No.10560
The countries are competing. Nations compete. Therefore, the qualities of people matter in eternal competition. At least from year 1960 to year 1991, the Soviet Union pursued a policy of sterilizing women of reproductive age diagnosed with severe mental retardation. This was not applied to men, in hope that women themselves would not want to be with a mentally retarded men as husbands.
The Soviet Union encouraged doctors of sciences and professors, giving each of them one additional room at the expense of the state, ostensibly for a library. In fact, this library room was often used as a nursery for one more kid. This can be considered a form of eugenics.
The revolutionaries of the early 20th century had the idea to build a new state, with a new social structure that required a new type of people. They especially dreamed of altruists.
There was a Russian Eugenics Сompany from the 1920s to the 1930s. The Russian Eugenic Company was founded in 1921 in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg). This happened at a time when the ideas of eugenics were popular all over the world of the planet Earth, including the USA, Great Britain, Germany, France and many other countries.
b) Objectives of the company The society set goals for itself:
• The study of heredity and its role in the development of human society.
• Promoting a healthy lifestyle to improve the population's gene pool.
• Development of marriage recommendations based on genetic principles. Its members sought to use scientific knowledge to improve the quality of life for future generations of humans.
The activities of the Russian Eugenic Company
Scientific research This society conducted research in the fields of genetics, medicine, and demography. Scientists have studied:
• Hereditary diseases.
• The influence of the environment on the development of offspring.
• Mental and physical characteristics of different population groups, including different ethnic groups.
Public propaganda
The Russian Eugenic Company actively spread ideas about the importance of a healthy marriage and responsible attitude towards the birth of children. For example:
• Lectures were given to the general public.
• Books and pamphlets on genetics and heredity were published.
International cooperation In the 1920s, the Russian Eugenic Society maintained links with other eugenic organizations around the world of the planet Earth, including American and European ones. It was a period when many scientists believed that eugenics could become a tool for solving many social problems.
Closure of the Russian Eugenics Company
In the early 1930s, the Russian Eugenics Company was closed.
This happened for several reasons:
1. The emergence of Hitler and Nazism: After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany (1933), eugenics became associated with the racial theories of Nazism, which made its ideas politically unacceptable in the USSR, according to the USSR’s communists.
2. Ideological pressure: In the Soviet Union, was criticism of all forms of "biological determinism" (theories that link social characteristics with biological factors) began to intensify. Stalin's ideology emphasized human education through social conditions rather than through genetic selection.
Soviet propaganda artists loved to depict beautiful people on posters, but the USSR did nothing to increase the number of such people.
3. Criticism within the scientific community: Many Soviet scientists licked the feet of politics by opposed eugenics, pointing out its lack of scientific validity and potential danger to society.
b) A specific closing date
The exact dates of the closure of the Russian Eugenic Company are not documented, but most sources indicate that its activities actually ceased by 1934-1935, when eugenics finally left the priority areas of scientific policy of the USSR.
b) Repression against scientists Some members of the Russian Eugenics Society were criticized and/or repressed, especially if their ideas could be linked to racial theories of Nazism. The scientific community has become more cautious about issues of genetics and heredity. c) Transition to other sciences Genetics as a science continued to develop in the USSR, but without any direct connection with eugenic ideas. However, in 1948, even genetics was declared a "bourgeois pseudoscience" due to the influence of Trofim Lysenko, which significantly slowed down its progress.
Dysgenics in the USSR
It manifested itself in the schizophrenic Soviet policy on alcohol and tobacco.
There was a USSR state monopoly on tobacco and alcohol. The revenues from the sales of this were huge, and the USSR’s management did not want to stop selling them. But people's exposure to tobacco and alcohol shortens their life expectancy, reduces physical fitness, spoils their health, and harms their minds and brains.
People who are affected by alcohol are less likely to rebel and make revolution because they drown their discontent and sadness in alcohol. This was one of the reasons for the lack of a serious alcohol ban in the USSR. The example of the Muslim Chechens who fought twice trying to gain Chechnya independence showed that sober people are dangerous to any country. Chechens, being Muslims, drink very little alcohol, and therefore rise up to riots and revolution much more easily than drunkards. Especially drunkards who drink alcoholic beverages that contain a lot of alcohol. It's hard to even walk after that, and of course it's impossible to rebel after that.
