Journal of the History of Biology (2012) 45:469498  Springer 2011

DOI 10.1007/s10739-011-9286-4

The Italian Communist Party and the Lysenko Aair

(19481955)

FRANCESCO CASSATA
Fondazione Adriano Buzzati-Traverso
Rome
Italy
E-mail: francesco.cassata@unito.it

Abstract. This article explores the impact of the VASKhNIL conference upon the
cultural policy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and Italian communist biology,
with particular attention to the period between 1948 and 1951. News of the Moscow
session did not appear in the Italian news media until October, 1948, and for the next
three years party biologists struggled over whether to translate the ofcial transcript of
the proceedings, The Situation in Biological Science, into Italian. This struggle reveals
the complex eorts of the PCI to conrm the ideological and political connection
with the Soviet Union, without completely alienating signicant milieus of the
democratic and antifascist culture in Italy. The apparent impossibility of doing both
is indicated by the fact that the project was nally abandoned in MarchApril, 1951.
The article is divided into three sections, each focused on dierent actors and their
response to Lysenkoism. The rst section outlines the features of the PCIs pro-Lysenko
campaign, with particular regard to the intellectual militancy and organizational
commitment of Emilio Sereni, head of PCIs Cultural Commission between 1948 and
1951. The second section analyzes the reaction of the three most important gures in
Italian communist biology during this period, Massimiliano Aloisi, Franco Graziosi and
Emanuele Padoa. The third section interprets the decision not to publish a translation of
The Situation in Biological Science as a consequence of the conicts between PCI
cultural program and the editorial policy of the left-wing publishing house Giulio
Einaudi Editore.

Keywords: Trom Lysenko, Cold War biology, genetics, Italian Communist Party

Introduction

The Italian Communist Party (PCI) emerged from the wartime anti-
fascist Resistance as a mass party, numbering over 1,700,000 members,
deeply rooted in Italian society and committed in the process of national
470 FRANCESCO CASSATA

democratization. The political line of progressive democracy,

theorized by PCI Secretary General Palmiro Togliatti between 1944 and
1946, was based on the social unity of the working class with peasants
and progressive intellectuals. It included a political alliance between the
Left and other progressive forces including, above all, liberal-demo-
cratic elements of Catholicism.
In 1947, the Cold War came to interfere with the democratic Italian
road to socialism. In May, the PCI and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI)
were expelled from the government. In the following September, at the
founding conference of Cominform, in Szklarska Poreba, Poland,
Togliattis political strategy was harshly condemned. The Cominform
was set up to consolidate the Soviet sphere of inuence in Eastern
Europe and to use the strength of the main Western communist parties to
undermine the Western bloc. At Szklarska Poreba, Soviet Politburo
member, Andrei Zhdanov accused the Italian communists of not having
prepared an oensive plan to respond to their expulsion from the
government, of allowing themselves to become infatuated with parlia-
mentarianism. Despite their censure of PCI policy, Soviet representa-
tives, at the conference and in the months that followed, were vague
about whether the PCI should seize power forcefully. In October 1947, at
the Direction of the PCI, Togliatti declared unconditionally the need to
side with the Soviet Unions peace policy. However, despite recog-
nizing the legitimacy of armed struggle in theory, he made no practical
concession to any hostile approach to progressive democracy.
As has been convincingly argued, the psychological threat contained
in the founding of the Cominform was more signicant than the
political challenge it launched (Pons, 1996, p. 261). This is particularly
true with respect to cultural and ideological policies. During the
Szklarska Poreba conference, Zhdanovs report avoided accusations of
ideological heresy against Western communist parties. However, in the
following months, PCI cultural policy was automatically adapted to the
conversion in international policy demanded by the Soviet Union.
Faced with the ambiguity of Soviet foreign policy and the dicult
political situation in Italy, Togliatti worked to suocate all forms of
internal opposition to the new Cominform orientation in international
policy. He also sought to hamper the insurrectionist line in the party led
by PCI deputy and vice-secretary, Pietro Secchia. In April 1948, the
Italian political elections resulted in a resounding success for the
Christian Democrats, and a defeat for the Popular Front (PCI/PSI)
ticket. At a Central Committee meeting on September 22, 1948,
Togliatti attempted to unify a party torn between moderate and radical
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 471

forces, by insisting that the most important task was reinforcing party
ideology. In this context, the Michurinist campaign in biology was just
one component of a broader cultural strategy, which included the
promotion of neo-realism and assaults against abstract art, modern
classical music, psychoanalysis, existentialism, and other examples of
decadent culture (Ajello, 1979).
The repercussions of the Lysenko controversy in the European
context have been the subject of specic case studies focused on Great
Britain (Werskey, 1978, particularly pp. 292304; Paul, 1979, 1983;
Harman, 2003. For the American response, see Wolfe, 2010; Selya, this
issue), France (Kotek, 1986; Buican, 1988. See also Krige, 2006; and
Sapp, 1987), Belgium (Schandevyl, 2003), and Germany (Regelmann,
1980; Schwerin, 2009; Hoxtermann, 2009), as well as some countries in
Eastern Europe (Krementsov, 2000; DeJong-Lambert, 2005, 2009;
Muller, 2009; Simunek, 2009). As far as Italy is concerned, the question
has been largely neglected by historians, despite the fact that there are at
least three issues which make the Italian case unique, as well as a vital
contribution to comparative studies of Lysenkoism. First, the response
of the PCI to the VASKhNIL conference was complicated by the par-
tys attempt to remain loyal to the USSR, while pursuing an Italian
road to socialism, and presenting itself as a mass party profoundly
rooted in national society, culture and politics. Second, the VASKhNIL
conference occurred at a moment when the memory of the impact of
Fascist racial laws (19381945) was still vivid in the scientic commu-
nity. This experience made Italian biologists wary with respect to
political and ideological interferences with scientic freedom. Third, the
rise of the Lysenko controversy coincided with the process of institu-
tionalization and professionalization of Italian genetics. Between 1947
and 1948, four Research Centres of the National Council of Research
(CNR) for experimental activities in the eld of genetics, were estab-
lished. In 1948, two chairs of genetics, headed respectively by Adriano
Buzzati-Traverso and Claudio Barigozzi, were created in Pavia and
Milan. Finally, the 9th International Congress of Genetics was sched-
uled to be held in Bellagio in 1953, and three geneticists Adriano
Buzzati-Traverso, Giuseppe Montalenti and Claudio Barigozzi took
charge of organization (Cassata, 2011). The congress took place at a
turning point in the history of the Lysenko aair just after Stalins
death, and the emergence of the rst serious challenge to Lysenkos
authority since the VASKhNIL conference in the USSR. It was also a
moment when the worlds attention was drawn to how Italian genetics
had developed since the end of the Second World War.
472 FRANCESCO CASSATA

In this article I explore the impact of the VASKhNIL conference

upon the cultural policy of the PCI, and Italian communist biology,
with particular attention to the period between 1948 and 1951. News of
the Moscow session did not appear in the Italian news media until
October, 1948, and for the next three years party biologists struggled
over whether to translate the ocial transcript of the proceedings, The
Situation in Biological Science, into Italian. This struggle reveals the
complex eorts of the PCI to conrm their ideological and political
connection with the Soviet Union, without completely alienating sig-
nicant milieus of the democratic and antifascist culture in Italy. The
apparent impossibility of doing both is indicated by the fact that the
project was nally abandoned in MarchApril, 1951.
I do not discuss the other important aspect of the controversy the
anti-communist movement against Lysenko. This would require ana-
lyzing various components of Italian anticommunism (Catholic, liberal,
etc.), in terms of their reactions to Lysenkoism, as well as the recon-
struction of Italian genetics in the post-war period, and geneticists
conicted relations with fascist eugenics. It would also entail an
examination of the political engagement of Italian geneticists, both on a
national and international level. This subject is so broad and variegated
that it demands independent treatment (Cassata, 2008).
My article is divided into three sections, each focused on dierent
actors and their response to Lysenkoism. The rst covers the PCIs
Cultural Commission, the second, the Communist biologists involved in
the controversy, and the third, the left-leaning publishing house Giulio
Einaudi Editore. I will begin by outlining the features of the PCIs pro-
Lysenko campaign, with particular regard to the intellectual militancy
and organizational commitment of Emilio Sereni (19071977), head of
PCIs Cultural Commission between 1948 and 1951. After November
1948, Sereni tried to organize a widespread cultural operation in sup-
port of Lysenko, based on three distinct initiatives: one, the publication
of a volume on the relationship between science, Marxism, and culture;
two, an Italian translation of the VASKhNIL report; and three, the
organization of a conference of communist biologists in support of
Lysenko. Serenis strategy failed due to the simultaneous opposition of
communist biologists, the Einaudi publishing house, and opponents
within the party itself.
The second section analyzes the reaction of the three most important
gures in Italian communist biology during this period: Massimiliano
[Massimo] Aloisi (19071999), Franco Graziosi and Emanuele Padoa
(19051980). In 1948, Aloisi was the primary PCI spokesman on
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 473

scientic matters, serving a role analogous to Marcel Prenant in France,

and J.B.S. Haldane in Britain. Graziosi was a young microbiologist
(he was born in 1923), and member of the Biological Seminar Roberto
Damiani in Rome. The Biological Seminar had been founded in
19441945 by a group of young communist students, belonging mainly
to the Institutes of microbiology, general pathology and general phys-
iology at the Faculty of Medicine. Until at least the early 1950s, the
Biological Seminar brought about a renewal in Italian biology, which
had suered through years of intellectual poverty, and international
isolation during the fascist period.1 As a full professor of biology in
Siena, Padoa was the most credible gure the PCI could count on in
1948. Born in Livorno, he graduated in natural sciences from the
University of Pisa in 1926, and in 1931 left for Pasadena where he
worked with Thomas Hunt Morgan, Calvin Bridges and Theodosius
Dobzhansky. He returned to Italy in 1934, where he was beaten for
voting no in the fascist plebiscite. Because he was antifascist, Padoa
lost his academic positions at the University of Florence and the Zoo-
logical Station in Naples. In 1944 he joined the communist Resistance in
Tuscany, and nally, in 1945, became professor of general biology at the
University of Siena. The challenges Aloisi, Graziosi and Padoa faced in
reconciling their political loyalty with their scientic convictions, mir-
rors their response from mediation to open dissent to the political
pressures of PCIs Cultural Commission.
In the third section, I interpret the decision not to publish a trans-
lation of The Situation in Biological Science as a consequence of the
conicts between PCI cultural program and the editorial policy of the
publishing house Giulio Einaudi Editore. This relationship, which
intensied in 1945, became increasingly dicult as a result of the
pressures enacted by the Cold War (Mangoni, 1999). As mentioned
above, the failure to produce an Italian translation of the VASKhNIL
transcript, highlights the diculties the PCI met with when they
abandoned the broad alliance with anti-fascist intellectuals from 1943
to 1946, to adopt a new Two Camps model for cultural policy, from
1947 to 1948.
These three actors the PCI, the Communist biologists, and the
Einaudi publishing house were all closely connected. Einaudi
1
Members of the Biological Seminar were, among others, Rita Arditti, Giovanni
Felice (Licio) Azzone, Corrado Baglioni, Irene Baldi, Eugenio Bonetti, Paolo Bua,
Enrico Calef, Anna Coppo, Mario e Adele Di Girolamo, Lia Fischer, Laura Frontali,
Franco Guerrini, Amos Luzzatto, Guido Modiano, Giorgio Morpurgo, Franco Paparo,
Geo Rita, Anna Rulli, Luigi G. Silvestri, Antonietta Spadoni, Giorgio Tecce, Mario
Terzi, Giovanni Toschi.
474 FRANCESCO CASSATA

published the works of Sereni and Togliatti, Aloisi was Einaudis con-
sultant for scientic matters, and some of the most important Einaudi
collaborators, such as Antonio Giolitti and Felice Balbo, were major
gures in the party: Giolitti was elected as PCI deputy to the Parliament
in 1948, while Balbo was the representative of the PCI Catholic group.
The impact of the VASKhNIL conference in Italy produced a uid
historical situation, in which dierent actors, strictly intertwined, re-
acted to each other and Lysenkos newly-established authority in Soviet
biology. The division of the article into three parts, each of which fa-
vours a particular point of view (the Party, the PCI biologists and the
publisher) on the same event, is an attempt to disentangle analytically
these deeply interwoven elements.
The chronology is structured according to two dierent phases. The
rst is 19481951, the period when an Italian translation of the
VASKhNIL report failed to appear, as well as the replacement of
Emilio Sereni by the literary critic Carlo Salinari as head of the PCI
Cultural Commission. This substitution was a response to Togliattis
intent to redene PCI cultural policy along the lines of a new pro-
gressive Front, unrestricted by the Cold War ideological confronta-
tion. This internal political shift in PCI cultural policy, as well as other
external political factors such as the rst fall of Lysenkos monopoly
in late 1952, the death of Stalin in 1953 and the beginning of the process
of de-Stalinization triggered the second phase: Public distancing of the
Party from Soviet Lysenkoism. This process culminated, between
March 1954 and August 1955, in a critical debate at the Gramsci
Foundation in Rome, coordinated, from the philosophical and scientic
point of view, by Massimo Aloisi (for an in-depth analysis of this
debate, see Cassata, 2008, pp. 182211).

Emilio Serenis Struggle for Lysenkoism

The PCI Cultural Commission was set up in January 1948, a time when
Togliattis leadership was subject to criticism by the insurrectionist wing
of the party. Unsurprisingly, the presidency of the Commission was
entrusted to Emilio Sereni, one of the most illustrious and radical party
members. Part of a small, Jewish intellectual elite, Sereni received his
degree in agronomy in 1927. His cultural interests were encyclopaedic,
ranging from history of agriculture to linguistics. A Marxist-Leninist
of unimpeachable orthodoxy (Gundle, 2000, p. 49), Sereni was a heroic
gure of the anti-fascist opposition and war of Liberation. In 1945, he
was selected as a member of the PCI Central Committee, and also
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 475

served as Minister for postwar assistance and public works from 1946 to
1947. In 1948, he was elected as a senator in the Italian Parliament. As
one of the few Italian communists to fully embrace Zhdanovs ideo-
logical campaign against the pernicious inuence of bourgeois cul-
ture, Sereni oered a guarantee that the development of PCI cultural
policy would conform to the demands for a restoration of orthodoxy,
emanating from the USSR.
The primary role that Sereni gave to the so-called peace campaign
exhibited his dogmatic devotion to Soviet priorities. In August 1948,
Sereni led a large Italian delegation to the First World Congress of
Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocaw, Poland.2 The Congress was the first act
in the organization of a vast communist-led peace movement (The Partisans
of Peace), which the Soviet Union considered useful to reducing the risk of
nuclear war by the United States, mobilizing the antinuclear masses,
increasing their influence, and seizing the initiative from the nonaligned
nuclear disarmament movements. At the end of 1948, Sereni was appointed
Secretary General of the Italian committee of The Partisans of Peace. It was
at the Congress in Wrocaw that Sereni and Aloisi first learned of the
VASKhNIL conference.
The news soon spread to the West, and the French debate anticipated
and inuenced what took place in Italy. While Marcel Prenant and
Aloisi were in Wrocaw, an article signed by Jean Champenois in the
communist journal, Les Lettres Francaises, described the VASKhNIL
meeting, and condemned Mendelism as the foundation for all racism
(Champenois, 1948). In September, the journal Combat published a
series of interviews by Maurice Laval, under the title Mendel ou
Lyssenko?, (Mendel or Lysenko?) which gathered critical observations
from Jean Rostand, Andre Lwo, Maurice Daumas, Marcel Prenant
and Jacques Monod. The French Communist Party (PCF) responded
with a counter-oensive in the pages of LHumanite (Cogniot, 1948) and
Action (see, for example: Rimbert, 1948; Lvov, 1948; Bertain, 1948). In
October, the journal Europe, edited by poet and novelist Louis Aragon,
dedicated a special issue to the scientic discussion in the USSR. The
issue reproduced certain passages from the VASKhNIL conference,
with an appendix that included an interview with Lysenko, and an essay
by Mark B. Mitin, a Marxist philosopher and member of the Soviet
Central Committee. The tone of the publication was set by Aragons
introduction, where he invoked freedom of speech, and compared

2
The delegation included, among others: Massimo Aloisi, Renato Guttuso, Sibilla
Aleramo, Salvatore Quasimodo, Goredo Petrassi, Elio Vittorini, Antonio Ban,
Cesare Luporini, Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Ambrogio Donini.
476 FRANCESCO CASSATA

Lysenko to Galileo (Aragon, 1948, pp. 910. On Aragons Lysenkoism,

see: Lyle, 2008). In Aragons view, the indignant reaction of biologists
revealed the tragedy of bourgeois, anti-soviet science (Aragon,
1948, p. 27).
The special issue of Europe particularly Aragons article soon
became a model for Emilio Sereni and the PCI. The debate in Italy
began in October, when the national Direction of the Press and Pro-
paganda Commission issued a release, featuring an article on
Michurinist biology published in the Soviet journal, Bolshevik. Sereni
organized a conference in Bologna on November 13, 1948, at the end of
the ItalianSoviet Friendship Month, a propaganda initiative organized
by the ItalyUSSR Association. During the conference, he addressed
party loyalists and displayed a copy of the VASKhNIL report sent from
Moscow (Sereni, 1949a, p. 25). While, in his address, Sereni mimicked
the rhetoric of Soviet Lysenkoists, nevertheless the organisation of his
speech was original. He maintained that there were three transgres-
sive features (scandali in Italian) of the Soviet gnoseological revolu-
tion political intervention in the cultural sphere, popularization of
culture, and the recognition of class in cultural policy (Sereni, 1949a,
pp. 3057). In his vision, the relevance of the new Soviet biology was
grounded in all of them. Sereni also made a parallel between the
transgressive and revolutionary nature of the Soviet cultural revo-
lution, and the evangelical message of early Christianity. He portrayed
the party as the authentic heir to the moral values of the Catholicism,
and the Christian-Democrats as victims of the Vatican and American-
ism. He insisted that Oportet ut scandala eveniant3 must be the new
motto of communist cultural policy. In Matthew 18.7, the Greek term
rjamdakom (oence in English, scandalo in Italian) had an ambiguous
connotation. While referring to the idea that there were stumbling
blocks on the path of faith, it also implied such hazards were necessary
for the achievement of faith. Sereni quoted Matthews dictum out of
context, preserving the rhetorical ecacy of the evangelic verse, while
altering its meaning. In Serenis view, rjamdakom became a positive,
revolutionary transgression of bourgeois norms.4
The Bologna conference also deserves attention, because it became
the subject of the rst chapter of Serenis book, Scienza, marxismo,
cultura (Science, Marxism, Culture). Sereni intended his work to be an

3
The Latin translation of the dictum of Matthews Gospel For it must needs be that
oences come (King James Bible).
4
Comparisons between Christianity and Communism were a common feature of the
political language used by the PCI.
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 477

ideological platform, which would orientate the Party cultural debate by

oering intellectuals and scientists general principles, and the gno-
seological presuppositions of the new socialist culture (Sereni to
Haussmann, 26 Nov 1948, PCI Archive, Sereni Papers, Box Corre-
spondence 1948). The book covered ve public conferences, held by
Sereni between January and November 1948, and an article published in
Societa in JanuaryFebruary, 1948. Lysenkoism was only dealt with in
the text of the Bologna conference (dated November 1948). The chapter
entitled La crisi della scienza e il marxismo (The Crisis of Science and
Marxism), a reproduction of a conference held on May 25, 1948, did not
mention Lysenko at all. Even more surprising, genetic mutations were
presented as an example of the applicability of dialectical materialism to
life sciences. The remaining chapters concerned a wide and heteroge-
neous set of topics: from Gramscis political thought5 to Italian agri-
cultural reform; from quantum theory to party policy in art.
In January 1949, Sereni sent the manuscript to the Einaudi pub-
lishing house. In choosing Einaudi, he was attempting to reach not just
PCI militants, but the wider cultured public. Sereni conceived his book
as a sort of general ideological prologue to the debate on Lysenkoism,
which was to precede the Italian publication of the VASKhNIL report,
also entrusted, as we shall see below, to Einaudi. In a letter addressed to
Felice Balbo on January 12, 1949, Sereni discussed the issue of Soviet
biology, stating that his pamphlet should be published quickly. He also
asked that it be issued before the translation of the VASKhNIL report,
so it could serve as an introduction (Sereni to Balbo, 12 Jan 1949, PCI
Archive, Sereni Papers, Box Correspondence 1948).
On January 21 Balbo responded to Sereni with a long letter that
would be the cause of tremendous acrimony between the publishing
house and the PCI. Balbo said Sereni confused culture with politics, and
that because the pamphlet lacked depth, it would have diculty
attracting an audience. A few days later, Balbos detailed objections
were reiterated in a letter from Einaudi (Einaudi to Balbo, 25 Feb
1949, PCI Archive, Sereni Papers, Box Correspondence 1948). On
March 2, 1949, Sereni responded vehemently, writing that the pub-
lishing house, like many of our intellectual comrades, did not realize
that he must deal simultaneously with aesthetics and quantum theory
(Sereni to Einaudi, 2 Mar 1949, Giulio Einaudi Editore Archive,

5
Antonio Gramsci was the founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921. On
November 1926, he was arrested in Rome and committed to connement at the Regina
Coeli prison. He died in prison on April 1937. His intellectual work in prison was
published several years after World War II.
478 FRANCESCO CASSATA

Box 194, Folder 2789, E. Sereni). It was not Sereni emphasised

ironically a question of encyclopaedic manias, but an inevitable
phenomenon in the development of the culture of the working class.
It was a struggle for which, in his opinion, most of our scientic or
specialist comrades in other cultural subjects including implicitly the
Einaudi publishing house were still unprepared. Sereni referred again
to the special issue of Europe on Lysenkoism, stating Even in France
Aragon had to write about Lysenko (Sereni to Einaudi, 2 Mar 1949,
Giulio Einaudi Editore Archive, Box 194, Folder 2789, E. Sereni). In
other words, just as in France, where biologists were so contaminated
by bourgeois culture that a poet Aragon had to inform them of
Lysenkos revolutionary message, Sereni despite his lack of compe-
tence in biology felt obliged by the ideological insensitivity of PCIs
specialist comrades to support Lysenkos theories.
The conict between Sereni and Einaudi was irresolvable. Sereni
defended the format and content of his work in the name of the
transgressive nature (scandalo) of Soviet culture, which involved not
only the working class, but also the specialists and scientic com-
rades. The publishing house, not wishing to mix culture and politics,
said topics must be explored on a scientic level, and insisted that the
party must decide who its audience was. Having received a negative
response from Einaudi, Sereni decided to publish the book anyway, and
the volume was nally issued by Le Edizioni Sociali, a small PCI
publishing house.
During these same months, another of Serenis projects the orga-
nisation of a communist biology conference on Lysenkoism was also
unsuccessful. Sereni discussed this project in a letter to Giovanni
Haussmann, a communist agronomist, on November 26, 1948 (Sereni to
Haussmann, 26 Nov 1948, PCI Archive, Sereni Papers, Box Corre-
spondence 1948). Haussmann responded by expressing his doubts on
the advisability of discussing Lysenkos doctrine without yet having
the documentation on the experiments carried out so far. In order to
have a positive (if contested) eect in the scientic milieu, the Party
would need to be able to count, according to Haussmann, on certain
data, and the participation of authoritative biologist-comrades.
Otherwise, it would be better to limit themselves to events of an
internal and purely popular nature (Haussmann to Sereni, 29 Nov
1948, PCI Archive, Sereni Papers, Box Correspondence 1948).
Despite Haussmanns objections, a letter from Sereni to Aloisi, dated
December 17, 1948, indicates the project had not been abandoned
(Sereni to Aloisi, 17 Dec 1948, PCI Archive, Sereni Papers, Box
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 479

Correspondence 1948). On January 5, 1949, a meeting of communist

biologists was held at Serenis private residence in Rome. Aloisi took
part, as did some members of the Biological Seminar, including Azzone,
Graziosi, and Silvestri. By this time, the most important biologists and
agronomists in the PCI had expressed their perplexity regarding Soviet
Michurinism. Padoa had declared himself to be totally against Lysenko,
while Aloisi and Haussmann wished to remain neutral until they had
more proof. The private meeting was probably a desperate attempt by
Sereni to challenge their position, but it ended in failure. A few auto-
biographical references, including the testimony of Luigi G. Silvestri,
then a young microbiologist of the Biological Seminar, are the only
traces of the meeting that remain (Azzone, 2000):
The discussion went on all day. [] Aloisi was explicit in consid-
ering Lysenkos theories not scientically valid, but he would have
preferred the Party not to take, or not to take for the moment, an
ocial position against them: he had a sense of discipline. I sus-
tained the most radical position: it was not only, in my opinion, a
scientic absurdity, but it was our Italian communists duty to
inform the Soviet comrades of our opposition to the Michurinist
and Lysenkoist theories. I was isolated, and a solution was adopted
that could be dened as follows: better to be wrong with the Party
than to be right alone (see Ajello, 1979, pp. 266267).
In June, 1949, Serenis position was also attacked on the political level,
within the PCI Cultural Commission (Relazione sui lavori dellUcio
Nazionale per il Lavoro Culturale, PCI Archive, Box National Bureau of
PCI Cultural Commission, 1416 June 1949). During the rst meeting
of the Commission (June 1416),6 Sereni was challenged by Antonio
Giolitti, and the literary critic Carlo Muscetta. Both Giolitti and
Muscetta were important Einaudi consultants in Rome. The former
referred explicitly to Lysenko, and emphasised the need to be very
cautious in bringing over Soviet experiences for which we need an
Italian tradition, not only of situation, but also of language. The latter
accused the members of the Commission of empiricism, and pointed
out that the Commission should include comrades technically pre-
pared to answer the questions before them. Meanwhile, Gastone
Manacorda, head of Party publishing, supported Serenis position.
6
Participants of the meeting were Antonio Pesenti, Furio Diaz, Cesare Luporini,
Camilla Ravera, Giuseppe Trevisani, Fabrizio Onofri, Ambrogio Donini, Antonio
Giolitti, Giancarlo Pajetta, Lucio Lombardo Radice, Giuseppe Berti, Antonio Ban,
Renato Guttuso, Alberto Caracciolo, Gastone Manacorda, Franco Paparo, Carlo
Muscetta.
480 FRANCESCO CASSATA

He criticized Einaudi and defended the language of the Soviet expe-

rience. He even advocated translating Gramsci using Soviet termi-
nology. In the nal report, Sereni repeated his model of cultural policy
as transgression of bourgeois rules (scandalo) invoking against
Giolittis objections the adoption of a deistic attitude due to which
everything that comes from that area becomes ours, and all those who
come from the other side are enemies. Nonetheless, even Togliatti
criticized Serenis resolution at the July 1949 Directorate meeting to
examine the results reached by the Cultural Commission the month
before. The Secretary General claimed it lacked the description of the
cultural situation of our country, which nowadays oered greater
opportunities than those we have in other elds. According to
Togliatti, it was necessary to identify fundamental enemies, on the
cultural side, in the clericals, and it was essential to increase the
multiplicity, the variety of our initiatives (Verbali della direzione PCI:
Palmiro Togliatti, July 7, 1949, PCI Archive).
The failure of Serenis strategy with regard to Einaudi, the com-
munist biologists, and the Party itself, better displays the characteristics
of PCI propaganda for the Michurinist doctrine. First of all, it was
mainly entrusted to the Party journals, particularly those of a more
political and popular nature, such as the daily newspaper LUnita, and
the magazines Vie Nuove and Calendario del Popolo. Secondly, as in
France (see Kotek, 1986, pp. 135163), the Michurinist campaign
positioned political leaders, such as Sereni (Sereni, 1949b, c) or Luigi
Longo (Longo, 1949a, b, c), journalists, and intellectuals without
scientic training as the protagonists, rather than the biologists (for a
general overview, see: Cassata, 2008). Finally, numerous translations
were published from Soviet, British, and French sources. With regard to
British sources, Bernal and Haldane were the most widely-cited authors.
As for the latter a founder of the Modern Synthesis and a leading
member of the British Communist Party the propagandistic manip-
ulation was evident. In March 1950, for example, Vie Nuove published
the translation of Haldanes article Can you inherit cancer?, pub-
lished in the Daily Worker in January, 1949 (Haldane, 1949a). In this
article Lionel S. Penroses experiments on oncogenic viruses in mice
were cited in support of Lysenko-Michurins theories (Paul, 1983,
p. 26). The introduction to the Italian translation is noteworthy for
what is said about Haldane: J. B. H. (sic) Haldane is a biologist who
occupies a leading position amongst geneticists. The theories presented
by Michurin and Lysenko initially perplexed him, now his opinion is
increasingly inclined to an interpretation of the facts in the sense
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 481

indicated by Michurin (Haldane, 1950). In fact, the opposite was true.

After initial assent in 1949, Haldane publicly distanced himself
from Lysenkoism with the publication of his article, In Defense of
Genetics, in The Modern Quarterly (Haldane, 1949b).
In conclusion, deprived of its scientic dimension due to the lack of
support from communist biologists, Italian Lysenkoism turned to
enhancing the most recurrent motifs of the Soviet myth: the centrality
of the Party and the people, the ght for peace, and the celebration of
scientic and technological progress. As an essential component of this
narrative, the Michurinist campaign emancipated the PCI from a po-
sition of political isolation, projecting its action in two directions. From
the point of view of the Cold War confrontation, the Michurinist
revolution combined anti-Americanism and antifascism to denounce
American science as bourgeois, imperialistic, and militaristic.
Internally, it also became a way of criticizing the Italian science system.
Criticism included the meagre weight of science in scholastic teaching,
the lack of public nancing for research, and the dependence of the
Italian scientic structures on American hegemony.

The Price of Obedience

Italian Marxist biologists were not sympathetic to the Michurinist

campaign organized by the PCI. The ambiguous reception did not turn
into public dissent, but the relationship between the Party leadership
and the biologists was on the verge of a dramatic breakdown. The
spectrum of intellectual and moral positions, which Marxist biologists
assumed with respect to the Partys pro-Lysenko commitment, ranged
from moderate attempts at mediation to explicit yet covert oppo-
sition.
As mentioned, three major gures in Italian communist biology,
whose behaviour portrays the complexities of this situation, are
Massimo Aloisi, Franco Graziosi and Emanuele Padoa. In dealing with
the monolithic orthodoxy of Emilio Sereni, the three Marxist biologists
(all PCI members) expressed dierent motivations. The opposition of
Aloisi was both scientic and philosophical. He rejected Serenis dog-
matic interpretation of dialectical materialism, and instead like Jean
Brachet in Belgium (Kotek, 1986, pp. 179187; Schandevyl, 2003)
argued for the necessity of obtaining more information on the philo-
sophical accuracy, and experimental validity, of Lysenkos doctrine.
Graziosi opposed the ideological exploitation of the controversy based,
as it was, on the Two sciences model. He tried to defend in the face
482 FRANCESCO CASSATA

of Serenis pressures the possibility of evaluating the scientic

dimension of the new Soviet biology from the point of view of
researches on cytoplasmic inheritance. Padoa unlike Aloisi and
Graziosi denied Lysenkos theories had any scientic value, and
directly stressed the political issue, i.e. the antidemocratic eect of
aligning PCI cultural policy to the Soviet position.
In the summer of 1948, Massimo Aloisi was without a doubt the
PCIs leading spokesman in the elds of biology, natural sciences and
philosophy of science. Born in Florence, Aloisi graduated in medicine
and surgery at the local university in 1932. In 1937, he studied with Otto
Heinrich Warburg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Cell physiology in
Berlin Dahlem. In 19381939, he worked with the clinical biochemist
Earl Judson King at the British Postgraduate Medical School of
Hammersmith Hospital in London. Once the Second World War broke
out in 1939, he joined the clandestine communist and anti-fascist
movement in Rome. In 1942, he became assistant at the Institute of
General Pathology. In 1943, Aloisi was arrested and turned over to the
fascist Special Tribunal for the Security of the State. After the fall of
fascist regime, in July 1943, he was released from prison and became
deeply involved in the communist anti-Nazi and antifascist Resistance.
From the cultural point of view, from the 1930s on, Aloisi shared the
interpretation of dialectical materialism, developed at Cambridge Uni-
versity by the Theoretical Biological Club (Woodger, Needham,
Waddington, Bernal) (see Werskey, 1978). His activity as consultant to
the Einaudi publishing house is the most evident conrmation of this
intellectual approach. In 1942, Aloisi began translating Joseph
Needhams Order and Life (Aloisi Papers, Box A. 6, Contributions on
general subjects and Correspondence, Folder 80. See, Needham, 1946).
In January, 1946 he proposed the publication of the second edition of
J.D. Bernals The Social Function of Science (Aloisi to Einaudi, 9 Jan
1946, Boringhieri Archive, Box Aloisi). In March 1946, he wrote a
positive editorial review of Conrad Hal Waddingtons An Introduction
to Modern Genetics (Aloisi to Einaudi, 27 Mar 1948, Boringhieri
Archive, Box Aloisi). Between 1945 and 1949, he supported the trans-
lation of J.B.S. Haldanes works, including The Philosophy of a Biologist
(Aloisi to Einaudi, 25 Aug 1948, Boringhieri Archive, Box Aloisi),
Science Advances (Aloisi to Einaudi, 23 Jan 1949, Boringhieri Archive,
Box Aloisi) and What is Life (Aloisi to Balbo, 8 Aug 1949, Boringhieri
Archive, Box Aloisi).
As mentioned above, the rst announcement of the results of the
VASKhNIL conference reached Aloisi at Wrocaw, where the Florentine
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 483

biologist presented a paper on American imperialism in science. Aloisi

criticized Italian scientists for moving to magnificent laboratories in the
United States. In his opinion, brain-drain reinforced imperialistic Ameri-
can policy, orchestrated to increase the level of dependence and
obscurantism of undeveloped countries like Italy at the end of the war.
From this perspective, science should not be considered a universalistic
field, but one strictly influenced by political and social factors. On his return
to Italy, Sereni charged Aloisi with writing a long informative essay on
Lysenkos doctrine for the PCI official monthly Rinascita. But while the
article, to be published in two parts, began to take shape at the end of
1948, Aloisis perplexities increased. This emerges in a letter that Aloisi
sent to Einaudi on December 3, 1948, where he wrote: I have also read
some technical articles in Lysenkos journal Agrobiology, but I did not
nd evidence of the experimental rigorousness that would be necessary
to silence criticisms, at least on this matter (Aloisi to Einaudi, 3 Dec
1948, Boringhieri Archive, Box Aloisi). The same day, Aloisi wrote to
Sereni, expressing the same doubts: I am convinced of the freshness of
the new area in which the Michurinists are trying to work, but I am not
yet convinced of their experimental rigour (Aloisi to Sereni, 3 Dec
1948, PCI Archive, Sereni Papers, Box Correspondence 1948).
Unfortunately the draft of this article has not been found either in
the PCI archive in Rome, or in Aloisis papers in Venice. However, we
may infer the contents by reading Aloisis publications between 1948
and 1950. Three points, in particular, must be emphasized. First, in his
philosophical articles, Aloisi frequently identied in dialectical materi-
alism the theoretical perspective which had denitively superseded the
debate between vitalists and mechanists in life sciences (Aloisi, 1945).
Second, on numerous occasions, Aloisi challenged the presumption that
science could be free and neutral, and pointing out the subjugation
of Italian scientic research to American inuence. Third, American
genetics, in particular, was criticized as reductionist and bourgeois
(Aloisi, 1950).
As far as Italian genetics was concerned, Aloisis main target was
Adriano Buzzati-Traverso. The rst aspect of Aloisis criticism con-
cerned the target theory and the hypothesis of genes as basic biological
units, supported in 1948 by Buzzati-Traverso and Luigi Luca Cavalli
(Sforza)s Teoria dellurto ed unita biologiche elementari (Target theory
and basic biological units) (Buzzati-Traverso and Cavalli, 1948). Aloisi
considered this theoretical model as merely mechanistic (Aloisi, 1948a, p.
214). Aloisis second accusation against Buzzati-Traverso concerned the
issue of eugenics. In 1948 Buzzati-Traverso, together with Montalenti
484 FRANCESCO CASSATA

and Barigozzi, had undertaken a political struggle against post-fascist

eugenicists, specically the demographers, statisticians and physicians,
led by Corrado Gini (18841965).7 An essential part of this struggle was
the redenition of the concept of eugenics. Echoing the arguments of the
so-called Bolshevik eugenicists of the 1930s (Hogben, Haldane,
Muller) (Paul, 1995, pp. 1135), Buzzati-Traverso stated that the bio-
logical dierences between human beings should be recognised, but they
should not be used to justify racist and classist eugenics. For Aloisi,
however, Buzzati-Traversos reform eugenics represented the most
evident proof of the reactionary and racist nature of American
science (Aloisi, 1948b).
These three components the identication of dialectical materialism
as an antidote to vitalism and mechanicism, the denouncement of the
neutrality of science, the scientic and ideological criticism of
American and Italian genetics dene Aloisis approach to Lysenkos
doctrines. They also display his conicted relationship with Party pol-
icy. Therefore, it may be assumed that Aloisis unpublished article on
Michurinist biology would probably include two main arguments: one,
classical genetics was a mechanistic, American science, and two,
Michurinist biology lacked experimental rigor, and perpetuated a
vitalistic misinterpretation of dialectical materialism. Not surprisingly,
the same two arguments would characterize Aloisis report at the PCI
Cultural Commission meeting on March 19, 1954, inaugurating
the process of self-criticism with regard to the PCIs reception of
Lysenkoism in 1948 (Aloisi, 1954).
The fact that Aloisis article was not published triggered a heated
discussion within the PCI Cultural Commission, which met in Rome on
June 1416, 1949. During the meeting, Giolitti highlighted the episode,
reproving the party for excessive subservience towards Soviet cultural
prescriptions. In his response, Sereni not only advocated as we have
seen a deistic approach to Soviet culture but, with regard to
Aloisis article, justied the non-publication by positing an inverse
relationship between scientic competence, and ideological purity.
Precisely because he was well-versed in biology, and therefore more
inuenced by the scientic culture learned from bourgeois books,
Aloisi was less able to understand the revolutionary eects of Lysenkos
doctrine.

7
On the role of the demographer and statistician Corrado Gini in scientic racism
and latin eugenics in Italy, see: Cassata, 2011, 2006.
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 485

According to Sereni, the artist Renato Guttuso, the foremost

practitioner of neo-realistic communist art, was much better suited to
this task (Serenis Conclusions, PCI Archive, Box National Bureau of
PCI Cultural Commission, Rome, 1416 June 1949). Although Gut-
tuso had never expressed support for Lysenko, Serenis reference was
certainly not accidental. In December 1948, Togliatti himself inaugu-
rated the PCIs oensive against the painted monsters of modern art
(r. [Roderigo di Castiglia, Togliattis pseudonym], 1948). The result
was that the neo-cubist and abstract painters (the group Forma 1)
left the PCI, and a realist current was formed, led by Guttuso
(Ajello, 1979, pp. 242253). In Serenis rhetorical and cultural vision,
therefore, the reference to Guttuso contributed implicitly to threat-
ening not only in art, but also in biology the possibility of a
denitive break from the Party. This is why Massimo Aloisis article
never appeared in Rinascita.
Meanwhile, in January 1949, Societa, the main cultural journal of the
Party, published a long essay by Franco Graziosi. Headed by the
archaeologist Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Societa was founded in 1945
as a journal linked to, but not directly published by, the PCI. In 1946, in
the name of orthodoxy, Togliatti had suocated the elegant cosmo-
politan vision of Societa, by sidling the editorial board with a Party
Committee, headed by Sereni himself. In 1948, Graziosi was a young
microbiologist at the University of Rome and a member of the Bio-
logical Seminar. On November 19, 1948, he had written, in collabora-
tion with Aloisi, a heated letter against Buzzati-Traverso, who had
called Lysenko a charlatan in an article published on November 14
(Buzzati-Traverso, 1948). The Aloisi-Graziosi letter labelled Buzzati-
Traverso a drawing-room scientist and magazine professor, and
exalted the democratic nature of Soviet science, and the practical
achievements of Michurinism (Azzone, Frontali, Graziosi, Toschi,
1948). LUnita published this letter, signed not only by Graziosi, but
also by other members of the Directive Committee of the Biological
Seminar (including Azzone, Frontali, Toschi). Their names were
attached, however, without consent. This detail should not be neglected,
since it allows us to understand the symbolic dimension that charac-
terised the Partys decision to give Graziosi the role of spokesman for
the positions of Italian communist biology on the Michurinist school.
The political message was transparent: It was the militant young sci-
entists, less contaminated by bourgeois scientic training, and more
sensitive to revolutionary change, who rst understood the innovations
coming from the Soviet Union.
486 FRANCESCO CASSATA

In his article published in Societa, La discussione sulla genetica

nellURSS (The Discussion on Genetics in the USSR), Graziosi criti-
cised the metaphysical conception of the WeismannMendel
Morgan school, using extensive quotations from German research on
cytoplasmic inheritance (particularly Carl Correns, Peter Michaelis,
Freidrich Oehlkers, Julius Schvemmle and Richard Harder) in defence
of Lysenkos doctrine.8
Although clearly siding with Lysenko, Graziosi adopted essentially
philosophical and biological arguments. From this perspective, the nal
paragraph of the article is surprising, as it introduces a sudden ideo-
logical shift by attacking the lthy and noisy anti-soviet press and
reasserting the two sciences model (Graziosi, 1949, p. 72). In the
oprint held in his personal papers, Graziosi underlines precisely these
last lines, rejecting paternity. This closure is inadmissible, Graziosi
wrote, it was added without my knowledge; responsibility lies with
Cesare Luporini [one of the editors of Societa] although perhaps the
piece was written by a more cynical hand (Franco Graziosi Papers,
oprint of La discussione sulla genetica nellURSS).
The implicit reference obviously concerns Emilio Sereni. The fact
that the conclusion to the essay came from the head of the Cultural
Commission or Cesare Luporini, rather than from the young microbi-
ologist, seems to be conrmed by the style of these sentences, their
content, and the typographical formulation i.e. a large gap separating
the nal conclusion from the body of the text. Undoubtedly Graziosis
protest remained private, limited to an irritated and personal note.
Nonetheless, its expression is interesting from the historiographical
point of view, as it reveals the presence, within the boundaries of the
pro-Lysenko eld, of a sharp distinction between Sereni and Graziosis
approaches. Sereni was willing to dene the Lysenko controversy as a
cultural Cold War, while Graziosi, who interpreted Michurinist
biology through the reference to German research on cytoplasmic
inheritance, saw it as a legitimate reaction to a chromosome theory of
heredity, which he judged excessively deterministic.
The picture is further complicated by factoring in the role of forty-
three year old biologist, Emanuele Padoa. In October 1948, Padoa
wrote to Sereni, contesting the Partys decision to endorse Soviet
Michurinism, and suggesting that the PCI encapsulate Lysenko,
without importing his ideas. The chromosomes at the service of
political reaction, he argued, are even more grotesque than the

8
On the interactions between Lysenkoism and research on cytoplasmic inheritance,
in particular in the French and American context, see Sapp, 1987.
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 487

Jewish physics, proposed by the Nazis (Padoa to Sereni, 20 Oct 1948,

PCI Archive, Sereni Papers, Box Correspondence 1948). On November
3, Sereni replied by rearming his deistic view of Soviet culture,
stigmatizing the reactionary and mystical Morganian genetics, and
praising the party-based, practical and popular character of the
Michurinist experiments (Sereni to Padoa, 3 Nov 1948, PCI Archive,
Sereni Papers, Box Correspondence 1948). Despite his choice to sub-
mit himself to the Party, Padoa radically challenged, in his private
correspondence, Serenis arguments. He denied there was any theoret-
ical originality in Lysenkos doctrine, defended the relevance of pure
and applied research in genetics, and denounced the disappearance
of Vavilov, and the terror that had overcome genetics in the Soviet
Union. Padoa argued that to deny the ethical value of pure scientic
research, would be not just for theoretical, but also for practical
reasons a serious error for the communist world. Furthermore,
Lysenkoism opened the way for a science with adjectives, the result of
which could only be the mortication of freedom of thought. We
have seen the results of Germanic and Nazi science, he wrote, and
by getting on the nerves of the Fermis and the Bohrs in Europe, it was
possible to build the atomic bomb in America (Padoa to Sereni, 12 Dec
1948, PCI Archive, Sereni Papers, Box Correspondence 1948). Sereni
answered laconically on December 26, and suggested Padoa read his
book, Scienza, marxismo, cultura (Science, Marxism and Culture), which
was about to be published (Sereni to Padoa, 26 Dec 1948, PCI Archive,
Sereni Papers, Box Correspondence 1948).
Faced with the PCI Michurinist campaign, the response of com-
munist biologists was not sympathetic, but also not homogeneous. On
the contrary, varied degrees of orthodoxy resulted inevitably from
dierent biographical, scientic and intellectual trajectories. On three
points, in particular, the reaction was polarized. First, with regard to
the relationship between science and politics, Aloisi and Graziosi were
concerned with the problem of the social functions of science, while
Padoa advocated the absolute freedom of science from social and
political inuences. Second, fascist racism was among the polemical
tools Aloisi adopted against Italian geneticists and their post-war
reform eugenics, while, in Padoas view, what happened during the
1930s exemplied the negative eects of political interference in the
scientic milieu. Finally, Aloisi and Graziosi attacked Morganian
genetics, pointing out research on cytoplasmic inheritance, while
Padoa emphasised the theoretical and practical importance of classical
genetics.
488 FRANCESCO CASSATA

The Report that was Never Published

Within a few months the stenographic report of the VASKhNIL

conference in JulyAugust 1948 was translated into the main European
languages. The PCI entrusted the translation of the report not to the
Foreign Language Editions, linked to Moscow, but to the publishing
house Einaudi. The relationship between the PCI and Einaudi, which
had intensied since 1945, was problematic. Einaudi was appealing to
the PCI because they could market Marxist works and topics that would
not otherwise have left the Party environment, to a cultured audience of
students, lay intellectuals, and progressive bourgeoisie. Because the
PCI perceived publishing with Einaudi as the means to reach a vast
network of intellectuals, Togliatti entrusted them with the publication of
Antonio Gramscis work. Another advantage oered by Einaudi, from
Togliattis point of view, during the years of the Cominform, was that
they could help reassert the original national roots of the PCI. However,
Einaudi also wished to maintain control over the nal product by
limiting the editorial role of the PCI to specic areas.
The contradictory priorities of Einaudi and the PCI set the stage for
conict. The new ideological climate of Cold War had considerable
repercussions for the relationship between the Party and the publisher.
From 1947 onward, the Party regularly expressed dissatisfaction with
the publishers independence, and its often unorthodox editorial choi-
ces. News of the VASKhNIL conference reached Italy at a moment
when the PCI and Einaudi wished to strengthen their relationship. In
October 1948, Einaudi wrote to Togliatti, asking for a deeper collabo-
ration, and for the diusion in Italy of the most important discussions
occurring in the Soviet Union, the most advanced research carried out
there. In this letter, Einaudi referred explicitly to Lysenko and the
debate over Soviet biology (Einaudi to Togliatti, 15 Oct 1948, Giulio
Einaudi Editore Archive, Box P. Togliatti).
For Einaudi the publication of the VASKhNIL conference was to be
part of a wider project, aimed primarily at emphasising the democratic
nature of Soviet scientic debates. Therefore the publication had to be
addressed both to a cultivated, progressive, non-party audience, and to
specialists. For this reason it was to be rmly supported by experimental
proofs of the validity of Lysenkos doctrine. For the PCI, on the other
hand and for Emilio Sereni, in particular the VASKhNIL conference
was to drive the ideological struggle in favour of the transgressive and
revolutionary nature of Soviet culture, speaking above all to the Partys
cadres and militants.
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 489

Since 1946, Einaudi had possessed a copy of Lysenkos text Heredity

and its Variability, translated into English and edited by Theodosius
Dobzhansky and Leslie Clarence Dunn (Einaudi to Giolitti, 18 Nov
1948, Giulio Einaudi Editore Archive, Correspondence with Italian
authors and collaborators, Box 96/1, Folder 1461/2, A. Giolitti).
However, the book had languished in Aloisis hands and, in the end,
never been translated into Italian. Considering the anti-Lysenko intent
of Dobzhansky and Dunns project,9 the lack of an Italian translation
does not seem benign. In fact, in his role as main external consultant of
Einaudi, between 1946 and 1950, Aloisi delayed and denitively blocked
the translation and publication of some of the most important works of
the Modern Synthesis and population genetics, including Gaylord
Simpsons Tempo and Mode in Evolution, Ernst Mayrs Systematics and
the Origin of the Species (on Mayr and Simpson: Balbo to Aloisi, 4 Mar
1949, and Aloisi to Balbo, 10 Mar 1949, Boringhieri Archive, Box
Aloisi), C.D. Darlingtons The Evolution of Genetic Systems (Montalenti
to Aloisi, 14 Jan 1946 and Aloisi to Einaudi publishing house, 24 Jan
1946, Boringhieri Archive, Box Aloisi), and Theodosius Dobzhanskys
Genetics and the Origin of Species (Columbia University Press to
Montalenti, 25 May 1945 and Montalenti to Aloisi, 14 Jan 1946,
Boringhieri Archive, Box Aloisi). Only Michael J. D. Whites work, The
Chromosomes, was published in 1950, four years after the initial pro-
posal had been sent to Aloisi by Giuseppe Montalenti (Montalenti to
Aloisi, 16 Jan 1946, Boringhieri Archive, Box Montalenti. For Mon-
talentis anti-lysenkoism: see Montalenti, 1948).
In October 1948, Giulio Einaudi and Felice Balbo contacted Aloisi and
Giovanni Haussmann about publishing a translation of the VASKhNIL
conference. Haussmann was professor of Alpine Agriculture and Forestry
at the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Turin, and director of the
Experimental Station of grassland farming at Lodi. Since 1944 he had
studied and analysed, in Russian, the agronomic contributions of
Lysenko. In 1948 he was writing a handbook of agronomy for Einaudi
entitled Levoluzione del terreno e lagricoltura, (The Evolution of the Land
and of Agriculture), based on Vasily R. Williams theories. The book was
published two years later (Haussmann, 1950).
The publication in France, in October 1948, of the special issue of the
journal Europe, generated the rst deep disagreement between the

9
In 19451946, Dunn and Dobzhansky thought the best way to support Soviet
geneticists was to simply expose Western geneticists to the content and methods of
Lysenkos arguments by translating them into English, and then carefully controlling
the reviews in scientic journals. See Krementsov, 1997, pp. 12122; Wolfe, 2010.
490 FRANCESCO CASSATA

publishing house and the PCI leadership. Sereni intended, in fact, to

publish the issue tout court in Italian. On November 9, Einaudi rejected
Serenis proposal. He wished to publish a volume that would include
reliable scientic papers from dierent areas of Soviet agronomy and
biology, along with an extract of the discussion at VASKhNIL, which
would demonstrate the critical, open and democratic debate involv-
ing Soviet science (Einaudi to Haussmann, 10 Nov 1948, Boringhieri
Archive, Box Haussmann). Both Haussmann and Aloisi fully agreed
with Einaudis project. The mere translation of the discussion
Haussmann wrote on November 22 could be more harmful than
useful, since it will not reach the hands of the general public, but of
specialists, and if it is not perfectly documented with experimental facts
it will be a total waste of time. The battle must therefore always and
only be fought on the scientic eld: then it will be possible to breach
the defences, not otherwise (Haussmann to Balbo, 22 Nov 1948,
Boringhieri Archive, Box Haussmann). Aloisi also agreed with Einaudi,
as he declared in a letter to Sereni, on December 3, 1948: It [Einaudis
project] seems a good idea to me, also because it would avoid an
incomplete and scientically unsatisfactory publication that would
strengthen the polemic of the critics, rather than silencing them for more
serene meditation (Aloisi to Sereni, 3 Dec 1948, PCI Archive, Sereni
Papers, Box Correspondence 1948).
Serenis decision on the translation was taken on November 26.
Giolitti himself communicated it to Einaudi. Three people, coordinated
by the chemist Franco Rossi, would translate the whole VASKhNIL
debate and Sereni, in cooperation with Haussmann, would give the
nal seal (Giolitti to Einaudi, 26 Nov 1948, Giulio Einaudi Editore
Archive, Correspondence with Italian authors and collaborators, Box
96/1, Folder 1461/2, A. Giolitti). On December 3, 1948, Einaudis dis-
content with Sereni became explicit, and as we see in a letter from
Einaudi to Giolitti, a breaking point was nearly reached:
The book organised in this way gives no guarantee of rendering a
service to culture []. I only left the volumes of a strictly ideological
nature in the hands of the Party; but this problem involves the sci-
entic reputation of the publishing house and I have a duty to express
my opinion (Einaudi to Giolitti, 3 Dec 1948, Giulio Einaudi Edi-
tore Archive, Correspondence with Italian authors and collabora-
tors, Box 96/1, Folder 1461/2, A. Giolitti. Italics added).
The same day, Felice Balbo wrote a long letter to Giolitti, emphasising
the political need to document the errors the Soviet Union had com-
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 491

mitted in liquidating genetics (Balbo to Giolitti, 3 Dec 1948, Felice

Balbo Papers). The whole question was further complicated by the
absence of the scientically indisputable material necessary to sup-
port the publication of the report. This was what Aloisi wrote to
Einaudi on December 3, 1948, declaring (as we have seen previously)
that he had read some technical articles in the Lysenko journal
Agrobiology, without, however, managing to obtain the certainty of
absolute rigour in the experiments, which would be necessary to silence
criticism (Aloisi to Einaudi, 3 Dec 1948, Boringhieri Archive, Box
Aloisi).
Einaudis attempt to nd a point of mediation, by proposing the
publication of the whole VASKhNIL conference, with the addition of a
scientic introduction by Aloisi and Haussmann, was rejected by Sereni
in mid-December 1948. According to Sereni, an introduction by Aloisi-
Haussmann would sound at best apologetic, and at worst, critical. It
was, therefore, superuous. In both cases the PCI would have had to
take political and cultural responsibility for a position not aligned to
Soviet political and ideological orientations, an option that the Party
did not intend to pursue (Giolitti to Einaudi, 15 Dec 1948, Giulio
Einaudi Editore Archive, Correspondence with Italian authors and
collaborators, Box 96/1, Folder 1461/2, A. Giolitti).
In mid-December, a compromise was nally reached between the
PCI and the publishing house. The report would be published in its
entirety, without an ideological and political introduction by Sereni, but
also without a scientic introduction by Aloisi-Haussmann (Einaudi to
Aloisi, 18 Dec 1948, Boringhieri Archive, Box Aloisi). The Lysenko
brick as Einaudi jokingly called it (Einaudi to Giolitti, 11 Feb 1949,
Giulio Einaudi Editore Archive, Correspondence with Italian authors
and collaborators, Box 96/1, Folder 1461/2, A. Giolitti) was fully
translated by early April 1949 (Einaudi to Giolitti, 7 Apr 1949, Giulio
Einaudi Editore Archive, Correspondence with Italian authors and
collaborators, Box 96/1, Folder 1461/2, A. Giolitti). Yet despite the
rapid pace of the editorial process which would seem to indicate keen
interest the publication was abruptly cancelled. Though the reasons
are not completely clear, it is possible to advance some hypotheses.
First, some sectors of the Communist leadership tried to publish their
own versions. The ItalyUSSR Association published an abridged
translation of the VASKhNIL report with the small Party publisher
Macchia. At the end of March, 1949, the PCI began selling the French
edition of the VASKhNIL meeting (Giolitti to Einaudi, 30 March 1949,
Giulio Einaudi Editore Archive, Correspondence with Italian authors
492 FRANCESCO CASSATA

and collaborators, Box 96/1, Folder 1461/2, A. Giolitti). Secondly, some

of Einaudis other publications challenged Lysenkos doctrine. In Jan-
uary 1949, Einaudi published a translation of Jean Rostands Short
History of Biology (Piccola storia della biologia), which included an
appendix with an article Rostand had published on November 4, 1948
in Nouvelles Litteraires. In this article the author expressed strong
doubts that experiments capable of contrasting the universality of
proofs already acquired against Lamarckism could come from the
Soviet Union (Rostand, 1949, pp. 248252). Einaudi also published
Marcel Prenants Darwin (1949). In the book, which came out in France
in 1949, the application of historical and dialectical materialism to
historiographical analysis left no room for Lysenko. He was not even
mentioned. While criticizing eugenics and social Darwinism, Prenant
celebrated Darwins theory of natural selection, Mendels laws, and the
signicance of genes and mutations. Prenant and Rostands books were
the result of Felice Balbos initiative (with reference to Rostand,
see: Balbo to Haussmann, 5 Jan 1949, Boringhieri Archive, Box
Haussmann. Prenants book was translated in Italian by Balbos wife,
Lola). They were published in the Piccola Biblioteca Scientico-Lette-
raria (PBSL) series, with respect to which Balbo had specied, at an
editorial meeting in January 1949, Einaudi would have authority over
the editorial process. As he said: In relation to the Party: it must not
take up a position, supporting the series; but it could from time to time
recommend, or not, the volumes. The publishing house must play the role
of publishing house. It is not a Party library (Einaudi editorial meeting,
1213 Jan 1949, Giulio Einaudi Editore Archive. Italics added). Finally
and perhaps most importantly the problem of proof had not been
resolved. On April 7, 1949, in a letter to Balbo, Aloisi revealed con-
tinued indecision: If you have sent Haussmann scientic works from
the Lysenko school, I beg you to send me a copy (of the translation!)
because I need it to form a denitive opinion (Aloisi to Balbo, 7 Apr
1949, Boringhieri Archive, Box Aloisi).
At the end of 1949, the internal re-organization of the Einaudi
publishing house provided a more careful evaluation of this latter
problem. The whole scientic sector of Einaudi was entrusted not to a
number of external consultants, overseen by Aloisi, but to a single
internal manager, with scientic training, Paolo Boringhieri, who was a
young editor and friend of Giulio Einaudi. In March 1950, Boringhieri
once again presented the voluminous translated type-script to Aloisi:
Is it still useful to publish in this state? At present would it be a
serious contribution to Italian culture and would it be useful from
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 493

our point of view? Einaudi believes that it would now be much

more useful to include that supporting documentation that you
mentioned during your last meeting in Turin. Perhaps it would be
better to prune the discussion and enhance the book with this
information (Boringhieri to Aloisi, 15 March 1950, Boringhieri
Archive, Box Aloisi. Italics added).
In May 1950, Boringhieri launched a new project. The report would be
republished in a slightly reduced form, with the addition of an appendix
of experimental documentation, edited by Aloisi and Graziosi. This was
a return to Einaudis original proposal, and probably resulted from the
severe criticism Sereni had received from within the Party in response to
his initial project of translating the issue of Europe devoted to the
controversy. In MarchApril 1951, the project for publishing the whole
Italian translation of the VASKhNIL conference was denitively
abandoned (le card LYSSENCO (Biological debate), Boringhieri
Archive, Box Index of titles. The last updating of the le card is dated
February 22, 1951. On this topic, see Boringhieri, 2010). Boringhieris
new project an abridged edition of VASKhNIL conference with
experimental documentation never came to light either, probably due
to the absence of convincing material. In 1955, opening the critical
debate within the PCI on the Lysenko aair, Aloisi attributed the
delay of this discussion to the desperate and failed search for experi-
mental evidence. He said: I have been strongly against Lysenkos
arguments from the start, and I made no secret of it in our cultural
discussions. I was waiting for concrete and comprehensible experi-
mental data which, I admit, I strongly hoped would be brought forward
and would be persuasive (Aloisi, 1955, p. 576).
The failure to produce an Italian translation of the VASKhNIL
report was a direct consequence of the tensions which the constitution
of the Cominform triggered within PCI cultural policy. After 1945 the
relationship between the PCI and Einaudi solidied, because it was
based on their identities as members of a wide, democratic, antifascist
cultural alliance. Between 1947 and 1948 the Cold War undermined the
project of forging a national and democratic Italian road to social-
ism. The issue of the publication of the VASKhNIL report caused the
latent conicts to explode, feeding the struggle between the divergent
aims and strategies expressed by the actors involved in the controversy.
For Einaudi, publishing Lysenko meant spreading Soviet culture out-
side the Party, emphasising its democratic elements. For the communist
biologists, like Aloisi, the publication accompanied by an introduction
and an appendix on the experimental applications of Michurinism was
494 FRANCESCO CASSATA

to be a way of defending their scientic independence in the face of

pressure from Party leaders. For intellectuals, like Giolitti consultant
for the publishing house and at the same time political leader of the
Party the publication would have been an opportunity to inuence
PCI cultural policy in a direction closer to the Italian national culture,
and less aligned to Soviet positions. For radical members in the PCI,
represented by Emilio Sereni, the report was conceived as an ideological
weapon in the cultural Cold War. The impossibility of reconciling these
agendas, combined with the desire not to transform an internal struggle
into a public conict, led to a stalemate. As a result, the VASKhNIL
report was never published in Italian.

Conclusions

The spread of Lysenkoism in Western Europe should not to be regarded

as mere propaganda, or as a phenomenon which would conrm the
subordination of West European communism to Soviet foreign policy.
On the contrary, the Lysenko controversy, in the international
scene, may be considered as a cultural, political and ideological
resource, through which dierent social actors pursued internal specic
objectives, establishing boundaries, elaborating dierent strategies, and
addressing particular targets and audiences (De Jong-Lambert and
Krementsov, this issue).
This article examined the reaction of three specic actors PCI
leadership, Italian communist biologists, and left-leaning publisher
Giulio Einaudi Editore to the results of the August 1948 VASKhNIL
meeting. From the point of view of the Party leadership, the Lysenko
controversy shaped the re-conguration of the PCIs role in the new
Cold War context. The exaltation of the Michurinist revolution
allowed the Party to strengthen the Soviet myth, not just as propa-
ganda, but also as an identity-symbol and a tool of mass mobilization.
The Lysenko controversy was not only a battleeld in the Italian cul-
tural Cold War, but also a vehicle through which the Party faced crucial
internal issues. These included the autonomy of Italian Marxism, the
lack of scientic culture in the formation of PCIs cadres and militants,
and the role of the state in the implementation of the scientic policies.
As far as the communist biologists are concerned, the complex
spectrum, which characterized their response to Lysenkoism in the fall
of 1948, was a dramatic expression of their diculty adapting to the
shifting PCI political and cultural policies from the 19431947 demo-
 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY 495

cratic and antifascist Italian road to socialism, to the new 19471948

two camps confrontation. Despite conicts with the Party, the
feeling of loyalty towards the communist cause prevailed among
communist biologists. The public distancing from Soviet Michurinism
came up only between March 1954 and August 1955. Aloisi and
Graziosi like many other communist intellectuals resigned from the
PCI only after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.10
The fallout between Einaudi and the PCI over the publication of the
VASKhNIL report expresses the tensions which emerged in leftist cul-
ture between 1947 and 1948. In the Lysenko aair Einaudi saw the
opportunity to exalt the democratic character of the Soviet regime,
and to spread the news of the Soviet scientic conquests beyond Party
militants to a much wider, lay and progressive audience. Nonetheless,
the publisher was not prepared to neglect the scientic dimension of the
issue. In Einaudis view, his publishing house could only contribute to
the development of PCI cultural policy, and maintain independence, if
the publication demonstrated the democratic character and the scientic
accuracy of Lysenkos doctrine. But this position could never be suc-
cessful because there was no experimental data conrming Lysenkos
arguments. Sereni insisted on a deistic cultural relationship between
the PCI and the CPSU. In his view, the controversy was merely an
instrument of political struggle, and ideological indoctrination of Party
militants and cadres.
The originality of the PCI response to Lysenkoism does not lie so
much in the conicts that occurred, or the arguments adopted in the
debate, as in the way the conict was managed internally. Unlike the
PCF, the PCI did not make the Lysenko controversy into as Sereni
put it a disciplinary case. While the PCF expelled Prenant from the
Central Committee in 1950 (Kotek, 1986, pp. 161163), the PCI did not
want to denitively break o relations with the biologists. On the
contrary, they tried to make use of their contribution in other ideo-
logical battles, for example against clerical obscurantism, or bacte-
riological warfare in Korea.
On the other hand, the Italian communist biologists unlike Monod
in France, or Haldane in Great Britain did not make public their
disapproval, and did not abandon the PCI. Instead, at a crucial phase of
the Italian political conict they decided to subordinate their personal
convictions as scientists, to the safeguarding of PCI ideological and

10
Graziosi was among the signers of the so-called Manifesto dei 101, which contested
PCIs line with regard to the Soviet invasion of Hungary. On Aloisis break with PCI,
see Rosini, 2003, pp. 655666.
496 FRANCESCO CASSATA

political unity. As Luigi G. Silvestri maintained, the solution was:

Better to be wrong with the Party than to be right alone.
With regard to the publication of the VASKhNIL report, the Italian
case is particularly unique. In a comparative perspective, the translation
of the report was managed by both contestants in the Lysenko con-
troversy as a tool for implementing their respective objectives. The
translation of Heredity and its Variability by Dobzhansky and Dunn, on
the one side (Gordin, this issue), and the publication of the special issue
of Europe in France, on the other, are good examples. In Italy, the
variety and the complexity of the political and cultural strategies,
elaborated by the various actors with regard to how to publish Lysenko,
led to a unique result which, paradoxically, was in the best interests of
all concerned. The most important document of the pro-Lysenko
campaign was left unpublished.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Roberto Cerati, Gilberto Corbellini and Franco

Graziosi for their help during my research. I would like also to thank
William deJong-Lambert and Nikolai Krementsov for their valuable
comments and suggestions on early drafts of this article. Im grateful
to the anonymous reviewers whose criticisms have helped clarify my
arguments.

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