mid-1930s Lysenko’s dominance in agricultural sciences was clearly established as he founded agrobiology, a pseudoscience that promised to increase yields rapidly and cheaply. He became president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1938 and director of the Institute of Genetics at the Academy of Sciences in 1940. Lysenko and his followers, Lysenkoites, have long been thought to have had a direct line to the Stalinist terror apparatus as they targeted geneticists that they thought opposed Lysenkoism, most famously noted scientist Nikolai Vavilov.
As Lysenko’s political influence increased, he expressed his views more forcefully. His view of genetics was irrational and based neither on reason nor scientific experimentation. His theory of heredity rejected established principles of genetics, and he believed that he could change the genetic constitution of strains of wheat by controlling the environment. For example, he claimed that wheat plants raised in the appropriate environment produced seeds of rye.
By 1948 education and research in traditional genetics had been completely outlawed in the Soviet Union. The 1948 August Session of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences gave the Ly-senkoites official endorsement for these views, which were said to correspond to Marxist theory. From that moment, and until Josef Stalin’s death, Lysenko was the total autocrat of Soviet biology. His position as Stalin’s henchman in Soviet science has been compared to Andrei Zhdanov’s role in culture during this time of high Stalinism.
In April 1952 the Ministry of Agriculture withdrew its support of Lysenko’s cluster method of planting trees, but Lysenko was not publicly rebuked until after Stalin’s death in 1953. Nikita Khrushchev tolerated criticism of Lysenkoism,
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but it took eleven years to completely confirm the uselessness of agrobiology. It was only with Khrushchev’s ousting from power in 1964 that Lysenko was fully discredited and research in traditional genetics accepted. He resigned as president of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1956, and his removal from the position of director of the Institute of Genetics in 1965 signified the full return of scientific professionalism in Soviet science. Lysenko kept the title of academician and held the position of chairman for science at the Academy of Science’s Agricultural Experimental Station, located not far from Moscow, until he died in November 20, 1976. See also: AGRICULTURE; SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; VAVILOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH
Joravsky, David. (1970). The Lysenko Affair. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Medvedev, Zhores A. (1969). The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. New York: Columbia University Press. Medvedev, Zhores A. (1978). Soviet Science. New York: Norton.
R?SA MAGN?SD?TTIR
The Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) were budget-financed state organizations established in rural areas of the Soviet Union beginning in 1930. Intended mainly as a mechanism to provide machinery and equipment (including repairs and maintenance) to the kolkhozes (collective farms), they also exerted state control over agriculture. Payment for the services of the Machine Tractor Stations was made in kind (product) by the farms. The emergence of the MTS was closely tied to the introduction of the collective farms and especially the continuing debate over organizational arrangements in the countryside, notably the appropriate scale or size of the collective farms. The original model of the Machine Tractor Stations was based upon experimental arrangements of the Shevchenko sovkhoz (state farm) in Ukraine. The Machine Tractor Stations were introduced rapidly. By the end of 1930 there were approximately 150 Machine Tractor Stations controlling approximately 7,000 tractors. By 1933 there were 2,900 stations controlling approximately 123,000 tractors, roughly 50 percent of all tractors in agriculture, the remaining tractors belonging to state farms. Overall, the growth of the tractor park was rapid, from some 27,000 units in 1928 to 531,000 units in 1940.
The Machine Tractor Stations became the dominant mechanism for providing equipment to the kolkhozes. While the stations themselves provided state support to kolkhozes, especially to those producing grain, the political departments of the MTS (the politotdely), established in 1933, became an important means for exercising political control over the collective farms. This control extended well beyond the allocation and use of machinery and equipment, and specifically involved the development of production plans after the introduction of compulsory deliveries in 1933. The MTS was, therefore, an integral part of kolkhoz operations, and conflict often arose between the two organizations.
The Machine Tractor Stations were abolished in 1958 during the Khrushchev era. However, their abolition and short-term replacement with the Repair Tractor Stations (RTS) was in fact a part of a much more significant process of continuing agricultural reorganization in the 1950s and thereafter.
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The first tractors coming off the assembly line at the tractor works in Stalingrad. © HULTON ARCHIVE In addition to changes within farms during the 1950s, there was continuing emphasis on consolidating farms, converting kolkhozes to sovkhozes, and changing the organizational arrangements above the level of the individual farms. In effect, state control came to be exercised through different organizations, for example, the Territorial Production Associations (TPAs). While the machinery and equipment were dispersed to individual farms, in effect the organizational changes in the agricultural sector during the post-Stalin era consisted largely of agro-industrial integration. The changes introduced during the 1950s were mainly reforms of Nikita Khrushchev, and they became a major factor in Khrushchev’s downfall in 1964. See also: COLLECTIVE FARM; COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE
Miller, Robert F. (1970). One Hundred Thousand Tractors: The MTS and the Development of Controls in Soviet Agriculture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
ROBERT C. STUART
Mafia capitalism is a term that emerged to describe Russia’s economic system in the 1990s. While the implied parallel goes to the classic protection rackets of the Sicilian mafia, the actual Russian practice was different. In order to reflect this, both scholars and journalists have taken to describing the Russian system of organized crime as “mafiya.”
There are obvious similarities between mafia and mafiya, in the form of organized gangs imposing tribute on businesses. This is the world of extortion, hitmen, and violent reprisals against those who fail to pay up. In the case of mafiya, however, it mainly affects the small business sector. Major actors will normally have affiliations with private security providers that operate a “cleaner” business of charging fees for protection against arson and violent assault.
To foreign businesses in particular, the latter offers plausible deniability in claiming that no money is being paid to Russian organized crime.
MAKAROV, STEPAN OSIPOVICH
Money paid to private security providers, or to officials “helping out” with customs or other traditionally “difficult” parts of public administration, may also frequently be offset against lower payments of taxes, customs, and other fees.
The real outcome is one where the Russian state and thus the Russian population at large suffer great damage. Not only is the government’s traditional monopoly on violence both privatized and decentralized into hands that are under no effective control by the authorities, but money destined to have been paid to the Russian government ends up instead in the coffers of security firms.
Moreover, businesses in Russia are subjected to demands for tribute not only from organized crime gangs,
