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History
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The Cult of Lysenko: How Pseudoscience and Political Power Starved Millions
Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist, rejected genetics for his own pseudoscientific theories. Backed by Stalin, his policies, like planting seeds densely, were forced upon farmers, leading to catastrophic crop failures and contributing to devastating famines in the USSR and China.
The Rise of a Peasant Scientist
In the turbulent early years of the Soviet Union, a figure emerged who promised to revolutionize agriculture and feed the masses: Trofim Lysenko. Born to a peasant family in Ukraine, Lysenko lacked a formal scientific education but possessed immense ambition and a knack for political maneuvering. He presented himself as a practical man of the soil, a stark contrast to the 'ivory tower' geneticists he would soon seek to destroy. His early work on a process called 'vernalization'—exposing seeds to cold and moisture to increase yields—gained him national attention and, crucially, the ear of Joseph Stalin.
A War on Genetics
At the heart of Lysenko's ideology, which became known as Lysenkoism, was a complete rejection of Mendelian genetics. He dismissed the existence of genes as a 'bourgeois' fiction invented by Western scientists. Instead, he championed a form of Lamarckism, the long-discredited idea that organisms can pass on acquired characteristics to their offspring. He argued that by changing a plant's environment, its very nature could be permanently altered in a single generation.
His most infamous theory was that plants from the same 'class' do not compete with one another, but rather cooperate for the common good. This directly contradicted fundamental principles of biology, but it perfectly mirrored Soviet collectivist ideology. Based on this, he mandated that seeds be planted extremely close together, believing that this socialist-style 'cooperation' would lead to bumper crops. He also promoted other scientifically baseless practices, such as burying manure deep in frozen soil and stripping trees of their leaves.
Ideology Over Evidence
Lysenko's ideas flourished not because they were sound, but because they were politically useful. They offered simple, fast solutions to the USSR's chronic food shortages and aligned with the Marxist belief that nature, like society, could be reshaped by revolutionary will. Stalin's backing made Lysenko untouchable. With state power behind him, Lysenko launched a brutal campaign against mainstream genetics. Scientists who dared to disagree were publicly denounced, fired from their posts, and arrested. The brilliant botanist Nikolai Vavilov, who had assembled the world's largest collection of plant seeds, was labeled an enemy of the people, arrested in 1940, and died of starvation in prison. Lysenko's grip was absolute; for nearly three decades, genetics was effectively outlawed in the USSR.
The English biologist Julian Huxley noted that Lysenkoism was "not a scientific discipline at all, but a branch of the Communist party line."
The Harvest of Famine
The real-world application of Lysenko's theories was catastrophic. The practice of dense planting, his signature policy, led to disaster. Instead of 'cooperating', the crowded seedlings competed fiercely for sunlight, water, and soil nutrients. The result was stunted plants and drastically reduced yields. Farmers who had for generations understood proper spacing were forced to adopt methods that defied all logic and experience.
These failed agricultural experiments contributed significantly to the severity of famines in the Soviet Union. The damage was not contained to the USSR; in the 1950s, Mao Zedong adopted Lysenko's methods across China during the Great Leap Forward. The policies of close planting and deep plowing were implemented on a massive scale, playing a key role in creating the Great Chinese Famine, a man-made disaster that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.
A Lasting Legacy of Lies
After Stalin's death, Lysenko's influence began to wane, but he clung to power under Nikita Khrushchev for a time. By the mid-1960s, the full extent of the agricultural and scientific damage became undeniable, and he was finally disgraced. The legacy of Lysenkoism is a chilling cautionary tale. It demonstrates the profound danger of elevating political ideology above scientific evidence. By replacing genetics with pseudoscience, Trofim Lysenko did not revolutionize agriculture; he crippled it, setting Soviet biology and crop production back by decades and leaving a trail of persecution and starvation that stands as one of the darkest chapters in the history of science.