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Vavilov was such an extraordinary individual. While he was imprisoned in 1940 for defying Stalin-era leader Trofim Lysenko for his Mendelian beliefs, his collab

Vavilov was such an extraordinary individual. While he was imprisoned in 1940 for defying Stalin-era leader Trofim Lysenko for his Mendelian beliefs, his collaborators protected the then largest seed bank in the world during the Siege of Lenningrad [1] by Nazi Germany. Most of those "protectors" died, and Vavilov died of starvation in prison - the same thing he was so obsessed of solving for everyone. "Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End" [2] is the canonical read on this topic! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad [2]: https://www.librarything.com/work/7565437 https://www.librarything.com/work/7565437

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Starvation was a Big Deal(TM) in pre-ww2 Russia. Many of the best and brightest were drawn toward working on agricultural problems in their niche. Mikhail Kalashnikov got interested in mechanics and engineering because he wanted to help design better farm equipment and improve yields.
- gullywhumper 5y ago
  For those that might not recognize the name, Mikhail Kalashnikov developed the AK-47 - the assault rifle.
  - baud147258 5y ago
    he was successful, but his invention ended reaping a very different type of harvest
    - kikokikokiko 5y ago
      Guns don't kill people, it's the bullets that do it.
      - devtul 5y ago
        It's a team effort
      - denkmoon 5y ago
        One could argue the bullet is an unwilling participant. The firing pin is the real perp.
        avmich 5y ago
        Gun is a tool with practically only one use, so I don't think "guns don't kill people" is actually accurate.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Starvation is always a big deal under Communism.
  - Conlectus 5y ago
    Commenting in no way on any such effects, droughts and famines have been a fairly regular feature of Russian history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - nickik 5y ago
      The comment was kind of unnecessary and not complete right but please don't excuse the Soviet government complicity in the massive famines between the revolution and WW2. The waste majority of famines in pre-Communist Russia were limited in scope in one region before transport was available. Even the most extreme famine in modern Russian history killed a few 100k of people. Under the Soviet government many millions died and often in years where there was not actually shortfall in the harvest, but that the government continued to export food during the mass starvation of its citizens. And lets not ignore what is basically genocide when the Soviet government forced nomads to farm and basically killed large parts of the population.
    - qwytw 5y ago
      While Russian agricultural productivity lagged significantly behind western countries, government policies (both soviet and imperial) were arguably the most significant cause of all peace time famines in the Russian Empire/USSR that occurred since the mid/late 19th century. Before 1913 main reason behind regional famines in Russia (excluding war time) was poor infrastructure and no efficient mechanism for redistributing grain (and the imperial government's unwillingness to establish one). Russian net exports of grain remained positive during the 1891–92, 1901 & 1906 famines. This (at least according to the death count) only got worse after the revolution. Agricultural production levels in 1930's weren't that much higher than they were in 1913 (grain production was much higher in all years besides 1936, however livestock production remained mostly at similar levels or even fell). However again, even taking into account the poor productivity exacerbated by the poor harvests the Soviet Union remained a next exporter of grain in all years between 1930 and 1933 (in 1932 and 1933 around 50% of all exports were from Ukrainian ports). During the same period at least 2 million people (up to 10 million according to higher estimates) died as a results of the famine. Considering this I don't really see how could anyone seriously blame the weather...
fuf_998 5y ago
He was. Only he was imprisoned for political reasons of being anti-bolshevik, you can even read this in the quote from his sentence in this cold-warish piece of writing in OP. This is biggest scientific myth i know - that soviets/marxism/etc deny science, because they prosecuted Vavilov for it. Like genetics back then was as it is now (search eugenics), and scientific debate about nature vs nurture was settled, and Lysenko was just some boy and didn't get applause in NYC conference on agrobiology. But I'm glad at least in research frontiers people do revisit Lysenko legacy nowadays, in the the light of epigenetic research. For common people it's just another neccesary illusion.
- enkid 5y ago
  Sorry, the Soviet Union explicitly advocated for science based on ideology instead of the other way around under Stalin. Wikipedia has numerous examples of this [0]. And no, one person getting applause at one conference in the US does not make a scientific hypothesis valid. Your also either fundamentally misunderstanding what the current research on epigenetics says or what Lysenko was advocating. Lysenko claimed to do things well beyond anything current studies of epigenetics would allow, and the SU went all in on these claims to disastrous effects. (Because they preferred Lamarckism instead of Darwinism for purely ideological reasons.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov...
  - fuf_998 5y ago
    Thanks for your comment, i'm working on heterochromatin formation rn as a phd (not claiming full understanding of full epigenetic field ofc, but have some conceptual touch). >Lysenko claimed to do things well beyond anything current studies of epigenetics would allow You are right, but this is not true for all of his work; look at his earlier works on seed vernalization by heat treatment - he experimentally did what is mechanisticaly described now [0]. Isn't it funny - instead of tweaking crazy plant genome with complicated patented GM tech with minimal improvement as a result, you can dip your seeds in warm water and change the phenotype competely. Worth revisiting? Btw, both your and my comments fairly can go to Vavilov too and his less-known sides of research. But for myth sustaining purposes - Lysenko is totally bad, Vavilov is totally good, thus communism (or whatever "bad" label is tranding rn in capitalism criticism) is anti-science. >they preferred Lamarckism instead of Darwinism for purely ideological reasons I've tried here to add this scientific debate dimension to this preference, which is omitted. Both theories were in their nappies back then, and one (Lamarckism) was more appealing bcs of its alignment with ideology, right. It does not mean that genetics were evidently true back then and SU denied it for ideology' sake - this is how is read in the OP writing. [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppl.13163 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppl.13163

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Starvation was a Big Deal(TM) in pre-ww2 Russia. Many of the best and brightest were drawn toward working on agricultural problems in their niche. Mikhail Kalashnikov got interested in mechanics and engineering because he wanted to help design better farm equipment and improve yields.

gullywhumper 5y ago
For those that might not recognize the name, Mikhail Kalashnikov developed the AK-47 - the assault rifle.
- baud147258 5y ago
  he was successful, but his invention ended reaping a very different type of harvest
  - kikokikokiko 5y ago
    Guns don't kill people, it's the bullets that do it.
    - devtul 5y ago
      It's a team effort
    - denkmoon 5y ago
      One could argue the bullet is an unwilling participant. The firing pin is the real perp.
      - avmich 5y ago
        Gun is a tool with practically only one use, so I don't think "guns don't kill people" is actually accurate.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Starvation is always a big deal under Communism.
- Conlectus 5y ago
  Commenting in no way on any such effects, droughts and famines have been a fairly regular feature of Russian history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nickik 5y ago
    The comment was kind of unnecessary and not complete right but please don't excuse the Soviet government complicity in the massive famines between the revolution and WW2. The waste majority of famines in pre-Communist Russia were limited in scope in one region before transport was available. Even the most extreme famine in modern Russian history killed a few 100k of people. Under the Soviet government many millions died and often in years where there was not actually shortfall in the harvest, but that the government continued to export food during the mass starvation of its citizens. And lets not ignore what is basically genocide when the Soviet government forced nomads to farm and basically killed large parts of the population.
  - qwytw 5y ago
    While Russian agricultural productivity lagged significantly behind western countries, government policies (both soviet and imperial) were arguably the most significant cause of all peace time famines in the Russian Empire/USSR that occurred since the mid/late 19th century. Before 1913 main reason behind regional famines in Russia (excluding war time) was poor infrastructure and no efficient mechanism for redistributing grain (and the imperial government's unwillingness to establish one). Russian net exports of grain remained positive during the 1891–92, 1901 & 1906 famines. This (at least according to the death count) only got worse after the revolution. Agricultural production levels in 1930's weren't that much higher than they were in 1913 (grain production was much higher in all years besides 1936, however livestock production remained mostly at similar levels or even fell). However again, even taking into account the poor productivity exacerbated by the poor harvests the Soviet Union remained a next exporter of grain in all years between 1930 and 1933 (in 1932 and 1933 around 50% of all exports were from Ukrainian ports). During the same period at least 2 million people (up to 10 million according to higher estimates) died as a results of the famine. Considering this I don't really see how could anyone seriously blame the weather...

fuf_998 5y ago

He was. Only he was imprisoned for political reasons of being anti-bolshevik, you can even read this in the quote from his sentence in this cold-warish piece of writing in OP. This is biggest scientific myth i know - that soviets/marxism/etc deny science, because they prosecuted Vavilov for it. Like genetics back then was as it is now (search eugenics), and scientific debate about nature vs nurture was settled, and Lysenko was just some boy and didn't get applause in NYC conference on agrobiology. But I'm glad at least in research frontiers people do revisit Lysenko legacy nowadays, in the the light of epigenetic research. For common people it's just another neccesary illusion.

enkid 5y ago
Sorry, the Soviet Union explicitly advocated for science based on ideology instead of the other way around under Stalin. Wikipedia has numerous examples of this [0]. And no, one person getting applause at one conference in the US does not make a scientific hypothesis valid. Your also either fundamentally misunderstanding what the current research on epigenetics says or what Lysenko was advocating. Lysenko claimed to do things well beyond anything current studies of epigenetics would allow, and the SU went all in on these claims to disastrous effects. (Because they preferred Lamarckism instead of Darwinism for purely ideological reasons.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov...
- fuf_998 5y ago
  Thanks for your comment, i'm working on heterochromatin formation rn as a phd (not claiming full understanding of full epigenetic field ofc, but have some conceptual touch). >Lysenko claimed to do things well beyond anything current studies of epigenetics would allow You are right, but this is not true for all of his work; look at his earlier works on seed vernalization by heat treatment - he experimentally did what is mechanisticaly described now [0]. Isn't it funny - instead of tweaking crazy plant genome with complicated patented GM tech with minimal improvement as a result, you can dip your seeds in warm water and change the phenotype competely. Worth revisiting? Btw, both your and my comments fairly can go to Vavilov too and his less-known sides of research. But for myth sustaining purposes - Lysenko is totally bad, Vavilov is totally good, thus communism (or whatever "bad" label is tranding rn in capitalism criticism) is anti-science. >they preferred Lamarckism instead of Darwinism for purely ideological reasons I've tried here to add this scientific debate dimension to this preference, which is omitted. Both theories were in their nappies back then, and one (Lamarckism) was more appealing bcs of its alignment with ideology, right. It does not mean that genetics were evidently true back then and SU denied it for ideology' sake - this is how is read in the OP writing. [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppl.13163 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppl.13163