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" Lysenko did not believe that genes or DNA existed, and only spoke about them to say that they did not exist. He instead believed that any body, once alive, obtained heredity. That meant that the entirety of the body was able to pass on the hereditary information of that organism, and was not dependent on a special element such as DNA or genes. That puzzled biologists at that time because it went against all established notions of heredity and inheritance. It also contradicted the Mendelian principles that most biologists had been using to base their ideas on. Most scientists believed that Lysenko's ideas were not credible, because they did not truly explain the mechanisms of inheritance. Many scientists and history of science writers believe[weasel words] that his beliefs are pseudo-scientific, and have little relationship to genetics.
Another of Lysenko's theories was that obtaining more milk from cows did not depend on their genetics, but on how they were treated. The better they were handled and taken care of, the more milk would be obtained. Given that belief, Lysenko and his followers were well known for taking very good care of their livestock. Lysenko claimed that the cuckoo was born when young birds such as warblers were fed hairy caterpillars by the parent (rather than host) birds; this claim failed to recognise that the cuckoos he described were brood parasites. Lysenkoites also believed that fertilization was not random, but that there was specific selection of the best mate. For reasons like these, Lysenkoism can be viewed as pseudo-scientific.
After World War II ended, Lysenko took an interest in the works of Olga Lepeshinskaya, an older feldsher and biologist, who claimed to be able to create cells from egg yolk and non-cellular matter. Lepeshinskaya recognized common ground between her ideas and Lysenko's. By combining both of their ideas it was possible to proclaim that cells could grow from non-cellular material, and that the predicted ratios of Mendelian genetics and meiosis were incorrect, thus undermining the basis of modern cytology, as well as genetics.
Consequences of Lysenkoism
Lysenko forced farmers to plant seeds very close together, since according to his "law of the life of species", plants from the same "class" never compete with one another. An article in The Atlantic suggests that Lysenko played active role in the famines that killed millions of Soviet people, and that Lysenko's practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages, but the arguments for this claim remain unclear. The Soviet Union's allies suffered under Lysenkoism, too. Communist China adopted his methods in the late 1950s and endured even bigger famines. Peasants were reduced to eating tree bark and bird droppings. At least 30 million died of starvation.
Outside the Soviet Union, scientists spoke critically: British biologist S. C. Harland lamented that Lysenko was "completely ignorant of the elementary principles of genetics and plant physiology" (Bertram Wolfe, 2017). Criticism from foreigners did not sit well with Lysenko, who loathed Western "bourgeois" scientists and denounced them as tools of imperialist oppressors. He especially detested the American-born practice of studying fruit flies, the workhorse of modern genetics. He called such geneticists "fly lovers and people haters".
Unable to silence Western critics, Lysenko tried to eliminate all dissent within the Soviet Union. Scientists who refused to renounce genetics found themselves at the mercy of the secret police. The lucky ones simply got dismissed from their posts and were left destitute. Hundreds if not thousands of others were rounded up and dumped into prisons or psychiatric hospitals. Several were sentenced to death as enemies of the state or starved in their jail cells (most notably the botanist Nikolai Vavilov).[citation needed] Before the 1930s, the Soviet Union had a strong genetics community. Lysenko gutted it, and by some accounts set Russian biology and agronomy back a half-century."
Mark Mora, like Trofim Lysenko, hates scientists (and smart janitors, too). He was able to reach Bloom's ear. Bloom's only
"research" was to advance the mink industry - until Russia collapsed.
Call me a lyre if you want.
That's precisely what I addressed in this particular post - God save us all from "Lysenkos" of this world, the hicks out of sticks, whether they hail from "Russia proper" or Ukraine ( as this Lysenko did in this case. Yeah, that "ethnically cleansed Ukrainian" who orchestrated all this B.S. in Soviet Union.)
On another hand, it's not like "more advanced nations" never looked in the same direction of pseudoscience.
I jusy wish Russia would stop all of this nonsense under Putin and open itself up to the world, in order that sanctions can be lifted and Russia can trade with us.
No one dislikes the Russian people, and we would like better relations, however until Putin finally goes this sadly seems unlikely.
Putin represents the Will of the Russian people. He's had from a 60% (bottom end) to a 90% plus approval rating.
PLUS, he and his cronies own all the media, the state oil and gas companies, etc.
Short of a revolution and a new constitution he can't and won't go...that is, he will be replaced by another puppet of the Oligarchs.
The main thing for those who matter in Russia is to move the big money overseas. They know that - sooner or later - the populace may get the hint that they are being screwed.
Then again, since the brain drain and the tens of millions dead, etc. the whole country may have such PTSD and Trauma that the Spark has gone out.
A book I recently read - written by some Russians who seem to know the score - seems to suggest that it is never going away.
I've read quite a few showing the same basics...but the most recent is this:
"The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia "
Those who want to know what Putin does - on a personal level - may want to read this book. It's a work of fiction, but it does reflect what really happened (just telling it as a personal story instead of historic)....
Excerpt: “.....the Soviet Union was the first country in world history to have completely eliminated hunger, an achievement that countries as "developed" as the United States have never reached. “
Here from Wikipedia we learn that although the rapid shift from private farming to collective farms and rapid industrialization caused famines in Stalin’s 5-year plan in Ukraine and Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, that ultimately these models were declared successful and rural peasants benefited by not having to be in servitude to one owner because of the collective arrangements.
"Collectivization brought undeniable benefits to some rural inhabitants, especially those who had owned little or no land. It freed them from laboring on the fields of others, and it increased their control over wages, lending to their daily existence a stability previously unknown to them." [12]
It took time
In Hungary, agricultural collectivization was attempted a number of times between 1948 and 1956 (with disastrous results), until it was finally successful in the early 1960s under János Kádár.
Subsidies and constant pressure destroyed the remaining private farmers; only a handful of them remained after the 1960s. The lifestyle of villagers had eventually reached the level of cities, and village poverty was eliminated
If by completely eliminate you mean say it doesn't exist.
To put it another way, it depends on how you measure hunger. The US has a very liberal interpretation. Anyone at any time being uncertain they will have enough quality food is considered food insecure. In common parlance that's often referred to as hunger.
Russia may measure it a little differently as in we've solved hunger insofar as millions of people are no longer starving to death in famines. But that's a problem the U.S. ever had. By the time there were millions of people, there was no more mass starvation. Even the Dust Bowl/Great Depression there wasn't any statistical difference in mortality rates from anything other than suicide. So while people may have gone hungry, there wasn't enough starvation to make even a blip.
In other words, hunger just means different things. United States hunger means you're not sure if you're going to get adequate nutrition at all times. If you have to go to a soup kitchen or food bank to get food, you are food insecure which is labeled as hunger. If you have to choose less healthy options because you have limited food stamps and money to buy better food, that is considered food insecure. Russia it more seems to mean we've solved mass starvation.
US ranks #3 overall, behind Singapore and Ireland. Russia is down at #43.
If you break that down into components, US benefits from cheap, affordable food. Wealthy country with cheap food so that's not surprising. Availability is #10 in the US vs #51 in Russia. So better access to food in the US.
Interesting if you look at natural resources and resilience the US is way, way down at #44 while Russia is #18. The US has very poor food security. That is to say we're very dependent on trade. While we produce massive quantities of food and are the top food exporting country in the world, we also are equally dependent upon food imports. We produce some types of food in abundance and very little of others. A large-scale disruption in international trade wouldn't result in immediate starvation. We just in general terms produce far more grains, soy, corn than we could ever use while importing mostly fish, fruits, and vegetables. A large scale disruption there would be an excess of grains rotting away and no one would immediately starve, but there would be shortages of fruits and vegetables meaning malnutrition.
The vegetable gardens had only to do with WWII. And while they played a role in ending the Great Depression, it isn't what you think.
During WWII, the United States sold massive amounts of goods to our allies. These goods included not only armaments, but food. The demand for US agriculture was so high that production couldn't keep up(IE why we had rationing). So the United States government encouraged more food production through personal gardens, so that the surplus could be sold to Europe.
America came out of the Great Depression because of the profits we made off supplying WWII.
As for the Great Depression, it would have been impossible for vegetable gardens to have ended the Great Depression on their own. In fact, vegetable gardens would have actually deepened the Great Depression.
The Great Depression, just like all capitalist recessions and business-cycles was not the result of too little production, but too much production and not enough demand. There were plenty of goods and services being produced, the problem was that no one had the money to buy them.
This created an avalanche, where manufacturers couldn't sell their goods, so they laid off their employees, who then had no money to buy anything, so then more produces had no one to sell to so, so they went out of business and could no longer buy anything, which affected more-and-more producers.
Also, overproduction and underconsumption led to deflation. Deflation is the worst thing possible for an economy, because if prices go down, it means that all manufacturers are basically losing money by the time they sell what they make.
To pull the country out of the Great Depression, they needed to make sure people had money to spend, and to stop deflation.
Eating vegetables from your garden is technically "consumption", but there is no money being exchanged. If everyone made everything for themselves, there would be no economy. If everyone grew their own food, every farmer would be put out of business.
So again, the only reason this was beneficial, is because the United States was selling US agricultural goods to Europe, placing those countries into massive debt, forcing them to adopt the Bretton Woods system, which basically established the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency.
The vegetable gardens had only to do with WWII. And while they played a role in ending the Great Depression, it isn't what you think.
During WWII, the United States sold massive amounts of goods to our allies. These goods included not only armaments, but food. The demand for US agriculture was so high that production couldn't keep up(IE why we had rationing). So the United States government encouraged more food production through personal gardens, so that the surplus could be sold to Europe.
America came out of the Great Depression because of the profits we made off supplying WWII.
As for the Great Depression, it would have been impossible for vegetable gardens to have ended the Great Depression on their own. In fact, vegetable gardens would have actually deepened the Great Depression.
The Great Depression, just like all capitalist recessions and business-cycles was not the result of too little production, but too much production and not enough demand. There were plenty of goods and services being produced, the problem was that no one had the money to buy them.
This created an avalanche, where manufacturers couldn't sell their goods, so they laid off their employees, who then had no money to buy anything, so then more produces had no one to sell to so, so they went out of business and could no longer buy anything, which affected more-and-more producers.
Also, overproduction and underconsumption led to deflation. Deflation is the worst thing possible for an economy, because if prices go down, it means that all manufacturers are basically losing money by the time they sell what they make.
To pull the country out of the Great Depression, they needed to make sure people had money to spend, and to stop deflation.
Eating vegetables from your garden is technically "consumption", but there is no money being exchanged. If everyone made everything for themselves, there would be no economy. If everyone grew their own food, every farmer would be put out of business.
So again, the only reason this was beneficial, is because the United States was selling US agricultural goods to Europe, placing those countries into massive debt, forcing them to adopt the Bretton Woods system, which basically established the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Who turned the money off . . And Why?
Should be pretty clear by now.
Gaddafi, Hussein, the Romanovs, etc were all killed, for . . . "the reasons". They all had . . . a money country.
Start with 1913.
Last edited by Hyperthetic; 03-30-2019 at 07:17 PM..
The fall of the USSR was mainly due to the coup attempt by hardliners to overthrow the comparatively moderate Gorbachev
Hardly.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was baked in long before August 1991 (when the coup attempt occurred).
Short summary:
*Long period of stagnation under Brezhnev and his two regency-like successors.
*Gorbachev comes to power, understands the need for reform, naively thinks he can do it without scrapping communism.
*He begins that reform (perestroika) and also begins lifting the Soviet boot off the neck of the people (glasnost).
*Glasnost puts the Soviet government under the microscope, and it could not withstand the scrutiny, while at the same glasnost allowed ethnic nationalism to express itself (the USSR was only about 55% Russian).
Things spun out of control, and Gorbachev continued almost to the end (the Communist Party was finally abolished and banned immediately following the coup attempt) to believe communism could be reformed and could coexist with democracy.
He was wrong.
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