The Vavilov Brothers

Social science in the Russian revolution is as big a topic as theology in the Protestant Reformation. So it must be set aside with the inevitable “few observations,” guidelines for a future history of social thought in Soviet Russia. The dominant mode is that of Kafka's “Great Wall of China“: masters of scientific socialism, energetically rebuilding society on scientific principles, are gradually brought to suspect that they have no social science. Marx and Lenin come more and more to resemble Kafka's Emperor; their dying word would make everything clear, but it cannot reach the builders through the overwhelming crush of ordinary men and grubby circumstance. Reports that the word still reaches distant backward places like Vietnam only heighten the bewilderment.