М.M. Zavadovskii and the August 1948 Session of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Towards the 75th Anniversary of the Session)

The article, timed to the 75th anniversary of the August 1948 session of the Lenin All-
Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASHNIL), analyzes how this event affected
the life and scientific career of Mikhail Mikhailovich Zavadovskii (1891–1957), one of the
leading Soviet biologists of the 1920s–1940s. It is shown that this influence was purely
negative; the scientist was dismissed from all positions and expelled from science for al-
most six years; some of his scientific works were purged from libraries; and his greatest
scientific and practical achievement, the method of artificial super-fecundity in livestock,
was restricted in application. The main reason for this was that Zavadovskii, not being a
geneticist by education and occupation, supported classical genetics in the 1930s and
1940s and was in opposition to T.D. Lysenko and his associates. The article discusses
the efforts that Zavadovskii made to return to science, appealing to Soviet state and party
officials of various ranks for this purpose. These efforts bore fruit only in 1953, when he
was permitted to organize a laboratory at the All-Union Institute of Animal Husbandry.
However, this new and last stage of Zavadovskii’s scientific career was short; on March
28, 1957, the scientist untimely died.