Even the Bees Work for Stalin

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 400, 21 February 1947, Page 13

Even the Bees Work

for Stalin

JN this, the third and final talk on the U.S.S.R. which he recorded for the NZBS, PROFESSOR

ERIC

ASHBY

discusses something in which he, as a

Professor of Botany, is ‘particularly interested-the Seviet application of science to the problems of agriculture.

E "commonly read that in agricultural science Russia has made staggering progress. We read about extraordinary kinds of perennial wheat, splendid new fruits, amazing coloured cotton, and so on. Much of this is mere journalists’ moonshine. Well meaning, but really very dangerous writers on Russia make the most ridiculous exaggerations about Soviet agriculture. The truth is that much Soviet agriculture is still, as one would expect, very primitive; but this should not distract our attention from the really solid work which is being done there. I'll tell you a little about it now. The Ministry of Agriculture is an enormous organisation, It has recently been split into two ministries, but when I was there it was all under one head, the Minister Benedictov. He controls nearly 1,000 institutes and field stations, with 14,000 scientific workers, and spends on scientific work alone about £15,000,000 a year. The variety of research institutes is extraordinary: institutes for grain culture, cotton, drugplants, rubber-plants, sheep, reindeer, poultry, rabbits, and bee-keeping. How Doth the Little... . Let me take you to one of these: to the All Union Scientific Research Institute of Bee Culture. It’s some way out of Moscow. You travel to Butova in a train crowded with peasants in their shawls and kapok coats (and often there’s someone with an accordion, singing in the carriage). From there, if you go in winter, as I did, you drive on a sledge, sitting on straw, through an oak wood, to the Institute. The director of. the Institute, like most directors of scientific institutes attached to Ministries, is not an experienced scientist. He is what we wonld call a political appointee; a man trained in administration and alive to the political importance of the Institute’s work. He told me how they have 3,500 people learning bee-keeping by correspondence; and summer schools for instructors in bee-keeping every year; and how their research is popularised in pam-' phlets which are distributed by the tens of thousands. Then he invited.me to go round the laboratories. Research into Pollination There’s a department of bee diseases, where I saw the drug gramicidin being . used to cure bees. There’s a department working on the production of red clover with a high nectar-content, for honey. There’s a department of technology, where they have discovered that boot polish can be made out of one of the by-products of wax production, But the Institute takes the view that the most important job bees do is not to make honey and wax, but to cause seeds to set in crops and pastures. So the main work of the Institute is on the setting

of seed. They have produced a method of training bees to pollinate a particular kind of flower. All they do is to put a bowl of 50 per cent. sugar in the hive, and, floating on the bowl, some of the flowers they want pollinated; lucerne, let us say. After two or three days’ training the bees go out of the hive and pollinate lucerne-and pretty well nothing,else. When the lucerne crop has set its seed, your bees can then be trained to pollinate some other plant. I'm quite satisfied that the method works and that in Russia it has resulted in over four times the normal seed pro- | duction in a paddock of lucerne. Mead Instead of Vodka In another department a new strain of Caucasian bees had been produced — which pollinate flowers at much lower temperatures than the ordinary Italian bees. This new strain is useful for getting fruit trees to set in districts where the spring, during blossom time, is cool. When we'd toured the laboratories I had a good country meal with all the staff and we drank mead-an old-fashioned drink made from fermented honey. _ I have time to tell you a little about one. more agricultural research institute, the famous Institute of Plant Industry in Leningrad. The business of this Institute is to classify and improve all kinds of crop plants. I saw there room after room of metal boxes with seeds (continued on next page)

Scientists and Farmers

(continued from previous page) in, They have seeds of 70,000 kinds of crops, including the largest collection of wheats ever brought together anywhere. When Leningrad was besieged, a small band. of scientists, led by a woman-Dr, Pantileeva-kept guard _ over these collections. There was mo heat in the building. It was damaged by bombs and shell-blast; but this rearguard of scientists used to stay in the building to protect the collections against robbery and fire. Vavilov’s Expeditions This Institute of Plant Industry is the headquarters from which plant-hunting expeditions have been sent to all parts of the world. The inspirat.on for these expeditions was, up to 1940, a man named Vavilov. He was an intellectual giant. He had the effect of stirring up everyone he met into intense acfivity. He could make the dullest job into an excit.ng adventure. He slept about four hours a night, and for the rest of the time he worked, talked, and laughed. When the Soviet Government put him in charge of plant breeding he threw himself into the organisation of a 20th Century Odyssey, to hunt the world to find the cradles of agriculture-the

places where our crop plants origin_ated. He sent out expeditions in the grand manner. He liked to have 100 men in the field at once. He used aeroplanes, motor boats, camels. He stayed in regions long enough to pick up some of the language and the folk-lore of the people. He spoke English, French, German, and two or three oriental languages, fluently. From the data collected on his expeditions Vavilov made his greatest contribution to science; his #vork on the origin and distribution of wheat. He found that the earliest farmers develcped wheat from its wild plant ancestors in two parts of the world independently: soft wheat (the sort you grow here) came from the mountains of Kashmir; hard wheat (the sort macaroni is made of) came from Abyssinia. At * Pushkin, near Leningrad, Vavilov’s staff grew every year thousands of varieties of wheat, and by hybridising them produced many new varieties suitable for the Russian climate. * Tragic Ending Vavilov’s leadership in scence was so outstanding that he was made a foreign member of the Royal Society of London; but his life ended in tragedy. In the late ‘thirties a terrific argument broke out in Russia over the science of heredity. It got into the papers and stirred up all sorts of people. A man called Lysenko, whose contributions to science are quite negligible, came out with the view that the principles by which heredity is studiéd all over the world are wrong pr-nciples, and contrary to Marxian philosophy. Lysenko proposed another set of principles, which are contrary to the facts as we know them. In the ordinary way this sort of nonsense in science is soon rubbed out, but Lysenko got a strong following. be- _ cause he had worked himself into a position of great influence through his political affiliations and his services to agriculture. Vavilov, who was a great fighter (if he'd been a New Zealander you would have suspected a bit of Irish in his blood), led the campaign of all honest bivlog’sts to ridicule Lysenko’s views. And his ridicule, like everything else he did, had the touch of genius. But it was ineffective. If you look at the 1940 issues of the journal published by Vavilov’s inst.tute, you find that Vavilov’s name has gone from the title »Ppage in the second number. In the third and successive numbers Lysenko’s name is frequently quoted as an authority, By 1941 Vavilov had disappedred. He was never heard of again, and it is believed on good evidence that he d.ed in prison in 1942, ; Attitude of Scientists I think you should know that this sort of thing is still apt to happen in Russia-just as it used to in the days of the Czars; but it should not blind us to the fact that side by side w‘th this there is a great deal of excellent agricultural research, which we would do well to follow very closely. I wish I had time to tell you something of Soviet medicine and Soviet ‘chemical industry; but it is getting late, and I must try to sum up these three talks. I did not meet a single scientist in Russia who was hostile, suspicious, or unwilling to talk, provided he had official permiss:on to meet me. Among scientists there I found the greatest sin(continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) cerity, generosity in imparting their ideas, enthusiasm, and a deep delight in their work. I found science the foremost activity of the State, permeating every other activity, planned on a great scale and limited not by shortage of money but by shortage of well-trained men. It’s not all lovely there, not by any means, and I have tried to give you the background of Soviet science as I think the intelligent Soviet citizen sees it. The average foreigner, unfortunately, does not see science in Russia through Russian eyes, but is compelled to look through a blurred and indistinct window, called the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, known for short as VOKS. VOKS ‘(and I say this seriously) does incalculable damage to our relations with Russia, by putting obstacles in the way of contact with Soviet institutions and by what we should regard in this country as bureaucratic incompetence. The only people who are more scathing in their criticism of VOKS than I am are some of the Russian scientists themselves. The Soviet Union is a great nation with great, institutions. It is a deplorable fact that this great nation is seen by foreigners through the heavily frosted and rose-tinted window of VOKS. I believe that the Russian people (whatever their Government says) want peace and fellowship with the British people, and want it with the deepest sincerity. I believe that our suspicion of Soviet motives and their suspicion of ours are due to the formidable barriers between the Russian people and ourselves. The hope for the world is to find a common ground of understanding. In science we and the Russians have this common ground. That is why I believe that in our dealings with Russia science should be a basis of our diplomacy. |