Loren Graham in his 1987 book *Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union*, amongst other things noted that E.O. Wilson's writings on sociobiology received a rather surprisingly favorable reception in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that Wilson's theories concerning the biological roots of human behavior seemed to go against some basic tenets of Marxism. Graham notes that one reason for the favorable reception from Soviet scholars was due to Wilson's discussion of the evolutionary origins of altruism. Wilson drew upon the work of William Hamilton to argue that Darwinian evolution did not unilaterally favor selfishness, but rather altruism itself might be favored by natural selection on the basis of "kin selection" and "inclusive fitness." If as Hamilton (and later George Williams, John Maynard Smith, and RIchard Dawkins) argued we take a "genes' eye" view of evolution, then natural selection might be seen, under certain circumstances, to sometimes favor altruistic actions by individual organisms over selfishness. While altruism might by putting at risk the survival of the altruistic organism reduce the Darwinian fitness of that individual, if the organism's actions benefited other organisms that were genetically related to it (thus sharing genes with them) the Darwinian fitness of that organism's genes might actually be enhanced, even at the expense of the altruistic organism. Thus if an organism sacrifices itself to save the lives of its siblings, those siblings will be able to pass on to future generations, genes which they shared with their deceased brother or sister, so the result might be a net enhancement of the Darwinian fitness of the deceased altruist. >From this standpoint, the selfishness of genes can lead to altruistic behavior on the part of living organisms. And Hamilton and other biologists including Wilson, suggested that this hypothesis could be used to explain the existence of cooperation.
Wilson suggested that Hamilton's kin selection hypothesis could provide a Darwinian explanation of the altruistic and cooperative behaviors we observe in human beings. This type of theorizing struck a nerve among many Russian and Soviet readers of his work, since there had been in Russian biology, a tradition going back to the work of the Russian biologist and anarchist theoretician, Petr Kropotkin, which argued for the evolutionary origins of mutual aid in both human and nonhuman species. Kroptotkin had presented his theories concerning the evolutionary origins of mutual aid as a rebuttal to the social Darwinism that was popular in his day. Kropotkin thought that Darwin and his successors had overemphasized the importance of competition in evolution, to the exclusion of cooperation. Wilson's theorizing on altruism was seen as fitting in with this long standing tradition in Russian biological thought. While Kropotkin, as an anarchist, was no Marxist, his work on mutual aid was seen in the Soviet Union as representing an interpretation of evolution that was congruent with Marxism, and as constituting a refutation of the social Darwinist interpretations of evolutionary biology that were favored by bourgeois ideologists. Graham notes that Wilson's *Sociobiology* received a favorable reviews in some of the leading philosophical and scientific journals of the Soviet Union. Other reasons for this surprisingly favorable reception (given that Wilson's work was harshly criticized in the West by such writers as Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould) include the fact that Wilson was willing to entertain hypotheses concerning the genetic roots of human behaviors like altruism. During Stalin's time and Khruschchev's, Lysenkoism had been the official orthodoxy concerning genetics, and Mendelism was banned. After the fall of Lysenkoism in 1965 (due to a campaign that spearheaded by scientists including Andrei Sakharov), there was a strong reaction among Soviet intellectuals against anything that smacked of Lysenkoism or other dogmas of the Stalinist period, and in favor of ideas that emphasized Mendelian genetics or other theories that had previously been banned. So since Wilson's sociobiology was obviously grounded in Mendelian genetics, that in of itself, would have been sufficient to guarantee that it would have received at least a respectful reading from many Soviet intellectuals. Also, at the time that Wilson's work on sociobiology was first being published, Soviet intellectuals were revisiting the whole nature/nurture debate concerning human behavior. Soviet thought had since the 1920s been strongly nurturist. Environmentalist or naturist ideas pervaded Soviet psychology, pedagogy, criminal justice and social policy in general. If people acted badly, it was assumed that the causes lied with the environmental conditions under which they had been raised and that the solution to social problems like crime, alcoholism, and social deviance lied with changing people's environments through radical social reform, which in the USSR meant the construction of a socialist society. By the 1970s, this nurturism was being increasingly questioned in the Soviet Union, since among other things it was apparent that problems like crime, drunkenness, shiftlessness etc. were still very much feature of Soviet life, despite the fact that the Communists had been in power for more than a half-century. Crime was after all supposed to disappear under socialism but it still existed in the Soviet Union. Given this reality, orthodox Marxist explanations of crime implied that if crime was still a reality in Soviet life then this must have been due to Soviet society not conforming to socialist ideals. Some leading Soviet scholars made that very argument including the Soviet geneticist Nikolai Dubinin along with two coauthors in the book *Genetics, Behavior, Responsibility* who attributed the persistence of crime in Soviet society to the incompleteness in the building of communism. Dubinin and his coauthors pointed out that economic inequalities were still pervasive in the Soviet Union, and the deprivation was still widespread. In short they applied a rather orthodox Marxist analysis of crime to Soviet society, which led them to make a rather devastating critique of Soviet society from a Marxist standpoint. Not too surprisingly this book displeased many of the Soviet authorities. Many Soviet administrators, jurists, police officials and others were becoming increasingly attracted to hereditarian explanations of crime which attributed its causation to genetic factors. If some people are, because of their genetic heritages, predisposed to criminal behavior, then this would tend to exonerate Soviet institutions from responsibility, whereas more orthodox Marxist explanations tended to indict them. Hence, some Soviet authorities, at least were willing to jettison portions of Marxist orthodoxy, if by doing so this would exonerate Soviet institutions from responsibility for crime and other social problems. This was not an entirely new phenomenon in the Soviet Union. B.F. Skinner had noted that the changing fortunes of Pavlovianism in the USSR could be explained along similar lines. Thus, in *Beyond Freedom & Dignity*, Skinner wrote: "Communist Russia provided and interesting case history in the relation between environmentalism and personal responsibility, as Raymond Bauer has pointed out. Immediately after the revolution the government could argue that if many Russians were uneducated, unproductive, badly behaved, and unhappy, it was because their environment had made them so. The new government would change the environment, making use of Pavlov's work on conditioned reflexes, and all would be well. But by the early thirties the government had its chance, and many Russians were still not conspicuously better informed, more productive, better behaved, or happier. The official line was then changed, and Pavlov went out of favor. A strongly purposive psychology was substituted: it was up to the Russian citizen to get an education, work productively, behave well, and be happy. The Russian educator was to make sure that he would accept this responsibility, but not by conditioning him. The successes of the Second World War restored confidence in the earlier principle, however; the government had been successful after all. It might not yet be completely effective,but it was moving in the right direction. Pavlov came back into favor." By the 1970s and 1980s confidence of the type that Skinner had referred to was disappearing in the Soviet Union, and in some quarters this loss of confidence in the power to improve the human condition by changing social environments took the form of the acceptance of theories that emphasized the role of genes in causing crime and other forms of social deviance. Wilson's writings on sociobiogy could be seen as fitting in with this trend too. So sociobiology had appeal to scientists interested in Darwinian explanations of human behavior, it had appeal to Soviet liberals who were in rebellion against Lysenkoism and other dogmas left over from Stalin's time, it also had some appeal to Soviet administrative types who were seeking hereditarian explanations of social problems. It was also taken up by right-wing nationalists who were rejecting Marxism and who thought that it might lend support to their own nationalist and even racist ideas. It should be noted that while much of the initial reception of Wilson's writings on sociobiology in the Soviet Union was favorable, there was some criticism too. The geneticist, Dubinin, who was mentioned above in connection with his defense of Marxist explanations of crime, was early on a critic of sociobiology. He thought that attempts to explain human altruism in terms of innate factors were just as mistaken as earlier attempts to similarly explain human aggression. Wilson, in his view, was repeating the old error of attempting to "biologize" man, thereby ignoring his nature as a social animal. Later when E.O. Wilson and Charles Lumsden published their book, *Genes, Mind, and Culture* where they explicitly criticized Marxism, the reception was less favorable, especially given that Wilson & Lumsden attacked Marxism as being akin to Lamarckianism, which struck a raw nerve among some Soviet writers since this implied that Marxism was somehow directly tied to Lysenkoism. This time, Wilson's work was subjected to the sorts of criticisms that his work had been receiving in the West from people like Lewontin, Gould, and the activist group, Science for the People. On the other hand, it is clear that many people in the Soviet Union remained favorable to Wilson. And that is a phenomenon that seems to have been indicative of the shift to the right that was already taking place among many Soviet intellectuals. Jim F. ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the Internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the Web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! 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