Word: zhebrak
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Professor Anton R. Zhebrak is a Soviet geneticist who has enjoyed international respect. Like most reputable scientists, he has believed in the Morgan-Mendelian theory of genetics (i.e., hereditary characteristics are controlled by genes which cannot be altered by ordinary environmental conditions). That belief made him a heretic in Russia, where science must take the Communist view that Environment Is All. Last year Zhebrak was roundly denounced by Pravda for admitting in the U.S. weekly, Science, that many Russian geneticists still uphold Mendel's laws (TIME, Sept...
During the last fortnight Professor Zhebrak has recanted his heresy. "I, as a party member," said he in a letter to Pravda, "do not consider it possible for me to retain the views which have been recognized as erroneous by the Central Committee of our party...
...With Zhebrak's capitulation, a debate that has gone on in Russia for over a decade came to an end. Henceforth, all vegetables, flowers and other plants in the U.S.S.R. will grow straight along the Marxian line. Under the vigorous influence of their Communist environment, they will cast off all Western bourgeois tendencies that might make them follow their heredity...
This summer, at the eight-day meeting of the Lenin Academy, Lysenko rose to insist on his views once again. Several scientists, including Professor Zhebrak, tried to start the old argument. It was then that Lysenko sprang his big surprise: his theory had been officially endorsed by the Central Committee...
Unsightly Role. Pravda soon joined the attack. What annoyed Pravda most: Zhebrak's heretical belief that there is no difference between Soviet and non-Soviet science.* "Zhebrak as a Soviet scientist," cried Pravda, "should have unmasked the class meaning of the struggle which is taking place around questions of genetics. But blinded by bourgeois prejudices, by detestable fawning on bourgeois science, he has adopted the attitude of the enemy's camp. . . . It turns out that there is a so-called pure science for Zhebrak. . . . It appears that there is no progressive Soviet biological science; there is no reactionary...