In Pursuit of the Gene

TRIUMPH OF THE MODERN GENE © 269
pletely rested and drove Muller to Detskoye Selo, where they had met for
the first time fifteen years earlier. The labs, which would soon be destroyed
by Lysenko, were still operational, and Vavilov proudly showed off the gardens
where samples of cultivated plants were sown. The Abyssinian flax
with its magnificent large blue flowers was in full bloom. After the tour,
they breakfasted on smoked fish, chocolate bars, and fresh bread prepared
in one of the labs used to test the qualities of different cereals. Vavilov’s
driver ate with them. After breakfast, Vavilov dropped Muller off at the
dock where he boarded a boat for England. 91
The attack on genetics had triumphed, Muller wrote Jessie from the
boat. “Many people are being unjustly accused nowadays. The country is
now in a bad state of hysteria. About 10% of the high officials have vanished.
A significant sign is that the best communists now no longer seem to
consider arrest a disgrace.” 92 Levit was now completely out of science and
his Institute of Medico-Genetics destroyed, and Muller had not dared to
visit him for fear of causing him even more trouble. Anti-genetics was now
compulsory in all higher educational institutions and the attack on genetics
by Yakovlev had been distributed in pamphlet form by the millions. Except
for a few who were deemed essential, foreigners were being forced out
of the country. To help Vavilov, Muller had asked the Academy for a
twelve-month leave of absence, but he had no intention of returning. 93
At the Paris meeting, Muller was offered three jobs, one by the Sovietborn
developmental geneticist Boris Ephrussi at the Radium Institute in
Paris, another by Frederick Crew at the Institute of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh,
and a third at the leading Swedish genetics institute—the State
Institute for Race Biology, in Uppsala near Stockholm— “so I suddenly feel
like Cinderella,” he wrote Altenburg. 94 After a short period of deliberation,
Muller chose Crew’s Institute, where Crew had promised to “see to it that
while he was here he should lack nothing” and there were already nearly a
dozen Drosophila workers for him to guide. Having barely escaped the “closing
jaws of Stalinism,” Muller wrote Edgar from Scotland in December, he
felt more vigorous than he had in years, excited to have the freedom to do
his own research and oversee the thriving Drosophila group at the Institute
without interference from the authorities. 95 In addition, he was consumed