From ‘Beastly Philosophy’ to Medical Genetics: Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet Union

Summary

This essay offers an overview of the three distinct periods in the development of Russian eugenics: Imperial (1900–1917), Bolshevik (1917–1929), and Stalinist (1930–1939). Began during the Imperial era as a particular discourse on the issues of human heredity, diversity, and evolution, in the early years of the Bolshevik rule eugenics was quickly institutionalized as a scientific discipline—complete with societies, research establishments, and periodicals—that aspired an extensive grassroots following, generated lively public debates, and exerted considerable influence on a range of medical, public health, and social policies. In the late 1920s, in the wake of Joseph Stalin's ‘Great Break’, eugenics came under intense critique as a ‘bourgeois’ science and its proponents quickly reconstituted their enterprise as ‘medical genetics’. Yet, after a brief period of rapid growth during the early 1930s, medical genetics was dismantled as a ‘fascist science’ towards the end of the decade. Based on published and original research, this essay examines the factors that account for such an unusual—as compared to the development of eugenics in other locales during the same period—historical trajectory of Russian eugenics.

Acknowledgements

Mark B. Adams provided inspiration and encouragement for this work and our numerous conversations helped shape my interest in and understanding of the history of Russian eugenics. Certain ideas and materials presented in this essay first appeared in a very abridged form in my chapter on Russian eugenics for the Oxford Handbook on the History of Eugenics, edited by Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (New York, 2010) and I am grateful to the volume editors for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Financial support for research leading to this article came from a Standard Research Grant awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

¹See S. M. Tret'iakov (1926) ‘Khochu rebenka’, Sovremennaia dramaturgiia 2 (1988), 206–43.

²See V. V. Maiakovskii, [1927] ‘Interv'iu’, in V. V. Maiakovskii, Sobranie sochinenii v 13 tomakh, 13 (Moscow, 1961), 232–3.

³Only excerpts of the play were published in 1927, see S. Tret'iakov, ‘Khochu rebenka’, Novyi LEF, 3 (1927), 3–11.

⁴For an analysis of the play in the context of changes in ‘everyday life’ spurred by the Bolshevik revolution, see Christina Kiaer, ‘Delivered from Capitalism’, in Everyday life in early Soviet Russia: taking the Revolution inside, edited by Christina Kiaer and Eric Naiman (Bloomington, IN, 2006), 183–216.

⁵Ig. Terent'ev, ‘Khochu rebenka’, Novyi LEF 12 (1928), 32–35, here—35.

⁶A bibliography of the history of eugenics in various countries would include several thousand items and, as early as 1989, Mark B. Adams has argued forcefully for the need of a comparative approach to the history of eugenics, Mark B. Adams, ed., The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia (New York, 1989). For the current state of the scholarship see Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine, eds., The Oxford Handbook on the History of Eugenics (New York, 2010).

⁷Diana Paul, Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1995); Diana Paul, The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nurture Debate (Albany, NY, 1998); Benoît Godin, ‘From Eugenics to Scientometrics: Galton, Cattell, and Men of Science’, Social Studies of Science, 37 (2007), 691–728; Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, eds., Heredity Produced: At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500–1870 (Cambridge, MA, 2007); Alison Bashford, ‘Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Eugenics’, in The Oxford Handbook on the History of Eugenics, edited by A. Bashford and Ph. Levine (New York, 2010), 254–286.

⁸Gunar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland (East Lansing, 1996); Nancy L. Stepan, ‘The Hour of Eugenics’: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY, 1996); Michael Schwartz, Sozialistische Eugenik: Sozialtechnologien in Debatten und Politik der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, 1890–1933 (Bonn, 2000); A. M. Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults & Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkley, CA, 2005).

⁹Robert A. Peel, ed., Essays in the History of Eugenics (The Galton Institute, 1998).

¹⁰Mark B. Adams, ‘Eugenics in Russia’, in The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia, edited by M. B. Adams (New York, 1989), 153–229; Mark B. Adams, ‘The Politics of Human Heredity in the USSR, 1920–40’, Genome, 31 (2) (1989): 879–884; Mark B. Adams, ‘Eugenics as Social Medicine in Revolutionary Russia’, in Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia, edited by S. G. Solomon and J. F. Hutchison (Bloomington, IN, 1990), 200–23; Mark B. Adams, ‘Soviet Nature-Nurture Debate’, in Science and the Soviet Social Order, edited by Loren R. Graham (Cambridge, MA, 1990), 94–138. Adams has also published biographies of many leaders of Russian eugenics in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography.

¹¹Michael Flitner, ‘Genetic Geographies: A Historical Comparison of Agrarian Modernization and Eugenic Thought in Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States’, Geoforum 34 (2003), 175–85; A. Spektorowski, ‘The Eugenic Temptation in Socialism: Sweden, Germany, and the Soviet Union’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 46 (2004), 84–106.

¹²Loren R. Graham, ‘Science and Values: The Eugenics Movement in Germany and Russia in the 1920s’, American Historical Review, 82 (5) (1977): 1133–64; Paul Weindling, ‘German-Soviet Medical Co-operation and the Institute for Racial Research, 1927-c. 1935’, German History, 10 (2) (1992), 177–206; Mark B. Adams, Garland E. Allen, Sheila Weiss, ‘Human Heredity and Politics’, Osiris, 20 (2005): 232–62; Nikolai Krementsov, ‘Eugenics, Rassenhygiene, and Human Genetics in the late 1930s’, in Doing Medicine Together: Germany and Russia between the Wars, edited by Susan G. Solomon (Toronto, 2006), 369–404.

¹³See, for instance, Iu. V. Khen, Evgenicheskii proekt (Moscow, 2003).

¹⁴Just a year ago, an 800-page volume, entitled ‘The dawn of human genetics: the Russian eugenic movement and the beginning of medical genetics’, appeared in Moscow. Alas, despite the promise of its title, the book is simply a reprint of numerous articles and a few archival documents from the 1920s and 1930s with a minimal commentary. See V. Babkov, Zaria genetiki cheloveka (Moscow, 2008). The same year, another 400-page volume, entitled ‘The genealogy of genius: from the history of 1920s science’, reprinted 25 key articles published by Russian eugenicists in the 1920s with a rather brief introduction by the volume editor, see E. V. Pchelov, ed. Rodoslovnaia genial'nosti: iz istorii otechestvennoi nauki 1920-kh gg. (Moscow, 2008). For recent Russian language works on the history of eugenics, see also M. B. Konashev, ‘Biuro po evgenike, 1922–1930’, Issledovaniia po genetike, 11 (1994), 22–8; R. A. Fando, ‘Polemika o sud'be evgeniki (v poeticheskom zhanre)’, Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, 3 (2002), 604–17.

¹⁵V. M. Florinskii, Usovershenstvovanie i vyrozhdenie chelovecheskogo roda (St. Petersburg, 1866). On Florinskii and his project see I. I. Kanaev, ‘Na puti k meditsinskoi genetike’, Priroda, 1 (1973), 52–68.

¹⁶See, for example, Iogannes Rutgers [Johannes Rutgers], Uluchshenie chelovecheskoi porody (Moscow, 1909); Charl'z Davenport [Charles Davenport], Evgenika kak nauka ob uluchshenii prirody cheloveka (Moscow, 1913); and many others.

¹⁷See, for instance, T. Iudin, ‘Ob evgenike i evgenicheskom dvizhenii’, Sovremennaia psikhiatriia, 4 (1914), 319–36.

¹⁸L. Krzhivitskii [Krzywicki], ‘Antropotekhnika’, in Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, 7th ed. (Moscow, 1912), 3, 249–50; K. A. Timiriazev, ‘Evgenika’, See, for instance, T. Iudin, ‘Ob evgenike i evgenicheskom dvizhenii’, Sovremennaia psikhiatriia, 4 (1914), 19, 391–95; L. Krzhivitskii, ‘Antropotekhnika’, in Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (St. Petersburg, 1914), 3, 99–101; Anon., ‘Evgenika’, See, for instance, T. Iudin, ‘Ob evgenike i evgenicheskom dvizhenii’, Sovremennaia psikhiatriia, 4 (1914), 17, 173.

¹⁹ Problems in Eugenics. Vol. II. Report on Proceedings of the First International Eugenics Congress held at the University of London, July 24 ^th to 30 ^th , 1912 (Kingsway, 1913), 50–1.

²⁰Kropotkin also published his critique in British newspapers and magazines, see P. Kropotkin, ‘The Sterilization of the Unfit’, Freedom. A Journal of Anarchist Communism 282 (1912): 767–77; P. Kropotkin, ‘Eugenics and Militarism’, The Times, 30 July 1912, 4; P. Kropotkin, ‘The Sterilization of the Unfit’, Mother Earth, 7 (10) (1912), 354–57. On Kropotkin's general attitude towards genetics and eugenics, see Álvaro Girón, ‘Kropotkin between Lamarck and Darwin: The Impossible Synthesis’, Asclepio, 55 (2003), 189–213.

²¹Dioneo, ‘Iz Anglii. Zverinaia psikhologiia’, Russkoe bogatstvo, 10 (1912), 296–323, here 302.

²²See V. Chizh, Kriminal'naia antropologiia (Odessa, 1895); P. I. Kovalevskii, Vyrozhdenie i vozrozhdenie. Prestupnik i bor'ba s prestupnost'iu (St. Petersburg, 1903); I. A. Sikorskii, Chto takoe natsiia i drugie formy etnicheskoi zhizni (Kiev, 1915).

²³For an excellent general history of physical anthropology in Imperial Russia, see Marina Mogil'ner, Homo Imperii. Istoriia fizicheskoi antropologii v Rossii (Moscow, 2008). Unfortunately, this book does not explore the relationship between an thropology and eugenics in any depth.

²⁴Krzhivitskii, 1912 (note 18), 249–50; Krzhivitskii, 1914 (note 18), 99–101.

²⁵Krzhivitskii, 1914 (note 18), 100.

²⁶P. I. Liublinskii, ‘Novaia mera bor'by s vyrozhdeniem i prestupnost'iu’, Russkaia mysl’, 3 (1912), 31–56.

²⁷See P. I. Kovalevskii, Otstalye deti (idioty, otstalye i prestupnye deti), ikh lechenie i vospitanie (St. Petersburg, 1906).

²⁸‘Khronika’, Gigiena i sanitarnoe delo, 1 (1914), 118.

²⁹See I. G. Orshanskii, ‘Rol' nasledstvennosti v peredache boleznei’, Prakticheskaia meditsina, 8–9 (1897), 1–120; T. Iudin, ‘Psikhozy u bliznetsov’, Zhurnal nevropatologii i psikhiatrii, 7 (1907), 68–83.

³⁰V. M. Bekhterev, ‘Vorporsy vyrozhdenia i bor'ba s nim’, Obozrenie psikhiatrii i nevrologii 9 (1908), 518–21; T. Iudin, ‘O kharaktere nasledstvennykh vzaimootnoshenii pri dushevnykh bolezniakh’, Sovremennaia psikhiatriia, 8 (1913), 568–78.

³¹I. G. Orshanskii, ‘Izuchenie nasledstvennosti talanta’, Vestnik vospitaniia, 1 (1911), 1–41, 2 (1911), 95–127.

³²N. Kabanov, Rol’ nasledstvennosti v etiologii boleznei vnutrennikh organov (Moscow, 1899); P. P. Tutyshkin, Rol’ otritsiatel'nogo otbora v protsesse semeinogo vyrozhdeniia (Khar'kov, 1902); A. Sholomovich, Nasledstvennost' i fizicheskie priznaki vyrozhdeniia u dushevno-bol'nykh i zdorovykh (Kazan, 1913).

³³See S. Ukshe, ‘Vyrozhdenie, ego rol’ v prestupnosti i mery bor'by s nim’, Vestnik obshchestvennoi gigieny, 6 (1915), 798–816.

³⁴Anon., ‘Programma zhurnala’, Gigiena i sanitariia, 1 (1910), 1–5.

³⁵K. V. Karaffa-Korbutt, ‘Ocherki po evgenike’, Gigiena i sanitaria, 1 (1910), 41–8, 138–45, 276–81.

³⁶N. F. Gamaleia, ‘Ob usloviiakh, blagopriiatstvuiushchikh uluchsheniiu prirodnykh svoistv liudei’, Gigiena i sanitaria, 6 (1912), 340–61.

³⁷I. V. Sazhin, Nasledstvennost’ i spirtnye napitki (St. Petersburg, 1908).

³⁸See Anon., ‘Kratkii ocherk sovremennykh vzgliadov na nasledstvennost’’, Gigiena i sanitaria, 6 (1912), 437–41.

³⁹See L. P. Kravets, ‘Nasledstvennost’ u cheloveka’, Priroda, 6 (1914), 722–43; Kr. L., ‘Evgenetika’, Priroda, 10 (1914), 1229.

⁴⁰N. Kol'tsov, ‘Alkogolizm i nasledstvennost’’, Priroda, 4 (1916), 502–5; N. Kol'tsov, ‘K voprosu o nasledovanii posledstvii alkogolizma’, Priroda, 10 (1916), 1189; Iu. Filipchenko, ‘O vidovykh gibridakh’, in Novye idei v biologii. Nasledstvennost’ I, edited by V. A. Vagner (St. Petersburg, 1914), 124–49.

⁴¹Iu. Filipchenko, ‘Evgenika’, Russkaia mysl’ 3–6 (1918), 69–96.

⁴²With the beginning of World War I in 1914, St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd, in 1924, Leningrad, and in 1991 the city regained its original name.

⁴³On Kol'tsov's life and activities see B. L. Astaurov and P. F. Rokitskii, Nikolai Konstantinovich Kol'tsov (Moscow: Nauka, 1975).

⁴⁴On the history of the institute, see Mark B. Adams, ‘Science, Ideology, and Structure: The Kol'tsov Institute, 1900–1970,’ in The Social Context of Soviet Science, edited by Linda L. Lubrano and Susan G. Solomon (Boulder, CO, 1980), 173–204.

⁴⁵Thanks to his friendship with Russia's leading microbiologist Lev Tarasevich (who also served on the editorial board of Priroda), Kol'tsov became a member of the governing council of the State Institute of Public Health (GINZ)—an association of several research institutions funded by the Narkomzdrav.

⁴⁶On the history of Soviet social hygiene, see Susan G. Solomon, ‘Social Hygiene and Soviet Public Health, 1921–1930’, in Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia, edited by S. G. Solomon and J. F. Hutchinson (Bloomington, 1990), 175–99.

⁴⁷See V. Mol'kov, ‘Piat' let raboty Gosudarstvennogo Instituta Sotsial'noi Gigieny’, Sanitarnoe prosveshchenie, 2 (1924), 31.

⁴⁸A large collection of documents illuminating the IEB activities is preserved in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ARAN), fond (collection) 570, opis’ (inventory) 1, delo (folder) 11, listy (pages)1–141. Hereafter such references will be given as ARAN, f. 570, op. 1, d. 11, ll.1–141.

⁴⁹V. Bunak, ‘O deiatel'nosti Russkogo evgenicheskogo obshchestva za 1921 god’, Russkii evgenicheskii zhurnal (hereafter—REZh) 1 (1922), 99–101.

⁵⁰ARAN, f. 570, op. 1, d. 11, l. 27.

⁵¹For a short biography of Filipchenko, see Mark B. Adams, ‘Filipchenko, Iurii Aleksandrovich’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Frederic Holmes, 17, (New York, 1990), Suppl. 2, 297–303; and N. N. Medvedev, Iurii Aleksandrovich Filipchenko (Moscow, 2006).

⁵²See ARAN, f. 570, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 29, 34, 58.

⁵³L. Z. Kaidanov, ‘Formirovanie kafedry genetiki i eksperimental'noi zoologii v Petrogradskom Universitete (1913–1920)’, Issledovaniia po genetike, 11 (1994), 6–12.

⁵⁴See Filipchenko's diaries kept in the Manuscript collection of the Russian National Library (hereafter—RNL) in St. Petersburg, f. 81 3, op. 1, d. 1283, l. 3.

⁵⁵See the St. Petersburg branch of the ARAN, f. 132, op. 1, d. 217, ll. 2–6; also Iu. Filipchenko, ‘Biuro po evgenike’, Izvestiia biuro po evgenike 1 (1922), 1–4; for a brief history of the Bureau, see Konashev, 1994 (note 14).

⁵⁶For details on Russian geneticists’ international activities, see Nikolai Krementsov, International Science between the World Wars: The Case of Genetics (London, 2005).

⁵⁷On Davenport and the Eugenics Record Office see Garland E. Allen, ‘The eugenics record office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910–1940: an essay in institutional history’, Osiris, 2 (1986), 225–64.

⁵⁸Vavilov to Davenport, 21September 1921, This letter is preserved among Davenport's papers held in the Manuscript Division of the American Philosophical Society, hereafter references to this collection will be given as ‘Davenport Papers’.

⁵⁹See Koltzoff [Kol'tsov] to Davenoport, 25 June 1921, Davenport Papers.

⁶⁰See Philiptschenko [Filipchenko] to Davenport, 28 October 1921, Davenport Papers.

⁶¹See, for instance, R. R. Gats [Gates], Nasledstvennost’ i evgenika (Leningrad, 1926).

⁶²See, for instance, N. Koltzoff [Kol'tsov], ‘Die rassenhygienische Bewegung in Russland’, Archiv fur Rassen und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 17 (1925): 96–103.

⁶³N. K. Kol'tsov, ‘Uluchshenie chelovecheskoi porody’, REZh, 1 (1922), 3–27.

⁶⁴Kol'tsov obviously used the word ‘religion’ in the sense we use today the word ‘ideology’.

⁶⁵A. S. Serebrovskii, ‘O zadachakh i putiakh antropogenetiki’, REZh, 1 (2) (1923), 107–16. For Serebrovskii's biography, see Mark B. Adams, ‘Serebrovskii, Aleksandr Sergeevich’, in Dictionary of scientific biography, edited by Frederic Holmes (New York, 1990), 18, Suppl. II, 803–11; and N. N. Vorontsov, ed., Aleksandr Sergeevich Serebrovskii (Moscow, 1993).

⁶⁶See report on the congress in Moskovskii meditsinskii zhurnal, 4 (1924), 146–53.

⁶⁷See, for instance, the report of the RES Saratov branch, M. P. Kutanin, ‘Otchet o deiatel'nosti saratovskogo otdeleniia Russkogo Evgenicheskogo Obshchestva za 1927 god’, REZh, 6 (1) (1928), 54–6.

⁶⁸See Adams, 1989 (note 10).

⁶⁹N. K. Kol'tsov, ‘Evgenika kak nauchnaia baza v rabote Otdela Okhrany Materinstva i Mladenchestva i aborty s tochki zreniia evgeniki i okhrany materinstva i mladenchestva’, in Materialy pervogo Vserossiiskogo soveshchaniia po okhrane materinstva i mladenchestva, Moskva 1–5 dekabria 1920 (Moscow, 1921), 41–50.

⁷⁰P. I. Liublinskii, ‘Evgenicheskie tendentsii i noveishee zakonodatel'stvo o detiakh’, REZh, 3 (1925), 3–29.

⁷¹See E. M. Deliariu, ‘Evgenika, ee metody i znachenie’, Ginekologiia i akusherstvo, 5 (1923), 159–60; M. M. Grinberg, ‘Evgenika v ginekologii i akusherstve’, P. I. Liublinskii, ‘Evgenicheskie tendentsii i noveishee zakonodatel'stvo o detiakh’, REZh, 3 (1925), 3–29., 164–68.

⁷²See report on the conference in Ginekologiia i akusherstvo, 4–5 (1922), 101.

⁷³Anon., ‘Evgenika i biologicheskie voprosy’, Ginekologiia i akusherstvo, 4 (1924), 409–13.

⁷⁴Many Russian gynecologists preferred the term evgenetika, ‘eugenitique’ introduced in 1912 by their prominent French colleague, obstetrician Adolphe Pinard. See Alain Drouard, ‘Eugenics in France and in Scandinavia: Two case studies’, in Peel, 1998 (note 9), 173–207, on the term see 180–81.

⁷⁵N. M. Kakushkin, ‘Evgenetika i ginekologiia’, in Trudy VI s”ezda obshchestva ginekologov i akusherov (Moscow, 1925), 415.

⁷⁶See N. M. Kakushkin, ‘Evgenetika i ginekologiia’, in Trudy VI s”ezda obshchestva ginekologov i akusherov (Moscow, 1925), 448–455.

⁷⁷G. P. Sakharov, ‘Protivozachatochnye sredstva i evgenika’, in Protivozachatochnye sredstva v sovremennom nauchnom osveshchenii, edited by A. P. Gubarev and S. A. Selitskii (Moscow, 1928), 34–47.

⁷⁸T. Ia. Tkachev, Sotsial'naia gigiena (Voronezh, 1924), 11, 153.

⁷⁹N. Semashko, ‘Predislovie’, in Fizicheskaia kul'tura v nauchnom osveshchenii (Moscow, 1924), 3.

⁸⁰A. N. Sysin, ‘Pervye shagi evgenicheskogo zakonodatel'stva v Rossii’, Sotsial'naia gigena, 3–4 (1924), 11–20.

⁸¹A. A. Krontovskii, Nasledstvennost’ i konstitutsiia (Kiev, 1925).

⁸²Compare M. I. Lifshits, Uchenie o konstitutsiiakh cheloveka s kratkim ocherkom sovremennogo polozheniia voprosa o nasledstvennosti (Kiev, 1924); S. Davidenkov, Nasledstvennye bolezni nervnoi sistemy (Kiev, 1925); T. I. Iudin, Psikhopaticheskie konstitutsii (Moscow, 1926).

⁸³S. N. Davidenkov, ‘Geneticheskoe biuro pri M. O. N. i P.’, REZh, 6 (1928), 55–6.

⁸⁴Soviet eugenicists carefully studied the questionnaires developed by Davenport's Eugenics Records Office and modified them to suit their own research priorities and interests. Exemplars of the US questionnaires are preserved among personal papers of both Kol'tsov and Filipchenko.

⁸⁵See Biuleteni Postiinoi komisii vivchannia krov'ianikh ugrupovani, 1 (Kharkiv, 1927).

⁸⁶See V. V. Bunak ‘O smeshenii chelovecheskikh ras’, REZh, 3 (1925), 121–38.

⁸⁷On the Western studies of the ‘unfit’, see Nicole Hahn Rafter, White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies, 1877–1919 (Boston, MA, 1988).

⁸⁸E. K. Krasnushkin, ‘Chto takoe prestupnik?’ in Prestupnik i prestupnost’, 1 (Moscow, 1926), 6–33, here—32.

⁸⁹See M. Volotskoi, Podniatie zhiznennykh sil rasy. Novyi put’ (Moscow, 1923).

⁹⁰See, for instance, discussions of the Norwegian and Swedish eugenic legislation by the Russian Eugenic Society, Iu. Filipchenko, ‘Obsuzhdenie norvezhskoi evgenicheskoi programmy na zasedaniiakh Leningradskogo Otdeleniia R. E. O.’, REZh, 3 (2) (1925), 139–43; and Anon., ‘Sovremennoe sostoianie voprosa o sterelizatsii v Shvetsii’, REZh, 3 (1) (1925), 78–81.

⁹¹See G. V. Segalin, ed., Klinicheskii arkhiv genial'nosti i odarennosti (evropatologii), posviashchennyi voprosam patologii genial'noodarennoi lichnosti, a takzhe voprosam patologii tvorchestva (Sverdlovsk, 1925–29).

⁹²The activity of this group is partially explored in Irina Sirotkina, Diagnosing Literary Genius (Baltimore, MD, 2001).

⁹³See Iu. A. Filipchenko, ‘Intelligentsiia i talanty’, Izvestiia biuro po evgenike, 3 (1925), 83–96.

⁹⁴Dr. A., ‘Konkursy grudnykh detei’, Gigiena i zdorov'e rabochei i krest'ianskoi sem'i, 17 (1926), 9.

⁹⁵See ARAN, f. 450, op. 3, d. 79, ll. 1–11.

⁹⁶On Bulgakov's novella, see Yvonne Howell, ‘Eugenics, Rejuvenation, and Bulgakov's Journey into the Heart of Dogness’, Slavic Review, 65 (2006), 544–62.

⁹⁷Theo Eli [Fedor Il'in], Dolina novoi zhizni (Moscow, 1928). Other examples include Alexander Beliaev's famous novel Amphibious Man and Vsevolod Valiusinskii's much less known Five Immortals. Tellingly, all three novels came out in the same year 1928.

⁹⁸On the rise of ‘communist science’, see Nikolai Krementsov, Stalinist Science (Princeton, NJ, 1997).

⁹⁹S. ‘Neskol'ko zamechanii o ‘Russkom evgenicheskom zhurnale’’, Pravda, 21 June 1925, 7.

¹⁰⁰G. Shmidt, ‘Ne iz verkhnikh desiati tysiach, a iz nizhnikh millionov’, Pod znamenem marksizma (hereafter—PZM), 7 (1925), 128–33.

¹⁰¹G. Shmidt, ‘Ne iz verkhnikh desiati tysiach, a iz nizhnikh millionov’, Pod znamenem marksizma (hereafter—PZM), 7 (1925), 128.

¹⁰²M. Volotskoi, Klassovye interesy i sovremennaia evgenika (Moscow, 1925).

¹⁰³G. A. Batkis, ‘Sotsial'nye osnovy evgeniki’, Sotsial'naia gigiena, 2 (10) (1927), 7–25.

¹⁰⁴For the debates on the interrelations among Marxism, Darwinism, Lamarckism, and genetics, see Nikolai Krementsov, ‘Marxism, Darwinism, and Genetics in Soviet Russia: the Dialectics of Co-evolution’, in Biology and Ideology: From Descartes to Dawkins, edited by Ron Numbers and Denis Alexander (Chicago, IL, 2010), 215–246.

¹⁰⁵Vas. Slepkov, ‘Nasledstvennost’ i otbor u cheloveka’, PZM, 4 (1925), 102–22; idem, ‘Biologiia cheloveka’, PZM, 10–11 (1925), 115–42.

¹⁰⁶See I. I. Rozenblium, ‘Popytka marksistkogo podkhoda k nekotorym problemam konstitutsii i nasledstvennosti’, Leningradskii meditsinskii zhurnal, 4 (1926), 48–63.

¹⁰⁷S. Levit, ‘Problema konstitutsii v meditsine i dialekticheskii materialism’, in Meditsina i dialekticheskii materialism, 2, (Moscow, 1927), 7–34, here 20–21. For a brief biography of Levit, see Mark B. Adams, ‘Levit, Solomon Grigorevich’, in Dictionary of scientific biography, edited by Frederic Holmes (New York, 1990), 18, Suppl. II, 546–49.

¹⁰⁸N. A. Semashko, ‘Ikh evgenika i nasha’, Vestnik sovremennoi meditsiny, 10 (1927), 639–49.

¹⁰⁹For details, see Krementsov, 2010 (note 104).

¹¹⁰See A. S. Serebrovskii, ‘Teoriia nasledstvennosti Morgana i Mendelia i marksisty’, PZM, 3 (1926), 98–117.

¹¹¹On the further development of this idea within the framework of population genetics and evolutionary synthesis, see Mark B. Adams, ‘From ‘Gene Fund’ to ‘Gene Pool’: On the Evolution of Evolutionary Language’, Studies in the History of Biology edited by William Coleman and Camille Limoges, 3 (Baltimore, MD, 1979), 241–85.

¹¹²See, for instance, Anon., ‘U nas ogromnyi genofond’, 30 dnei, 12 (1926), 84–5.

¹¹³N. K. Kol'tsov, ‘Rodoslovnye nashikh vydvizhentsev’, REZh, 4 (3–4) (1926), 103–43.

¹¹⁴N. Kol'tsov, ‘Evfenika’, Bol'shaia meditsinskaia entsikolpediia, 9 (Moscow, 1929), 689–92.

¹¹⁵See Anon., ‘Kratkii otchet o deiatel'nosti obshchestva po izucheniiu rasovoi patologii i geograficheskogo rasprostraneniia boleznei’, REZh, 7 (2–3) (1929), 113.

¹¹⁶For details, see Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York, 1990); also Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed. Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington, IN, 1978).

¹¹⁷For details on the effects of the revolution from above on the system of Soviet science, see Krementsov, 1997 (note 98).

¹¹⁸See Trudy Vsesoiuznogo s”ezda po genetike i selektsii (Leningrad, 1930), 6 vols.

¹¹⁹A. Sh. Shorokhova, ‘Novye puti v selektsii cheloveka i mlekopitaiushchikh’, Vrachebnaia gazeta, 3–4 (1929), 179–84.

¹²⁰See RNL, f. 813, op. 1, d. 363 and d. 736.

¹²¹A. S. Serebrovskii, ‘Antropogenetika i evgenika v sotsialisticheskom obshchestve’, Trudy Kabineta nasledstvennosti i konstitutsii cheloveka pri Mediko-biologicheskom institute, published as a special issue of Mediko-biologicheskii zhurnal, 5 (1929), 3–19; S. Levit, ‘Genetika i patologiia (v sviazi s sovremennym krizisom v meditsine), See RNL, f. 813, op. 1, d. 363 and d. 736, 20–39.

¹²²See David Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 1917–1932 (New York, 1961); Loren R. Graham, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (New York, 1974).

¹²³For the texts of Bednyi's poem and Serebrovskii's response, see R. A. Fando, 2002 (note 14).

¹²⁴‘Po povodu proizvodstvennogo plana ‘sotsialisticheskoi evgeniki’’, Moskovskii meditsinskii zhurnal, 9 (1930), 77–87.

¹²⁵A. S. Serebrovskii, [‘Letter to the editors’], Mediko-biologicheskii zhurnal, 4–5 (1930), 447–8.

¹²⁶See A. I. Abrikosov, “Trudy kabineta nasledstvennosti i konstitutsii cheloveka. Vyp.1,” Russkaia klinika, 13 (72) (1930), 522–23.

¹²⁷See G. Sobolev, ‘Russkoe evgenicheskoe obshchestvo’, VARNITSO 5 (1930), 49–50.

¹²⁸The plan is preserved among Kol'tsov's personal papers, see ARAN, f. 450, op. 4, d. 7.

¹²⁹A manuscript of this article is preserved among Kol'tsov's papers in ARAN, f. 450, op. 5, d. 29.

¹³⁰G. Batkis, ‘Evgenika’, Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia 23 (Moscow, 1931), 812–819.

¹³¹M. Gremiatskii, ‘Evgenika’, Malaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 3 (Moscow, 1936), 150–2.

¹³²S. Levit, ‘Chelovek kak geneticheskii ob”ekt i izuchenie bliznetsov kak metod antropogenetiki’, Trudy geneticheskogo otdeleniia pri Mediko-biologicheskom institute, 2, issued as a special issue of Mediko-biologicheskii zhurnal, 4–5 (1930), 273–87.

¹³³S. Levit, ‘Predislovie’, in Trudy mediko-biologicheskogo instituta, 3 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934), III–IX.

¹³⁴G. I. Meller [H. J. Muller], ‘Evgenika v usloviiakh kapitalisticheskogo obshchestva’, Uspekhi sovremennoi biologii, 2 (3) (1933), 3–11.

¹³⁵G. Meller [H. J. Muller], ‘Evgenika na sluzhbe natsional-sotsializma’, Priroda ,1 (1934), 100–6.

¹³⁶See Konferentsiia po meditsinskoi genetike. Doklady i preniia, issued as a supplement to the journal Sovetskaia klinika, 20 (1934), 7–8.

¹³⁷S. N. Davidenkov, ed. Nevrologiia i genetika (Moscow, 1936).

¹³⁸For a detailed history of the Seventh International Genetics Congress, see Krementsov, 2005 (note 56).

¹³⁹See H. J. Muller, Out of the Night. A Biologist's View of the Future (New York, 1935).

¹⁴⁰Mark B. Adams had found a draft of Muller's letter to Stalin among Muller's papers, see Adams, 1989 (note 10). Recently, a Russian translation of the letter has been found in Stalin's personal archive, see, “Pis'mo Germana Miollera—I. V. Stalinu,” Voprosy istorii eestestvoznaniia i tekhniki, 1 (1997), 65–78. Following citations from Muller's letter are given from the English original located in the Lilly Library of the University of Indiana (Bloomington), Muller MSS, Writings, Box 3, Folder 1936.

¹⁴¹For details, see Krementsov, 2006 (note 12).

¹⁴²On Lysenko and his attack on genetics see D. Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, MA, 1970); Krementsov, 1997 (note 98).

¹⁴³See, for instance, E. A. Finkel'shtein, ‘Evgenika i fashizm’, in Rassovaia teoriia na sluzhbe fashizma (Kiev, 1935), 37–88; Z. A. Gurevich, ‘Fashizm, ‘rasovaia gigiena’ i meditsina’, On Lysenko and his attack on genetics see D. Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, MA, 1970); Krementsov, 1997 (note 98), 89–125.

¹⁴⁴G. Frizen, ‘Genetika i fashizm’, PZM, 3 (1935), 86–95.

¹⁴⁵E. Kol'man, ‘Chernosotennyi bred fashizma i nasha mediko-biologicheskaia nauka’, PZM, 11 (1936), 64–72.

¹⁴⁶L. Karlik, ‘Trudy Mediko-geneticheskogo instituta im. M. Gor'kogo’, PZM, 12 (1936), 169–86.

¹⁴⁷Anon., ‘Po lozhnomu puti’, Pravda, 26 December 1936, 4.

¹⁴⁸See the State archive of the Russian Federation, f. 8009, op. 1, d. 113.

¹⁴⁹For details, see Krementsov, 2005 (note 56) and Krementsov, 2006 (note 12).

¹⁵⁰S. N. Davidenkov, Evoliutsionno-geneticheskie problemy v nevropatologii (Leningrad: GIDUV, 1947).

¹⁵¹For details, see Adams, 1989 (note 10); Krementsov, 1997 (note 98).

¹⁵²See, for example, William H. Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (Champaign, IL, 2002).

¹⁵³See, for instance, Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge, 1989); Broberg and Roll-Hansen, 1996 (note 8).

¹⁵⁴See Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling, eds., Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940 (Budapest, 2007).

¹⁵⁵Pauline M. H. Mazumdar, Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, Its Sources and Its Critics in Britain (London, 1992); S. J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York, 1996).

¹⁵⁶For a thorough analysis of the Soviet ethnic policies, see Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY, 2005). Alas, this otherwise excellent work does not look at the connections between ethnic policies and eugenics.

¹⁵⁷See, for example, Stepan, 1996 (note 8).

¹⁵⁸L. Trotskii, Literatura i revoliutsiia (Moscow, 1923), 195–7.

¹⁵⁹David L. Hoffmann, ‘Mothers in the Motherland: Stalinist Pronatalism in Its Pan-European Context’, Journal of Social History, 34 (2000), 35–54.

¹⁶⁰See, for instance, Elizabeth Waters, ‘The Modernisation of Russian Motherhood, 1917–1937’, Soviet Studies, 44 (1992), 123–35; Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936 (Cambridge, 1993).