Presidium of the Academy of Science of the USSR, Michurinist Biology. August 26, 1948
Original Source: Pravda, 27 August 1948.
The Presidium of the Academy of Science of the USSR decrees:
1. To relieve Academician L. A. Orbeli of the duties of Secretary of the Division of biological science. Temporarily (until the election of the general assembly) to assign the duties of secretary to Academician A. I. Oaring. To appoint to the staff of the Bureau of the Division of Biological Science Academician T. D. Lysenko.
2. To relieve Academician I. I. Schmalhausen of the duties of director of the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Evolutionary Morphology.
3. To abolish in the Institute of Cytology, Histology and Embryology the Laboratory of Cytogenetics, headed by the corresponding member, N. P. Dubinin, since it has held anti-scientific positions and has demonstrated its sterility in the course of a number of years. To close in the same institute the Laboratory of Botanical Cytology, since it has the same incorrect and anti-scientific direction. To liquidate in the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Evolutionary Morphology, Laboratory of Phenogenesis.
4. To require the Bureau of the Division of Biological Science to revise the plans of scientific-research for 1948-50 with a view to refining and developing the Michurinist teachings and subjecting the scientific- research work of the institutions of the biological division to the needs of the public economy of the country.
5. To require the Council of Editors and Publishers and the Division of Biological Science during 1948-49 to prepare for publication in the series, Classics of Science, a scientific biography of Michurin.
6. To revise the staffs of the scientific councils of biological institutes and the editorial boards of biological journals, to remove advocates of the Weismann-Morgan tendency in genetics, and to appoint representatives of progressive Michurinist biological science.
7. To commission the Division of History and Philosophy to provide in the plan of the division for works on the theoretical summation of the achievements of the Michurinist tendency in biology and of the criticism of the pseudo- scientific Weismann-Morganist tendency.
8. To commission the Bureau of the Division of Biological Science to revise the structure, the administration, and the professional staffs of the scientific institutions of the division. To submit within one month a project for the reorganization of the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology in the Name of A. N. Severtsov and the Institute of Cytology, Histology, and Embryology.
9. To commission the Council of Editors and Publishers within one month to revise publishing plans for the purpose of insuring the publication of scientific works in the field of Michurinist biology.
10. To commission the Division of Biological Science to organize in October, 1948, a broad session, devoted to the problems of the development of Michurinist biological science. To conduct the session with the cooperation of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Science in the Name of V. I. Lenin, the biological institutions of the republican academies and their affiliates, and the bases of the Academy of Science of the USSR
11. To commission the Bureau of the Division of Biological Science to revise the plan for the preparation of aspirants in its institutes, being guided in the matter of preparation of scientific personnel by the interests of the development of Michurinist biological science.
12. To publish the materials of the enlarged conference of the Presidium in the current issue of Vestnik Akademii Nauk.
Source: George S. Counts, Country of the Blind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1949), pp. 220-221. Copyright, 1949 by George S. Counts and Nucia Lodge; copyright renewed 1977 by Martha L. Counts and Nucia Lodge. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Miflin Company. All rights reserved.