Ivanov’s ape-human hybrid project—Why?
A researcher says that archived documents shed light on the motives behind the ‘forgotten
scandal’ of ‘Stalin’s mutant ape army’
by David Catchpoole
Published: 11 November 2008; republished 2 September 2009(GMT+10)
Image Wikipedia
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov
A decade ago, when the newly opened Russian government archives revealed details
of biologist Ilia Ivanov’s attempts to create an ape-human hybrid in the 1920s,
it made international headlines. Why had Ivanov’s project, which included
expensive expeditions into Africa, been both sanctioned and financed by the Bolshevik
government at a time when few Russians were allowed to leave the country? Some suggested
that the military commanders aimed to breed super-strong hairy ape-man warriors
for what The Sun in London referred to as ‘Stalin’s mutant
ape army’.1 However,
neither Ivanov’s nor the government’s actual motives for the project
were spelled out clearly in the archive documents.
Ivanov’s approach to the government stressed how proving Darwin right would
strike a blow against religion
University of Cambridge specialist in Russian history, Soviet-born Alexander Etkind,
in a recent journal paper entitled ‘Beyond
eugenics: The forgotten scandal of hybridizing humans and apes’, believes
he has the answer.2 Etkind
says that when Ivanov put his proposal to the authorities, he painted it as the
experiment that would prove men had evolved from apes. (But see box: ‘The
limits of hybridisation’.)
‘If he crossed an ape and a human and produced viable offspring then that
would mean Darwin was right about how closely related we are,’ Etkind says.
Ivanov’s approach to the government stressed how proving Darwin right would
strike a blow against religion—Ivanov of course knowing that religion
was something the authorities ‘were struggling to stamp out’.
Image Wikipedia
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1878–1953)
Etkind’s observations bear out our earlier article about Ivanov (see
Stalin’s ape-man superwarriors—Creation 29(1):32–33,
2006) and information provided subsequently by a correspondent (see
Reader feedback: Stalin’s ape-men experiment had anti-God motives).
Note that it wasn’t only the Bolshevik government that financed Ivanov’s
vision. Etkind writes that when news of Ivanov’s proposal reached USA shores
in the 1920s, ‘The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism announced
its fund-raising campaign to support Ivanov’s project but gave it a scandalously
racist interpretation.’
Scandalously racist? Actually, racism is a logical outflow of evolutionary
teaching (see, e.g., The
fallacy of racism, and Darwinism’s
influence on modern racists and white supremacist groups: the case of David Duke).
Therein lies the real scandal.
The limits of hybridization
‘Tigger’ (above), belongs to Camilla Maluotoga, from New Mexico in the
USA, and is the name she gave to this cross between a horse and a zebra, known as
a zorse.
Ilia Ivanov was initially not regarded as a crank, having established something
of a reputation for himself as a successful breeder of hybrid animals using AI (artificial
insemination) techniques.
Notably, he produced a zeedonk (zebra-donkey hybrid), a zubron (European bison-cow
hybrid) and various combinations of rats, mice, guinea pigs and rabbits.
Thus having established credibility, he told a gathering of zoologists in 1910 that
he believed it might even be possible to create hybrids between humans and ‘their
closest relatives’, by which he meant apes.
The fundamental flaw in Ivanov’s argument is that he failed to recognize (or,
at least, acknowledge) that zebras and donkeys, although labeled as being different
species, are in fact members of the same originally created kind.
Similarly bison, yaks and other cattle are descendants of the same created aurochs
kind. But the limits of hybridization are clearly such that different kinds
of creatures cannot be hybridized with one another—e.g. one cannot cross an
antelope with a pig, nor a panda with an aardvark. But it is possible to hybridise
lions and tigers, and dolphins and killer whales—see
Don Batten’s classic article
Ligers and Wholphins? What next? for more on this subject.
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Related articles
Further reading
References
- Pain, S., The forgotten scandal of the Soviet ape-man,
NewScientist.com
news service, <http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19926701.000-the-forgotten-scandal-of-the-soviet-apeman.html>,
20 August 2008, and published in print edition as: How to breed a model
citizen, New Scientist 199(2670):48–49, 23 August
2008. Return to text.
- Etkind, A., Beyond eugenics: the forgotten scandal
of hybridizing humans and apes, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological
and Biomedical Sciences 39(2):205–210, 2008.
Return to text.
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