Page 133 - Communism in Ambush

Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya)
131

lieved in the "inheritance of acquired traits." When Lysenko's myth was
applied to Soviet agriculture, the losses were immense.
But Mao did not learn from this disaster of the Stalinist period—on
the contrary he and his supporters, educated from their youth on a strict
Darwinism, continued to believe in "proletarian science" and to distort
real science, according to the requisites of the theory of evolution. The
Great Leap imitated Lysenko's model, and Chinese peasants were
forced to perform agriculture according to principles of "evolutionist sci-
ence."
Jasper Becker, Beijing bureau chief of South China Morning Post, in
his book entitled Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, relates in detail
the Lysenkoist agricultural enterprise put into effect during the Great
Leap. These attempts, each of which resulted in a separate disaster,
were:
Close Planting: Lysonko, thinking that seeds evolve by adapting to
their habitat, declared that planting seeds very close together would cre-
ate "socialist solidarity" among them. The Maoists undertook to apply
this myth. Until that time, in Southern China, about 1.5 million seeds
were sown on any one acre of land. In 1958, the Communists ordered
this amount to be increased to between 6 and 7 million seeds. In 1959,
they again increased the amount, to between 12 and 15 million. As a re-
sult, a very large number of seeds went to waste, and agricultural pro-
duction suffered a severe decline.
Deep Plowing: One of Lysenko's assistants, Teventy Maltsev,
claimed that deep plowing would allow plants to establish better root
systems. Chinese Communists adopted and applied this Lamarckist
claim. During the Great Leap, Chinese peasants were ordered to plow
their fields to a depth of 1.5 meters. As a result, tens of millions of peas-
ants were forced to spend months hoeing. Again, the outcome was great
loss of production, resulting in famine.
The Sparrow Hunt: Mao initiated a campaign to eliminate various
species of animals that damaged agricultural production. Sparrows be-
came the main target of this campaign. Special methods were employed
to hunt and kill sparrows throughout the whole of China. But as a result,
there was an explosion in the number of insects and other pests that the