FOLLOWING the Russian revolution of 1917, Nikolai Koltsov managed to keep himself below Lenin鈥檚 radar for several years before his luck ran out. Arrested as part of a witch hunt by the Bolshevik leader鈥檚 secret police, the biologist was held without food for two days before they reluctantly released him. Koltsov was one of the luckier ones: 24 of his peers were executed by firing squad.
Lenin鈥檚 relationship with scientists was a troubled one 鈥� particularly for the scientists. When a coup swept him and the Bolsheviks to power, 100 years ago this month, Lenin embarked on the latest of many attempts to govern an empire that had been expanding for centuries without proper attention to development. Russia鈥檚 extent was bigger than the visible surface of the moon, yet had no councils, unions or guilds, few schools or hospitals worthy of the name, and in many places, no roads.
A 鈥渟cientific government鈥� was Lenin鈥檚 answer, and an overarching social science, Marxism, would apply such knowledge to the public good. So the state needed scientists 鈥� and that was a big problem. Twelve years earlier, during the revolution of 1905, liberal-minded, Western-educated scientists had led a coup against the tsar. That modest revolution had resulted in constitutional change, but when the communists stormed to power in 1917, they were contemptuous of the failed scientific revolutionaries.
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Still, as Lenin conceded to his brother-in-law: 鈥淐ommunism cannot be built without a fund of knowledge, technology, culture, but they are in the possession of bourgeois specialists.鈥� Most troubling were those with access to power: people like the well-connected Koltsov.
Born in 1872, Koltsov was one of the shapers of modern biology. His first work was on the development of the frog pelvis, but he realised quickly that science needed to move on from observational approaches. He hankered for a new experimental discipline.
In late 1916, Koltsov managed to set up an Institute of Experimental Biology in Moscow and after the revolution was able to secure grants from several commissariats on the strength of a promise to study agriculturally useful things like wheat, poultry and cattle.
Koltsov was an exacting and inspiring leader who gathered together talented men and 鈥� exceptionally for the era 鈥� women, regardless of their political convictions. This did not make him non-political in the eyes of the authorities. In 1920, the secret police announced that they had exposed a group of conspirators in Moscow, made up of people who had taken part in the 1905 uprising, and Koltsov was added to their number. It was only the writer Maxim Gorky鈥檚 appeal to Lenin that allowed Koltsov to dodge the firing squad.
Domesticated people
Koltsov was dimly aware of developments in genetics in Thomas Hunt Morgan鈥檚 lab at Columbia University in New York. Morgan was busy establishing the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a key model in the study of genetic inheritance. Genetics was a field Koltsov was keen to enter, partly because it required only modest equipment.
It also appealed to his sense of humour: in a 1922 paper called 鈥淏etterment of the Human Race鈥�, he exuberantly explored the limits of selective breeding by imagining the invasion of a group of super-intelligent Martians who treated us the way we treat livestock and pets. People would be domesticated, rebellious ones eradicated; docile breeders would give rise to an obedient workforce; the most beautiful humans would be bred for show, and so on. There would be 鈥渆ndless races of domesticated people as sharply distinct from one another as a pug or a lapdog is from a Great Dane or St Bernard,鈥� he wrote.
Meanwhile, the hardship of the five-year civil war that followed drew the people of Koltsov鈥檚 institute closer together. Students soldered, mended, made whatever they could, before settling to study. But their achievements were remarkable. Bison, Daniil Granin鈥檚 thinly fictionalised biography of one worker there, Nikolai Timofeev-Ressovsky, captures the mood: 鈥淭hey learned to determine species鈥� Everyone had his own cultured amoebas, flagellates. Every stage of division and multiplication had to be fixed, compared, drawn鈥� They dissected all kinds of bugs and beetles, observed regenerations and transplantation in guppies and tritons. Everyone鈥� made discoveries, gasped, made mistakes, asked questions, and felt like a real researcher.鈥� Koltsov鈥檚 work even led him to propose that inherited traits were passed on via a 鈥済iant hereditary molecule鈥�.
Such was the pace of work at Koltsov鈥檚 institute over the next two decades that the Health Commissar Nikolai Semashko conceived of a health system that would not just cure the sick, but prevent illness by treating congenital diseases. Eugenics (swiftly renamed 鈥渉uman genetics鈥� to distinguish it from political developments in the US and Germany) was part of this. Koltsov led the lobbying to explain it to both the public and the authorities.
鈥淭he secret police exposed a group of 鈥榗onspirators鈥�, and Koltsov was among them鈥�
But Koltsov鈥檚 jokes returned to haunt him. On the pretext of having 鈥渦ncovered鈥� his Wellsian fantasies of the 1920s, in March 1939 the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences set up a commission to investigate his institute鈥檚 鈥減seudoscientific deviations鈥�. At one point, accusations by the ideologue Isaak Izrailevich Prezent were put before Koltsov, in particular that he 鈥渄id not pay enough attention to the influence of the environment on the hereditary process鈥�. Koltsov replied: 鈥淚saak Izrailevich says that, by feeding, one can turn a cockroach into a horse.鈥�
Stalin laughed when he read the transcript. Koltsov鈥檚 wit may have saved his life, but it did not save him from being kicked out of his own institute. One of his students, Nikolai Dubinin, took over. Though a diehard Bolshevik, Dubinin fought tooth and nail to continue the institute鈥檚 work 鈥� and ended up birdwatching in Siberia for his trouble.
Although the Bolsheviks had wanted a scientific government, they could not match the speed at which science travels, and its myriad puzzles and controversies intimidated them. Like adoring fans, they ended up regimenting, regulating and suffocating the thing they purported to love. Koltsov died of a heart attack on 2 December 1940, aged 68. He had lived through the Great Purge of the 1930s, seen whole disciplines in the institute disbanded, and a generation of radical, freethinking colleagues ruined, exiled or shot.
Koltsov had placed the Soviet Union at the vanguard of genetics, one of the 20th century鈥檚 most important scientific revolutions, only to see the field vilified, tarred with the brush of fascism. The day after his death, his wife settled her affairs and drank poison. Her deathbed letter was read out at the funeral. She recalled that as Koltsov lay dying he had said: 鈥淗ow I wish that everybody would wake up. That everybody would wake up.鈥�
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he bourgeois biologist and the revolution鈥�
