[Nakived frequently writes to MIM to tell us we should be pro-Lysenko. Lysenko is famous in the imperialist countries as an example of how communism supposedly ruins science with politics. Supposedly politics interfered with the advance of the theory of evolution and genetics in the case of Stalin's support of Lysenko. MIM takes Mao's line that Stalin was wrong to back Lysenko on scientific questions where such subject matters belong in the realm of natural scientific struggle and not class struggle. We base our line on Science for the People's book on science in China under Mao. Nevertheless, Nakived is correct that we cannot trust the bourgeoisie and its scientists to handle the question of Lysenko accurately or rationally. We put this article on our web page as an indication of desire to go into this subject more deeply.] LYSENKO IS RIGHT, 1950, by J. Fyfe. Reviewed by Nakived Written early, 1950, while Stalin was still in and about a time when he was healthy and things were practiced correctly by the Michurinists (Lysenkoites). It's a GOOD BOOK, especially the parts about labor, views toward laborers in the west, merging of labor with mental work and the worth of all labor, and etc., elitist attitudes toward types of labor, etc. A CLEAR understanding of the 2 sciences and what these actually RESULT IN when practiced. Very good book! I found the references Richard Lewontin gave to China in his article, tho they were VERY spiffy and said nothing much but they agreed with what SOYFER pointed out in much greater detail which is: they told me that the Chinese, by that time, were believing the HYPE against Lysenko and believing it during a time when Krushchev WRECKED the land there and when Lysenko's Michurin methods were NOT BEING PRACTICED. During a time when they were chemically fertilizing the land and doing other harebrained things Krushchev ordered, including corn planting. Fyfe is a BOTANIST. The book IS excellent and sort of (er) simple when the biology parts are written. The Stalinist and/or Michurinist REALITY is what's so damned good in his book. FINALLY, a book someone writes about "life over there" that AGREES with my own heresay, first hand accounts that at least I know I got from people LACKING an agenda and who spoke FOR no one save an audience of one or two family members. FINALLY. ONE BOOK. All Lewontin could do is figure out that Lysenkoism was some kind of proto cultural revolution - tho he figured this out from the TOTALLY OPPOSITE END of where I figured it out from, with a lot of help from people who WERE THERE and SAW. Also, the capitalist Mancur Olsen's facts - the economy BOOMED under Stalin and we do realize that economy can't do shit, nor can people, if they are HUNGRY! Mancur Olsen can't figure out why it went to hell after Stalin was gone -not to criticize him -it's not easy to FIND OUT that the NKVD was removed from patrolling ALL economic sectors or that the KGB is NOT the NKVD (which is what EVERYONE says, writes and thinks: SO MUCH FOR WRITTEN WORDS - distortions, lies) and that the KGB are the GUGB same old Bukharinites out to gain! It's also not easy to know the CIA deeds in cold war which STARTED near the end of Stalin's death and took off BIG TIME after that! What don't you get, Mim? That 5% have it all? That maybe now some 25% might have it GOOD and that the whole rest have the bare minimum? Or that a "leveling" (equalizing) of the wage so that EVERYONE makes $25 an hour would make the vast majority of Americans RICH and make the few BITCH about having to have A BIT LESS? It was the same there. That the few that bitch are already in VERY POWERFUL positions like a NETWORK? That the vast majority are NOT united or networked at all? What Stalin did from OUR point of view is kill off all the Old Bolsheviks who had come from WELL OFF FAMILIES! Lenin was already dead tho his wife was a royal pain in the ass who WOULD have been dealt with had she been anyone OTHER THAN "Mrs. Lenin." Stalin was POOR get a clue, his family SERFS of the Asatani warriors. That the old OGPU had to be purged by a man who was young and NOT a Lenin Bolshevik from more well off background and/or worldly experience, but a Stalinist: YEZHOV. That Yezhov was NOT part of that good old boys NEP "get rich" shit and that when that was stopped, those Nepmen found OTHER WAYS to line their pockets? That they weren't ALL purged out? That their GREED never went away? Or infected others? At least my own ANTI Commie relations were NOT western ass kissers but they saw Lenin et al as WESTERN RULERS with WESTERN MONEY AND CONNECTIONS (they DID have this!) lording over what they considered THEIR TURF and they wanted their OWN government allied with Islamic countries in accord with their OWN culture. THERE IS a difference! Mao had NO WAY to know ANY of this about Lysenko or what HAPPENED back then -hardly anyone knows details of it NOW. All Mao could look at and think were "THE FACTS" is what I said and what FINALLY someone (Krementsov) exposed from archives, which is that Mao saw PHONEYS who adopted "the Michurin line" in order to save their skins and that partially happened during Stalin's last days. Had Stalin lived long enough, there'd have been a "finding out" of this thru the NKVD and a NEW PURGE. Soyfer at least outlines well JUST WHAT the Maoists heard and believed and thought based on it. Whatever it is Mao COULD POSSIBLY have to make an analysis would have been phoney data deliberatly put forth by enemies of Michurinism, and NON-Michurin methods because NO ONE could criticize it when it was in full bloom where economy boomed, birth rates rose, people lived longer and were healthy and not starving and food was abundant. That would have been around 19 to 11 years PRIOR to Mao taking over China! NO ONE could criticize it when laborers took pride in labor. Mao couldn't know what he couldn't know! It's documented in brief by this obscure guy Fyfe -but consider that: it's OBSCURE AS HELL -NO ONE mentions his book. And yet the book is about MICHURINISM IN REALITY -not some hindsight half bullshit pack of twisted lies Mao HAD to have heard. Soyfer documents it too - how the Chinese said "Lysenko is finished" but that was during Krushchev's time. How they mocked the stuff out, but that was NOT Lysenko's stuff or Michurinism which NO ONE was doing anymore. Fyfe is good also because it is THEN, 1950. Fyfe is good exposing the WESTERN MENDELIAN tyranny in his own country and how every agricultural breeder IGNORED it and showing how there was NO SUCH tyranny science thing in USSR and he writes this in 1950. He also is good at exposing a few of those MISQUOTED DISTORTIONS the so-called "scientists" claim Lysenko said by quoting them and then quoting Lysenko! The SAME distortions that the CHINESE QUOTED AND SAID and BELIEVED! You don't realize, the Maoists and Mao by the time he said BOO about it (long after the facts were buried and distorted) heard stories that Lysenko claimed that warbler birds give birth to cuckoos and that foxes can turn into cats or that wheat can grow into rye or that he put shoes on pigs to train them to walk like people. And if it was "loyal USSR Communists" that told Mao or his people this, they'd have no reason NOT to believe them and that's exactly what happened: SOYFER DOES give some detail here. It is Soyfer who sort of spells out JUST WHAT the Chinese HEARD during that time. They heard LIES. Look, we EAT the fucking Burbank potato. He did what NO geneticist has YET done and his potato, unlike that stupid Flaver Saver Tomato, is STILL on the market because he "changed its heredity" the RIGHT WAY -like Michurin and Lysenko would have done it - NOT by fucking directly with the genes! Lewontin doesn't even seem to know that vernalization WAS INDEED applied --- since then that fact has been denied and the more recent the writer, the more denials get stronger. There is hardly anyone left ALIVE, if not senile, that was THERE that could confirm or deny. I have HERESAY but my first hand sources are also all dead from old age! NONE of us wrote books, peasants didn't write books. All you CAN see now is ruined land - go ahead, BLAME LYSENKO when he NEVER had a finger in it. No one knows what his SON did on that same experimental farm in Lenin Hills and those people are secretive as hell about this. Lewontin didn't DIG OUT facts we have, nor did he DIG OUT the information about the NKVD and such. Yeah, he read what Mao had to say but Mao would have known ONLY AS MUCH as Medvedev knew - wrong information and/or packs of lies. But Lewontin DOES GIVE (in the version of his paper I have...) some very interesting references in Michurinist work by others that X NEVER heard of but will have to eventually ALSO get. Lewontin didn't say ANYTHING about "Soviet Creative Darwinism" otherwise known as Lysenkoism (said as an insult) by the enemies of it. He didn't say he was for it or against it. Gould only focuses on the 1948 last statement of the speech, NOW KNOWN FOR A FACT dictated directly by Stalin TO Lysenko in person as I wrote letter to Harry Kirpalani (you got copy of it). Gould says he is frightened to death or something like that, by those 10 words that shook the world. He doesn't even CONSIDER the reasons for it or what came before. Or at least he doesn't do that in public! The west, led by Huxley from a radio broadcast they all heard back then thought that Lysenko wanted personal power to hurt, torture and kill his enemies! This book, found by B again!, is VALUABLE. It is MORE valuable than Lewontin's chapter on it because it's more back then when NO ONE COULD DENY that vernalization worked and was being massively used! Unlike YOU Mim, B has told us all references he bumped into about Lysenko, not just the ones either pro or con or having to do with political AGENDAS!!! Fyfe is 100 times better than Lewontin's article as it has DETAILS much more current and DURING Stalin's lifetime. The anti-communist feeling in the youth of the former USSR is that their ONLY experience of it is NOT-Stalinist. Their exprience of what communism is, is TYRANNY! thought control! KGB all over the place watching everyone, scarcity of goods, food lines, shortages, STAGNATION. What's so damned funny about all of this is that my ONLY experience with Mendelism was at the medical school when I tried to explain Mendelism to a young student there. So I checked with the HEAD OF GENETICS (Dr. Searle) to make sure it was right and his REACTION was to yell at me, throw my paper drawing in the trash after ripping it and angrily said "Mendelism is simplistically wrong. Most things are NON Mendelian. The man was a fraud." That's all he said but he got SO UPSET over it. That's it - my ONLY experience - and I found it shocking since well, I thought that MENDEL DISCOVRED GENES and that Watson and Crick discovered the actual DNA !!!!! "A fraud?" What did he mean? I didn't ask, he was in no mood to BE asked anything more. So then, FYFE IS RIGHT! They KNOW THE TRUTH about Mendel but they keep up the lip service to support an AGENDA. And by the way, COSsers know ME as being the originator of the concept of "the agenda" - whether conscious or unconscious in what people say. I started that - so you imagining I don't know it - more proof the gang is right: YOU DON'T understand what I say. You think it's this, or that. You don't know when I'm talking some alternate viewpoint and you IMAGINE I "changed my mind." DAMN. You HATE IT when I point out irreconcilable differences, ok, struggles, NOT between you and some other Communist group but between you and the TOTALLY OPPOSITE CAMP especially when that camp consists of young people LESS WELL OFF than YOU PERSONALLY! The group working JUST TO pay bills! Yet you can't show me where their views are NOT DOABLE which would mean "wrong!" NOT DOABLE is wrong. DOABLE is right! If a thing can be done - then it can BE DONE! And if the majority of people here want to do it? WELL? Imperialists will either wipe them out or CATER to their desires to avoid a revolution. You can't show where this is wrong - in fact, your own theory line PROVES IT IS RIGHT, they use this tactic! So when I BRING IT UP, THEIR views, then you shift by moving the argument into the 3rd world. Someone forgot the WEAPONS this country has or that they would use them because they HAVE USED THEM BEFORE. Or that they ARE USING other forms of weapons and I TELL YOU about it but no no, you don't wanna know. You are forgetting the THINGS going on in the USSR (I can't even bear to hear about it) or what's going on in China (talk about EUGENICS? They put into LAW a 2 fold eugenics policy not long ago to make "super Chinese."