Lysenkoism

Lysenkoism was a false scientific idea promoted in the Soviet Union by a man named Trofim Lysenko in the 1920s and 1930s. Lysenko rejected real genetics, the science discovered by Gregor Mendel, which showed how traits like eye color or plant height are inherited through genes. Instead, Lysenko believed in an older idea called Lamarckian evolution, which said that traits a plant or animal picked up during its life (like being exposed to cold) could be passed on to its offspring. This matched the beliefs of the Soviet government, which wanted to believe that both nature and people could be shaped and controlled by hard work and communist values.[1][2]

One of Lysenko's main ideas was vernalization, a process where seeds were exposed to cold and moisture before planting. He claimed this would make plants grow better, but his methods did not actually work in most cases and caused crops to fail. Still, because he supported the Communist Party and Joseph Stalin, Lysenko became very powerful. He called scientists who disagreed with him “enemies” or “traitors,” saying they were using science to support unfair capitalist systems.[3]

In 1940, Lysenko became head of the Soviet Union’s top genetics institute. From that position, he helped remove, punish, or even kill scientists who did not agree with him. One of the most tragic cases was Nikolai Vavilov, a brilliant scientist who collected thousands of plant seeds from around the world to help fight hunger. Vavilov disagreed with Lysenko and was arrested, put in prison, and later died of starvation in 1943.[3]

Because of Lysenko, real genetics was banned in the Soviet Union. Textbooks were rewritten, labs were closed, and science journals were censored. Thousands of scientists were fired, sent to labor camps, or executed. As a result, Soviet biology stopped making progress for many years.[4] These bad policies even helped cause a deadly famine in 1946–47, where over a million people died from hunger, partly because of Lysenko’s failed farming ideas.[5]

Even when the rest of the world saw that Lysenko was wrong, he kept his position until the mid-1960s. He stayed in power because later leaders like Nikita Khrushchev also supported him. Finally, after scientists pushed to bring back real genetics, Lysenko was removed in 1965.[6] Lysenko’s ideas spread to other countries too. In China, early communist leaders followed similar anti-genetics beliefs, which delayed progress in science and farming there as well.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Sojfer, Valerij Nikolaevič; Soyfer, Valery N.; Lysenko, Trofim Denisovič; Gruliow, Leo (1994). Lysenko and the tragedy of Soviet science. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-2087-2.
  2. ↑ Graham, Loren R. (1993). Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: a short history. Cambridge history of science. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-24566-1.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Lysenko Affair | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2025-07-28.
  4. ↑ Krementsov, N. L. (1997). Stalinist Science. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-02877-4.
  5. ↑ Conquest, Robert (1987). The harvest of sorrow: Soviet collectivization and the terror-famine (1. issued as an Oxford Univ. press paperback ed.). New York: Oxford Univ. Pr. ISBN 978-0-19-505180-3.
  6. ↑ Borinskaya, Svetlana A.; Ermolaev, Andrei I.; Kolchinsky, Eduard I. (2019). "Lysenkoism Against Genetics: The Meeting of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of August 1948, Its Background, Causes, and Aftermath". Genetics. 212 (1): 1–12. doi:10.1534/genetics.118.301413. ISSN 1943-2631. PMC 6499510. PMID 31053614.
  7. ↑ "China - Changes under Mao III: Agriculture 1950-62". www.johndclare.net. Retrieved 2025-07-28.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.