The Scientific Socialism of J. B. S. Haldane

Samanth Subramanian

For decades, there has been a real sense of bewilderment about the way Haldane responded to Lysenko. This is particularly because he famously went on the BBC in the late 1940s and took on three of his scientific colleagues, attempting to defend Lysenko’s scientific theories. For anyone who only had access to that kind of information, it would appear as if Haldane had either subscribed to Lysenkoism wholesale, which seems ridiculous, or had given in to pressure from the Communist Party to defend Lysenko.

For decades, there has been a real sense of bewilderment about the way Haldane responded to Lysenko.

The truth is more complex, and a lot of the archival material that I found speaks to this. I think Haldane chose for a year or two to defend Lysenko in print and on radio because he felt that it was an important moment in the history of communism and that by rejecting Lysenko, he would do the party more harm than good. He decided that he would lend his stature to the task of buttressing Lysenko’s reputation and theories for the sake of the greater cause, you might say.

However, in the background, he was writing to his colleagues in the CPGB all the time, arguing that the party had to distance itself from Lysenko. He had furious arguments with people in the party on this point. After the Lysenko episode, the reason that he distanced himself from the CPGB was in part because he had burned so many of these bridges. He was quite upset with the way in which his colleagues in the party refused to stand by him or think like rational scientists, which was his model of thinking.

I think he did change his broader perspective on how the Soviet Union worked as well. But there’s no evidence of him rethinking his view of Stalin in private. I didn’t find anything in letters or diaries that indicated he had changed his mind about Stalin…