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Lysenkoism was a political campaign led by the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century, rejecting natural selection in favour of a form of Lamarckism, as well as expanding upon the techniques of vernalization and grafting.
More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Soviet Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, who had been Lysenko's mentor, but later denounced him, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.
The government of the Soviet Union (USSR) supported the campaign, and Joseph Stalin personally edited a speech by Lysenko in a way that reflected his support for what would come to be known as Lysenkoism, despite his skepticism toward Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-orientated in nature. Lysenko served as the director of the USSR's VASKhNIL. Other countries of the Eastern Bloc including the People's Republic of Poland, the Republic of Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees, as did the People's Republic of China for some years.
Some Marxists, however, perceived a fissure between Marxism and Darwinism. Specifically, the issue is that while the "struggle for survival" in Marxism applies to a social class as a whole (the Class conflict), the struggle for survival in Darwinism is decided by individual Random Mutation. This was deemed a Liberalism doctrine, against the Marxist framework of "immutable laws of history" and the spirit of collectivism. In contrast, Lamarckism proposed that an organism can somehow pass on characteristics that it has acquired during its lifetime to its offspring, implying that changing the body can affect the genetic material in the germ line. To these Marxists, a "neo-Lamarckism" was deemed more compatible with Marxism.
Marxism–Leninism, which became the official ideology in Stalin's USSR, incorporated Darwinian evolution as a foundational doctrine, providing a scientific basis for its state atheism. Initially, the Lamarckian principle of inheritance of acquired traits was considered a legitimate part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin himself supported it. Although the Mendelian view had largely replaced Lamarckism in western biology by 1925, it persisted in Soviet doctrine. Besides the fervent "old style" Darwinism of Marx and Engels which included elements of Lamarckism, two fallacious experimental results supported it in the USSR. First, Ivan Pavlov, who discovered conditioned reflex, announced in 1923 that it can be inherited in mice; and his subsequent withdrawal of this claim was ignored by Soviet ideologists. Second, Ivan Michurin interpreted his work on plant breeding as proof of the inheritance of acquired traits. Michurin advocated directed plant breeding by environmental control: "We cannot wait for favors from nature: we must wrest them from her".
Kliment Timiryazev, a popularizer of science in Russia, had sympathies with communism, and allied with the new Soviet republic. This made his views more orthodox and widely known. When gene theory rose in early 1900s, some gene theorists promoted saltative mutationism as an alternative to gradualist Darwinism, and Timiriazev vigorously argued against it. Timiryazev's views influenced many, including Michurin.
Soviet agriculture around 1930 was in a crisis due to Stalin's forced collectivisation of farms and extermination of kulak farmers. The resulting Soviet famine of 1932–1933 provoked the government to search for a technical solution which would maintain their central political control.
Lysenko claimed that the concept of a gene was a "bourgeois invention", and he denied the presence of any "immortal substance of heredity" or "clearly defined species", which he claimed belong to Platonic metaphysics rather than strictly materialist Marxist science. Instead, he proposed a "Marxist genetics" postulating an unlimited possibility of transformation of living organisms through environmental changes in the spirit of Marxian dialectical transformation, and in parallel to the Party's program of creating the New Soviet Man and subduing nature for his benefit. Lysenko refused to admit Evolution, stating that "science is the enemy of randomness".
Lysenko further claimed that Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics occurred in plants, as in the "eyes" of potato , though the genetic differences in these plant parts were already known to be non-heritable . He also claimed that when a tree is Grafting, the scion permanently changes the heritable characteristics of the stock. In modern biological theory, such a change is theoretically possible through horizontal gene transfer; however, there is no evidence that this actually occurs, and Lysenko rejected the mechanism of genes entirely.
Lysenko's political success was mostly due to his appeal to the Communist Party and Soviet ideology. His attack on the "bourgeois pseudoscience" of modern genetics and the proposal that plants can rapidly adjust to a changed environment suited the Class conflict in both agriculture and Soviet society. 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 was an enthusiastic advocate of Leninism. The Party-controlled newspapers applauded Lysenko's practical "success" and questioned the motives of his critics, ridiculing the timidity of academics who urged the patient, impartial observation required for science. Lysenko was admitted into the hierarchy of the Communist Party, and was put in charge of agricultural affairs.
He used his position to denounce biologists as "fly-lovers and people haters", Epistemology and the Social, Evandro Agazzi, Javier Echeverría, Amparo Gómez Rodríguez, Rodopi, 2008, "Philosophy", p. 149 and to decry traditional biologists as "wreckers" working to sabotage the Soviet economy. He denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology, and rejected general methods such as control groups and statistics:
Lysenko presented himself as a follower of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, a well-known and well-liked Soviet horticulture, but unlike Michurin, Lysenko insisted on using only non-genetic techniques such as Heterosis and grafting.
Support from Joseph Stalin increased Lysenko's popularity. In 1935, Lysenko compared his opponents in biology to the peasants who still resisted the Soviet government's collectivization strategy, saying that by opponents of his theories were opponents of Marxism. Stalin was in the audience for this speech, and was the first to stand and applaud, calling out "Bravo, Comrade Lysenko. Bravo." Stalin personally made encouraging edits to a speech by Lysenko, despite the dictator's skepticism toward Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-orientated. The official support emboldened Lysenko and gave him and Prezent free rein to slander any geneticists who still spoke out against him. After Lysenko became head of the VASKhNIL, classical genetics began to be called "fascist science" and many of Lysenkoism's opponents, such as his former mentor Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, were imprisoned or executed, although not on Lysenko's personal orders.
During 1947 October, Lysenko and Stalin exchanged multiple letters. Lysenko promised Stalin to breed branching wheat into a yield of 15,000 kg/ha. At that time, the most productive wheat breed under exceptionally favorable conditions could achieve 2,000 kg/ha.
Mendelism-Morganism, Weissmanist neo-Darwinism ... are not developed in Western capitalist countries for the purposes of agriculture, but rather serve reactionary purposes of eugenics, racism, etc. There is no relationship between agricultural practices and the theory of bourgeois genetics.
Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko, and criticism was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist". The Ministry of Higher Education commanded all biological institutes to immediately follow the Lysenko orthodoxy:Kaftanoff S, 1948, Order of the USSR Ministry of Higher Education no. 1208, August 23, 1948 On the state of teaching of biological disciplines in the universities and measures to strengthen the biological faculties by qualified staff of biologists-Michurinists (in Russian).
The Central University Administration and the Administration of Cadres are directed to review within two months all departments of biological faculties to free them from all opposed to Michurinist biology and to strengthen them by appointing Michurinists to them.For several months, similar central directives dismissed scientists, withdrew textbooks, and required the removal of any references to heredity in higher education. There was also an order to destroy all stocks of Drosophila (the model organism for genetics studies). (p. 125) Leading geneticists were being monitored by secret agents from the State Security Service. (p. 129)Point 6 of the Order No. 1208 (August 23, 1948) (trans. p. 125)
The same wave of propaganda supported a number of other Pseudoscience "new Marxist sciences" in the Soviet academy, in fields such as Japhetic theory and art. Pravda reported the invention of a perpetual motion engine, confirming Engels' claim that Entropy in one place must concentrate somewhere else. Lysenko's journal Agrobiology published reports of wheat turning into rye, cabbages into rutabaga, etc.
In 1948, the film Michurin portrayed Michurin as an ideal Soviet scientist, bringing the propaganda to the masses. Published songbooks included songs praising Lysenko, "He walks the Michurin path/With firm tread;/He protects us from being duped/by Mendelist-Morganists." (p. 132)
In Lysenko and his followers' political claim, the "Weismannist-Mendelist-Morganist" theory was reactionary and idealistic, a tool of the bourgeois, while the "Michurinist" theory was progressive and materialistic. The victory of Michurinism was framed as a victory of socialism over capitalism. Some even traced Hitler's racial policies to the genetic theory. (pp. 119-121)
A prominent promoter of Lysenkoism was the biologist Olga Lepeshinskaya, who attempted to demonstrate abiogenesis of cells and tissues from "vital substance". She delivered a speech in 1950 in which she equated all of the "bourgeois" Heresy:
Perhaps the only opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to escape liquidation were from the small community of Soviet Nuclear physics: according to Tony Judt, "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."
From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Izrail Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to . The famous Soviet geneticist and president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943. In 1936, the American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller, who had moved to the Leningrad Institute of Genetics with his Drosophila fruit flies, was criticized as bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, and a promoter of fascism, and he returned to America via Republican Spain. Iosif Rapoport, who worked on mutagens, refused to publicly repudiate chromosome theory of heredity, and suffered several years as a geological lab assistant. Dmitry Sabinin's book on plant physiology was abruptly withdrawn from publication in 1948. He died by suicide in 1951.
Those who supported Lysenkoism were favored. Alexander Oparin vigorously defended Lysenkoism and was politically favored, although he may have been genuine in his belief, as he continued to defend it even in 1955, after its fall.
Inspired by the success of Lysenkoism and the 1948 VASKhNIL session, other fields of Soviet science experienced brief revolutions, albeit with less success: against "Pavlovians" in medicine, against "reactionary Einsteinism" in physics and quantum mechanics, and against Pauling resonance theory in chemistry.
In addition to the biological sciences, Lysenkoism had an impact on geological sciences, especially paleontology and biostratigraphy in the USSR. The State of Geological Sciences in the USSR by the Mid-Twentieth Century // Chinese Annals of History of Science and Technology. 2024. Volume 8, Issue 1 P. 125-130.
Lysenkoism was never dominant in the West, and during the 1960s, it increasingly was seen as pseudoscience. Soviet scientists noticed the great advance in molecular biology, such as the characterization of DNA, and even hold-out Lysenkoists were starting to accept DNA as the material basis for heredity (though they still rejected gene theory).
This theory also explains vegetative hybridization, as the heredity in the scion may diffuse into the stock, resulting in a change in the stock's offspring. The vegetative hybridization theory was further tested on animals by injecting blood, for example, by injecting blood from colored chicken into a white chicken. It was claimed that the white chicken's offspring showed partly and fully colors. However, such claims were rejected by Western scientists. The plant hybridization experiments did not replicate, and the chicken experiment did not control for recessive alleles.
Lysenko also proposed a form of Lamarckian heterochrony. An individual plant develops in stages, depending on its environment. A change in environment can speed up or slow down the stages, and result in downstream effects that are then inherited. This theory justified Lysenkoist plant-breeding practices.
As Darwin proposed the pangenesis theory, this partly redeems Darwin for Lysenko, though the historical correctness of Darwin was demoted in comparison with Lamarck's.
Communist Czechoslovakia adopted Lysenkoism in 1949. The prominent geneticist Jaroslav Kříženecký (1896–1964) criticized Lysenkoism in his lectures, and 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"; he was imprisoned in 1958.
In East Germany, although Lysenkoism was taught at some universities, it had very little impact on science due to the actions of a few scientists, such as the geneticist Hans Stubbe, and scientific contact with West Berlin research institutions. Nonetheless, Lysenkoist theories were found in schoolbooks as late as the dismissal of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.
Lysenkoism dominated Chinese science from 1949 until 1956, during which open discussion of alternative theories like classical Mendelian genetics was forbidden. Only in 1956 during a genetics symposium opponents of Lysenkoism were permitted to freely criticize it and argue for Mendelian genetics. 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". For a while, both schools were permitted to coexist, although the influence of the Lysenkoists remained large for several years, contributing to the Great Famine through loss of yields.
Almost alone among Western scientists, John Desmond Bernal, Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, London, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a communist, made an aggressive public defence of Lysenko.Maurice Goldsmith (1980). 009139550X, Hutchinson. 009139550X
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