Nobody Does Enhancement Like Stalin

Yes, it's true, Stalin was no genius. But he thought big thoughts. Like this brilliant idea,

... a secret plan to create hordes of half-man half-ape super-warriors to conquer the rest of world. If successful, the plan would have seen humans and chimpanzees cross-breeding to create a new race of "living war machines", which ignored pain and fear and which thrived on hardship...

Stalin threw scientists and other genetic experts into the program, providing lavish resources and funding in a bid to achieve early results. "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat," Stalin said, quoted by Moscow newspapers.

His cronies were not slow in supporting him. In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine".

The Soviets drafted their top animal-breeding expert into the program. Ilya Ivanov, who previously had set up the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses, set off for West Africa to conduct his first experiments in inseminating chimpanzees.

Meeting little success, Ivanov turned his efforts around, setting up a facility in Stalin's home republic of Georgia to fertilise human volunteers with monkey and ape sperm. Not surprisingly, the efforts were a total failure...

And the reward for failing Stalin? You guessed it.

For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform.

- Art Caplan