The Bison

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(•>'/«" V <)Mi" 272 pages 0-385-24753 2 Nikolai Timofeyev-Resovsky, one of the íounders of modern genetics and the Bison in Daniil Granin's documentary növel, is a symbolic figure for a Soviet society still struggling to rid itself of Stalin's legacy of intolerance, anti-intellectualism, and dogmatism in science. Born to a family of ancient Russian gentry, endowed with exceptional intellectual talent and inexhaustible physical energy, Timofeyev-Resovsky was a fiercely independent man for whom the pursuit of scientific truth was an almost mystical imperative. Thus, he was an anachronism in the era of Stalin's pseudoscience. Spared the fate that befell many of his Soviet colleagues under Stalin's purges because he had been assigned to direct a genetics research institute near Berlin, he was able to pursue the research that brought him international acclaim. Ultimately more important, he was able to serve-after his postwar release from the Gulag-as a living link with long-banned... Tovább

Fülszöveg

(•>'/«" V <)Mi" 272 pages 0-385-24753 2 Nikolai Timofeyev-Resovsky, one of the íounders of modern genetics and the Bison in Daniil Granin's documentary növel, is a symbolic figure for a Soviet society still struggling to rid itself of Stalin's legacy of intolerance, anti-intellectualism, and dogmatism in science. Born to a family of ancient Russian gentry, endowed with exceptional intellectual talent and inexhaustible physical energy, Timofeyev-Resovsky was a fiercely independent man for whom the pursuit of scientific truth was an almost mystical imperative. Thus, he was an anachronism in the era of Stalin's pseudoscience. Spared the fate that befell many of his Soviet colleagues under Stalin's purges because he had been assigned to direct a genetics research institute near Berlin, he was able to pursue the research that brought him international acclaim. Ultimately more important, he was able to serve-after his postwar release from the Gulag-as a living link with long-banned Western science, as an inspiration to a new generation of Soviet scientists. In his final years, Granin writes, Nikolai Timofeyev-Resovsky seemed to have come from another century. "The Russia of Turgenev and Chekhov, the Russia after the war, prewar Europe, Nazi Germany, the atomic world-all the epochs of our century came together in him, and they continued in him." Vissza