THE GENETICS CONTROVERSY AND THE PSY-
CHOLOGICAL SCIENCES IN THE USSR
RAYMOND A. BAUER
Harvard C/iiversitv
AMERICAN psychologists will be interested
f-\ to know that the controversy over genetic
/ V theory in the Soviet Union has spread to
psychology and psychiatry.
.For about twenty years orthodox genetic theory
has been under attack in the Soviet Union. The
leader of the attackers, Trolim I). Lysenko, chal-
lenges the gene constancy hypothesis, and main-
tains that hereditary characteristics can be change:!
by human intervention (via the organism's response
to a changed environment) and that these changes
will be passed on to succeeding generations.1 Ju
August 1048, Lysenko, who is president of the
Academy of Agricultural Sciences, announced in a
speech at that institute that his position had the
official sponsorship of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party, that there was no point in further
discussion on this matter, and that the teachings of
Weismann, Morgan, and Mendel were to be elimi-
nated in Soviet genetics. A number of prominent
scientists were relieved of their posts, and the work of
at least one institute was terminated. Orbcli, who
succeeded Pavlov as director of the Pavlov Institute,
was relieved of his post as Secretary of the Depart-
ment of Biological Science in the Academy of Science
(-12}. _
Articles spelling out the implications of the new
line in genetics for various other disciplines appeared
quickly in the journals of these disciplines, and the
popular press heralded this ''new triumph of Soviet
science."
1. Lysenko's genetics have impinged on psy-
chology and psychiatry on varied occasions. A prom-
inent psychologist published a full length article
on The most important problems of psychology in the
light of the session of the Lenin all-union Academy
of Agricultural Sciences (6). The director of the
Institute of Psychology in the Academy of Pedagog-
ical Sciences rose at the end of an address by the
1
Further details of this position and of the history of the
controversy can be found in items 2, 7, A', 9, 10 and It in
the bibliography.
418
president of the Academy and made a brief statement
of the present deficiencies and future tasks of the
science of psychology (5). An unsigned editorial in a
psychiatric journal on The flowering of Soviet pro-
gressive science devoted several pages to an attack
on Mendclian genetics and its proponents in psy-
chiatry. Finally, the editor of the psychiatric journal
of the Ministry of Health wrote an extended,attack
on one of his psychiatric colleagues-using the doc-
trines of -Lysenko as a text. As varied and as few
as these articles are, a fairly clear picture seems to
emerge. Their authoritative nature gives assurance
that they arc representative.
2. An explicit stand is taken that acquired charac-
teristics are inherited.
The Weismann Morganists make an artificial dis-
tinction between the material of inheritance and
the rest of the body. . . . This constitutes 'pre-
formism,' and is an idealistic reactionary conception
which is antiscientific and foreign to materialism.
Progressive Mitchurin 2 biology, on the other hand,
asserts that a change in inherited finalities is the
ordinary result of development of an organism
under particular environmental conditions (/).
And:
According to creative Soviet Darwinism, inheritance
is changed by the accumulation of traits and char-
acteristics, which the organism acquires in the
course of generations (5).
In psychology, the possibility of purposeful genetic-
changes is heralded as an opportunity to crack the
problem of phylogenesis. A Professor Borovskii is
berated for having said "The inheritance of acquired
traits is not possible" (6). His critic replies:
The false, metaphysical conception that, inherited
traits remain unchanged in the living organism is an
2
The Soviet press usually refers to Lysenko's theories as
''mitehurin geneties" in honor of the originator of that posi-
tion, I. V. Mitehurin, a plant breeder who is compared by
both proponents and opponents (each with different intent)
to Luther Burbank.
 GENETICS CONTROVERSY IN USSR
obstacle to the successful solution of a series of
zoopsychological problems. This is particularly true
of the important problem of instincts (tf).
A colleague argues in the same vein.
We always discuss the problems of the development
of the psyche of animals in our texts and specialized
works. Yet the question of the mutability of instincts
remains untouched.
We do pitifully little to understand the role of his-
torical social conditions in the development of the
social consciousness of man (5).
]n psychiatry it is considered pessimism and fatal-
ism to maintain that heredity cannot be changed.
The reasoning is: If mental disorders are inherited,
and nothing can be clone to alter heredity, then one
can do nothing positive to eliminate mental disease.
S. H. Davidenkov is singled out as a defender of this
pessimistic position. He says that we must be con-
tent with the alleviation that can be effected by
training, "Since it is, naturally, impossible actively
to influence the genotype of future generations'' (4).
His critic's comment is:
There is no need to point out how useless the author's
practical conclusions arc, since Mcndelian, Mor-
ganistic idealism excludes any practical usefulness
in biological science (4).
None of the writers who attack orthodox genetics
make any actual suggestions of how genetic changes
in response to environmental changes might be ef-
fected, nor has concrete research in this problem been
suggested.
3. The reader of these articles gets the impression
that the attack on gene constancy, while vigorous,
may be somewhat formal, and that the writers are
primarily concerned with the effects of environment
on the organism rather than with its genetic consti-
tution. The strongest arguments are directed against
the position that abilities, trails, and menial diseases
are inherited, rather than against the position that
inheritance is immutable.
For example, a psychologist is applauded for hold-
ing
. . . the completely correct notion that only the
anatomo-physical traits of the organism are innate.
These traits do not in themselves determine directly
one's abilities. Abilities are formed only in the proc-
ess of development of appropriate activities. Conse-
quently, they are dependent on the concrete condi-
tions which make a given activity possible (6).
The author follows this statement with a reference to
419
"the decisive role of training in the formation of the
human personality."
"Bourgeois psychology" is characterized as taking
the point of view that the development of person-
ality is mainly the unfolding of inherent qualities.
This is contrasted with Soviet psychology, which:
. . . holds that the basis of the psychic development
of the child is the development of his concrete life
relationships, and of his activity which is determined
by the concrete conditions of his life, and by his
training (6).
In connection with the inheritance of mental dis-
eases again, Davidenkov is as much pilloried for
saying that they are inherited as he is for saying
that, inheritance is immutable. Thus, the following
passage from his book is singled out:
The role of external environmental influences must
be considered secondary with regard to all the follow-
ing (and here he mentions almost all the nosological
forms of mental disease, N.G.). These secondary
influences may accelerate, retard, change the ap-
pearance, and even be the precipitating causes of
mental disorders. However, even if these external
malinjhiences were completely absent, tlie disease might
well develop in its typical form. (Author's italics) (4).
At another point, his critic comments on his theories:
"Therefore, neither socio-economic conditions" nor
education are taken into consideration as factors
influencing higher nervous activity" (4). Throughout
the article, underemplmsis on the effect of life ex-
perience in the formation of neuroses, and of training
as effective prevention and therapy are labelled as
"fatalistic" or "idealistic."
In general, none of these authors moves on to any
more strictly psychological problem than this general
discussion of "heredity and environment." However,
one author, Leontiev, uses this discussion as a step-
ping off place for making a few relatively general
statements about the difference between Soviet and
"bourgeois" psychologies. Some of his points are:
(1) Bourgeois psychology studies an "abstract,
generalized man," whereas Soviet psychology studies
a concrete man who is the product of specific, histori-
cal social circumstances. (2) Bourgeois psychology
regards man as the product of the interaction of two
forces external to himheredity and environment.
Soviet psychology sees him as a result of forces
internal to the psyche3 working themselves out in a
'These forces arc not like the "internal" forces with which
420 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
social context. (3) Bourgeois psychology looks on
development as primarily the expression of innate
characteristics, while the Soviets consider develop-
ment to be preeminently a social phenomenon. (4)
Bourgeois psychology is abstract, academic, and with-
drawn from practical problems. Soviet psychology
is concrete and practical. All these points are old-hat
as far as Soviet psychology is concerned, and they
are introduced into this article in much the spirit
that a Fourth of July orator routinely takes his
stand against political sin.
We see that these writers insist simultaneously
that inheritance is mutable, and that inheritance is
not important. These two lines of argument might,
at first glance, seem to be contradictory in. spirit.
What they have in common is a similarity of attitude
toward the possibility of man changing the world,
and changing himself. Both positions maintain that
it is fatalistic to admit limitations on what can be
done in either training or therapy.
Science in the Soviet Union has become pro-
gressively less empirical in its search for laws. The
two criteria which are most important in the evalua-
tion of a scientific generalization are practical fruit-
fulness, and ideological correctness. When there is a
conflict between these two demands, it varies with
the circumstance which is given priority. "Scienti-
fic truth" is not sought in abstraction. One of our
authors says:
Psychology is being converted from a science which
states and analyzes the psychic processes and the
psychic characteristics of the individual into a science
for changing them, and into a science of the laws of
transformation (tf).
Another writer is even more explicit on the relation-
ship of theory and practice:
Our basic deficiency in this regard is that we do not
start out with practice, but we try 'post factum' to
apply our results to practice (5).
Lysenko's triumph in the genetic controversy is
considered by most critics to be a result of his
practical success as a plant breeder, and indeed it is
said in the Soviet press that "the strongest side of
Mitchurin theory is its effectiveness." Certainly, the
"bourgeois psychology" is reputedly concerned. The latter
arc "innate" characteristics, while the internal forces of the
Soviet psychologist are internalized manifestations of the
dynamics of society. They are developed by and in society
and Ihcy seek their resolution in and from society.
empirical soundness of his theory is at best question-
able.4 Primarily it is a programatic statement, the
nub of which is revealed in such passages as the
following:
The Mendclian-Morganists, who proclaim that
hereditary alteration, or 'mutations' as they are
called, are 'indefinite,' presume that such alterations
cannot be predicted as a matter of principle We have
here a peculiar conception of unknowability. . . .
On the whole, living nature appears to the Morganists
as a medley of fortuitous, isolated phenomena, without
any necessary connections and subject to no laws.
Chance reigns supreme (8, p. 59).
Tt is the attitude toward the lawfulness of events,
L think, as much as anything, that won official
approval for his position. His rejection of "chance"
in nature must not be interpreted as a simple in-
sistance on determinism. An ideology that stresses
will and initiative as does the contemporary Soviet
doctrine is not primarily interested in determinism
per se. It is interested in man's ability to make his
own destiny, and it rejects indeterminacy (except
in man himself) as being a statement of limitation
on his powers. Soviet science, to use their own term,
is "optimistic."
The reader will raise the question: what is the
practicality of a theory that is empirically invalid?
The Soviet point of view can be understood if we use
analogy from linguistics. A word may be considered
either from the standpoint of its meaning (semantics)
or from the standpoint of its effect on the listener
(pragmatics). We are primarily concerned with the
meaning of theories, and they are more concerned
with the "effect" of these theories on the people
who use them and on the other people in the society.
It must not be assumed, however, that such pro-
gramatic statements are absent in our disciplines.
When we say, for example, "everything that exists
can be measured," we do not mean this so much as a
statement of fact, as we mean it as a program to be
followed out. However, we exercise much more
stringent empirical control on our statements.
A last question to be considered is that of the long
run effect of the Lysenko controversy on psychology.
4
The question of the actual practicality and theoretical
soundness of Lysenko's position is peripheral to this argument
and the discussion of this problem has been so infused with,
and confused by political feeling on both sides that it would
be fool-hardy to embark on so needless and perilous an ex-
cursion. The only point that needs to be made here is that the
supporters of Lysenko in the USSR seem to be only secondarily
concerned with his theoretical soundness.
 GKNKTICS CONTROVERSY IN USSR
It seems almost impossible that psychologists will
not give lip service to the inheritance of acquired
characteristics. Yet, it seems highly probable, that
in practice this doctrine will be used mainly as
a further argument for stressing the importance of
training in the development of the individual. After
all, whether acquired traits are transmitted or not
they must be developed in order to be acquired.
And, once acquired, whether through training or
changed heredity, training must be maintained. If
heredity is a function of environment, any relaxation
of training would result in a deterioration of in-
herited traits, thus necessitating further training
and so on around the circle. Obviously, the burden
in this system of explanation must rest always on
training.
The genetics controversy does not add anything
fundamentally new to Soviet psychology. Psychol-
ogy had its own "Lysenko controversy" in 1936,
when the Central Committee of the Communist
Party issued a proclamation abolishing the testing
movement in psychology. This step crystalized a
trend that had been under way since 1930. In simp-
lest terms, this trend was one toward a more pur-
posive and a more plastic model of man, with an ever
increasing emphasis on the extent to which man can
be trained, and the extent to which he is responsible
for his own fate. This tendency in psychology was
essentially a reflection of the problems of social
control and demands for the effective use of man-
421
power that resulted from rapid economic expansion.
In this trend, positing that genetic change can be
planned is no more than the last, logical step.
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1. ANON, Toward the flowering of Soviet progressive sciences,
Newopatalogiia i psiklriatriia, 1948, n. 6, 3-6.
2. ASHBY, ERIC, A Scientist in Russia, Pelican, 1947.
3. GOLDSCIIMIDT, R. B., Research and politics. Science,
Mar. 4, 1949.
4. GUASIICHENKOV, N. I., In opposition to idealism in
neurology. Newopatalogiia psikhiatriia, 1948, no. 5,
3-16.
5. KAIROV, I. A., The session of the Lenin All-union Academy
of Agricultural Sciences and the tasks of the Academy of
Pedagogical Sciences. Sovetskaia Pedagogika, 1948, no.
11, 37-57.
6. LEONTIKV, A. N., The most important problems of psy-
chology in the light of the session of the Lenin All-union
Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Sovetskaia Pedagogika,
1949, no. 1, 76-85.
7. LEVY, JEANNE, "Lysenko and the issues in genetics."
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8. LYSENKO, TROFIM, The science of biology today. Inter-
national Publishers, N. V. 1948.
9. MORTON, A. G., Biology in the Soviet Union. The Anglo-
Soviet Journal, 1948, Winter, 5-8.
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12. Decree of the presidium of the Academy of Sciences of
the USSR from August, 24-26, 1948, Priroda, 1948,
no. 10, 3-6.
Received April 18, 1949