ABSTRACT
The interpreter at the interview between Dr. Harland and the future dictator in Russian biology was Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, at that time head of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and of the Genetics Institute, and famous throughout the world for his researches on the geographical centers of origin and the genetical evolution of the most important cultivated grains. Moscow has displaced Vavilov as director of the Genetics Institute and as president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In answer, Vavilov praised, as well he might, the practical and theoretical achievements of Soviet experimental biology; but he urged also the international interdependence and unity of world science and pleaded that Soviet biology should not deny itself the privilege of learning from other lands. Not until 1939 did the geneticists of the entire world become aware of the fateful drama that was being enacted in Soviet science.
