The Institute of History of Science and the Michurinists in the Archives of Boris Raikov

The Institute for the History of Science of the USSR Academy of Sciences, IHS (since 1953 — Institute for the History of Science and Technology), was the leading centre in the country for the study of the history of science, including biology. After the August session (1948) of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, VASKHNIL, the staff of the IHS was involved in the propaganda and historical justification of the “Michurinist” biology (also known as Lysenkoism). In this article, based on archival documents, I reconstruct the events of 1949–1953, connected with the participation of IHS staff in the struggle for “Michurinist” biology. Among historians of biology worked in IHS there were those who sincerely accepted the “Michurinist” doctrine and those who were in “internal opposition” to it (but were forced to take part in its propaganda). I trace the history of the failed project to publish the so-called “Anti-Weissmanism Collection” book, which was included in the IHS research plan at the end of 1948 but was never published. Based on documents from the archival fund of the prominent Soviet historian of biology Boris Raikov, events related to his forced participation in the propaganda of Lysenkoism are described, including the mechanism of censorship intervention in the manuscripts of his monographs, aimed at their revision in the “Michurinist” spirit. The materials illustrate the forms of ideologically motivated interference in the work of Soviet historians of science and further characterize the negative impact of Lysenkoism on areas of science far removed from evolutionary biology and genetics

Censorship · Doctrine · History of science · Ideology · Biographical and Historical Analysis · Fusion and Plasma Physics Studies · Philosophy and History of Science