Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom: Letter no. 1

I have finally obtained a copy of Andrei D. Sakharov's Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom. Although it's a bit outdated, some of Sakharov's fundamental ideas are still widely known today. I'm highly interested in some of the points Sakharov brings and Salisbury's contribution to this essay. Hopefully it'll be an influential read!

In the introduction, Salisbury brings up a situation that took place in the scientific world of the Soviet Union. He explained that many brilliant scientists were sent to exile or death due to their contradictions against Soviet ideologies. It revolved around a battle between those who supported the classical (and might I say, most logical) genetic theories of Mendel and Morgan vs. Michurin's belief in the environment's ability to change the heredity of plants. Here is an example:
[...]by exposing wheat seeds to cold, he contended, a strain more resistant to cold might be developed.
His theories were taken up by Trofim D. Lysenko, who eventually won Stalin's support and appointed a "dictator of the sciences". Under his wing, classical theories and teaches have been poisoned with his senseless crap and many intellectuals were sent to gulag or the execution wall with the help of Stalin and his secret police.

It is apparently futile only to insist that the more backward countries restrict their birthrates. What is needed most of all is economic and technical assistance to these countries. This assistance must be of such scale and generosity that it is absolutely impossible before the estrangement in the world and the egotistical, narrow-minded approach to relations between nations and races is eliminated...Chances in the economic situation of underdeveloped countries would solve the problem of high birthrates [...] without the barbaric method of sterilization...Therefore, government policy, legislation on the family and marriage, and propaganda should not encourage an increase in the birthrates of advanced countries while demanding that it be curtailed in underdeveloped countries that are receiving assistance.

Chapter 4: Hunger and Overpopulation (and the psychology of racism)
Our world population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and there's no doubt that this increase will continue in future generations. Here, Sakharov states that in order to control these ridiculously high birthrates (particularly in poorer countries) is to receive support from higher countries (like the States).