Lysenko was a soviet agronomist who developed the idea that plants and crops could be trained to grow in climates that were not hospitable. Lysenkoan theory follows Lamark's theories of evolution, rather than Darwin's. Lysenkoism gained favor from Stalin, and caused some massive crop failures and ecological destruction. This is at least partly responsible for the sorry state of soviet and post-soviet agriculture. Believed man could change nature. Silly man.

Lysenko also represents problems beyond planning of future, which I would like to call 'futuricism'. Just like bureaucratic machine of SU with their five years plans Lysenko produced a vast amount of plans for future and, most importantly, none of these was carried out properly.

With the aid of few simple tricks Lysenko managed to make it look like birches produced apples and oranges would flourish in Siberia. This new "science" was called agrobiology or Mintshurian biology.

Now, after the Soviet collapse, the newspaper of Russian government "Rossiiskaja Gazeta" wrote an article about Lysenko, titled: The struggle was clear beforehand. The only weapon of researchers of genetics was the truth but Lysenko had executioners."

These were words used to recall the conference about 50 years ago that effectively put the stop for Soviet biology and genetics for two decades. Almost every serious researcher lost their jobs, many were imprisoned and some exterminated. The ideological nonsense replaced science.

Trofim Lysenko was in favour of the party since middle 30's and his "glamorous" career was based on two innovations. He rightly guessed that after catastrophical collectivization of agriculture special tricks were needed. He also guessed that leaders of the party couldn't resist ideological rhetoric that looked like science.

Lysenko promised to refine incredibly fruitful cattle and crops and put Darwinism and genetics in the light of bourgeoisie humbug.

It was late until 1974 when Soviet encyclopedia wrote: "Some statements and suggestions put forward by Lysenko remained experimentally unproved and they weren't implemented in full scale afterall."
However, it still wasn't appropriate to put a reference to the liquidation of science nor scientists.

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