With and Without Galton

In 1865, British polymath Francis Galton published his initial thoughts about the scientific field that would become ‘eugenics.’ The same year, Russian physician Vasilii Florinskii addressed similar issues in a sizeable treatise, entitled Human Perfection and Degeneration. Initially unheralded, Florinskii’s book would go on to have a remarkable afterlife in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russia. In this lucid and insightful work, Nikolai Krementsov argues that the concept of eugenics brings together ideas, values, practices, and fears energised by a focus on the future. It has proven so seductive to different groups over time because it provides a way to grapple with fundamental existential questions of human nature and destiny. With and Without Galton develops this argument by tracing the life-story of Florinskii’s monograph from its uncelebrated arrival amid the Russian empire’s Great Reforms, to its reissue after the Bolshevik Revolution, its decline under Stalinism, and its subsequent resurgence: first, as a founding document of medical genetics, and most recently, as a manifesto for nationalists and racial purists. Krementsov’s meticulously researched ‘biography of a book’ sheds light not only on the peculiar fate of eugenics in Russia, but also on its convoluted transnational history, elucidating the field’s protean nature and its continuing and contested appeal to diverse audiences, multiple local trajectories, and global trends. It is required reading for historians of eugenics, science, medicine, education, literature, and Russia, and it will also appeal to the general reader looking for a deeper understanding of this challenging subject

With and Without Galton

In 1865, British polymath Francis Galton published his initial thoughts about the scientific field that would become ‘eugenics.’ The same year, Russian physician Vasilii Florinskii addressed similar issues in a sizeable treatise, entitled Human Perfection and Degeneration. Initially unheralded, Florinskii’s book would go on to have a remarkable afterlife in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russia. In this lucid and insightful work, Nikolai Krementsov argues that the concept of eugenics brings together ideas, values, practices, and fears energised by a focus on the future. It has proven so seductive to different groups over time because it provides a way to grapple with fundamental existential questions of human nature and destiny. With and Without Galton develops this argument by tracing the life-story of Florinskii’s monograph from its uncelebrated arrival amid the Russian empire’s Great Reforms, to its reissue after the Bolshevik Revolution, its decline under Stalinism, and its subsequent resurgence: first, as a founding document of medical genetics, and most recently, as a manifesto for nationalists and racial purists. Krementsov’s meticulously researched ‘biography of a book’ sheds light not only on the peculiar fate of eugenics in Russia, but also on its convoluted transnational history, elucidating the field’s protean nature and its continuing and contested appeal to diverse audiences, multiple local trajectories, and global trends. It is required reading for historians of eugenics, science, medicine, education, literature, and Russia, and it will also appeal to the general reader looking for a deeper understanding of this challenging subject

Landscape science: a Russian geographical tradition

The Russian geographical tradition of landscape science (landshaftovedenie) is analyzed with particular reference to its initiator, Lev Semenovich Berg (1876-1950). The differences between prevailing Russian and Western concepts of landscape in geography are discussed, and their common origins in German geographical thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are delineated. It is argued that the principal differences are accounted for by a number of factors, of which Russia's own distinctive tradition in environmental science deriving from the work of V. V. Dokuchaev (1846-1903), the activities of certain key individuals (such as Berg and C. O. Sauer), and the very different social and political circumstances in different parts of the world appear to be the most significant. At the same time it is noted that neither in Russia nor in the West have geographers succeeded in specifying an agreed and unproblematic understanding of landscape, or more broadly in promoting a common geographical conception of human-environment relationships. In light of such uncertainties, the latter part of the article argues for closer international links between the variant landscape traditions in geography as an important contribution to the quest for sustainability

6. Resonance: Euphenics, Medical Genetics, and Rassenhygiene

“True eugenics can only be a product of socialism.”H. J. Muller, May 1936 Volotskoi’s reprint gave Florinskii’s book a new lease on life. This time, Human Perfection and Degeneration found a receptive audience. The book proved influential in shaping not only discussions around eugenics and its “stepsister” genetics, but also the adoption of certain social policies and legislation in the new Soviet Russia. Indeed Volotskoi’s use of Florinskii’s ideas as a model and justification for his “bio-s..

4. The Hereafter: Words and Deeds

“...Every new endeavor has to wait for its time, only then will it come into its own and fulfill its highest purpose.”Veniamin Portugalov, 1870 After the appearance of “Human Perfection and Degeneration” on the pages of Russian Word, their author and their publisher parted ways as suddenly as they had come together just a few months earlier. In February 1866, the imperial authorities suspended publication of Russian Word and, in early June, shut down the journal altogether. Nevertheless, in l..

Apologia: The Historian’s Craft

“…habiendo y debiendo ser los historiadores puntuales, verdaderos y nonada apasionados, y que ni el interés ni el miedo, el rancor ni la afición, no les hagan torcer del camino de la verdad, cuya madre es la historia, émula del tiempo, depósito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir.”Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 1605 As Miguel de Cervantes forcefully stated in his immortal book Don Quixote: “it is the job and duty of historians to b..

5. Rebirth: Eugenics and Marxism

“[It] cannot be uniform: every [social] class must create its own eugenics.”Alexander Serebrovskii, 12 January 1926 For sixty years since its first publication, Vasilii Florinskii’s Human Perfection and Degeneration remained apparently unread and its major ideas dormant. In 1926, however, the book was republished. The main reason for its “resurrection” was the rapid growth during the early twentieth century of a transnational eugenics movement, initiated by, among many others, Francis Galton ..

8. Science of the Future: With and Without Galton

“If blind, opportunistic, and automatic natural selection could conjure man out of a viroid in a couple of thousand million years, what could not man’s conscious and purposeful efforts achieve even in a couple of million years, let alone in the thousands of millions to which he can reasonably look forward?”Julian S. Huxley, 1962 Vasilii Florinskii and Francis Galton, two of the major protagonists of this study, never met and were not aware of one another’s efforts to tackle their common subje..

The Faces of Eugenics: Local Mirrors and Global Reflections

“We cannot even guess, How our word will echo…”Fedor Tiutchev, 27 February 1869 The two men whose names appear in the title of this book — British polymath Francis Galton and Russian gynecologist Vasilii Florinskii — were contemporaries. Although they never met and likely never even heard of one another, in the history of science their names appear to be closely linked. In 1865, each published in an influential monthly a scholarly piece that years later their followers in Britain and in Russi..