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'''Lysenkoism''' (<small>Russian:</small> Лысе́нковщина) was a political campaign against [[genetics]] and science-based [[agriculture]] conducted by [[Trofim Lysenko]], his followers and Soviet authorities. Lysenko was the director of the [[Soviet Union]]'s [[VASKhNIL|Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences]]. Lysenkoism began in the late 1920s and formally ended in 1964. The term ''Lysenkoism'' is also used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.<ref>[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/view.html?pg=4], [http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_ghost_of_lysenko.html].</ref>

The pseudo-scientific ideas of Lysenkoism were built on [[Lamarckism|Lamarckan]] [[Inheritance of acquired characteristics|heritability of acquired characteristics]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lysenkoism|title=Lysenkoism|work=merriam-webster.com}}</ref> Lysenko's theory rejected [[Mendelian inheritance]], the concept of the "gene" and departed from Darwinian evolutionary theory by rejecting [[natural selection]].<ref name="Perversion of Knowledge" /> Proponents falsely claimed to have discovered, among many other things, that [[rye]] could transform into wheat and wheat into barley, that weeds spontaneously transmute into food grains, and that "natural cooperation" was observed in nature as opposed to "natural selection".<ref name="Perversion of Knowledge">{{cite book|last1=Birstein|first1=Vadim J.|title=The Perversion of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science.|date=2004|publisher=Westview Press|isbn=0813342805}}</ref> Lysenkoism promised extraordinary advances in breeding and agriculture that never came about.

The campaign was supported by [[Joseph Stalin]]. More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were sent to prison, fired, or executed as a part of this campaign instigated by Lysenko to suppress his scientific opponents. The president of the Agriculture Academy was sent to prison and died there, while the scientific research in the field of genetics was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953.<ref name="Perversion of Knowledge" /> Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines was also negatively affected or banned.<ref name="Soyfer Tagedy">{{cite book|last1=Soyfer|first1=Valery N.|title=Lysenko and The Tragedy of Soviet Science|date=1994|publisher=Rutgers Univ. Press|location=New Brunswick, NJ|isbn=0813520878}}</ref>

==In agriculture==
In 1928, [[Trofim Lysenko]], a previously unknown agronomist, claimed to have developed an agricultural technique, termed [[vernalization]], which tripled or quadrupled [[crop yield]] by exposing [[wheat]] seed to high humidity and low temperature. While cold and moisture exposure are a normal part of the life cycle of autumn-seeded winter cereals, the vernalization technique claimed to increase yields by increasing the intensity of exposure, in some cases planting soaked seeds directly into the snow cover of frozen fields. In reality, the technique was neither new (it had been known since 1854, and was extensively studied during the previous twenty years), nor did it produce the yields he promised, although some increase in production did occur.

When Lysenko began his fieldwork in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, the [[Agriculture in the Soviet Union|agriculture of the Soviet Union]] was in a massive crisis due to rapid changes in switching from an agrarian-based economy towards an industrial economy and the liquidation of the [[kulak]]s, leading to mismanagement of [[collective farms]].  The resulting [[Soviet famine of 1932–33|famine]] provoked the people and the government alike to search for any possible solution to the critical lack of food.  Lysenko's vernalization practices yielded marginally greater food production on the farms, and he was quickly accepted as the hero of Soviet agriculture.

Many [[Agronomy|agronomists]] were educated before the [[Russian Revolution (1917)|revolution]], and even many of those educated afterwards did not agree with the forced collectivization policies. Furthermore, among [[biologist]]s of the day, the most popular topic was not agriculture at all, but the new [[genetics]] that was emerging out of studies of ''[[Drosophila melanogaster]]'', commonly known as fruit flies.  [[Drosophilidae|Drosophilid]] flies made experimental verification of genetics theories, such as [[Gregor Mendel|Mendelian ratio]]s and [[heritability]], much easier.

[[Isaak Izrailevich Prezent]], a main Lysenko theorist, presented Lysenko in [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[mass-media]] as a [[genius]] who had developed a new, revolutionary agricultural technique. In this period, Soviet [[propaganda]] often focused on inspirational stories of [[peasant]]s who, through their own canny ability and intelligence, came up with solutions to practical problems. Lysenko's widespread popularity provided him a platform to denounce theoretical genetics and to promote his own agricultural practices. He was, in turn, supported by the Soviet propaganda machine, which overstated his successes and omitted mention of his failures. This was accompanied by fake experimental data supporting Lysenkoism from scientists seeking favor and the destruction of counter-evidence to Lysenko's theories.  Instead of performing controlled experiments, Lysenko claimed that vernalization increased wheat yields by 15%, solely based upon questionnaires taken of farmers.

==Rise==  
Lysenko's political success was mostly due to his appeal to the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Communist Party]] and Soviet ideology. Following the disastrous [[collectivization]] efforts of the late 1920s, Lysenko's "new" methods were seen by Soviet officials as paving the way to an "agricultural revolution". Lysenko himself was from a peasant family, and an enthusiastic advocate of [[Leninism]]. During a period which saw a series of man-made agricultural disasters, he was also extremely fast in responding to problems, although not with real solutions. Whenever the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Party]] announced plans to plant a new crop or [[Tillage|cultivate]] a new area, Lysenko had immediate practical suggestions on how to proceed.

So quickly did he develop his prescriptions—from the cold treatment of grain, to the plucking of leaves from cotton plants, to the cluster planting of trees, to unusual fertilizer mixes—that academic biologists did not have time to demonstrate that one technique was valueless or harmful before a new one was adopted. The Party-controlled newspapers  applauded Lysenko's "practical" efforts and questioned the motives of his critics. Lysenko's "revolution in agriculture" had a powerful propaganda advantage over the academics, who urged the patience and observation required for science.

Lysenko was admitted into the  [[hierarchy]] of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], and was put in charge of agricultural affairs. He used his position to denounce [[biologist]]s as "fly-lovers and people haters,"<ref>''Epistemology and the Social'', Evandro Agazzi, Javier Echeverría, Amparo Gómez Rodríguez, Rodopi, Jan 1, 2008 - Philosophy - 231 pages, [https://books.google.com/books?id=xBvbQgWtgjsC&pg=PA149&dq=fly-lovers+and+%22people+haters%22+%22Lysenko%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-nMvVcfbMNKyogTn24CICA&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA Google books scanned reference], p 149</ref> and to decry the "[[wrecking (Soviet crime)|wreckers]]" in biology, who he claimed were trying to purposely disable the Soviet economy and cause it to fail. Furthermore, he denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology.

Lysenko presented himself as a follower of [[Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin]], a well-known and well-liked Soviet [[horticulture|horticulturist]]. However, unlike Michurin, he advocated a form of [[Lamarckism]], insisting on using only [[Heterosis|hybridization]] and [[grafting]], as  non-genetic techniques. With this came, most importantly, the implication that ''acquired'' characteristics of an organism—for example, the state of being leafless as a result of having been plucked—could be inherited by that organism's descendants.  This is why Lysenko claimed [[vernalization]] would give greater productivity than it did; he believed the ability of his vernalized seeds to flower faster and produce more wheat would be passed on to the next generation of wheat seeds, thus causing vernalization to further amplify the process.

Support from [[Joseph Stalin]] gave Lysenko even more momentum and popularity.  In 1935, Lysenko compared his opponents in biology to the peasants who still resisted the Soviet government's collectivization strategy, saying that by opposing his theories the traditional geneticists were setting themselves against Marxism.  Stalin was in the audience when this speech was made, and he was the first one to stand and applaud, calling out "Bravo, Comrade Lysenko. Bravo."  This event emboldened Lysenko and gave him and his ally Prezent free rein to slander the geneticists who still spoke out against him.  Many of Lysenkoism's opponents, such as his former mentor [[Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov]], were imprisoned or even executed because of Lysenko's and Prezent's denunciations.

On August 7, 1948, the  V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that from that point on Lysenkoism would be taught as "the only correct theory". Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko's research.<ref>Pamela N. Wrinch. "[http://www.jstor.org/pss/2008893 Science and Politics in the U.S.S.R.: The Genetics Debate]". ''[[World Politics]]'', Vol. 3, No. 4 (Jul., 1951), pp. 486-519</ref> Criticism of Lysenko was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist", and analogous "non-bourgeois" theories also flourished in other fields in the Soviet academy at this time (see [[Japhetic theory]]; [[socialist realism]]). Interestingly, perhaps the only opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to escape liquidation came from the small community of Soviet [[Nuclear physics|nuclear physicists]]: as [[Tony Judt]] has observed, "It is significant that Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone and never presumed to second guess ''their'' calculations. Stalin may well have been mad but he was not stupid."<ref name="Judt">Judt, Tony. ''Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945'', (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 174n.</ref>

==Lysenkoism in other countries==

Many other countries of the [[Eastern Bloc]] accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology" as well; however the acceptance of Lysenkoism was not uniform in communist countries. In Poland, all geneticists except for [[Wacław Gajewski]]<ref name="gaj">{{cite journal|journal=The Quarterly Review of Biology|year=1990|volume=65|issue=4|author=Gajewski W.|title=Lysenkoism in Poland|doi=10.1086/416949|pages=423–34|pmid=2082404}}</ref> followed Lysenkoism. Even though Gajewski was not allowed contacts with students, he was allowed to continue his scientific work at the Warsaw botanical garden. Lysenkoism was then rapidly rejected starting from 1956<ref name="gaj"/> and modern genetics research departments were formed, including the first department of genetics headed by Wacław Gajewski, which was started at the [[Warsaw University]] in 1958.

[[Czechoslovakia]] adopted Lysenkoism in 1949. [[Jaroslav Kříženecký]] (1896–1964) was one of the prominent Czechoslovak geneticists opposing Lysenkoism, and when he criticized Lysenkoism in his lectures, he was dismissed from the Agricultural University in 1949 for "serving the established capitalistic system, considering himself superior to the working class, and being hostile to the democratic order of the people", and imprisoned in 1958.<ref>{{cite journal|journal=Quarterly Review of Biology|last=Orel|first=Vitezslav|title=Jaroslav Kříženecký (1896-1964), Tragic Victim of Lysenkoism in Czechoslovakia|volume=67|issue=4|pages=487–494|year=1992|jstor=2832019|doi=10.1086/417797}}</ref> In 1963, he was appointed head of the newly established [[Gregor Mendel]] department in the [[Moravian Museum]] in [[Brno]], the city in which Gregor Mendel pursued his early experiments on inheritance and formulated the laws of [[Mendelian inheritance]].

In the [[German Democratic Republic|GDR]], although Lysenkoism was taught at some of the universities, it had very little impact on science due to the actions of a few scientists (for example, the geneticist and fierce critic of Lysenkoism, [[Hans Stubbe]]) and an open border to [[West Berlin]] research institutions. Nonetheless, Lysenkoist theories were found in schoolbooks until the dismissal of [[Nikita Khrushchev]] in 1964.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1016/S0168-9525(02)02677-X|title=How did East German genetics avoid Lysenkoism?|first=Rudolf|last=Hagemann|journal=Trends in Genetics|volume=18|issue=6|year=2002|pages=320–324|pmid=12044362}}</ref>

Lysenkoism dominated [[People's Republic of China|Chinese]] science from 1948 until 1956, when, during a genetics symposium opponents of Lysenkoism were permitted to freely criticize it and argue for [[Mendelian inheritance|Mendelian genetics]].<ref name="china">{{cite journal|title=Lysenkoism in China|last=Li|first=CC|journal=Journal of Heredity|volume=78|issue=5|page=339|year=1987}}</ref> In the proceedings from the symposium, [[Tan Jiazhen]] is quoted as saying "Since [the] USSR started to criticize Lysenko, we have dared to criticize him too".<ref name="china"/> For a while, both schools were permitted to coexist, although the influence of the Lysenkoists remained large for several years.<ref name="china"/>

==Repercussions==

From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including [[Isaak Agol]], [[Solomon Levit]], [[Grigorii Levitskii]], [[Georgii Karpechenko]] and [[Georgii Nadson]]) or sent to [[labor camp]]s. The famous Soviet geneticist and president of the Agriculture Academy, [[Nikolai Vavilov]], was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943.<ref>Cohen, Barry Mandel. "Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov: the explorer and plant collector" ''Economic Botany'', ''45'' (1991): 38-46.</ref> [[Hermann Joseph Muller]] (and his teachings about genetics) was criticized as a bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, and promoting fascism so he left the USSR, to return to the USA via Republican Spain. In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a [[bourgeois pseudoscience]]";<ref name=gar57>{{cite book | last = Gardner | first = Martin | year = 1957 | title=Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science | publisher=Dover Books | location = New York | url=http://books.google.no/books?id=TwP3SGAUsnkC&lpg=PP1&dq=gardner%20fads%20and%20fallacies&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false | isbn = 9780486131627}}</ref> all geneticists were fired from their jobs (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued.

Over 3,000 biologists were imprisoned, fired, or executed for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism at one time and overall, scientific research in genetics was effectively destroyed  until the death of Stalin in 1953.<ref name="Perversion of Knowledge" /> Due to Lysenkoism, crop yields in the USSR actually declined as well.<ref name="Perversion of Knowledge" /><ref name="Soyfer Tagedy" />

[[Nikita Khrushchev]], who claimed to be an expert in agricultural science{{citation needed|date=March 2015}}, also valued Lysenko as a great scientist, and the taboo on genetics continued (but all geneticists were released or [[Rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitated posthumously]]). The ban was only waived in the mid-1960s.

Almost alone among Western scientists, [[John Desmond Bernal]], Professor of [[Physics]] at [[Birkbeck, University of London|Birkbeck College, University of London]], and a Fellow of the [[Royal Society]], made an aggressive public defense of Lysenko and some years later gave an obituary of "[[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] as a Scientist". However, despite Bernal's endorsement, other members of Britain's scientific community retreated from open support of the Soviet Union.

== Neo-Lysenkoism ==
The word 'Neo-Lysenkoism' has occasionally been used by [[Hereditarianism|hereditarian]] researchers as a pejorative term in the [[race and intelligence controversy|debates over race and intelligence]] and [[sociobiology]] to describe scientists minimizing the role of genes in shaping human behavior, such as [[Leon Kamin]], [[Richard Lewontin]], [[Stephen Jay Gould]] and [[Barry Mehler]].<ref>Pearson, Roger. "Activist Lysenkoism: The Case of Barry Mehler." In ''Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe'' (Washington: Scott-Townsend Publishers, 1997).</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last= Davis|first= Bernard|last2= |first2= |year= 1983|title= Neo-Lysenkoism, IQ, and the press|url= http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/200604071_issue_073_article_3.pdf|journal= [[The Public Interest]]|publisher= [[National Affairs]]|volume= |issue= 73|pages= 41–59|doi= |accessdate=30 November 2013}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Anti-intellectualism]]
* [[Great Leap Forward]]
* [[Japhetic theory]]
* [[Lamarckism]]
* [[Pavlovian session]]
* [[Politicization of science]]
* [[Roy Medvedev]]
* [[Suppressed research in the Soviet Union]]
* [[TRIZ|TRIZM]]
* [[Deutsche Physik]]
* [[List of topics characterized as pseudoscience]]

==References==
{{Reflist|35em}}
*Denis Buican, ''L'éternel retour de Lyssenko'', Paris, Copernic, 1978.
*[[Ronald Fisher]], "What Sort of Man is Lysenko?" ''Listener,'' ''40'' (1948): 874–875 — contemporary commentary by a British evolutionary biologist ([http://wayback.archive.org/web/20090316173453/http://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/coll/special//fisher/229.pdf pdf format])
*Loren Graham, ''Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). ISBN 0-231-06442-X.
*Loren Graham, "Stalinist Ideology and the Lysenko Affair," in ''Science in Russia and the Soviet Union'' (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
*Loren Graham, ''What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience?'' (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1998).
*Loren Graham, ''Science and the Soviet Social Order'' (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002). ISBN 0-674-79420-6.
*Oren Solomon Harman, "C. D. Darlington and the British and American Reaction to Lysenko and the Soviet Conception of Science." ''Journal of the History of Biology'', Vol. 36 No. 2 (New York: Springer, 2003)
*Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr M. Nekrich, ''Utopia In Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present.'' (New York: Summit Books, 1986)
*[[Julian Huxley]], ''Soviet Genetics and World Science'' (Chatto & Windus, 1949).
*David Joravsky, ''The Lysenko Affair'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
*[[Richard Levins]] and Richard Lewontin, "Lysenkoism," in ''The Dialectical Biologist'' (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1985).
*Anton Lang, "Michurin, Vavilov, and Lysenko." ''Science'', Vol. 124 No. 3215 (Washington: American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, 1956)
*Richard Lewontin, "The apportionment of human diversity." ''Evolutionary Biology'', ''6'' (1972): 381-398
*[[Roy Medvedev]], ''Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism.'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989)
*Roger Pearson, "Activist Lysenkoism: The Case of Barry Mehler." In ''Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe'' (Washington: Scott-Townsend Publishers, 1997).
*Valery N. Soyfer, ''Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science'' (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
*Gary Werskey, ''The Visible College: The Collective Biography of British Scientific Socialists During the 1930s'' (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978). ISBN 0-7139-0826-2.
*"The Disastrous Effects of Lysenkoism on Soviet Agriculture." ''Science and its Times'', ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer, Vol. 6. (Detroit: Gale, 2001)

==External links==
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*[http://skepdic.com/lysenko.html SkepDic.com] - 'Lysenkoism', [[The Skeptic's Dictionary]]

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[[Category:Denialism]]
[[Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia]]
[[Category:Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic]]
[[Category:Obsolete biological theories]]
[[Category:Political terminology]]
[[Category:Politics of science]]
[[Category:Pseudoscience]]
[[Category:Science and technology in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Science and technology in Ukraine]]
[[Category:Scientific misconduct]]
[[Category:Soviet phraseology]]
[[Category:Anti-intellectualism]]