer peasants, the so called kulaks, who were hostile to socialism. The peasantry was not just a single whole, but consisted of strata. These strata were originally described by Lenin, and not by Stalin and sharply distinguished between the rich peasantry, and the above mentioned poor and middle peasants. It would be this issue that would consume the future debate on collectivisation.

Immediately after Lenin's death, the various shades of opinion were openly in conflict.
Thus Preobrazhenskii, (whom we met with the Communist Academy) was in alliance with Trotsky, and wanted to "squeeze" the peasantry.
Bukharin on the other hand exhorted the peasantry to "enrich themselves." Stalin's views are quoted above, and consisted of wanting to move to a voluntary collectivisation (See below).

Secondly there was the pressing need for grain, meat and other agricultural produce that the proletariat in the towns needed for food. These facts form the basis for various distortions that need to be discussed. It is the ensuing period Collectivisation that has come to be radically distorted for propagandistic ends by "historians".

The major distortion has been to deliberately confuse the Volga famines of 1921, for "alleged" famines thereafter.

These later famines of course implicate socialism following Bolshevik survival to the 1930's. These allegations have long been used to attack the USSR of Stalin's administration. This tactic has a long and dishonourable history, that starts with the yellow rags of the Hearst newspapers.

It extends (to use an appropriate metaphor for this work!) in a "genomically Weismmanian unchanged form", through the generations down to the present day Robert Conquests.
Douglas Tottle has traced the detailed lineage of Conquest's ancestors in "Fraud, Famine and Fascism", (ISBN 0919396-51-8). This exposes fabricated "eye witness" accounts, and the substituion of Famine Pictures, from the Volga Famine of 1921 for a supposed 1935 Ukraine Famine.
For this "1935 Famine" of course, Stalin is held responsible.

Thus, photographs authenticated by reputable sources (including Dr.Fridtjof Hansen's International Committee Russian Relief in Geneva) as originating from either the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Tottle, Ibid p.9) or the Volga Famine of 1921 (p.22, 31), were palmed off on the world as being from 1930's in the Ukraine. How did this happen ?

The Hearst Press had a long history of scurrilous and fraudulent reporting antedating the Russian Revolution. Harper's Weekly refused to print allegations from the Hearst Library during the First world War:

The Hearst Press however continued to perpetrate fraud. For example in the case of Thomas Walker. Many of the quoted individuals who purported to be in the Ukraine at the time of the alleged Famine were not there at all, including the charlatan Thomas Walker (Tottle, Ibid, p. 11). Walker was a "correspondent" of the Hearst Press, supposedly sent to the Ukraine. His articles appeared in the Chicago American and the New York Evening News, and were syndicated the world over. Allegedly he witnessed horrendous sights.

Louis Fischer, tracked down his entry and exit visas to Russia, showing that Walker had only had a total stay of 5 days. In that 5 days, it was physically impossible for Walker to have covered the distances, that he claimed he had!
It then emerged that Walker was in fact an escaped convict Robert Green. The New York Times reported that he had escaped from a prison term of 8 years for fraud, and that he had previous convictions for violations of the Mann White Slave Act in Texas (Tottle Ibid, p. 9-11).

Walker's documentary "photos" (As noted above, these were in reality from the Volga Famine of 1921 and from the period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) subsequently re-surfaced repeatedly.
In fact they then were so "useful" that they served as templates for both German and Italian fascism. The Hearst campaign of fraudulent allegations of Famine and Genocide began in fact on his trip to Nazi Germany, where Hearst met Hitler. The fake photos were prominently shown in the Nazi Organ: "Voelkicsher Beobacter", and were republished by Dr.Ewald Ammende (p.24). The same photos are variously used to support "Famines" of 1932, 1933, or 1934. They are credited at various times to Walker, a Nazi Dr.Ditloff and unknown (Ibid, p.29). It further emerges that Ammende held posts with the counter-revolutionary Estonian and Latvian Governments (p.31).

During this same trip, while Hearst's press was racily retelling of the famine, the French Premier Edouard Herriot, on October 1st, 1934 was reported in Herald and Examiner as saying:

As Tottle says:

Unfortunately, these organisations conceal pro-Hitler fascists, such as Petro Pavlovich (alias Apollon Trembovetskyj) who refers in Ukrainian print-but not in the English print - to : "Stalin the Jewish moron." (Tottle, Ibid, p. 37).
In fact, the well known fascist sympathies of many of the Ukrainian extreme nationalistic right-wingers, allowed an easy entry of Hitler into the Ukraine. This bedrock of anti-Bolshevism, fuels the propaganda claims that are ongoing.

Alongside all this is the usually unchallenged view that between 1 million and 10 million deaths occurred. Here the first "landmark" claim was by the historian Dana Dalrymple (Dana G.Dalrymple, "The Soviet Famine of 1932-34", Soviet Studies, January 1964, Oxford. pp 259-260).

He simply "averaged" figures of "reliable sources".. ..
Such as Thomas Walker, open fascists, the pro-fascist Archbishop of Canterbury (who had publicly proclaimed his "greatest sympathy" with Herr Hitler's remarkable revolution in every facet of German life), the Austrian Cardinal Innitzer (who struck a deal with Hitler, and instructed Catholics to vote for the "man whose struggle against Bolshevism, corresponds to the voice of Divine Providence) and so on ! (Tottle, Ibid, p. 45)

And from there we soon find Robert Conquest.
This historian now works from effectively an offshoot of the US military Office of Strategic Services (OSS), at Harvard University the Ukrainian Research Institute (URI). That this construction on the URI is not unreasonable, is implicitly acknowledged by no less than the former US Statesman McGeroge Bundy who said:

However these have been challenged on methodological grounds by US sociologist Albert Szymanski :

Conquest is the scholarly component of the propaganda barrage.
Who is he? Well now he is Harvard as a "Scholar". What has he been before?

We will quote however a comment on the methods of Conquest from a respected historian, Arch Getty Jr who believes that Conquest 's method is to elevate rumour and hearsay to a historical truth :

After the growth of the population in the USSR by 1929 to 12% more than in 1917, and with an area of grain under production only 90 % of the pre war figure, and a continued increase in land parcellation (24.5 million households in 1928), the move to collectivisation by Stalin was totally necessary. This resulted in an immediate increase in the Expansion of the Sown Area.

This is depicted below in Table One drawn from McCauley, Martin. "Khrushchev and the Development of Soviet Agriculture." London 1976. p. 25.

Region                                  Area            % Total Increase        Increase On The State Farm

North and Central                 4,518                 21.1                                 1,140

Southern (Ukrainian SFR,

Central Black Earth,             11,516                 54.3                                 6,801

Middle and lower Volga,
north Caucasus, Crimea)
Eastern (Urals, Bashiria,
Kazakhstan
& Karakalpakia,
West and East Siberia,
Yakutia, Far East)                 3,477                    16.2                                 3,290

Central Asia &
Transcaucasia                         1,796                     8.4                                     482
__________________________________________________________________________
TOTAL                         21,442             100.0                                 11,713

McCauley's Source: Summary of Fulfilment of the First 5 Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the USSR (Moscow 1933) p.159.

There has been some dissension as to whether or not the policy of collectivisation had adequately dealt with the agricultural problems of the USSR.
However, even hostile forces to Stalin are forced to acknowledge that in general the measures were successful:

Williams, has largely now been forgotten by modern eco-scientists, but is generally remembered by political theorists who largely ridicule him. Yet it is noteworthy in these days of the so called "Greenhouse Effect", how modern his concepts sound:

Table 2 below shows the yields of wheat, relative to the base years 1926-1928, for the USA and the USSR.
It is drawn from Levins and Lewontin, Ibid, p. 190, and was complied from the U.S.Bureau of the Census, 1975. Obviously the figures for the war years show the expected devastation in the Soviet Union due to the ravages of the War. Thereafter, in the only reasonable years that could be in any way attributable to Stalin's "terrible influence" : There does not appear to be the relative impoverishment of supply the anti-Stalin propagandists complain of. Subsequent to Stalin's death even, the supply from the farm was not a problem. Of course then the socials effects of the resurrection of private property makes an enormous impact upon the distribution of the available supply.

TABLE 2.Comparison USA & USSR Wheat Yields By Year

YEARS                         USA                             SOVIET UNION
1926-28                       BASE 100(14.83BU/ACRE)         100 (6.69 bu/acre)
1929-31                                 98                                        104
1932-34                                 82                                         93
1935-37                                 87                                         97
1938-1940                             96                                        113
1941-44                                 118                                         -
1945-47                                 118                                       72
1948-1950                             116                                        106
1951-53                                 116                                        135
1954-1956                             128                                        130
1957-59                                 159                                        172
1960-62                                 169                                        184

Thus the allegation that USSR agriculture was severely damaged under Stalin is incorrect. According to Lewins and Lewontin, who are certainly not proponents for Stalin, the figures for the 1930's may be overestimated; but the figures for the post war years and the base years are not affected. They conclude:

Following the Second world war, the pressure on agriculture was met very well.
Contrary to revisionist and bourgeois charges, Stalin's agricultural policy was functioning well.
Appropriate measures were instigated for control of drought and wind erosion in the Virgin lands program. A generally correct policy was on the whole followed, with the exception of the Lysenkoist cluster planting.
Nonetheless, even the Stalin Plan itself was in broad terms, quite appropriate. The Stalin Plan rested on ecological principles that subsequently have become commonplace and accepted.

Evidence that Khrushchev opposed these plans in general, is consistent with the view that Khrushchev was certainly associated with a countryside plan to disrupt harmony in the countryside. We are forced to try and understand Khrushchev's motives.

THE STRUGGLE ON AGRARIAN POLICY.

Stalin versus Khrushchev and Vosnosensky

That there was an inner party struggle between revisionists like Khrushchev and the Marxist -Leninists led by Stalin, has become very clear to a number of non-Marxist historians. It is of course well recognised amongst the very few Marxist-Leninists that support Stalin. It is then of interests, that "semi-Marxists" who have repudiated Stalin, claim there is no difference between Khrushchev and Stalin, other than Feudal Boss mentality; this paints a picture of them fighting for the personal fiefdom of the Soviet Union completely divorced from any essential political difference.

In reality, the issues that divided Stalin and Khrushchev, all revolve around that of the profit motive in regulation of production.

This is another way of saying the issues revolved around the class struggle. Having built a socialist state (this point will of course be contended by the semi-Marxists and Trotskyites. We cannot deal with this contention here.)
Stalin wished to maintain a socialist state. Khrushchev and his allies wished to reintroduce profit as a regulator of production.
In agrarian policy, the conflict is indicated clearly by academic historians:

These policies of the Khruschevites tended to increase the demand for consumer light industry; that section of renascent USSR capitalists whose interests Khrushchev served. In addition it served to "enrich" the peasant and reinforce individual small scale capitalist tendencies in the countryside. Voznosensky, a key ally of Khrushchev was heavily involved in these agitations :

It is now well known that Khrushchev following Stalin's death, managed to effect changes in the direction he had argued unsuccessfully against Stalin earlier. The earliest charges were made in the countryside. Thus Khrushchev dismantled the machine and Tractor Stations in the countryside (MTS), and actively promoted the proponents of light industry over and above that of heavy industry.

Bourgeois commentators see the struggle between the Marxist-Leninist and the revisionists led by Khrushchev, as being hinged on how hard to "squeeze" the peasant.
It is alleged that Stalin wished to squeeze the peasant, and that his resistance to "consumerism" or light industry was based on this.

In fact, Marxist-Leninist resistance at that time to further expenditure on light industry was based on the overwhelming necessity to increase the heavy industrial base in order to improve the well being of the people. This is made clear by Stalin in his last known work, one written to rebut many of Voznosensksy's revisionisms, "Economic problems of socialism" :

CONCLUSION :

The inner party struggle between revisionism and Marxism-Leninism, in agrarian policy was very acute. It took the form of a struggle over the allocations to be made to light versus heavy industry; and the extent to which private property type relations with the peasantry were to be encouraged. Stalin resisted the encroachment of these private relations in the countryside.

THE LENINGRAD AFFAIR - VOZNOSENSKY'S ECONOMIC THESES

In 1948-9, during Stalin's lifetime a serious attempt was made to initiate the kind of "economic reforms" that would have led to the restoration of an essentially capitalist society in the USSR. Precisely these same reforms, with the process of capitalist restoration was ultimately started by the Khrushchev regime, to be completed under the Brezhnev regime.

These economic "reforms" were carried out on the theoretical inspiration and under the leadership of Nikolai Voznosensky - a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU since 1939 and of its Political Bureau since 1947, who had held the posts of Chairman of the State Planning Commission since 1937 and of Deputy "Prime Minster" since 1939. We have of course, already met Voznosensky. He was an ally of Khrushchev in the battles in the countryside to restore capitalist relations.

In 1947 Voznosensky published a book by entitled "The War economy of the USSR during the period of the Patriotic War", a feature of which was the author's claim that the distribution of labour "was" (meaning "should be") determined by the "Law of values" (meaning the profitability of individual enterprises and industries). Voznosensky therefore demanded that the prices of commodities should be "market-prices", based on their values or "Prices of production" (the latter term being defined by Marx, in his analysis of capitalist economy, as cost of production plus an average profit). He therefore emphasised the need to enhance the role of "cost accounting" (accounting based upon the profitability of individual enterprises and industries) in the organisation of production, together with that of economic incentives in the form of bonuses to the personnel of enterprises:

In taking this step Vosnosensky did not only have the public support of many leading economists - many of those who publicly supported his economic theses, such as Leontiev and Gatovsky, naturally played a leading part in supporting the these of Liberman which paved the way for the precisely similar "economic reform" carried out under the Brezhnev regime. He was also assured of the powerful support in the highest ranks of the Party and State apparatus, particularly in Leningrad. Among those openly associated with Vosnosensky's "economic reform" of 1948-9 were:
Aleksei Kuznetsov, who had been First Secretary of the party in Leningrad from 1945-1946, when he was appointed a Secretary of the Central Committee;
Grigori Popkov, First Secretary of the party in Moscow and also a Secretary of the Central Committee;
Mikhail Rodionov, "Prime Minister " of the Russian Republic;
Aleksei Vosnosensky (Nikolai's brother) who had been Rector of Leningrad University from 1944-1948, when he was appointed Minister of Education of the Russian Republic.
Ivan Golikov, President of the Supreme Court; and
Colonel-general Ivan Shikin, Head of the chief Political Directorate of the Soviet Army.

Among other prominent figures associated with Vosnosensky who supported his economic theses more discreetly was Alexsei Kosygin, later "Prime Minister" of the USSR, who had been Director of the October Spinning Mill in Leningrad in 1937-8, "Mayor" of Leningrad in 1938-9, "Prime Minister" of the Russian republic in 1943-6, and Minister of Light Industry of the USSR from December 1948, and who had been a member of the Political bureau of the CC of the party since 1948:

On March 15th, it was announced that Petr Popkov had been "released" from his state post as member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, being replaced by Vasily Andrianov.
On March 15th, 1949, it was announced that Ivan Goliakov had been "released" from his state post as President of the Supreme Court.
On July 15th, 1949, it was announced that Aleksei Vosnosensky had been released from his state post as Minister of Education of the RSFR.
On January 15th, 1950 a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet restored the death penalty (which had been abolished in May 1947) for treason and certain other crimes against the state.

And in two stages, on January Ist and July Ist, 1950, the Vosnosensky economic reforms" of 1949 was nullified.

This appears to have been the sum total of all that was published in the Soviet Union at the time concerning the counter-attack launched against the opposition group headed by Vosnosensky.

But in February/march 1949, Aleksei Kuznetsov was removed from the post of Secretary of the CC of the Party; Nikolai Vosnosensky was removed from membership of the Political bureau of the CC; Peter Popkov was removed from the post of First Secretary of the Leningrad organisation of the party; and Ivan Shikin was removed from the post of Head of the Chief Political Directorate of the Soviet Army.

And in December 1949, Grigori Popov was removed from the post of First Secretary of the moscow organisation of the party and of Secretary of the CC of the Party (in both of which posts he was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev).

In Leningrad most of the leading Party and state organs were restaffed. Frol Kozlov told the 19th Congress of the CPSU in October 1952, that in that city:

Some members of the opposition group were transferred to minor posts for a time: Kuznetsov to be Secretary of the Far Eastern Bureau of the CC, Popov to a "responsible job in city construction", Vosnosensky, however was not given such a post, and remained at home working on a new exposition of his economic views to be entitled "The Political Economy of Communism".

In November/December 1949, Vosnosensky, Popkov, Popov, Rodionov, Goliakov and Shikin were arrested, and in 1950 tried on charges which in the case of Vosnosensky himself, including the passing of secret papers of the State Planning Commission to a foreign state (V.Kolotov: Article in "literaturnaya Gazeta" (Literary Gazetter) November 30th, 1963, in R.Medvedev: Ibid, p.482.)

Some of the defendants in the "Leningrad Affair"- including Nicolai Vosnosensky, Kuznetsov, Popkov and Rodionov - were sentenced to death and executed on September 30th 1950. Others survived, to be released and "rehabilitated " by the post-Stalin leadership : Popov was appointed Ambassador to Poland in March 1953, and Shikin was awarded a medal in December 1954.

Alexsei Kosygin escaped prosecution:

Stalin's role in the counter-attack

In view of Stalin's known opposition to the economic these put forward by Voznosensky, there is no reason to doubt the truth of Khrushchev's assertion - in his " secret speech" to the 20th Congress of the CPSU(B) in February 1956- that the counter-attack against the group headed by Voznosensky was initiated by Stalin :

The first step in this process was that the General Secretary's personal Secretariat, headed by Aleksandr Poskrebyshev, operating as an intelligence service outside the control of the oppositionist majority would carry out its own investigation into the activities of the persons suspected of treason. If the results of this investigation were positive, the evidence would then be passed over to the official state security organs.

Even if these organs were headed by concealed oppositionists (as in the Yagoda/Yezhov period of 1934-38) or by sympathisers with the Opposition (as in the Abakumov period of 1946-52, under discussion here) the heads of these organs were then faced with the choice either of pursuing their own investigations and acting upon the evidence, or of risking their exposure as accomplices of traitors.

As a matter of policy agreed among the concealed oppositionist conspirators, they invariably chose the firs course. backed by the decision of state security organs that a prima facie case had been made out against the persons concerned, Stalin, as General Secretary of the CPSU, then felt in a strong enough position to take emergency action in the name of the Central Committee- dismissing them from any responsible Party posts they might hold and recommending to the appropriate state organs their dismissal from responsible state positions.

This is, doubtless, what Khrushchev meant in complaining , in his "secret speech" to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, about Stalin's:

Clearly, Stalin and his political allies, being strongly opposed to Voznosensky's economic theses, could only be assisted in their attack upon these by the public announcement that their author had been charged and found guilty of treasonable crimes against the Soviet state.

The concealed oppositionists and Stalin's political allies, had an opposite interest, since the oppositionists favoured Voznosensky's economic theses, which they intended to revive as soon as circumstances made this practicable. Having a majority on both the Central Committee of the CPSU(B) and its Political Bureau, they used this majority to limit as much as possible the adverse effects on their position arising from their forced ratification of the "purge" initiated by Stalin: they secured the adoption of resolutions which forbade publication of the dismissal of Voznosensky and his group from their party posts, their arrest and trail, together with any official denunciation of Voznosensky's economic theses.

Thus on July 13th, 1949, the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution withdrawing the dismissal of the Editor of the magazine "Bolshevik" and several members of its editorial board for having published "excessive praise" of Voznosensky's book:
 

The first published criticism of Voznosensky's economic theses appeared also in 1952, when Stalin seized the opportunity afforded him by his allotment of the "harmless" task of writing a criticism of a draft textbook on political economy to denounce these, but without naming Voznosensky as their author.

It was about this time- the autumn of 1952- that a Kremlin radiologist, Dr.Lydia Timashuk, wrote to Stalin accusing a number of Kremlin doctors of being involved in an opposition conspiracy which had resulted in a the murder of a number of Soviet leaders who had been closely associated with Stalin-including Andrei Zhdanov and Aleksandr Scherbakov - by means of criminally wrong medical "treatment".

It was in the atmosphere of the investigation into this case, in which it was widely rumoured that a number of prominent Party and state leaders were suspected of involvement, and immediately following the public trial in November 1952 of Czechoslovak Party and state leaders (headed by Rudolf Slansky and Vladimir Clementis), in which the defendants admitted to treason in Yugoslavia, that the concealed oppositionist majority on the Central Committee of the Soviet Party and its Political Bureau were forced into permitting the majority to secure a reversal of the policy of "silence" in relation to the "Leningrad Affair" which had been in force since 1949.

On December 24th, 1952, as has been said , an article by Mikhail Suslov was published in the official paper of the CC of the CPSU, "Pravda", quoting for the first time from one of the CC resolutions three years earlier in connection with the "Leningrad Affair" and, again for the first time, denouncing Voznosensky's economic these by name as revisionist:

But, the campaign directed against Voznosensky came to an abrupt halt following the death of Stalin on March 5th, 1953.

The "Rehabilitation".

Twenty-one months after Stalin's death, in December 1954, the still concealed oppositionists in the leadership of the Soviet party and state felt their position to be strong enough to take their revenge upon Viktor Abukumov, who had been Minister of State Security at the time of the "Leningrad Affair".

On December 24th, 1954, it was announced that Abukumov, together with five other leading officials of the security organs in 12949-50, had been tried in secret by a military tribunal of the Supreme Court for "treason and political sabotage". All had been found guilty; four including Abukumov, had been sentenced to death and executed; two had been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The official announcement declared that Abukumov :

It is no surprise that for instance Vucinich, in his description of Stalin's supposed control of all Sciences including economics states baldly that:

More targeted questions need to be asked. These include:

Firstly, this movement had the appearance of sponsorship by the highest levels of the CPSU (B). Given the imprateur of the CPSU (B), this approach led to a cult of authoritarianism in biology built up around Lysenko. This led to a distortion of the original Marxist-Leninist approach towards non-Bolshevik scientists. In the turmoil, one serious consequence was that certain incorrect and mechanically materialist theories; sometimes promulgated by opportunists, were given sway.

One such was Olga Lepishinskaia (See Part two) who claimed that she could grow cells out of non-cellular matter such as egg yolk. Her claims were put in a manner that proclaimed a monopoly of wisdom. The tactic espoused here was to use a crude reductionist materialism to attack the waverers. This was particularly successful as the problems of genetics were as discussed in Parts 1 and 2 quite difficult to solve, due to their complexity. Later Oparin, an undoubted dialectician in science would attack her notions. 

Objectively this process could only undermine the CPSU(B)'s long standing good relations with the honest non-communist scientists and intelligentsia.

Secondly, some aspects of advances made by modern day genetics were bypassed in the Soviet Union. We have argued that certain parts of Lysenkoism were theoretically correct, particularly the insistence on the importance of change. On the other hand we have shown that there was a tendency to  "Throw out the baby with the bath water" during the process of rejecting the worst of ecclesiastical genetic theory.

One has to acknowledge, that retarding the forces of science development, was objectively a disruption of the socialist forces.
If there needed to be a dialectical fusion of Lysenkoite change, and "genetic" particularity, this could not be achieved in the shrill attack climate that Lysenko created.

It is obviously of interest then, to answer how this Lysenkoite tendency was supported and by whom.

Clearly these are political questions, that cannot be answered by an examination of the theory of genetics. Most prevailing opinions are that the Lysenkoists were supported by the ubiquitous Stalin.
In fact, as we discuss below there is surprisingly little (if any) data for this assertion, other than Lysenko's own claim that Stalin had personally endorsed him.
On the other hand there is evidence that Stalin fought against dogmatism in science.

Before passing to this, we must paint the background a bit more sharply.

For no less important than the above considerations, is the evidence that the Cult of Personality (Obviously an anti-Marxist-Leninist feature) was resisted vigorously by Stalin.
Stalin himself pointed out in an interview with Lion Feuchtwangler, in a prescient remark that the revisionists were building up the Cult of Personality in order to discredit him, Stalin. Many quotes show a consistency in Stalin's approach to this, and are carried in the Appendix. Of course the prevalent paradigm either ignores these, or says that this is further evidence of Stalin's duplicity.

It is proposed that accepting that Stalin fought the Cult of Personality, and that it was not created by him changes radically the interpretation of events. The most obsequious of the fawners such as Khrushchev, were later to reveal themselves as the most vicious anti-Stalin individuals. The erection of the Cult of Personality allowed them cover, and as Stalin said, further cause by which to damn Stalin.

If this analysis is correct, it is of course interesting that the Academy of Sciences USSR played :

The subsequent rise of Lysenkoism then came at a period of heightened class struggle in the Soviet Union. It coincided with the break up of the Cominform by the expulsion of the Yugoslavs, and the Inner party struggle against Khrushchev. Lysenko gave a great deal of credit for his rise to prominence to Ia.I.Iakovlev (Graham 1, Ibid. p. 214). But it was also critical for him that Lysenko received the support and intervention of I.I Prezent and Mitin.

This support transformed Lysenko from the farmer-vernalizer to the ambitious reformer of Genetics:

The field of the battleground became philosophy.

The conflict within the realm of philosophy reflected the deadly battles against revisionism. Mitin suffered a blow when Zhdanov removed him in 1944 as editor with P.F. Yudin, of Istoriya filosofii (History of Philosophy). The details of the struggle discussed below are drawn from W.G.Hahn's history:
"Postwar Soviet Politics The Fall of Zhdanov and the Defeat of Moderation, 1946-53." Ithaca, 1982.

Hahn's interpretations of the key players should however be slightly modified.
These modifications must account for the reality that Zhdanov and Stalin were Marxist-Leninist allies against the revisionist attempts to subvert Socialism.
Hahn places Zhdanov in a struggle somehow against Stalin.
In Hahn's view, Malenkov and Zhdanov were engaged in a struggle against each other for Stalin's approval. But clearly, Zhdanov was a Marxist-Leninist as judged by his actions, and Malenkov was not. Obviously Hahn cannot appreciate this, for this requires an explanation of history that transcends one based only on an individual personal conflict.

Thus the battle between Mitin, Yudin on one hand and Zhdanov's group with B.M.Kedrov and G.F.Alexsandrov on the other, erupted openly in 1944. The ostensible cause was the 3rd volume of Istoriya filosfii (History of Philosophy) :

The Institute of Philosophy was taken over by B.M.Kedrov and G.S.Vasetskiy. Agitprop Chief G.F. Alexsandrov wrote in 1946 Istoriya zapadnoyevropeyskoy filosofii (History of Western Philosophy), and under the promotion by Kedrov, this won a Stalin Prize. But now Yudin and Mitin counterattacked by forcing a critique on Alexsandrov himself. It is alleged by Hahn that:

Zhdanov had ensured a full Second debate, saying that the CC wanted to have a fuller account as so few people had been able to speak and get their views published previously.

Of itself, this is another indication that the bourgeois mythical caricature, of "Stalin crushing all debates"; is incorrect.

This open process led to an attack on Agitprop, which was now charged by Mitin and Yudin, as being monopolized by Alexsandrov and his allies. It appears that in this attack they were successful:

But other significant names that supported Lysenko are more conjectural. The known supporters of Stalin were few, and included Andreei Zhdanov, Lavrenti Beria and Molotov. As far as these figures are concerned, did their actions or word show any relation to Lysenko? Only Zhdanov can be said to have been directly concerned in the Lysenko struggles.

In fact, neither Andrei Zhdanov (in charge of Agitprop) nor his son Iurrii (in charge of Agitprop science) were by any means, totally committed to Lysenko:

Iurri publicly criticised Lysenko on his leadership of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences and on his views of intra-specific competition. Iurrii Zhdanov's attitude to authority in science was expressed in a May 1948 article on scientific creativity. In it he castigates a "proprietary attitude toward science" :

As far as the Party functioning evidences, the Lysenkoists were supported against the disdain of more orthodox scientists. But also the Lysenkoists were not themselves exempt from stricture :

A letter from Iurrii Zhdanov to Stalin was unveiled on the final day of the Lenin Academy Agricultural Sciences conference in 1948. It had originally been written in June, following attacks on Iurri for having criticised publicly Lysenko. Its impact given its content was devastating to any opposition to Lysenko:

These remarks appear clearly NOT to be a recantation over the theoretical issues. In fact the very clear refusal to acknowledge that Lysenko was theoretically correct, suggests that there was an ongoing battle behind the closed doors of the politburo. This became resolved very shortly.

For following Andreii Zhdanov's death just after the conference, there was a sea change in the attitudes of Voprosii filosfii.

Within a week, Pravda carried an article attacking the editorial position of voprosii filosfii, and thereafter the editors were changed. The attack was headed by M.B.Mitin, who it will be recalled had been opposed by Zhdanov.

The only plausible conclusion to these various shifting events, is that there was a split within the CC as to the degree of support to give to Lysenko, and most importantly to his campaign to dominate Genetics in the Soviet Union. The statements made that Stalin directed support for Lysenko are unclear in the evidence provided.

But in fact Georg Malenkov confirmed Lysenko's statement, that the CC of the CPSU (B) had supported Lysenkoism. At the 19 th Congress of the CPSU (B) in October 1952, he said :

But of course, though the equation is made by the majority of bourgeois historians that Stalin WAS the CC of the CPSU(B), we know from the Leningrad Affair, that this was not the case.

Malenkov later within a few months of Stalin's death showed his allegiance to the consumer goods capitalist wing of the revisionists. On Aug 8th, 1953 as Prime Minister, Malenkov told the Supreme Soviet:

Until recently, the closest we were able to come to any conclusion that Stalin did support Lysenko, was the intervention of Stalin at a speech given by Lysenko. This was in February, 1935, at the Second All Union Congress of Collective Farmers and Shock Workers. When during his speech, Lysenko:

In his latest book (Graham 2, Ibid), Graham does state that a claim has been made at a recent conference, that Lysenko's sppech to the Lenin Academy, in 1948 has been found with phrases editorially inserted by Stalin. This claim has however not been authenticated. If it is even true, it may be simply have been a means of correcting the tilt towards a reductionism in the Morganism direction. Of this reductionism we have seen enough evidence in parts one and two. It is dubious in the extreme, at least for this author, that Stalin would sanction a disemboweling of the new advances in genetics. He had not tolerated such a disemboweling in physics, nor in linguistics.

Whatever else, one can hardly say that either of these instances, amount to conclusive evidence for Stalin's support of Lysenko, to suppress genetics. There is however some significant contrary evidence. Again it is indirect, but in as much as Stalin urged an openness in science, it is very significant.

Thus initially before 1948, as Joravsky (an anti-Stalin writer) makes plain, Stalin's speeches and writings show nothing to suggest that the Lysenkoists were to be the only voice in genetics.
In fact Stalin opposed "eating specialists" :

Following the victory of the Lysenkoists at the 1948 Congress, for some considerable time there was a silencing of the opposing views in science and genetics. But significantly, it is after this time that Stalin attacked despotism in science, in the discussion on linguistics as noted above, with very strong language:

That this reductionist challenge by Stalin did not appear in print as being directed at the crude reductionism in biology, does not mean that Stalin would have been in agreement with it. Taken in conjunction with the other information, it is likely on the contrary that Stalin would not have been in favour of a mechanical materialism in any field including biology.

It is usually alleged that only upon Stalin's death, was there "allowed" a critique of Lysenkoism to take place. The facts show that the actual beginnings of the exposure of the worst excesses of Lysenko occurred before Stalin's death.

In fact it is likely that along with the attack on distortions in both Linguistics and Economics, Stalin was preparing an onslaught on the positions of the revisionists in all other arenas. But differently from the lingusitics debate, this was being conducted by scientists in the field of either biology, or physics:

So much so, that it has to be postulated that Stalin was murdered. The evidence for this has been recently reviewed by Bland, and cannot be pursued here. But to complete the links between Lysenkoism and the rise of revisionism, it is necessary briefly to review the post-Stalin history of Lysenko and his key supporter, Mitin.

In essence, there was massive support of Lysenko by Khrushchev. After the attacks launched upon Lysenko which, as noted above, began in Stalin's last year of life; the pressure had became intense to depose Lysenko as head of biological thinking in the USSR:

Immediately after this, Khrushchev protected Lysenko against Lysenko's attackers at the Botanical journal and the Bulletin of the Moscow Society of Experimenters of Nature.
The editor of this journal, V.N.Sukachev was replaced.

But Lysenko's practical failures in the production of high yield milks and in chicken farming were danger signs. His fate was sealed after Khrushchev's removal from power on October 15th, 1964. Lysenko was increasingly subject to theoretical attacks. An investigation into Lysenko's Lenin Hills Farm was conducted by the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. This checked in detail the records going over all the raw data. The committee concluded that the profits of the farm were genuine but were due to the exceptional supports and given to the Farm by Khrushchev's patronage. But no evidence was found for the breeding success of Lysenko's methods, particulary for cows. Furthermore it appeared that Lysenko had sold his cows around the country and that this had ruined herds of higher purity.

Lysenko's career was finally over. In the current disintegration of Russia, some of his scientific enemies are now finding voice and depict some of the bitterly unfair treatment they received (See Graham 2).

Mitin fared somewhat better:

CONCLUSION :

The heavy handed monopoly of science by revisionist cliques that became characteristic of the USSR in the late days of Stalin; was in fact resisted by both Stalin and his most able lieutenant Andreii Zhdanov.

These Marxist-Leninists were opposed by representatives of the hidden revisionists who wore a cloak of Ideological Purity. These revisionists took a generally correct Marxist-Leninist line and pushed it to absurdity.

In biology, the confusing state of limited knowledge allowed them particular scope. A generally correct line of dialectics - recognition of the importance of change in biology, was accepted by Lysenko. But this generally correct line was used to justify extrapolation to incorrect stances. These stances denied any role for other interpretations, and forced the creation of scientific monopoly.

Stalin and Zhdanov strived for an open approach that allowed frank and hard discussion, but one that by no means excluded any alternative point of view. This can be particularly illustrated with reference to the struggle over linguistics.

In biology, the distortions of the class struggle ended up in objectively retarding the socialist forces in the development of biology. There is no doubt that the Lysenkoist monopoly had major consequences in retarding the further development of the USSR science, and possibly agriculture, in later years.

FOR TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THIS BOOKS GO TO:  lysenkotable.html

FOR BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THIS BOOK GO TO: LysenkoBiblio.html
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APPENDIX 2 : THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIALECTICS IN GREECE REFLECTED THE SOCIAL STATE OF SOCIETY


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