ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Not Externalist Enough: Soviet Biology in the Grip of Planned Economy

• In Event: Science, Technology and Politics in the 20th Century

English Abstract

In the Soviet Union of the 1930s–1940s, externalist histories of biology, focused on the social, political, and economic contexts of scientific knowledge, were increasingly displaced by internalist narratives centered on individual geniuses progressing toward a correct understanding of nature. This shift was paradoxical. Biologists who promoted an externalist historiography failed to recognize the current economic and political environment of science, while Lysenkoists, who succeeded precisely in aligning with it, went on to produce classical internalist histories.
Inspired by dialectical materialism, Soviet contributions to the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology (1931) played a formative role in externalist historiography. In particular, Boris Zavadovsky’s presentation influenced J. D. Bernal and Joseph Needham in developing an interest in the economic, political, and technological dimensions of biology. Like Nikolai Vavilov, Zavadovsky emphasized the practical orientation of both biological and historical research.
This paper argues that the key arena in which externalists lost to Lysenkoists was not practical orientation, nor commitment to dialectical materialism, but rather the temporal structure of planned governance. Externalists were aware of the increased dominance of directive planning over predictive planning; however, they failed to synchronize their research agendas with plans of rapid industrialization. Lysenkoists, by contrast, much more closely aligned their activities with the boosted creation of new crop varieties and ecosystem transformation needed for industrial expansion. Thus, externalist biologists with a dialectical understanding of science and its history were ultimately displaced by competitors who held a linear view of scientific progress.

Author

• Sergei Shevchenko, Ruhr University Bochum