Lysenko and the Soviet Conception of Science

The Anglo-American reaction to the Lysenko affair has been treated primarily either from the point of view of the political Right or Left, or as a consequence of post-WWII international relations. None of the accounts have considered the central role of the British cytogeneticist and evolutionist C.D. Darlington. This article considers Darlington's role, and illustrates how, through an analysis of his divergent reaction, it becomes possible to see the response to Lysenko as a reflection of internal scientific and political debates concerning the planning, funding, utility, and freedom of science in post-war Britain. This article considers the role of British cytogeneticist and evolutionist C.D. Darlington in the reaction of the Anglo-American scientific community to the events in the Soviet Union that became known as the Lysenko affair. Darlington's as yet unexamined, singular and controversial mode of reac- tion departed starkly from the concensus, though unofficial, strategy devised by the rest of his scientific colleagues in Britain and the Unites States. By examining his reaction, and situating him politically and scientifically among his colleagues, it will be possible to clarify a connection hitherto only partly described in the extant historical literature.1 The reaction in Britain to Lysenko, it will be shown, while informed to a degree by political inter- national relations considerations, had less to do with developments in the Soviet Union proper, or with world politics, and more to do with an internal struggle concerning the definition of the proper role science should play in