An effort to intimidate scientists began. They were arrested one by one at first, then in groups. In 1929 a group of historians, including Sergei Platonov and Evgeny Tarle, were arrested; in 1930 it was a group of microbiologists; then it was agronomists, physiologists, aircraft designers, and so forth. Some were killed, others broken in spirit. In 1934 Professor S. Pisarev was forced to sign a denunciation of his friend Academician Vavilov; otherwise, he was threatened, his children would be killed, his wife tortured, and he himself killed as well.41 Academician Ukhtomsky was forced to renounce his brother, a bishop already under arrest, and some of his students, also under arrest.42 Vavilov, the great botanist, who died of starvation in Saratov prison, said that a process of selection was taking place in the scientific field, to produce a strain of people "lacking the gene of honesty." This was the same Vavilov who in the name of science and "for the good of the cause" went to Afghanistan in 1924 and, in return for Soviet permission to go there for his research on strains of wheat, agreed to take photos of a fortress on the India—Afghanistan border; the same Vavilov who during the worst years of the famine, in 1931—1933, went abroad "to praise the achievements of Soviet agriculture and the Soviet government."43 Later he agreed to lead Trofim Lysenko by the hand into the domain of science, only to be sent to his own painful death by Lysenko.
In a 1924 polemic with the famous psychologist and physiologist Ivan
Pavlov, Bukharin declared that he himself followed "neither Kant's categorical imperative nor the commandments of Christian morality, but revolutionary expediency."44 In 1936, in his conversations with Nicolaevsky, Bukharin spoke at length about "humanizing" Communist theory. Nicolaevsky pointed out, "What you are now saying is nothing other than a return to the Ten Commandments." Bukharin replied: "Do you think the Commandments of Moses are obsolete?"45 It may be that Bukharin was reminded of the Ten Commandments because he had encountered the Devil. He told the Menshevik leader Fedor Dan, "He is a petty, malicious man. Not even a man. A devil." He was talking about Stalin.46
By 1936 the devil and his numerous assistants, including those who quietly regretted it, had accomplished their task: science was under control. The Academy of Sciences passed a resolution stating, "We will resolve all problems that arise before us with the only scientific method, the method of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin."47
On July 4, 1936, the Central Committee conducted an utterly astounding experiment in the liquidation of an entire science by the mere stroke of the pen, by a single decree. Liquidated was "so-called pedology," for it was based on "pseudo-scientific, anti-Marxist assumptions."48 Only a few years before pedology had been the "science of development for the new socialist individual," "a unified, independent science built on the foundation of dialectical materialism."49 The abolition of pedology was followed by the closing down of other sciences: genetics, sociology, psychoanalysis, cybernetics, and so forth. Pedology was the first in a long line.
The problem with pedology was that it tried to be an exact science, studying the child with the aid of what the decree called "senseless and harmful questionnaires, texts, and so on." As long as official ideology proceeded from the assumption that existence determines consciousness, pedology was useful because it showed that poor conditions, a poor environment, has a negative influence on the child. In 1936 it was proclaimed that socialism had been built, but the "senseless and harmful questionnaires, texts, and so on" were demonstrating that children still lived in poor conditions. When a pedologist studying Chuvash children came to the conclusion that they studied poorly due to poor conditions, the journal Pedology (which was liquidated along with the science and the pedologists) immediately responded: What kind of poor conditions did the researcher uncover? Conditions created by the Soviet government and the Communist party? At the first—and last—pedological conference, in 1928, A. Zal- kind, in the main presentation, defined pedology's tasks as follows: "Pedology had to respond, clearly and unambiguously, as to whether from the pedological standpoint the new socialist environment was a proper one for the creation of the new mass individual." Two years later that question sounded suspicious, and in 1936 downright counterrevolutionary.
In the cultural field, 1936 began with an article in Pravda on January 28, "Some Chaos Instead of Music," a devastating blast at Shostakovich's opera Katerina Izmailova. The fact that Pravda took an interest in musical questions was a sign that the process of "taming the arts" was nearing completion. Up until then party directives passed through professional channels. For example, the magazine Worker and Theater (Rabochii i teatr) complained in 1932, "Instead of calling on composers to master the method of dialectical materialism, the magazine Proletarian Musician urges them to this day to master the creative method of Beethoven."50 Now the Central Committee was intervening directly in cultural matters, without delegating its authority to anyone. The article in Pravda was unsigned, meaning it voiced the official opinion, and it referred to Soviet culture as a whole: 'This ultraleft deformity in opera derives from the same source as ultraleft deformity in painting, poetry, pedology, and science." The article warned, 'This playing around with unintelligible things could end badly."51
On February 6 Pravda published another article against Shostakovich, this time taking up his ballet The Clear Stream. On February 20 it was the architects' turn, with an article headlined, 'The Cacophony in Architecture"; on March 1 painters were taken to task in "Daubers, Not Painters"; on March 20 the theater and theatrical writing were attacked in "Outward Glitter, Inner Falsity" (specifically against Bulgakov's play МоНёге, put on by the Moscow Art Theater).
Writers, artists, musicians, actors organized meetings at which they approved the articles in Pravda and went on to denounce one another and recant. Arkady Belinkov, whose books on Tynyanov and Olesha are the first true histories of Soviet culture, once wrote: "Art is the dynamometer of the vileness of a tyrannical regime. The degree of vileness can be measured by the speed with which art is turned to dust."52
The second great event of 1936 was the publication in Pravda on January 27 of the "comments" by Stalin, Kirov, and Zhdanov on a "proposed textbook of Soviet history" as well as on a "proposed textbook on modern world history." Written in June 1934, the "comments" were published a year and a half later (after the assassination of one of the authors) to complete the process of nationalization of spiritual life. Memory became state property.
In Soviet ideology history occupies a central place. The teleological nature of this ideology makes history a legitimizing factor. History validates the firm hand that leads men toward the great goal. "With every major historical zigzag of policy, [the bureaucratic policy makers] are compelled to revamp history all over again. Thus far we have had three large-scale alterations."53 Trotsky wrote those words in reference to the period 1923— 1931. The alterations of the history of the party and the revolution took place only a few years after the events themselves, before the eyes of living witnesses. Facts were deleted, reworked, falsified, but party members went along with it all because history gave legitimacy to the leaders and the party as a whole.