Stalin's government received information about the political and economic situation in the countryside through the reports prepared by the security service VChK-OGPU-NKVD. This article reveals that these reports ( svodkas in Russian) strain to rhetorically construct a social classification of the peasantry by dividing it into the kulaks (wealthy peasants hostile to Soviet power), the bednyaks (poor peasants supporting Soviet power), and the serednyaks (peasants of average means with uncertain attitudes to the regime). The svodkas persuaded their audience—the secret police and the governments—of the reality of this tripartite classification. This persuasion derived from their massiveness, secretiveness, and mixture of ideological and technical language. Since these conditions inhere in modern governmental, technical, and scientific discourse, the writers for these fields should be aware that when they engage in constructing order through classification, they face temptations of what Kenneth Burke calls rhetoric of hierarchy with its scapegoat principle.

The author of this book provides a successful rhetorical analysis of Lysenkoist discourse by examining two speeches given by T.D. Lysenko in 1936 and 1948. Stanchevici (who is from Moldova, which was once a part of the Soviet Union) uses his background and education in professional writing and rhetoric to add unique insights to this analysis. The book begins with an introduction to Lysenkoist science, categorizing its rhetoric as political propaganda that sustained itself by its opposition to Mendelian genetics. The author provides a thorough background on Lysenkoist themes. These themes include: the orrespondence of Lysenkoism and classical genetics to Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism, the fitting of Lysenkoism and genetics into the dominant ideology of Stalinist Russia. The author achieves his overall purpose in showing how Lysenko's manipulative rhetoric was able to prevail over Mendelian genetics for a time. Stalinist Genetics provides readers with a thorough analysis and background in order to understand the controversy surrounding Lysenkoism. In a time where politics are intertwined with many aspects of our lives, this book reminds scientists and rhetoricians of the danger of manipulative rhetoric and the negative influences that can result when combining politics and science. REFERENCES [1] Z. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1969, Trans. by I.M. Werner