The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin`s Persecution of One of the Gr 9781451656497

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Автор: Pringle Peter (Питер Прингл)
Название: The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin`s Persecution of One of the Gr
Перевод названия: Питер Прингл: Убийство Николая Вавилова. История сталинских преследований
ISBN: 9781451656497
Издательство: Simon & Schuster
Издательство: Simon & Schuster
Классификация:

Биографии деятелей науки, техники и медицины

История

Генетика (немедицинская)

ISBN-10: 1451656491
Обложка/Формат: Paperback
Страницы: 384
Вес: 0.60 кг.
Дата издания: 02.07.2011
Язык: English
Размер: 23.62 x 15.49 x 2.54 cm
Читательская аудитория: General (us: trade)
Подзаголовок: The story of stalin`s persecution of one of the gr
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Поставляется из: США
Описание: In The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov, acclaimed journalist and author Peter Pringle recreates the extraordinary life and tragic end of one of the great scientists of the twentieth century.

In a drama of love, revolution, and war that rivals Pasternaks Dr. Zhivago, Pringle tells the story of a young Russian scientist, Nikolai Vavilov, who had a dream of ending hunger and famine in the world. Vavilovs plan would use the emerging science of genetics to breed super plants that could grow anywhere, in any climate, in sandy deserts and freezing tundra, in drought and flood. He would launch botanical expeditions to find these vanishing genes, overlooked by early farmers ignorant of Mendels laws of heredity. He called it a mission for all humanity.

To the leaders of the young Soviet state, Vavilovs dream fitted perfectly into their larger scheme for a socialist utopia. Lenin supported the adventurous Vavilov, a handsome and seductive young professor, as he became an Indiana Jones, hunting lost botanical treasures on five continents. In a former tsarist palace in what is now St. Petersburg, Vavilov built the worlds first seed bank, a quarter of a million specimens, a magnificent living museum of plant diversity that was the envy of scientists everywhere and remains so today.

But when Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin took over, Vavilovs dream turned into a nightmare. This son of science was from a bourgeois background, the class of society most despised and distrusted by the Bolsheviks. The new cadres of comrade scientists taunted and insulted him, and Stalins dreaded secret police built up false charges of sabotage and espionage.

Stalins collectivization of farmland caused chaos in Soviet food production, and millions died in widespread famine. Vavilovs master plan for improving Soviet crops was designed to work over decades, not a few years, and he could not meet Stalins impossible demands for immediate results.

In Stalins Terror of the 1930s, Russian geneticists were systematically repressed in favor of the peasant horticulturalist Trofim Lysenko, with his fraudulent claims and speculative theories. Vavilov was the most famous victim of this purge, which set back Russian biology by a generation and caused the country untold harm. He was sentenced to death, but unlike Galileo, he refused to recant his beliefs and, in the most cruel twist, this humanitarian pioneer scientist was starved to death in the gulag.

Pringle uses newly opened Soviet archives, including Vavilovs secret police file, official correspondence, vivid expedition reports, previously unpublished family letters and diaries, and the reminiscences of eyewitnesses to bring us this intensely human story of a brilliant life cut short by anti-science demagogues, ideology, censorship, and political expedience.

The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin`s Persecution of One of the Gr, Pringle Peter