There is a third possible motive – that Ivanov’s research was part of an ambitious plan to transform society. Though the guise of overturning religion was the argument that earned approval for Ivanov’s ethically-dubious research, Pain suggests that the real reason compelling the work may have been even darker. In 1910, he told a gathering of zoologists that it might even be possible to create hybrids between humans and their closest relatives.” Using his mastery of artificial insemination, he had “produced a zeedonk (zebra-donkey hybrid), a zubron (European bison-cow cross) and various combinations of rats, mice, guinea pigs and rabbits. Ivanov’s quest for hybridization was not without precedent. Eventually, he had to seek volunteers.Īccording to Pain, Russia’s scientists disapproved of Ivanov’s quest. Originally, Ivanov wanted to force the procedure on an unsuspecting woman. “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,” says Etkind. ![]() And famed Russian zoologist Ilia Ivanov, an expert in artificial insemination and a man “hell-bent on breeding a creature that was half man, half ape,” knew how to take advantage of that political push, Stephanie Pain wrote in New Scientist a few years ago. Ivanov pitched his pet project to the Russian Academy of Sciences as a way to ‘prove Darwin right’ and “strike a blow against religion.” Supported and financed by the Bolshevik government, Ivanov set off for Africa to catch some chimpanzees and orangutans and, he hoped, to use one to artificially inseminate a human woman. ![]() In 1926, less than a decade after the Russian revolution, Russia’s Bolshevik party-which went on to become the Communist Part of the Soviet Union-was seeking to stamp out religion, a perceived threat to the party’s power.
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