White Robes

A suspenseful work based on documentary accounts of the clash in Soviet science in the 1940s–1950s between genuine geneticists and ignorant opportunists—supporters of the “academic-agronomist” T. D. Lysenko, who claimed that with proper care rye could be turned into wheat; and of how, under the atmosphere of total dominance of the latter and with unexpected backing from certain representatives of various social strata, the former continue their experiments in secret, wearing the forced mask of conformism and thereby explaining the phenomenon of total hypocrisy and the “double” existence of people in Soviet society.

For this novel, the writer was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1988.