Teacher of the Toilers

Academician Trofim D. Lysenko, ideological shepherd of Soviet geneticists, announced last week in Izvestia that Soviet agrobiologists can turn wheat into rye. All they have to do is plant wheat in places where the climate is tough for it. In a spasm of self-preservation, wrote Lysenko solemnly, the wheat turns into rye.

Wheat and rye are only superficially similar; they belong to different genera of the grass family. Non-Soviet geneticists believe (on the basis of thousands of experiments) that to make one turn into the other would be as difficult as making a cat give birth to puppies. But such Westerners are neglecting a new factor in genetics: the miracle-passing powers of Joseph Stalin.

Lysenko attributed the latest success of Soviet genetics to "Stalinist teaching on gradual, concealed, unnoticeable, quantitative changes that result in quick, qualitative, basic changes." He added: "Comrade Stalin is the embodiment of folk wisdom . . . He is the happiness of all the toilers of the world. Glory and long years of life and health to the leader and great teacher of the toilers, the coryphaeus* of science: Comrade Stalin."

*Original meaning: leader of the chortis.

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