Evolutionary Theory and The Political Left - Lysenkoism

Lysenkoism

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Soviet Union became the world's first communist state. Parallel to that state's development was the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis and the end of the eclipse of Darwinism. Lysenkoism was a campaign against genetics that was orchestrated by the non-scientific agronomist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898–1976) and supported by Stalin. Lysenko was the leading proponent of the ideas of Ivan Michurin, a form of Lamarckism, during the early years of the Soviet Union. Lysenko's "science" of agriculture was anti-genetic, instead proposing change in species through hybridization and grafting.

Lysenko began his campaign in 1928, as an unknown agronomist who "invented" a new agricultural technique, vernalization (using humidity and low temperatures to make wheat grow in spring). He promised to triple or quadruple yields using his technique. In reality, the technique was neither new (it was known since 1854, and was extensively studied during the previous 20 years) nor useful.

Soviet mass-media presented Lysenko as a genius who developed a new, revolutionary technique. Between 1934 and 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's blessings, many geneticists were executed (including Israel Agol, Solomon Levit, Nikolai Vavilov, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps (including the most well-known Soviet geneticist, Nikolai Vavilov, who was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943). Genetics was stigmatized as a "fascist science" and "bourgeois science". Some geneticists, however, survived and continued to work in genetics, dangerous as it was.

In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience"; all geneticists were fired from work (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. Nikita Khrushchev also valued Lysenko as a great scientist, and the taboo on genetics continued through the 1950s (but all geneticists were released or rehabilitated posthumously). Only in the middle of the 1960s was it waived.

Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to admit to having made a mistake even in the face of agricultural disaster. Lysenkoism also spread to China, where it continued long after it was eventually denounced by the Soviets.