Books: The Brothers Medvedev

A QUESTION OF MADNESS by Zhores and Roy Medvedev. 223 pages. Knopf. $5.95.

The Medvedev twins have punched some embarrassing small holes in their country's bureaucracy. Zhores, a biochemist and sociologist of science, made influential enemies with his book The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko (Columbia University Press, 1969). Drawing upon his personal experience as a devoted Marxist working within the Soviet scientific establishment, he fashioned a dispassionate piece of scholarship about Stalin's quack biologist and agronomist, whose theories hobbled Russia's economy for more than a generation.

Roy Medvedev, 46, a historian...

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