Speaker 1: Fireheart originals.
Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original. In nineteen twenty nine, Joseph
Speaker 2: Stalin ordered the farmers of the Soviet Union to start
Speaker 2: a utopia. Back then, the USSR was a quilt of
Speaker 2: old school, frankly almost medieval farming villages. Peasants lived simply.
Speaker 2: They grew their own food and if they felt like it,
Speaker 2: sold the surplus. Stalin saw that as a problem. The
Speaker 2: Soviet Union was industrializing. People were flocking to cities, and
Speaker 2: many of them didn't have garden plots to grow their
Speaker 2: own food. Meanwhile, the country's stockpile of grain was shrinking
Speaker 2: by the day. The situation was so bad that the
Speaker 2: USSR was importing wheat and rye from the United States.
Speaker 2: As you can imagine, Stalin hated this, so he cooked
Speaker 2: up a strategy to fill every belly in the country
Speaker 2: with locally grown food. The plan collectivization. The state would
Speaker 2: take over farms and all those old school peasants would
Speaker 2: begin growing food for everybody with the stroke of a pen.
Speaker 2: The government began gobbling up farmland. It bought new state
Speaker 2: of the art machinery. It introduced new breeds of high yield,
Speaker 2: disease resistant crops, but there was one problem. Many of
Speaker 2: the farmers refused to join the fight.
Speaker 3: There was sort of a systemic depression among farmers. Now
Speaker 3: they were working for Stalin, not for themselves.
Speaker 2: That's Gary Paul Nabhan. He's an agricultural ecologist, conservationist, and
Speaker 2: past winner of a MacArthur Genius Grant. He describes Stalin's
Speaker 2: push for collectivization this way. Imagine you live on a
Speaker 2: farm that's been in your family for generations. You know
Speaker 2: the land inside and out.
Speaker 3: Say have a pride in taking care of their land.
Speaker 3: They have motivations for working hard to produce crops, both
Speaker 3: for their own food and for others.
Speaker 2: And now suddenly the government is handing you seeds and
Speaker 2: giving you quotas, and you can't even keep the spoils.
Speaker 2: Farmers didn't take the news well, especially the most powerful peasants,
Speaker 2: a class of farmers called the Kulos. They simply ignored
Speaker 2: Stalin's demands. When Stalin realized that the Kulaks were resisting,
Speaker 2: he didn't respond with a sternly written letter. He responds
Speaker 2: by promising and I quote, to liquidate the Kulaks as
Speaker 2: a class. Police swooped onto Kulock farms around five million
Speaker 2: would be arrested, deported sent to prison camps. Untold numbers
Speaker 2: were killed. Turns out, exterminating your most successful farmers is
Speaker 2: a bad idea. Productivity plummeted, food became even more scarce,
Speaker 2: yields failed to improve, and the USSR plunged into a
Speaker 2: famine that would lead to the deaths of seven million people.
Speaker 2: Not to put too fine a point on it, but
Speaker 2: Stalin had gotten himself into a bit of a mess.
Speaker 2: He needed help, and one of the people he turned
Speaker 2: to was a guy named Nikolai Vavolov was one of
Speaker 2: the world's leading experts in plant genetics. He had turned
Speaker 2: the dusty botanical labs of Imperial Russia into the world
Speaker 2: capital for plant science, and now his job was to
Speaker 2: resurrect Soviet agriculture, to turn the USSR into a self
Speaker 2: sufficient farming wonderland with crops sprouting from the desolate scrublands
Speaker 2: of the Eurasian step to the craggy mountains of Kazakhstan.
Speaker 2: Vavolov would work tirelessly to lift his country out of
Speaker 2: Stalin's man made famine, but he was also a realist.
Speaker 2: He told the government it would take years to recover
Speaker 2: developing new hardy plant breeds took time. Stalin didn't want
Speaker 2: to hear this. He wanted a solution fast. He needed
Speaker 2: somebody who would make collectivization and work, somebody who could
Speaker 2: engineer seeds that could be planted anywhere, anytime of the year.
Speaker 2: So he began searching for a hero. The search would
Speaker 2: bring the Soviet Union to its knees, and it would
Speaker 2: force Nikolai Vavilov to make a fateful choice, one between
Speaker 2: the truth or his life. Welcome to very special episodes
Speaker 2: and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz, and
Speaker 2: this is seed Wars. I have to say I was
Speaker 2: never a botany kid. I know some kids are, you know,
Speaker 2: out in the backyard, like looking at leaves, identifying trees.
Speaker 2: That was never a skill set of mind. But add
Speaker 2: a historical element and add some characters like Bavolov, and
Speaker 2: then that makes me care about botany.
Speaker 4: My fiance is all about plants and trees, like I can,
Speaker 4: I think, point to any tree and say what is that?
Speaker 4: And she'll know, So for her the story would be amazing.
Speaker 4: For me, I was just wrapped up in the Vavilov
Speaker 4: of it, like just it's so wrong, what happens.
Speaker 5: I want to give a shout out before we start
Speaker 5: to Lucas Riley, who wrote today's episode, So if you
Speaker 5: like the botany aspects, he wrote another show here called
Speaker 5: Bad Seeds, so check that out. If you like the
Speaker 5: repressive dictatorship aspects, he worked on a show called Big Brother,
Speaker 5: all about the assassination of Kim Jong UN's older brother.
Speaker 5: So something for everybody. And in this episode we kind
Speaker 5: of combine them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. And also the Soviet Union, what's up without
Speaker 4: it always sounds like the worst group project in the
Speaker 4: history of humanity. Like nothing is worse than Like I
Speaker 4: got together with some of my Soviets and we came
Speaker 4: up with a plan.
Speaker 5: One quick spoiler. We have some superb voice acting by
Speaker 5: one of the three of us later in this episode,
Speaker 5: and it's not me.
Speaker 2: It's not me. I have my podcast voice and that's it.
Speaker 5: This was showing new new talents. I'd have to do
Speaker 5: an episode about Zarin's acting abilities and career later on.
Speaker 5: I don't know if we can get into it now.
Speaker 4: And how I draw inspiration from the Hunt for the
Speaker 4: Red October for my Russian accents.
Speaker 2: This is just a fascinating story. We get botany, we
Speaker 2: get seed banks, we get politics, we get Russian accents.
Speaker 2: I mean, should we get into it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's do do it.
Speaker 2: When Nikola I Vovolov was a kid, he heard horrific
Speaker 2: stories from family about what it was like to almost
Speaker 2: starve to death.
Speaker 3: Russia I had undergone several famines from the eighteen sixties
Speaker 3: on that literally devastated the population. There was great traumatic
Speaker 3: stress in his own family about the dramatic social cost
Speaker 3: of those famines.
Speaker 2: Hunger was a fact of life in the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: When you went out, you expected to see people's bones
Speaker 2: through their clothes. It was like living in a world
Speaker 2: where skeletons walked the streets. But this nightmarish vision fired
Speaker 2: up Vavolov. He had a dream to create a world
Speaker 2: where nobody would starve. As a kid attending the Petrovskiya
Speaker 2: Agricultural Academy, he wrote in his diary.
Speaker 6: I want to commit my life to understanding nature for
Speaker 6: the betterment of humankind, to work for the benefit of Zippor.
Speaker 2: Vavolov hit the books and became a plant science whiz kid.
Speaker 2: After graduating, he traveled abroad to study even more In England,
Speaker 2: he studied evolutionary theory by pouring over the original manuscripts
Speaker 2: in Charles Darwin's personal library. Along the way, he made
Speaker 2: important contacts.
Speaker 3: Babolov was in contact with some of the greatest evolutionary geneticist.
Speaker 2: One of those great geneticists was William Bateson, the man
Speaker 2: who literally came up with the word genetics. He also
Speaker 2: added people like Reginald Punnitt to his rolodex, which if
Speaker 2: you remember doing Punnitt squares in high school biology, it's
Speaker 2: well that guy. By his late twenties, Vavolov's vast network
Speaker 2: of connections turned him into an internationally known up and comer.
Speaker 2: It helped that Vavolov was, frankly, a really nice guy.
Speaker 2: He was one of those people who seemed to have
Speaker 2: an endless battery, always on the go, solving problems at
Speaker 2: every turn. He seemed to never sleep, but was always
Speaker 2: radiating energy and enthusiasm. He carried a smile everywhere he went,
Speaker 2: and he never forgot the names of people he worked with.
Speaker 2: Simply Vavolov, it was a mensch and a talented one too.
Speaker 2: As a young scientist, he started connecting dots that nobody
Speaker 2: had ever considered. Take for example, this idea about plant diversity.
Speaker 3: He was the first one to sell the alarm about
Speaker 3: biodiversity that connected it to our food system. Wabolov was
Speaker 3: clear that famines were going to occur at an increasingly
Speaker 3: frequent and severe level if we didn't diversify our food system.
Speaker 2: Weavlov argued that if most farms raised the exact species
Speaker 2: of the exact same crop, a single disease could decimate
Speaker 2: the region, but plant diversity could prevent these future calamities.
Speaker 3: It was chafing that against quickly evolving question and diseases.
Speaker 2: Vavolov resolved to take this knowledge home. He returned to
Speaker 2: Russia and joined the Ministry of Agriculture, and then his
Speaker 2: country changed for good. The Tsar is dethroned, the Winter
Speaker 2: Palace is stormed. Vladimir Lenin takes control for Vavolov. The
Speaker 2: new Communist government is pretty friendly to his research interests.
Speaker 2: The Bolsheviks were pitching themselves as a party of peasants' rights.
Speaker 2: Lenin in particular knew the country's poorest needed easy access
Speaker 2: to food. The famine to prevent is the next one,
Speaker 2: Lenin said, and the time to begin is now. The
Speaker 2: Soviets funneled money into agricultural research. Flush with cash, Vavlov's
Speaker 2: tiny botany bureau would become a plant breeding mecca. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Vavolov was doing some cutting edge research. When he was
Speaker 2: thirty three, he presented a theory on plant classification that
Speaker 2: turned him into Russia's top plant science celebrity. Vavolov was
Speaker 2: becoming hot stuff. Russia's leading botanist called him quote the
Speaker 2: future pride of Russian science. The Komissar of Agriculture compared
Speaker 2: him to the inventor of the periodic table. Biology, he
Speaker 2: said has found its Mendolaev. With Vavolov's profile on the rise,
Speaker 2: he had the Soviet government's attention, and he made a pitch.
Speaker 2: If the USSR was going to diversify its crops, if
Speaker 2: it was going to breed new varieties of plants, then
Speaker 2: the government would need a library of sorts, a library
Speaker 2: of seeds.
Speaker 3: It was to be the first living collection of culture
Speaker 3: seeds from around the world.
Speaker 2: To build this library, Vavolov would have to travel and
Speaker 2: collect every seed variety known.
Speaker 3: To man to find resistance and tolerant strains of those
Speaker 3: prop plants and then to either breed them or select
Speaker 3: them to new conditions and uses.
Speaker 2: The government listened to Vavolov's pitch and approved it. Soon
Speaker 2: the young scientist was hitting the.
Speaker 3: Road horseback, mule back, camelback in small plains and wrapting
Speaker 3: rivers to get to places where he thought he might
Speaker 3: find seeds that had been underappreciated.
Speaker 2: Vavolov's passport grew fat with stamps. He traveled to Persia, Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: Syria and Palestine. He explored Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Ethiopia.
Speaker 2: He searched for seeds in Italy and crete in China
Speaker 2: and Japan, In Mexico, Peru, Chile and Trinidad. Vavolov became
Speaker 2: the world's top seed hunter, bringing tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: specimens back to his seed library in Leningrad. He didn't
Speaker 2: just collect seeds, though, he collected local knowledge.
Speaker 6: Two.
Speaker 3: He was really the first scientist to listen deeply to
Speaker 3: the traditional knowledge of farmers.
Speaker 2: He'd ask, where do you grow this crop in moist soil,
Speaker 2: dry soil, on the side of a hill in the shade.
Speaker 2: What time of day do you water it? Vavolov sponged
Speaker 2: in all of the knowledge he could, and by doing
Speaker 2: that he formed another bombshell idea. It's nineteen twenty four
Speaker 2: and Vavolov is in Afghanistan. He steps into a region
Speaker 2: called Nuristan Province, a place of unspoiled beauty. Imagine jagged
Speaker 2: tan mountains carpeted with pine trees, valleys of lush tall grass,
Speaker 2: rivers blue as a gemstone, all untouched by agriculture. Wandering
Speaker 2: the foothills, Vavolov is struck by an idea.
Speaker 3: He realized that which diversity of plants are distributed in
Speaker 3: a few patches river basins, or coastlines or mountain ranges,
Speaker 3: they had been maintained in place for thousands of years
Speaker 3: and had diversified into all kinds of colors and shapes,
Speaker 3: almost like a rainbow of food plant diversity.
Speaker 2: That is, there are a handful of places on Earth
Speaker 2: that preserve a dazzling diversity of ancient crumps. These regions
Speaker 2: are like natural museums, and they are Vavolov suggested the
Speaker 2: center of origin for those plant species. In other words,
Speaker 2: places like this valley in Afghanistan was where the world's
Speaker 2: food originated.
Speaker 3: The food crops that are the mainstays of every country
Speaker 3: in the world come from just a few places.
Speaker 2: This idea, what Vavolov called gene centers, would turn Vavolov
Speaker 2: the plant celebrity into Vavolov the plant genius. Vavolov became
Speaker 2: the most famous plant scientists, not only in Russia, but
Speaker 2: arguably in the whole world. Vavolov's new theory essentially helped
Speaker 2: create a manual for making new breeds of plants, breeds
Speaker 2: that could stand up to drought or heavy rain, or disease,
Speaker 2: even the unpredictable seasons of Russia. Here's Vavolov again, with
Speaker 2: an assist from Peter Pringle's translations in his excellent book
Speaker 2: on Bablov.
Speaker 6: We have before us is the possibility of sculpturing organic
Speaker 6: forms at vil. In the near future, men will be
Speaker 6: able by means of crossing, to synthesize forms such as
Speaker 6: are absolutely unknown in nature.
Speaker 2: When Vavolov came home from his adventures with a new
Speaker 2: collection of seeds, he'd mail the specimens out to experimental
Speaker 2: research farms that were scattered across the Soviet Union. There,
Speaker 2: groups of scientists would plant the seeds and observe how
Speaker 2: they grew in varied soil and climate conditions. Vavolov's work
Speaker 2: would launch the USSR to the peak of plant science.
Speaker 2: It would also launch his international career. He'd be elected
Speaker 2: vice president and later president of the International Genetics Conference.
Speaker 2: In the USSR, he became leader of eighteen different agricultural posts.
Speaker 2: At the Bureau of Applied Botany, he managed more than
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred staff members and was hiring more by the day.
Speaker 2: Vavlov was assembling an army of scientists, and one of
Speaker 2: the people to join that army was a kid named Trophimlesenko.
Speaker 2: Lisenka was a poor kid with little formal education. He
Speaker 2: worked at an experimental farm in Azerbaijan, where he tended
Speaker 2: plots of pea plants in bear feet. He was a nobody,
Speaker 2: but he was an ambitious nobody, and soon he would
Speaker 2: wreck everything Vavolov had built. Trofim Lisenko was nothing like
Speaker 2: Nikolai Vavlov. Where Vavolov was gregarious and open, Lisenka was
Speaker 2: joyless and cold. Vavolov had an actual twinkle in his eyes. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Lisenka was gaunt, with shallow eyes and tight sunken cheeks.
Speaker 2: A journalist at the newspaper Pravda charitably described him as
Speaker 2: quote stingy of words and insignificant of face. Unlike Vavolov,
Speaker 2: who trained at universities under some of the most famous
Speaker 2: geneticists of his day, Lisenka was mostly self taught. The
Speaker 2: two men's educations reflected their backgrounds. Vavolov was born to privilege,
Speaker 2: Lisenko born to peasants. Since Lisenko grew up farming, he
Speaker 2: knew plants inside and out. He often said that he
Speaker 2: didn't need a fancy science degree to understand how plants worked.
Speaker 2: By the nineteen twenties, Lisenko was working at an experimental
Speaker 2: plant breeding station in Azerbaijan where he was growing peas,
Speaker 2: and he was trying something unique. Usually peas are grown
Speaker 2: over the spring and summer, but Lisenko wanted to try
Speaker 2: to grow them over the winter so that the local
Speaker 2: cattle would have something to munch on over the cold months.
Speaker 2: And it worked. Lisenko felt exhilarated. It was like he
Speaker 2: had cracked a secret code, a way to grow plants
Speaker 2: any time of the year. If this was true, it
Speaker 2: was groundbreaking. It could increase yields and save lives. He
Speaker 2: started telling everybody about it, including journalists. When a reporter
Speaker 2: with the state run newspaper Pravda visited Lisenko's farm, the
Speaker 2: writer took the gardener at his word. The story, after all,
Speaker 2: had a good hook. A young, uneducated scientist who had
Speaker 2: grown up dirt poor was using his common sense to
Speaker 2: make scientific discoveries. The writer said that Lisenko didn't quote
Speaker 2: toil in a laboratory away from the land. He went
Speaker 2: to the root of things back at the seed library
Speaker 2: in Leningrad. Vavolov must have read the article with amusement.
Speaker 2: Lisenko hadn't discovered anything. Regular farmers had stumbled upon the
Speaker 2: same trick generations ago. In fact, Vavolov had created an
Speaker 2: entire department to study the effects of heat, light, climate,
Speaker 2: and season on plant growth. But Lisenko didn't know this.
Speaker 2: He didn't read botany journals or keep up with the
Speaker 2: latest science, so when he made his so called discovery,
Speaker 2: he was convinced it was news to everybody. Vavolov didn't
Speaker 2: resent Lisenko for taking credit for an old idea. The
Speaker 2: kid clearly had talent, so he encouraged the young scientists
Speaker 2: to keep at it. In the meantime, Vavolov was curious
Speaker 2: about Lisenko's methods, so he sent one of his top
Speaker 2: scientists down to Azerbaijan to check on Lisenko's science. The
Speaker 2: report that came back was not great. Lisenko had little
Speaker 2: knowledge of scientific literature. The report said, he paid no
Speaker 2: attention to pesky things like lab practices or control groups.
Speaker 2: Lisenko wasn't tracking any data. He was just charting vibes
Speaker 2: up in Leningrad. Vavolov was dismayed by the report, but
Speaker 2: remained optimistic that Lisenka was just young and arrogant. He
Speaker 2: would grow out of it. But Vavolov's optimism was his weakness.
Speaker 2: He didn't know that Lisenko had no interest in learning
Speaker 2: from so called elites like him. He didn't know that
Speaker 2: Lisenko thought universities were quote harmful nonsense. Lisenko was one
Speaker 2: of those people who was convinced he already knew everything,
Speaker 2: which is funny because Lisenko believed a lot of nonsense.
Speaker 3: Lisenko was stuck in sort of a nineteenth century ideology.
Speaker 2: To start, Lisenko did not believe in genetics, chromosomes, genes, DNA, heredity.
Speaker 2: All of that stuff might as well be fairy dust. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: he believed in things like spontaneous generation, the idea that
Speaker 2: life can just appear. He even believed that a species
Speaker 2: could transform midlife into another species, like wheat could transform
Speaker 2: into rye. And then there were his opinions about evolution.
Speaker 3: He didn't understand anything about natural selection.
Speaker 2: Liseno didn't believe in Darwin's theory. Instead, he was what
Speaker 2: you'd call a Lamarkist, named after the French naturalist Jean
Speaker 2: Baptiste Lamarque. Lamarkists believed that traits aren't acquired through genes,
Speaker 2: they're acquired through actions that we take during our lifetime.
Speaker 2: Take a giraffe. Lamarkists believed that the giraffe got its
Speaker 2: long neck because its ancestors stretched their necks reaching for leaves.
Speaker 2: All of that stretching lengthened the neck, and over generations,
Speaker 2: they passed this long neck to their offspring. To be clear,
Speaker 2: that is not how evolution works.
Speaker 3: Oh couldn't accept the breath and I think the wonder
Speaker 3: and beauty of revolution as we understand it today.
Speaker 2: Lisenko didn't accept that you could help plants evolve by
Speaker 2: crossbreeding them. Instead, he believed you could essentially train a
Speaker 2: plant to transform into something different. To be clear, again,
Speaker 2: that is not how evolution works. Up in Leningrad, Vavolov
Speaker 2: knew Lisenko harbored some weird ideas, that he was a
Speaker 2: bit sloppy with his data, but he never truly understood
Speaker 2: the extent of Lisenko's wackiness. Instead, all he saw was
Speaker 2: somebody who, like him, loved plants, a kid who quote
Speaker 2: walked by faith and not by sight. After all, what
Speaker 2: was so wrong about employing someone who thinks outside the box,
Speaker 2: who knows? Vavolov said, maybe Lisenko would stumble on a
Speaker 2: way quote to grow bananas in Moscow. He believed in
Speaker 2: Losenko's potential, and Lisenko returned that goodwill by stabbing him
Speaker 2: in the back. In the early nineteen thirties, Lisenko was
Speaker 2: experimenting with planting schedules. What if we plant potatoes in
Speaker 2: the winter or in the fall, how would that change productivity?
Speaker 2: He called this big idea vernalization. The so called journalists
Speaker 2: at the state newspaper.
Speaker 7: Ate it up a Grandmamus. Lisenko's discoveries will lead our
Speaker 7: agriculture onto a high road of vast possibilities in extraordinary
Speaker 7: achievements and greatly increased the tempo of our social construction.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, scientists whistled a different tune. When Lisenko presented his
Speaker 2: findings at a science conference, most colleagues ignored his work. Vavolov, meanwhile,
Speaker 2: acted like a good mentor. He called Lisenko's work remarkable
Speaker 2: and encouraged the young scientist again to keep at it.
Speaker 2: But each time he sent a scientist down to check
Speaker 2: on Lisenko's methods, the reports that returned were brutal.
Speaker 8: Lisenko is an experimenter who was fearless and undoubtedly talented,
Speaker 8: but he was also an uneducated and extremely egotistical person,
Speaker 8: deeming himself to be a new messiah of biological.
Speaker 2: Science, the new Messiah of biological science. By now, Lisenko
Speaker 2: had become a darling of the Communist press, and it
Speaker 2: was getting to his head. In his mind, he was
Speaker 2: just a poor kid coming up with great ideas that
Speaker 2: the elites in Leningrad just didn't appreciate, and he was
Speaker 2: getting sick of the fact that they weren't validating his efforts.
Speaker 2: So he went out and found somebody who would. In
Speaker 2: the early nineteen thirties, Lisenko Medigui named Isaac Present, Present
Speaker 2: was not a scientist. He was a political philosopher and professor,
Speaker 2: a guy with a deep interest in biology, and by
Speaker 2: deep interest, I mean he believed that communism and biology
Speaker 2: were incompatible. Take genetics here was an idea that basically said,
Speaker 2: your bloodline determines your fate. It sounded fascist, a scientific
Speaker 2: way to justify racism. To Present, genetics was metaphysical bs
Speaker 2: it had no real evidence behind it, he said. He
Speaker 2: and Lisenko also took issue with natural selection, instead, arguing
Speaker 2: that plants, at least plants within the same species, were
Speaker 2: like good communists and didn't compete with other members of
Speaker 2: their species. Now, anybody who tends a garden knows that
Speaker 2: beloney plants compete for sunlight, soil, water, basically everything else.
Speaker 2: But for Present, a guy who taught classes with titles
Speaker 2: like class Struggle on the natural science front, that sort
Speaker 2: of knowledge was the old way of doing science. It
Speaker 2: was time to embrace a new communist friendly science.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: By the early nineteen thirty's Present took a shine to
Speaker 2: the young Lisenko. Here was a kid whose ideas were
Speaker 2: being spurned by his bourgeois bosses. Lisenko in turn looked
Speaker 2: up to Present. Finally, somebody in the upper ranks of
Speaker 2: academia was taking him seriously. They began to meet and
Speaker 2: chat about science. After a few meetings, Present decided to
Speaker 2: become Lisenko's biggest cheerleader, his publicist, his promoter, his spin doctor.
Speaker 2: Together they would concoct a quote new biology that reflected
Speaker 2: a communist worldview. Take that idea about natural cooperation. Lisenko
Speaker 2: would go on to suggest that since plants, like good communists,
Speaker 2: don't compete, then a farmer could plant seeds as close
Speaker 2: together as possible to achieve a higher yield. This is
Speaker 2: a catastrophically bad idea, but Lisenko didn't bounce his idea
Speaker 2: off other scientists. He bounced it off Present. Meanwhile, he
Speaker 2: bumped Lisenko's ideas up to his friends in the Kremlin,
Speaker 2: where he lauded the young scientist as an unsung genius
Speaker 2: whose ideas were being ignored, which was true in a way,
Speaker 2: scientists like Vavolov were ignoring him. Lisenko kept pushing to
Speaker 2: bring his big idea of vernalization to the masses, but
Speaker 2: Vavolov kept shooting him down, telling him that the idea
Speaker 2: was best for slow and controlled experimentation, not something that
Speaker 2: should be forced on every farm in the USSR. Lisenko
Speaker 2: didn't like getting rejected. Vavolov wasn't a real farmer. He
Speaker 2: was a phony who spent most of his work here
Speaker 2: traveling the world hunting for seeds.
Speaker 3: He thought that Babolov was an elitist that was spending
Speaker 3: a lot of money going around other countries, almost on
Speaker 3: a scientific joy ride.
Speaker 2: By the mid nineteen thirties, some people high up in
Speaker 2: government were beginning to feel the same way. After Stalin
Speaker 2: liquidated the Kulux and sent the USSR spiraling into famine,
Speaker 2: the government was anxious to recover, and Vavolov, they believed,
Speaker 2: was moving too slow. The Kremlin demanded new varieties of
Speaker 2: grain to be ready in three years. Vavolov calmly told
Speaker 2: his superiors that that was not how science works. It
Speaker 2: would take at least ten The government did not like
Speaker 2: hearing that, and Lisenko saw that as his chance. Lisenko
Speaker 2: argued that he alone knew how to save the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union from starvation, but elites like Vavolov were holding him
Speaker 2: and the country back.
Speaker 3: Lyshenko laim Babilov and said that he could come up
Speaker 3: with a more cost effective solution to avoiding famines.
Speaker 2: Lisenko became more and more aggressive. In nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 2: he made another speech comparing his superiors to the kulaks.
Speaker 2: His bosses, he said were obstructing progress. Joseph Stalin was
Speaker 2: in the audience when Lisenko made his speech. He didn't
Speaker 2: know anything about biology, but he knew good rhetoric. When
Speaker 2: he heard it, he stood up and began.
Speaker 4: To clap Bravo, comrad Lisenko.
Speaker 2: The next year, the Commissariat of Agriculture ordered approximately five
Speaker 2: hundred farms to put Lisenko's farming techniques to the test.
Speaker 2: After the government ordered farmers to try out Lisenko's planting methods,
Speaker 2: the scientist mailed hundreds of questionnaires to track the experiment's progress.
Speaker 2: When the envelopes came back, Lisenko threw most of the
Speaker 2: results out. He kept only ten percent of them, the
Speaker 2: ones that made his idea look correct. His idea was
Speaker 2: a complete failure, but because he cherry picked the data
Speaker 2: and tossed anything that made him look wrong. All of
Speaker 2: the news reports made him out to be a boy genius.
Speaker 2: When reality on the ground became too hard for even
Speaker 2: the state sponsored newspapers to deny, one reporter twisted it
Speaker 2: this way, summer plantings are very good, but because of
Speaker 2: poor cultivation of the land, we obtained a low harvest.
Speaker 2: In other words, it was the farmer's fault. In the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, there was a word for people like this,
Speaker 2: people who obstructed the communist revolution, wreckers, And as Lisenko
Speaker 2: saw it, the farmers were wreckers, and so were scientists
Speaker 2: like Vavolov, who were demanding that he published transparent data.
Speaker 2: Even with these silent failures, all the press, the government support.
Speaker 2: The momentum was still on Lisenko's side, and as his
Speaker 2: star was rising, Vavolov's was falling. Vavlov was barred from
Speaker 2: traveling internationally and banned from receiving foreign science journals. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: people like Present were writing articles lambasting Vavolov for not
Speaker 2: finding fast solutions to the famine. Present compared Vavolov's belief
Speaker 2: in genetics to religious devotion. Vavolov responded by writing in
Speaker 2: a journal.
Speaker 6: To those who propose elimination of modern genetics, v say,
Speaker 6: first offer a substitute of equivalent value. Let chromosomal theory
Speaker 6: be replaced by better theory, not a theory that sets
Speaker 6: us back seventy years.
Speaker 2: Lisenko replied in the same issue, calling Vavalov's beloved genetics.
Speaker 9: A reactionary, idealistic absorb falsification of science.
Speaker 6: Genetics is undisguised metaphysics.
Speaker 2: Up in Leningrad, Vavolov tried to tune out all of
Speaker 2: this rubbish. He continued cataloging his seeds, expanding the holdings
Speaker 2: of his vast plant library, but it was getting harder
Speaker 2: to stay the course. Wavlov was giving lectures as usual,
Speaker 2: but now he was getting booed off the stage. Lisenko
Speaker 2: was getting more fiery too.
Speaker 6: Comraatesvzre and easier.
Speaker 9: Really no class stluggle on the vernylization front. Instead of
Speaker 9: helping the collective farmers, scientists like Vardilov sabotage sinks. A
Speaker 9: class enemy is always enemy, even if it is scientist.
Speaker 2: Vavolov usually kept his head down, but he couldn't help
Speaker 2: but defend the sanctity of science. He knew his old
Speaker 2: protege was cooking the books. Lisenka was failing upward, and
Speaker 2: it was plunge the Soviet Union closer and closer to famine.
Speaker 6: Our magicians do not take into accounts the years of
Speaker 6: long experience of warm science. They do not want to
Speaker 6: here opinion of other researchers. They want to live in
Speaker 6: their birthta suits.
Speaker 2: In the old days, criticizing the work of a fellow
Speaker 2: scientist was just part of the discourse. It's what made
Speaker 2: science well science. But these were new times. Scientific criticism
Speaker 2: wasn't just criticism anymore. It was something downright unpatriotic. In
Speaker 2: the late nineteen thirties, Stalin issued in order to quote
Speaker 2: fight the high priests of science. It started when the
Speaker 2: secret police arrested two leaders of the USSR's top farm school.
Speaker 2: The school's former president, Alexander Murlov, would be charged with
Speaker 2: sabotage and shot dead. The school's current president, Georgie Meister,
Speaker 2: would be arrested too. The person to take his job
Speaker 2: would be Trophen Lisenko. It's unclear exactly what Vavlov was
Speaker 2: thinking when his colleagues began disappearing, but he clearly assumed
Speaker 2: that he was next. But over the next two years,
Speaker 2: his number never came up. Instead, Vavolov watched as dozens
Speaker 2: of the country's leading geneticists, all of them his friends,
Speaker 2: were declared enemies of the people and rounded up, never
Speaker 2: to be seen again. All the while, Lisenko began taking
Speaker 2: jobs that used to be Vavolov's. The Kremlin installed Lisenko
Speaker 2: as new director at the Institute of Genetics. Vavolov was
Speaker 2: baffled the guy running the Institute of Genetics didn't even
Speaker 2: believe in genetics. By nineteen thirty nine, he was at
Speaker 2: wits end.
Speaker 9: We shall go to Zipire, we shall burn, but we
Speaker 9: shall not retreat from our convictions.
Speaker 2: The people in high posts were listening. In fact, they
Speaker 2: were slowly building a case against Vavolov. The State Security
Speaker 2: Service concocted a conspiracy claiming that the USSR's agricultural scientists
Speaker 2: had deliberately sabotaged Stalin' push for collectivisation. In the report,
Speaker 2: Vavolov was one of the scientists named. It said that
Speaker 2: he and the Institute oft had provided quote grist to
Speaker 2: the mills of anti scientific theories. Lisenko was happy to
Speaker 2: jump onto that narrative.
Speaker 3: He blamed Vavolov for famines and other disruptions of peasant
Speaker 3: agriculture that were really caused by the Collectivizationlysenko manipulated Stalin
Speaker 3: to think that Vabolov's whole point of view was a
Speaker 3: capitalistic elitist endeavor.
Speaker 2: The secret police had a lot of phony evidence to
Speaker 2: suspect Vavolov of wrongdoing. He received his higher education in
Speaker 2: the West, and he was chummy with scientists from capitalist
Speaker 2: parts of the world.
Speaker 3: He was open to dialogue between the Western world and
Speaker 3: Eastern world, sharing feedsen knowledge with other scientists.
Speaker 2: Wavolov believed in sharing knowledge to push science forward, but
Speaker 2: Lisenko was suspicious of his motives.
Speaker 3: Lysenko was xenophobic and suggested to Stalin that Davilov was
Speaker 3: both a spy for other country and was sharing secrets
Speaker 3: with people in other countries.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty, Vavolov was traveling Ukraine doing his usual
Speaker 2: chatting with farmers, examining crops. He visited a research institute
Speaker 2: dedicated to propagating sugar beets. One day, after exploring the
Speaker 2: grassy valleys of the Carpathian Mountains, Vavolov returned to his
Speaker 2: hostel near turnipsy and was greeted by four Soviet agents.
Speaker 2: The men said he was needed in Moscow. Vavolov knew
Speaker 2: what they really meant. Vavolov's file contained reports from spies
Speaker 2: and moles who had been tailing him for almost a decade.
Speaker 2: Included in the file was a memo struggle waged by
Speaker 2: reactionary scientists against academician Lisenko. The charges against Vavolov were broad.
Speaker 2: He was accused of political betrayal, sabotage, even espionage. Secret
Speaker 2: police turned his lab upside down, his apartment was searched,
Speaker 2: and at Lubyanka Prison he was interrogated. Thanks to archived
Speaker 2: transcripts of his interrogations and Peter Pringle's book, we know
Speaker 2: how the talks started.
Speaker 1: You are arrested as an active participant of anti Soviet
Speaker 1: wrecage organization and a spy for foreign intelligence services. Do
Speaker 1: you admit your guilt?
Speaker 6: No, I do not admit my guild. I never was
Speaker 6: a spy or participant of anti Soviet organization. I always
Speaker 6: voted honestly for the benefit of Soviet step You are alive.
Speaker 1: The investigation is aware that during a long period of
Speaker 1: time you headed the anti Soviet wreckage organization in the
Speaker 1: field of agriculture, and you are a spy for a
Speaker 1: foreign intelligence services. With the man truthful information.
Speaker 6: I ctagorically declare that I was not involved into espionage
Speaker 6: or any anti Soviet activity.
Speaker 2: Over the next two weeks, Vavalov was interrogated an average
Speaker 2: of ten hours a day. The questionings were always in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night, There was never a break,
Speaker 2: and Vavolov was never allowed to set Looking back, it's
Speaker 2: clear he was being tortured into giving a false confession, because,
Speaker 2: almost ten hours into his twenty third interrogation, Vavalov broke.
Speaker 6: I am guilty of being member of a righteous organization
Speaker 6: existing in USSR Commissariat of Agri Kurtu.
Speaker 2: In a letter, Vavlov's brother despaired.
Speaker 10: His big, useful life is being ruined, his end, the
Speaker 10: lives of his close ones for that this is a
Speaker 10: cruel mistake and an injustice, the end of scientific work,
Speaker 10: zeeslanda ruining, the lives of family members, the threat of
Speaker 10: it all.
Speaker 2: As Wavolov languished in jail, Lisenko assumed the leadership of
Speaker 2: all of the Soviet Union's top agricultural departments, installing his
Speaker 2: pseudo scientific followers in important posts. More than three one
Speaker 2: thousand mainstream biologists would be dismissed or imprisoned. Numerous scientists
Speaker 2: were relieved from their jobs with a bullet to the head. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Lisenko's farming policies were failing, but Lisenko kept cooking the
Speaker 2: books and the press kept blindly singing his praises. He'd
Speaker 2: earned full support of the Communist Party's Central Committee, and
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty eight he'd give a speech declaring Mendelayan
Speaker 2: genetics a pseudoscience. Teaching genetics and cell biology in schools
Speaker 2: was soon banned. Textbooks were purged, school teachers were re educated.
Speaker 2: When Lisenko and his acolytes traveled to international biology conferences,
Speaker 2: scientists from other countries were astounded by how backward the
Speaker 2: USA R had become.
Speaker 5: The faithful followers of Lysenko prepared their scientific results just
Speaker 5: to support its fantastic theories. Listeners acquainted with biology were horrified.
Speaker 5: It was simply inconceivable that such gibberish could be presented
Speaker 5: in the guise of scientific discoveries.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Lisenko became more unhinged with time. Many of his
Speaker 2: followers declared that viruses don't exist around the world. Scientists
Speaker 2: were baffled. The USSR used to be leading the plant race.
Speaker 2: Now it was totally backward, and all were wondering what
Speaker 2: in the world happened to Nikolai Vavolov. After his arrest,
Speaker 2: Vavlov would be interrogated almost four hundred times, totaling seventeen
Speaker 2: hundred hours. The interrogations were so exhausting that Vavlov often
Speaker 2: returned to his bunk, crawling on all fours. But through
Speaker 2: it all he refused to deny the legitimacy of his
Speaker 2: scientific work. He also didn't forget who helped send him there.
Speaker 2: According to his cellmate, a police informant, Vavlov cursed Lisenko
Speaker 2: as a false scientist. Lisenko's henchmen would say the same
Speaker 2: of Vavlov. After his interrogations, a panel of scientists reviewed
Speaker 2: the scientific merit of Vavlov's testimony. Their report confirmed that
Speaker 2: genetics was metaphysical and that Vavlov was a wrecker. All
Speaker 2: of the scientists on the panel, of course, were approved
Speaker 2: by Lisenko. When a judge read the report, he made
Speaker 2: his sentence.
Speaker 1: Nikolay Vavlov must suffer the supreme penalty to be shot
Speaker 1: and for all his personal property confiscated.
Speaker 2: Ponn sentencing, Vavalov begged for his life. He made an
Speaker 2: appeal for a reduced sentence, which miraculously was approved. But
Speaker 2: just as hope appeared on the horizon, the Nazis invaded
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. World War two hit the Motherland, and
Speaker 2: Vavolov was evacuated to a new prison, and he follow
Speaker 2: through with his appeal died with the advance of World
Speaker 2: War In the city of Saratov, Vavlov lived in a
Speaker 2: dank jail basement holding other intellectuals. His cellmates were an
Speaker 2: engineer and a literary critic. They had no clothes. They
Speaker 2: wore canvas sacks and shared a single bed. They barely ate.
Speaker 2: Vavlov grew skinny and weak, but in the darkness he
Speaker 2: found light. His cellmates were thinkers. They they were intellectually curious,
Speaker 2: and so he passed the time in his cage by
Speaker 2: telling stories of his adventures abroad, giving lectures on genetics
Speaker 2: and biology. Three years into his sentence January nineteen forty three,
Speaker 2: Vavolov would become pale and emaciated. Payne shot through his
Speaker 2: chest his breathing was shallow. He had become one of
Speaker 2: those walking skeletons he had wished to save as a child.
Speaker 2: When he visited the prison hospital, doctors diagnosed him with
Speaker 2: dystrophy from prolonged malnutrition. Two days later he died. The
Speaker 2: man who had dedicated his life to feeding the world
Speaker 2: had died of starvation. Trofumlsenko would lead the USSR's Agricultural
Speaker 2: School another two decades, but by nineteen sixty five it
Speaker 2: became obvious to everyone that Vavolov was right. Lisenko's ideas
Speaker 2: were trash. It was a long time coming. In nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine and nineteen fifty, nearly all of Lisenko's summer
Speaker 2: plantings were destroyed by drought and disease. His belief that seeds,
Speaker 2: like good communists, could be planted close together had proven
Speaker 2: especially disastrous. In Communist China, Mao Zidong embraced Lisenkoism. The
Speaker 2: result the Great Chinese Famine, considered one of the worst
Speaker 2: man made disasters in history. Lisenko's methods led to the
Speaker 2: deaths of at least fifteen million people in China. According
Speaker 2: to Sam Keene, writer at The Atlantic Trophen Losenko probably
Speaker 2: killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history.
Speaker 2: After Lisenka was removed from his position, the study of
Speaker 2: genetics became acceptable again. Eighty thousand biology teachers had to
Speaker 2: be retrained. Officials decided to rename the All Union Institute
Speaker 2: of Plant Industry. Coming up with a new name was easy.
Speaker 2: They would call it the Vavolov Institute. By the late
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, Nikolai Vavolov's reputation had been resurrected, and for
Speaker 2: good cause, because if you eat vegetables, or bread or
Speaker 2: meat from animals that eat vegetables, chances are high that
Speaker 2: you've consumed something descended from Nikolai Vavolov's massive seed collection.
Speaker 2: This was especially true for anybody living in the former
Speaker 2: Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: History bears out that what Russia fed for the sixty
Speaker 3: years after Babylov's death was in fact the plants, the
Speaker 3: crop plants and seeds that he brought in.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen thirties, Vavolov's seed collection had totaled at
Speaker 2: more than two hundred and fifty thousand samples. It was
Speaker 2: the world's first and largest seed bank. It would inspire
Speaker 2: scientists around the world to protect the hereditary material of
Speaker 2: their native plants. Today, there are hundreds of seed banks
Speaker 2: all over the planet routinely coming to our rescue. In
Speaker 2: the early nineteen eighties, for instance, when a parasitic worm
Speaker 2: was attacking soybean crops all over the United States, scientists
Speaker 2: stopped the attack by crossbreeding with beans kept at the
Speaker 2: Vavolov institutes. Vavolov knew his science could have that kind
Speaker 2: of impact, and when compared to other scientific heretics, he
Speaker 2: remains in a league of his own. Take Galileo, when
Speaker 2: he was facing down the inquisition for his scientific beliefs,
Speaker 2: he recanted his claims. He caved to the political pressure.
Speaker 2: Vavolov never caved. Staring down the interrogator, Vavolov chose truth.
Speaker 2: He never denied the existence of genetics. He never dismissed
Speaker 2: his life's work. He chose to be on the right
Speaker 2: side of science, even if it put him on the
Speaker 2: wrong side of the protege who killed him. In the end,
Speaker 2: Vavolov couldn't save himself, but he did save us. So
Speaker 2: that's it's sort of a downer of an episode. But
Speaker 2: I have to say there's a spirit of optimism that
Speaker 2: I do think runs through Bavlov's story completely.
Speaker 4: I mean, I can't aworry with a new hero, and like,
Speaker 4: I never expect a story about like a pair of
Speaker 4: battle and Soviet botanists who would rope in my man Galileo.
Speaker 4: But like more than that, I also never expect to
Speaker 4: walk away from the story thinking that my Man Galileo
Speaker 4: was a punk ass, which I did. I was like, dude,
Speaker 4: but Galileo, he's not nearly the guy that Vabilov is,
Speaker 4: because Babilov was down to die for science and Socrates
Speaker 4: had that same spirit, but not Galileo. He's like, no,
Speaker 4: I'm going to cop to the charges. I want to
Speaker 4: keep my life. Avolov's like, I'm going down for the cause,
Speaker 4: like new hero. And also he dies with the most
Speaker 4: brutal cosmic irony ever.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it would make a very good movie. And so
Speaker 5: if it were a movie, who would play Babilov?
Speaker 2: Oh God, we need like a hero. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I like sort of an atom driver type. But maybe
Speaker 2: I would just cast him in anything.
Speaker 4: Okay, I went two ways on this. I went there,
Speaker 4: you could do it as a dark comedy, and I
Speaker 4: know you're like dark comedy with the story we just heard.
Speaker 4: But seriously, imagine this Nikolai Vavlov seth Rogen and for
Speaker 4: trofim Lysenko Jeremy Allen White from The Bear Dude can
Speaker 4: nail before right. Also, you need you need to Stalins.
Speaker 4: You need a young Stalin and an old Solan For
Speaker 4: young Stalin. Some will say it's stunt casting, but I
Speaker 4: think it works perfectly because he looks like him. Zane
Speaker 4: Malick from One Direction as young Stalin and for Old
Speaker 4: Stalin Javier Bardem, but keeping in the spirit of Sean
Speaker 4: Connery from in The Hunt for the October, he does
Speaker 4: it without a Russian accent, Tavier Bardem Spanish accent, but
Speaker 4: a thick and lush mustache.
Speaker 5: What do you say?
Speaker 2: I just respect how quick and how well thought out.
Speaker 4: That answer was unbelievable, But okay, I also got an
Speaker 4: Oscar bay one if you want that. This one's the
Speaker 4: more serious one. Now imagine the hero Vigo Mortensen as
Speaker 4: Nikolai Bavelov, and then you pair it with that cat
Speaker 4: from Always Sunday in Philadelphia, Charlie Day. He does unhinged well,
Speaker 4: so you have him as trophim Lysenko. Then for young
Speaker 4: Stalin it's still Zane Malick from one direction. For Old Stalin,
Speaker 4: it's Tom Hardy with an outrageous Russian accent and outrageous
Speaker 4: by stash boom oscar bait.
Speaker 2: I'm in I Where do I send the check?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 7: Hollywood?
Speaker 5: Are you listening? Yeah, let's fund this. Let's not put
Speaker 5: this out because someone will steal this idea and we
Speaker 5: got to get a piece of this.
Speaker 4: Also, by the way, did you guys notice the High
Speaker 4: Priests of Science bit that one line stuck out at me?
Speaker 4: And I haven't told you the guys this, but I
Speaker 4: have this hobby. I like to collect band names, perfect
Speaker 4: band names. And now I'm going to put on the
Speaker 4: list right below Cruise Ship Magician, the High Priests of Science.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 2: I would listen to them.
Speaker 5: Very special running segment. So let me ask you guys this.
Speaker 5: You've both hosted hundreds of episodes of your own podcasts,
Speaker 5: Dana Noble, Blood Zarin, Ridiculous Crime and others. What's your
Speaker 5: favorite set in Russia episodes that you two have told
Speaker 5: anything come to mind?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I would say I have an episode on Catherine
Speaker 2: the Great Coup against her husband. And if you have
Speaker 2: any interest in Russian history. I would I would go
Speaker 2: back to listen to that one. I think it's called
Speaker 2: Catherine the Great and her husband the Mediocre. They just
Speaker 2: had a fascinating relationship and then a real throwback back
Speaker 2: in like like early early noble blood days. So it's
Speaker 2: like the audio quality may not be up to snowf
Speaker 2: but give give it a whirl. I have an episode
Speaker 2: on the Empress Anna Ivanovna, who built an ice palace
Speaker 2: entirely to humiliate and ideally freeze to death a political enemy.
Speaker 5: Incredible way to do it. That's Russian style. That's Russian style.
Speaker 5: See as far as.
Speaker 4: I don't think we have any episodes set in Russia, though,
Speaker 4: we did go and talk about how for a while,
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union was selling their battleships and so Pepsi
Speaker 4: was the sixth largest navy in the world thanks to
Speaker 4: the Soviet Navy. They've been buying because the Soviet wanted
Speaker 4: Pepsi cola, so then they traded their old defunct ships
Speaker 4: to Pepsi for cola. So eventually, for a while Pepsi
Speaker 4: had the sixth largest navy in the world. So we
Speaker 4: didn cover that.
Speaker 5: Well, that's good further listening. If you want to dive
Speaker 5: into those. I'll put the links in the show description
Speaker 5: here so they don't do too much hunting.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, Bye.
Speaker 5: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 5: This episode was written by Lucas Riley. Our producer is
Speaker 5: Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by Chris Childs. Additional
Speaker 5: editing by John Washington, Mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser.
Speaker 5: Very Special Episodes is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett
Speaker 5: and me Jason. English. Original music by Elise McCoy. Research
Speaker 5: in fact checking by Austin Thompson and Lucas Riley. Show
Speaker 5: logo by Lucy Kintonia. Shout out to our voiceover crew,
Speaker 5: especially Tom antonellis a total pro who did some great
Speaker 5: work in this episode. I hope we get to hear
Speaker 5: him again soon. I'm your executive producer and we'll see
Speaker 5: you back here next Wednesday. Very Special Episodes is a
Speaker 5: production of iHeart Podcasts.