#stalin — Public Fediverse posts

“When you mix science and politics, you get politics:*…

Tina Hesman Saey on a looming threat to the U.S…

Soviet scientists in the 1930s knew what could happen if they bucked the party line: denunciation, firing and banishment from the scientific establishment, even imprisonment and death. Political reprisals against those who opposed the views of dictator Joseph Stalin and his followers — and the dubious science they endorsed — led to the starvation of millions, as well as to decades of lost progress in fields from agriculture to molecular biology.

Now, scientists are warning that history could repeat itself — but in the United States.

A new proposal from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget would put political appointees in charge of funding decisions traditionally overseen by scientists. In recent years, the federal government has funded about 40 percent of basic science research in the United States.

The OMB’s more than 400-page proposed rule change would let political appointees decide how to hand out federal research funds and who can get them. It would cut funding for collaboration with scientists in other countries and restrict scientists’ ability to communicate their findings. What’s more, it could prevent research on matters that President Donald Trump’s administration has deemed “not in the national interest” — such as studies on health disparities, mRNA-based vaccines and research that doesn’t recognize biological sex as a strict binary.

The new rules would also give OMB the power to rescind previously approved research funds. The proposal “poses a sweeping threat to federal grantmaking and the responsible stewardship of American taxpayer dollars,” the science advocacy group Stand Up for Science Foundation said in a report. In addition, it would impact nonscientific grants supporting services for mental health, housing, education, veterans and Tribal nations, affecting the health and well-being of millions.

So far, OMB has received more than 98,000 comments on the proposal. The public comment period closes July 13. It then will be up to OMB to decide whether to keep the rule as is, revise it or scrap it.

These far-reaching measures are already drawing parallels to dark moments in scientific history. Some researchers say the recent mass firings, policy changes and grant cancellations at federal research institutions, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, closely mirror what happened in the U.S.S.R. under Stalin. “A similar threat now hangs over U.S. science,” the editorial board of The New England Journal of Medicine wrote in June.

Its editorial invoked the example of Trofim Lysenko [see here], an agronomist and astute political operator who rose to power in the 1930s Soviet Union under Stalin.

Until the 1930s, “the Soviet Union was a real powerhouse in the field of genetics,” says Lee Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

Then, Lysenko came along. “This guy was your sort of classic charlatan,” Dugatkin says. “He had the equivalent of a mail order degree in agriculture, but he was quite good with the press, and he started to basically spread this idea out there that he was capable of dramatically increasing crop yield, particularly wheat.”

Lysenko’s supposed innovation was a process called vernalization and amounted to soaking seeds in freezing water. The resulting plants — and all their offspring — should be resistant to the U.S.S.R.’s famously cold winters, Lysenko reasoned.

His reasoning was based on a disproven idea in evolutionary biology called Lamarckian inheritance. French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his followers thought that things an organism experiences in its lifetime can be handed down to the next generation. The classic example is a giraffe that has to stretch to reach leaves producing offspring with long necks.

This idea ran counter to Mendelian genetics, which holds that genes — not environmental influences — control traits and are passed to offspring. Mendelian geneticists thought it would take five years to breed more cold-tolerant crops. Lysenko said he could do it in two to three years.

Stalin didn’t have time to wait. He was trying to get collective farms going and needed to increase crop yields to feed more than 150 million people. Large parts of the country had already suffered from famine in 1932 and 1933 and about 6 million people died. Some resorted to cannibalism.

Stalin embraced Lysenko’s quick-fix approach. That decision, says Michael Gordin, a historian of science at Princeton University, was “something that the majority of people at the time, and everyone since, considers the wrong side of the dispute.”

Lysenko was put in charge of a prestigious genetics institute and forced his scientifically unsound farming practices on the collective farms. His methods were disastrous.

Soaking seeds in freezing water hampered germination, leading to crop losses. Millions starved. Meanwhile, Mendelian genetics was branded a “whore of capitalism,” and geneticists were forced to renounce their views or lose their jobs. Many were jailed, and almost a dozen were executed or died in prison.

The Soviet Union lost its scientific leadership role and sat on the sidelines for important scientific discoveries of the 1950s and beyond. One, Gordin says, was the development of “massively” productive hybrid corn. The country also missed out on the discovery of DNA and the advent of molecular biology, putting Soviet genetics decades behind the rest of the world.

Soviet genetics did not recover from Lysenko’s influence until after the break-up of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gordin says. “I think you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who thinks that … Russia is today, or Ukraine, or any post-Soviet successor state, is a leading molecular biology country.”…

The Soviets did it, and it didn’t end well: “Here’s what happens when you put politicians in charge of science,” from @thsaey.bsky.social in @sciencenews.bsky.social.

See also: Idiocracy

* John M. Barry

###

As we remember the past so as not to repeat it, we might recall that it was on this date in 1834 that the Spanish Inquisition (finally) ended. Authorized by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478, the Inqusition was initially led by inquisitors (Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín) who were appointed by the future Catholic monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. It was originally (ostensibly) intended primarily to identify heretics; its aim, to maintain Christian orthodoxy. But it became an effective instrument of state power by replacing the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control.

Over its course, the Inquisition prosecuted an estimated 150,000 people for various offences. An estimated 3,000–5,000 were turned over to the state for execution, particularly in the initial 50 years, mostly by burning at the stake. Other punishments included penance and public flogging, exile, enslavement on galleys, and prison terms ranging from several years to life. In many of these punishments an important motive was the confiscation of all the victims’ property.

As Monty Python observed, “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” And nobody expected it to last 356 years.

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Workers of the world unite!
#marx #engels #lenin #stalin #communism #mao #fanon #marxismleninism

#bot #BotsOfMastodon

"[S]ix million people were sent to the #Soviet #Gulag. A quarter did not survive. Another 16-17 million were transported to strict regime #laborcamps, where the death rate was around 10%.

Within these numbers are the names of tens of thousands of #Jews of every kind, from the devout #hassid to the #assimilated #Communist.

#Stalin’s rule was fortified by spies who believed that they were repairing the world and saving it from the ravages of #fascism. The most effective of these were five young idealists who were at #CambridgeUniversity in the 1930s and who bore witness to the rise of #Hitler and the march of #Nazism across Europe.

#TheCambridgeFive: #GuyBurgess, #DonaldMcLean, #KimPhilby, #AnthonyBlunt, and #JohnCairncross sold their collective soul to Stalin. While their story has been retold countless times in many #books, the remarkable Stalin’s Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire by #AntoniaSenior sheds new light[...]"

https://www.jpost.com/history/article-901146?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Backfiring propaganda

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2174683/backfiring-propaganda

Backfiring propaganda

https://piefed.social/c/tankiejerk/p/2174680/backfiring-propaganda

Comparison to Hitler, Mao, Stalin? Trump says: ‘Sounds good to me!’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/19/trump-hitler-mao-stalin
#Resist #protest #Authoritarianism #Fascism #Dictatorships #Nazism #news #Trump #Hitler #maozedong #mao #Stalin

The PEOPLE'S pseudoscience!

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1855250/the-people-s-pseudoscience

The PEOPLE'S pseudoscience!

https://piefed.social/c/tankiejerk/p/1855246/the-people-s-pseudoscience

No extolling #imperialistic #Mexican - American #War
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/mexico-leaders-react-trump-invasion?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
My take on new #Orwellian #geopolitical #dystopia here
https://nkozphoto.com/index.php/2026/01/23/are-we-headed-toward-an-orwellian-geopolitical-dystopia/ #orwell #trump #geopolitics #denmark #greenland #venezuela #maduro #hitler #stalin #churchill

Žukov beveva capitalismo puro mentre Stalin dormiva. La misteriosa bevanda col tappo rosso e il segreto che vinse la Guerra Fredda.

👇 https://wp.me/pey833-8mG

https://boomerissimo.it/2025/11/16/linganno-di-zukov-a-stalin-una-passione-capitalista/

#storia #URSS #guerrafredda #stalin #storiamilitare

Un ouvrage général, mais malgré tout pointu, sur les notions de #fascisme, #nazisme et de #RégimesAutoritaires. L'auteur parvient à couvrir, en un peu moins de 300 pages, et à l'aide d'une abondante bibliographie, les traits qui définissent ces #idéologies du début du 20è siècle. Tout comme l'a fait Philippe Burrin, dans le livre précédemment lu, il met le doigt sur ce qui distingue l' #autoritarisme du #totalitarisme, le fascisme d'autres formes d' #ExtrêmeDroite.

Cette lecture permet aussi de montrer que notre époque, même si elle présente des similarités avec cette période, s'en différencie aussi énormément. Le monde n'est plus du tout celui du tournant entre le 19e et le 20e siècle. Comme on dit, l'histoire ne repasse jamais deux fois les plats, mais elle hoquette. La détérioration de nos démocraties post-Seconde Guerre Mondiale n'a rien à voir avec les balbutiements des démocraties d'il y a 100 ans.

Il va falloir s'y faire, mais nous ne vivons pas du tout un nouveau début de 20e siècle. Nous sommes au début du 21e siècle et nous devrons trouver nos propres termes pour décrire et définir les régimes dits #illibéraux, voire les nouvelles #dictatures qui émergent aux USA, en Europe de l'Est et qui semblent plus que frémir en Europe de l'Ouest. Après tout, nos ancêtres ont bien dû en faire de même pour faire sens des régimes fascistes, nazis, catholico-conservateurs et soviétiques, sans précédents, auxquels ils ont dû faire face.

D'ailleurs, en cela, ils ont été aidés par les promoteurs-mêmes de ces régimes. Aujourd'hui, l'extrême-droite n'a plus grand-chose à voir avec celle des années 70-80. Et d'ailleurs, les promoteurs de la nouvelle #GuerreCulturelle contre le #wokisme et le #gauchisme, se qualifient d' #altright ou de #FarRight . Sans se limiter à leurs propres auto-qualifications, je pense qu'elles peuvent nous aider à identifier ces phénomènes politiques. Est-ce que Trump est fasciste? Et Victor Orban? Vladimir Putin? Tayip Erdogan? Et Benjamin Netnayahou? En tous cas, il manque plusieurs critères pour classer leurs personnalités et leurs méthodes dans cette catégorie. Ça ne signifie pas pour autant qu'ils soient moins nocifs et dangereux que des #Mussolini, #Hitler, #Stalin, #Pétain, #Salazar, #Franco de cette époque. Mais pour les combattre et résister, il va falloir les étudier dans le contexte actuel et pas simplement tenter des décalques entre eux et les leaders totalitaires ou autoritaires des années 1920.

Cependant, ce genre de lecture reste essentielle, à mon sens, pour nous aider à faire sens de notre époque, parce que, comme déjà dit, l'histoire fait des crises de hoquet et qu'il faut voir quels sont les éléments philosophiques, moraux, idéologiques et politiques qui restent, se transmettent, renaissent ou se renouvellent. Et à quoi ils peuvent contribuer à donner naissance.

(comment on Fascisme, nazisme et régimes autoritaires en Europe)

#Russia #Putin #VladimirPutin #Stalin #USSR #BBC #SteveRosenberg #Russian #UkraineWar #Indoctrination #History #RewritingHistory #ErasingHistory
The slow indoctrination begins. If Steve asked the same questions to young Russians in thirty years, I wonder what answers he’d get?
Steve Rosenberg’s past exploits make him a top journalist in my opinion. Anyone gutsy enough to ask Putin inflammatory questions head on in fluent Russian is definitely worth listening to.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cz63n6j7407o

@perkoch Somewhere in hell, #Stalin and #Lysenko are smiling.

#Russia steps up harassment of #CrimeanTatar #humanrights #journalist and #lawyers before 80th anniversary of #Stalin #Deportation
#Ukraine #Zudiyeva #LetMyPeopleGo #StandWithUkraine #StopRussia
https://khpg.org/en/1608813661