2
Factory of geniuses. Super race of Soviet people
Sometimes new sciences arise not because of discoveries, but because of the emergence of new philosophical concepts. At the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche’s idea of "a superman" became such a concept. And soon, scientists from all over the world began to dream of artificially “removing” “superhumans” and eradicating useless “subhuman people”, which even then were recognized by all criminals, patients and beggars. So eugenics appeared - the science of improving humanity.
Since 1907, the United States began to forcibly sterilize criminals, epileptics, the mentally ill, alcoholics, orphans, homeless people and people with disabilities — blind, deaf, and people with tuberculosis. In total, about 80 thousand people were sterilized, and half of them were sterilized after World War II.
Germany in the first half of the 20th century sterilized about 320 thousand people, and since 1937 went further - began to kill them.
And only in Russia, eugenics went the way of creation.
We have everything special - both science and people
This happened largely due to the research of the Russian biologist Nikolai Koltsov, who was the first to discover the mechanism of transmission of hereditary information via chromosomes and to establish their exact number in human cells.
The future genius was born in 1872 in Moscow, in the family of an accountant in a fur factory. He became interested in biology in his youth, brilliantly graduated from the University, worked at zoological stations in Naples, in Germany, in Villafranca. He studied the structure of cells, including crustacean sperm. He wanted to set forth his discoveries in a dissertation, which he was supposed to defend at Moscow University, but because of the 1905 revolution, which he sympathized with, Koltsov was limited in scientific activity and was forced to transfer it to a non-state university. Shanyavsky, where in 1912 he organized the first laboratory of experimental biology.
The ideas of eugenics inspired not only Koltsov, but also other scientists. Anarchist Peter Kropotkin wrote that “genial garbage” should rather be called effeminate aristocrats-idlers, and not workers or single mothers who survive where aristocrats die from disease, and at the same time manage to raise children. Others wrote that people with mental disabilities are brilliant in science and art, and that social “diseases” - poverty and illiteracy - should be eradicated.
Already in 1917, Koltsov headed the Institute of Experimental Biology, then created a department of eugenics under him and became the founder of the first eugenic society in the USSR, which included prominent scientists: psychiatrists, doctors, hygienists and anthropologists. Scientists announced that every person is important for the gene pool of the Soviet people, and the main goal of science is to improve the nation, and this will be helped by research in the field of genetics.
The Bolsheviks did not agree with this, they believed that the main thing was not “molecules,” but education.
At this difficult time, Koltsov set himself the task of figuring out the exact mechanism for the transfer of heredity and whether it can be somehow influenced. He came up with a brilliant idea - to try to irradiate cells with x-rays in order to understand the way mutations occur and the mechanisms of their fixing or correction.
God Himself?
In 1923, Koltsov wrote the work “Improving the Human Breed”, which brought together all his ideas for creating the Soviet superman Homo Creator - the Creator Man. In it, he pointed out that sterilization of people, abortion and birth control lead to a restriction of the genetic wealth of the people, and therefore to damage to the state.
To create a new type of person, scientists of the USSR should begin the selection of gifted and physically strong people with high moral qualities. For them, it was necessary to create conditions in which they could reveal their talents and leave behind numerous offspring. The scientist pointed out that in each of the fallen civilizations, whether Rome or Ancient Greece, the best people of envy were persecuted, and this led to the fact that they did not leave children behind. If greenhouse conditions were created for them, they all the more stopped producing children and focused on the consumption of goods and pleasures.
Soviet science should have found a middle ground so that every superman could not only benefit, but also leave behind at least a thousand children, including through the artificial insemination of healthy and intelligent women.
The creation of Homo Creator was supposed to rest on three pillars: anthropotechnics, anthropogenetics, and eugenics elevated to religion. Religion was supposed to make people believe only in the laws of the physical world, anthropogenetics had to make discoveries with which it was possible to "improve the breed", and anthropotechnics - to make their life happen.
Eugenics - to life!
Every Soviet magazine published articles on eugenics, doctors and biologists traveled to cities with lectures, Koltsov himself spoke on the radio. Eugenic society grew - gynecologists and obstetricians, neurologists and forensic experts, livestock specialists and teachers joined it. Thanks to them, the direction of the protection of infancy and motherhood appeared in the USSR, which included the prevention of diseases among children and youth. Doctors advocated abandonment of abortion and breastfeeding, women's consultations began to appear in cities, doctors persuaded patients to abandon bad habits, and monitored the course of pregnancy.
There were even suggestions that before marriage, a man and a woman should notify each other in writing about the presence of a family of hereditary or infectious diseases, mental disorders.
The study of the inheritance of blood groups and their distribution among peoples began. A large-scale company was conducted to identify hereditary diseases in the regions of the USSR. Doctors went to apartments, came to factories and schools, in the Caucasus, Roma and Assyrians were examined right on the streets. This made it possible to detect an increase in goiter in some regions of the USSR and to reveal a connection between nationality and color blindness.
It turned out that Armenians, Kabardino-Balkarians, Bulgarians and Germans do not see green color blinds, while Finns, Assyrians, Tatars and Jews do not see green and red with the same frequency. It turned out that the peoples of Central Asia hardly suffer from inflammation of the appendix.
The scientist's research put an end to the terror of 1937. Perhaps the fatal role in Koltsov’s fate was played by the American geneticist German Moller, who in 1936 sent a book and a letter to Stalin. The American hoped that in the USSR he would be given the opportunity to engage in practical experiments on people.
The answer was not long in coming: genetics and eugenics were declared the "corrupt girls of capitalism" and the "fascist" sciences. Studies were terminated, put on cloth and classified.
In a bitter irony of fate, the geneticist Meller in 1946 became the Nobel Prize laureate for the discovery of the appearance of mutations under the influence of x-ray radiation.
https://life.ru/p/1302416
Bookmarks