In Pursuit of the Gene

266 ¨ TRIUMPH OF THE MODERN GENE
affect the direction of mutation, Muller asserted, no such claim had withstood
the test of time, “The latest claims of this kind, those of Lysenko,” he
added, “give every evidence of suffering from the same errors as those of
the past.”
While the body of his speech was given in Russian by his friend N. K.
Koltsov, as Muller looked on, he insisted on speaking the concluding lines
himself in Russian: “If our outstanding practitioners are going to support
theories and opinions that are obviously absurd to everyone who knows
even a little about genetics—such views as those recently put forward by
President Lysenko and those who think as he does—then the choice before
us will resemble the choice between witchcraft and medicine, between astrology
and astronomy or between alchemy and chemistry.” Many of the
key participants at the December 1936 meeting died soon after in the escalating
terror, but those who survived and were later interviewed by the
Russian writer Mark Popovsky in the 1960s and 1970s still remembered the
thunderous applause that broke out as Muller spoke those words. 82
After his lecture Muller was taken to a private room by Bauer, the
chief of science of the Communist Party, and Yakovlev, who both expressed
their vehement opposition to his views on the stability of genes. The idea
that it was possible to “change the genes so as to make all races equal,”
Yakovlev said, represented the view in the highest official circles. “Just
better the conditions and you better the genes.” Furthermore, the idea that
gene mutation was random was against state policy, Muller was informed,
and he was forced to issue a public apology for his statements. 83 In a major
policy speech delivered on January 5, 1937, Yakovlev declared that those
who would defend the stability of the gene were “reactionaries and even
saboteurs,” signaling a change in official policy. 84 His speech, which was
published in Lysenko’s journal, also contained an article by Lysenko’s top
advisor, I. Prezent, which referred to Agol as a “Trotskyite bandit” and attacked
Levit for supporting a fascist view of hereditary predisposition.
¨ IN THE EARLY SPRING Muller completed a bibliography of Drosophila
literature dating back to 1905, a project he’d been asked to take over from
Bridges. After submitting the manuscript to the Soviet Academy of Sciences