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David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair, Harvard University Press, Cam- bridge, 1970, xiii + 459 pp.

This book is Professor Joravsky's second major contribution to Soviet intellectual history, but, as the title indicates, only one area of the natural sciences is treated. The mastery of the source material is impressive and the 1166 footnotes, two appendices and bibliography will prove invaluable

to those who may wish to consult the original sources to follow his method of analysis or to dispute his conclusions. The book is not only researched with admirable thoroughness, but the 313 pages of text are written in an urbane, witty prose style as discussions of Russian and Soviet history and Communist ideology are effortlessly interwoven with the pedestrian details of who ran what institute when. These details are skillfully analyzed to provide a factual basis for slaying at least one myth.

In the Preface Joravsky says, "The effort to explain that paradoxical turn of events and the extended trouble it occasioned led me to the intractable problem of ideology. How can we distinguish it from other types of thought? And how can we be precise and factual in analyzing ideological influences in Soviet history? The basic purpose of this study is to help answer those two questions. ''1 To answer these questions he analyzed the "evolving interaction of agriculture, natural science, ideology, and political power" on the basis of the available evidence, i.e. despite closed archives.

Thus this book is not simply a detailed and exhaustive account of the political and scientific issues involved in the Lysenko Affair, but this affair is taken as a starting point to carry out an empirical analysis of Soviet ideology. This approach is radically different from Professor Tucker's analysis of the Lysenko Affair. 2 Joravsky maintains that students of Soviet ideology should restrict themselves to "areas where rigorous empirical scholarship is possible. ''3 This is distinguished from Kremlinology which is defined as "the effort to do archival research in high Soviet politics without access to the archives. ,,4

Studies in Soviet Thought 1[1 (1971) 301-307. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1971 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland

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Of central concern to the author is the refutation of the myth which pictured Marxism-Leninism as the cause of Lysenkoism. "According to this myth genetics was denounced because it subverted faith in the malleability of human nature, and the dying Lamarckist tradition in biology was revived to prove that new conditions create new men. ''5 Among his principal arguments are the following: (1) Mitin's corps of philosophical agents never gave Lysenko the blessing of Marxism- Leninismuntil ordered to do so in 1948 ; (2) neither Michurin nor Lysenko grounded their beliefs in Marxism-Leninism; (3) elements of the ideology were changed to fit Lysenkoism; (4) there were no supporters for Lysenko- ism in the Center for the Dialectical Materialist Reconstruction of Biology. Joravsky concludes, "The search for utopia through the biologi- cal transformation of human beings is a creation of their opponents' fantasy, not the Communists' .,,6

On the basis of the evidence and argumentation, this reviewer cannot imagine how the above myth can be credibly held. At any rate anyone who would maintain it must now go back over the mass of material evaluated and present an equally credible counter-evaluation. Joravsky has simply done this myth in.

It is interesting to compare Medvedev's 7 and Tucker's 8 observations and conclusions on the Lysenko Affair with Joravsky's. Medvedev lists five causes for Lysenkoism:

(1) Erroneous tendency to classify sciences into bourgeois and prole- tarian.

(2) Constant diffÉculties and mistaken policies in the country's agri- cultural production.

(3) Lack of freedom of the press. (4) Protracted isolation of Soviet scientists from world science. (5) Rigid academic centralization in U.S.S.R. It appears to this reviewer to be a striking negative confirmation of

Joravsky's conclusion that nowhere does Medvedev even mention the myth which Joravsky is attacking. If the rise of Lysenkoism was rooted in the ideology or if it was thought to be, then Medvedev would have mentioned it. If genetics ran into trouble in all situations controlled by the party and only in situations controlled by the party, then there would by a primafacie case for the myth, but, as Medvedev points out, genetics had difficulties in Nazi Germany and many Soviet and Western Corn-

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munists loyal to the ideology never had any problems reconciling the ideology and genetics.

The total inadequacy of Tucker's discussion of the Lysenko Affair is due to the fact that it enters the scene in 1948 and not in 1930 or 1931 and that it accepts the ideological ornamentation provided by 'philoso- phers' at face value. Tucker concludes, "Lysenko was led to this stand- point not by the weight of carefully sired scientific evidence, but by the imperatives of transformist ideology. Transformist thinking is funda- mentally opposed to any conception that endows the object that is to be transformed (in this case, the organism) with developmental autonomy; it must not have spontaneous internal forces for growth or change that the transformer has to reckon with and respect, because that would impose unwanted limits upon the extent to which the object could be transformed from without. ''9 It would be interesting to know what led Tucker to this standpoint.

Since Soviet philosophy and ideology are of primary concern to the readers of this journal, some central issues raised by Joravsky should be discussed. In his first chapter, 'Soviet Ideology as a Problem', Joravsky cogently discusses the question of ideology, reviews several definitions, and offers his own. "I will attempt a precise definition. When we call a belief 'ideological', we are saying at least three things about it: although it is unverified or unverifiable, it is accepted as verified by a particular group, because it performs social functions for that group. 'Group' is used loosely to indicate such aggregations as parties, professions, classes, or nations. 'Because' is also used loosely to indicate a functional correla- tion rather than a strictly causal connection between acceptance of a belief and other social processes. ''1° He then adds, "Ideology, then, is unacknowledged dogma that serves social functions. The main purpose of scholarly analysis of ideology is to discover the functions. The concept of ideology is the analogue in sociology of the concept of rationalization in psychology, only it is much more disruptive of social harmony, for analysis of ideology challenges the coherence of groups rather than individual personalities. ' ' ii

The neutral use of the word is discussed but rejected. "Communist writers use the term 'ideology' to describe their own thought, and we may simply take them at their word. But the matter cannot be settled so simply. We do not take them at their word when they call Marxism-

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Leninism a science or when they call their government a representative democracy. Why should we insist on the proper meaning of words when the Communists appropriate eulogistic terms but readily concede their appropriation of pejoratives? We certainly do not accept the special pleading by which they have tried to convince themselves that ideology ceases to be a pejorative when applied to Communist doctrine. ''~2 We

are faced with the alternative of the Wissenssoziologie oriented pejorative use of the word or the neutral use which Marxist-Leninists claim for themselves. But it is not an either/or situation as both uses are legitimate and necessary. One simply has to specify which one is used. Joravsky chooses the first. Moreover, he maintains that all unverified or unverifi- able statements are accepted as verified because they perform social

functions for that group. In this reviwer's opinion this leads to at least two problems: (1) By equating ideology with unverified and/or unverifiable beliefs he

is using too positivist a criterion which does not distinguish between

certain propositions of Soviet metaphysics, and ideology as an instru- ment of social control. By any current definition of 'verifiable' the laws

of the dialectic and atheism are not verifiable, but they are not simply instruments of social control. They would merit philosophical considera- tion even if the CP had no political power anywhere. Soviet Marxism- Leninism cannot be reduced to an ideology in the sense of a sociological equivalent of psychological rationalization unless one says that all un- verified beliefs have an ideological social-control function. But this cannot be true because this statement itself is both unverified and un- verifiable and it obviously has no social control function as I repeat it to

myself in my room. (2) By rejecting the neutral use of the word Joravsky forces himself

into drawing several distinctions very similar to those drawn by Professor J. M. Bochenski in an article in this journal. ~3 Joravsky comments on this article, "The way out of the dilemma, it often seems, is to distinguish between a sacred class of absolutely true beliefs and policies, which may not be subjected to discussion, and a class that may. Some people dis- tinguish ideology from other types of thought in this way. But clearly that is not a genuine escape from the dilemma. At any given time there are issues in the nonsacred class that are causing the leaders to worry: Does it endanger group interests to have such matters subjected to public

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discussion?... At the same time, there are some beliefs in the sacred class that are causing the leaders to worry: Are these beliefs really in the group interest or do we only imagine them to be so? ''14

First, Bochenski never uses the words 'sacred' and 'nonsacred' in discussing the interrelation of the four component parts of what he desig- nates as Communist Total Discourse (CTD) and to describe them as such implies a barrier between the four component parts far more rigid than proposed. Secondly, the sacred-nonsacred dichtomy does not correspond to part of the ideology-not part of the ideology. A distinction has been made within the ideology. Thirdly, the fact that at any given time it may be difficult to determine in what category a given proposition should be placed is an objection which also applies to any conceptual framework devised by anyone. It is precisely the merit of Bochenski's logical analysis that it can handle shifts in the party line without resorting to the ideologi- cal-nonideological dichtomy.

The fact that distinctions similar to Bochenski's are re-introduced is not in itself a valid objection, but this reviewer prefers Bochenski's for two reasons:

(1) Because of its logical rigor it is easily adapted to the empirical analysis of any problem arising out of or taking place within the frame- work of Soviet ideology.

(2) Terminological similarity, i.e. nomenclature used by the Soviets is retained, e.g. science, philosophy, instead of Joravsky's grandideology, 'petty' ideology, political realism. For example, at the XIV International Congress of Philosophy in 1968 in the session on Philosophy and Ideol- ogy, IS the Marxist-Leninist delegates used precisely these distinctions and terms, and nothing is gained by not accepting their usage. Without accepting their usage, discussions between them cannot be intelligently followed.

However many major or minor objections one may make about the conceptual framework established in Chapter 1 to discuss ideology, one must admire the skill with which the author (in the ensuring chapters), has distilled evidence based on mountains of newspaper and journal articles, conference reports, scientific materials, etc. In two final chapters (8 and t0) he returns to philosophical and ideological questions, but his purpose is broader than simply to discuss one specific empirically investigi- able phenomenon of Soviet intellectual history.

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In the course of reviewing aspects of Soviet philosophy relevant to the proof of his central thesis, Joravsky passes the following harsh judgments on philosophy in the Soviet Union. "To discover why the bosses have wished to make certain statements, and to change them in time, one must examine the actual thought process of these anti-intellectual bosses, rather than the ritualistic incantations that have adorned it. Readers who have no inclination to doubt this basic rule of Soviet intellectual history should skip this chapter, unless some morbid sympathy moves them to retrace the political mortification of Marxist thought. ''16 "Bukharin, the last Bolshevik leader genuinely concerned to find metaphysical reassurance in nature, seems now as antique as Engels, Voltaire, or Lucretius. Their tradition of humanism founded on cosmological vision appears nowhere more thoroughly dead than in Soviet philosophical missals, which continue the tradition as a leaden catechism. Soviet philosophers with real minds at work are as far from this tradition as the great bulk of philosophers in other lands. ''i7

If Stalin-Mitin is taken as the sole paradigm of the relation of power and philosophy in the Soviet Union, then this conclusion is irrefutable. But certainly there is more to Soviet philosophy than the political-boss- and-his-hack relation which reached its ultimate exemplification in the grim and disgusting spectacle at the 1948 conference which the author so graphically describes} 8 It is unfair and quite simply mistaken to state that all Soviet philosophers working within the cosmocentric approach of Soviet dialectical materialism are on the same intellectual and/or moral level as some justly maligned and easily identifiable hacks. Professor G. A. Wetter has suggested that Soviet philosophers resemble theologians rather than philosophers, but Joravsky puts them on the even lower intellectual level of ritualists. Does Joravsky maintain that Tugarinov, Asmus, Kedrov, and Narskij are "as far from this tradition as the great bulk of philosophers in other lands" or that they are not "Soviet philosophers with real minds actually at work"? Is either alternative tenable?

If we distinguish between philosophical positions and the level of sophistication attained in the exposition of those positions, then we must keep in mind the purpose of the various Osnovy as introductory manuals (or missals) and not dismiss or condemn Soviet philosophy as a whole on the basis of them. Is not this similar to judging the whole of neo-

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Thomism (as a philosophy) on the basis of an introductory text written

for undergraduates ? In spite of our critical remarks, it,seems to this reviewer that this book

is a model of impeccable historical scholarship and by its careful empirical analysis has set a standard which is not likely to be often attained.

PATRICK M C N A L L Y

N O T E S

1 Joravsky, xii. 2 Robert C. Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind, Praeger, New York, 1963, p. 91-8. 3 Joravsky, p. 13. 4 Ibid., p. 329. s Ibid., p. ix. 6 Ibid., p. 253. 7 Zhores A. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall o f T. D. Lysenko, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1969, pp. 244-53. 8 Robert C. Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind, Praeger, New York, 1963, pp. 91-8. 9 Tucker, p. 93. lo Joravsky, p. 2. 11 Ibid., p. 3. 12 Ibid., p. 4.

13 j. M. Bochefiski, 'Toward a Systematic Logic of Communi s t Ideology', SST4 (1964) pp. 185-205. 14 Joravsky, p. 4. 15 The Proceedings o f the X1Vth International Congress o f Philosophy, 1968, Vol. I, pp. 381- 509. 16 Joravsky, p. 228. 17 Ibid., p. 252. 18 Ibid., p. 225.

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M. A. Avraamova, Udenie Aristotelja o sug(nosti. Izd. MGU, 1970, 67 pp.

The Soviet Istorijafilosofii 1 devotes some 80 pages to Plexanov but only 17 to Aristotle and Filosofskaja Onciklopedija 2 has a 13 column article on the 'cult of the personality' but only a 9 column article on Aristotle. A cursory survey of the Bibliography o f Soviet Philosophy published in this journal also does not reveal a lively interest in Aristotle among Soviet philosophers. The thorough and scholarly biography of Aristotle by Zubov 3 is the most recent Soviet work on Aristotle which the author

quotes. Given the extraordinary importance which both Marx and Lenin assigned to Aristotle in the history of philosophy, this seems a most un- Marxist-Leninist state of affairs.

The title of this short work leads one to expect a monograph, but the author goes far beyond treating substance. She also wants to show the struggle between idealism and materialism in Ancient Greek philosophy, the views shared by Aristotle and the materialists, the causes of the dis- tortion of Aristotle by Medieval Philosophy, to characterize the relation of bourgeoise philosophy to the philosophy of Aristotle, and to present a Marxist-Leninist evaluation of Aristotle's philosophy. Because of the ambitious scope of the booklet, the treatment of several problems is necessarily very brief.

As to the mechanics of the work, Bekker numbers are not used and so it is difficult to consult the text unless one has in hand the Russian transla- tions from the 1930's which the author cites. Twice odaia is translated as 'substancija' instead of 'su~6nost" which could cause needless confusion

for the reader. Central to the author 's discussion and criticism of Aristotle is the

term 'concrete-sensual' ( 'konkretno-euvstvennyj'). Sometimes it is used epistemologically, i.e. '~uvstvennyj' is emphasized and opposed to concept or reason and sometimes ontologically, i.e. 'konkretnyj' is emphasized and opposed to the abstract or immaterial. In either sense 'concrete-sensual' is opposed to the distinctly Hegelian use of 'concrete' so central to Soviet philosophy. The author says, "The materialist line of Aristotle's philosophy is manifest in the definition of the concrete- sensual forms. Aristotle borrowed the concrete-sensual forms from the Ancient Greek materialists. ''4 She then adds, "Let us draw certain conclusions. The three basic forms are the manifestation of three sub-

Studies in Soviet Thought 11 (1971) 308-310. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1971 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordreeht-Holland

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stances, characterized above in the exposition of Aristotle's doctrine:

the concrete-sensual substance, the substance united with matter, and the eternal substance, which has no matter. Aristotle's doctrine of forms is inconsistent: if the concrete-sensual form is materialistic, then the acknowledgement of the eternal form of perishable things is a precondition for idealism and the acknowledgement of the existence of form without matter is idealism. ''5

The following objections can be made to the author 's criticism: (1) She does not recognize the ascending dialectic from sensation to

memory to experience to science and art which Aristotle outlines in the beginning of the Metaphysics. An undialectical barrier between sensation and reason is incorrectly ascribed to Aristotle. The author says, "In his (Aristotle's) opinion concepts, as the content of our knowledge, originate not in sensations, but in reason. ''6 " F o r Democritus general forms are inseparably connected with concrete-sensual forms, for Aristotle general forms do not arise in the basis of sensual-concrete forms, but in the

soul. ''7 But the fact that they arise in the soul does not exclude their arising out of sensual-concrete forms.

(2) There is an ambiguity in the meaning of the word 'matter' . In

answer to the question 'What is matter? ' the author makes use of two different answers: (a) Matter is everything that exists independently of consciousness. (b) Matter is anything that is 'concrete-sensual'.

According to the first answer the unmoved mover is matter, but according to the second it is not. But it is needlessly confusing to imply that the doctrine that ideal beings exist independently of consciousness is materialism and then to say that it is idealism.

(3) The author's criticisms of Aristotle are made from the standpoint of the 'concrete-sensual'. If there are two 'lines of philosophy' ( 'the line

of Democritus' and 'the line of Plato'), then all arguments advanced by Avraamova against Aristotle can be used against diamat to show that it is closer to 'the line of Plato' than to 'the line of Democritus' . Her two principal arguments correspond to the two uses of 'concrete-sensual' indicated above:

When Aristotle leaves the sensual-concrete, he moves over to 'the line of Plato'. If in order to remain in 'the line of Democritus' we must not abandon the 'concrete-sensual', then what is the concrete-sensual sub- stratum of communism which does not yet exist in the SU? If it does not

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only exist in the minds of Communists, where is the sensual-concrete substance in which it exists? In the context of Marxism-Leninism these two questions are ridiculous and therefore within the context of Marxism- Leninism these criticisms of Aristotle are ridiculous.

The author's discussion of the scholastic treatment of Aristotle is particularly unscholarly. Lenin accused scholasticism of killing what was living in Aristotle and taking only the dead. The author, of course, accepts this as true. But it is highly un-Leninist simply to repeat what Lenin said. Marx had great praise for Aristotle, but Lenin did not simply repeat this. We venture to say that the author has not read a single line of Aquinas or if she has, it is a well guarded secret. She never quotes him but quotes only those whom she herself admits are epigoni.

Many interesting and striking similarities between the philosophy of Aquinas and the thought of Marx and Engels have been elaborated by Professor Ferraro. s And Professor Bochenski has pointed out similarities between the philosophy of Aquinas and Marxism-Leninism. 9 From the Soviet side, it would be very interesting to have a monograph showing precisely how, for example, Aquinas in his Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics killed what was living in Aristotle and took only the dead. Lenin's criticism of scholasticism does not need repetition, but proof.

PATRICK M C N A L L Y

N O T E S

a Istorijafilosofii, Izd. AN SSSR, M., 1957. z Filosofskaja ~nciklopdija, G N D , M., 1960. 3 V. P. Zubov: Aristotel ' , h d . AN SSSR, M., 1963. 4 M. A. Avraamova, U~enie Aristotelja o sug6nosti (Aristotle's Doctrine of Substance), Izd. MGU, M., 1970, p. 23. 5 Ibid., p. 25. 6 Ib id . ,p . 12. 7 Ibid., p. 25. 8 j. Ferraro, 'Marxism and Thomism: Some Reflections on the Basis for a Dialogue', International Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1970) 75-101.

9 j. M. Bochefisky, 'Discussion: Thomism and Marx i sm-Lenin i sm ' , S S T 7 (1967) pp. 154 68.