Editing Lysenkoism (section)

==Context==
{{Further|Lamarckism|Mendelian inheritance}}

[[File:Weismann's Germ Plasm.svg|thumb|upright=1.5|[[August Weismann]]'s [[germ plasm]] theory stated that the hereditary material, the germ plasm, is transmitted only by the reproductive organs. [[Somatic cell]]s (of the body) [[embryology|develop afresh]] in each generation from the germ plasm. There is no way that changes made to somatic cells can affect the next generation, contrary to [[Lamarckism]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Huxley |first=Julian |author-link=Julian Huxley |year=1942 |title=Evolution, the Modern Synthesis |page=17 |title-link=Evolution, the Modern Synthesis}}</ref>]]

[[Mendelian genetics]], the science of heredity, developed into an experimentally based field of biology at the start of the 20th century through the work of [[August Weismann]], [[Thomas Hunt Morgan]], and others, building on the rediscovered work of [[Gregor Mendel]]. They showed that the characteristics of an [[organism]] are carried by inherited [[gene]]s, which were located on [[chromosome]]s in each cell's [[Cell nucleus|nucleus]]. Genes can be affected by random changes ([[mutation]]s), and can be shuffled and recombined during [[sexual reproduction]], but are otherwise passed on unchanged from parent to [[offspring]]. Beneficial changes can propagate through a population by [[natural selection]] or, in agriculture, by [[plant breeding]].<ref name="Leone 1952"/>

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|class struggle]]), the struggle for survival in Darwinism is decided by individual [[Random Mutation|random mutations]]. This was deemed a [[Liberalism|liberal]] 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.<ref>{{cite web |author-link=Karl Kautsky |date=1989 |editor-last=Kautsky |editor-first=John H. |title=Karl Kautsky: Nature and Society (1929) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1929/12/naturesoc.htm |access-date=21 February 2020 |website=www.marxists.org |quote=Many saw agreement between Darwin and Marx in that each of them regarded struggle as the motor of development, one the class struggle, the other the struggle for existence. But there is a great difference between these two kinds of struggle! ... For Marx, the mass is the carrier of development, for Darwin it is the individual, though not as exclusively as for many of his disciples... A quite individualist conception which corresponded very well to the thought of liberalism that was all-powerful in Darwin’s time and which was therefore easily accepted... A materialist neo-Lamarckism, freed not only of all of the naivete of its origins but also of all mysticism, which some of its followers seek to inject into it, seemed to me to assert in biology the same principles that Marx had revealed for society in the materialist conception of history.}}</ref><!--<ref name="Kolakowski 2005">{{cite book |last=Kolakowski |first=Leszek |title=[[Main Currents of Marxism]] |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=2005 |isbn=978-0393329438 |pages= }}</ref>--><ref name="Leone 1952" /><ref name="Ghiselin1994">{{cite journal |last1=Ghiselin |first1=Michael T. |author-link=Michael T. Ghiselin |title=The Imaginary Lamarck: A Look at Bogus "History" in Schoolbooks |url=http://www.textbookleague.org/54marck.htm |journal=The Textbook Letter |issue=September–October 1994 |date=1994 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20001012042617/http://www.textbookleague.org/54marck.htm |archive-date=12 October 2000 |url-status=usurped |access-date=12 December 2019 }}</ref>

[[Marxism–Leninism]], which became the official ideology in Stalin's USSR, incorporated Darwinian evolution as a foundational doctrine, providing a scientific basis for its [[Marxist–Leninist atheism|state atheism]]. Initially, the Lamarckian principle of inheritance of acquired traits was considered a legitimate part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin himself supported it.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kováč |first=Ladislav |date=2019 |title=Lamarck and Darwin revisited |journal=EMBO Reports |language=en |volume=20 |issue=4 |doi=10.15252/embr.201947922 |issn=1469-221X |pmc=6446194 |pmid=30842100}}</ref> Although the Mendelian view had largely replaced Lamarckism in western biology by 1925,<ref name="Casp" /> 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<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pawlow |first=I. P. |date=1923-11-09 |title=New Researches on Conditioned Reflexes |url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.58.1506.359 |journal=Science |language=en |volume=58 |issue=1506 |pages=359–361 |doi=10.1126/science.58.1506.359 |pmid=17837325 |bibcode=1923Sci....58..359P |issn=0036-8075 |quote=... conditioned reflexes, i.e., the highest nervous activity, are inherited. At present some experiments on white mice have been completed. ... Three hundred times was it necessary to combine the feeding of the mice with the ringing of the bell in order to accustom them to run to the feeding place on hearing the bell ring. ... The fourth generation required only 10 lessons. ... I think it very probable that after some time a new generation of mice will run to the feeding place on hearing the bell with no previous lesson.|url-access=subscription }}</ref> that it can be inherited in mice;<ref name="Casp" /> and his subsequent withdrawal of this claim was ignored by Soviet ideologists.<ref name="Casp" /> Second, [[Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin|Ivan Michurin]] interpreted his work on plant breeding as proof of the inheritance of acquired traits.<ref name="Casp">{{cite journal|last1=Caspari|first1=E. W.|last2=Marshak|first2=R. E.|date=16 July 1965|title=The Rise and Fall of Lysenko|journal=Science|publisher=New Series|volume=149|issue=3681|pages=275–278|doi=10.1126/science.149.3681.275|jstor=1715945|pmid=17838094|bibcode=1965Sci...149..275C}}</ref> Michurin advocated directed plant breeding by environmental control: "We cannot wait for favors from nature: we must wrest them from her".<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Kepley |first=Vance |date=July 1980 |title=The Scientist as Magician: Dovzhenko's Michurin and the Lysenko Cult |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01956051.1980.10661859 |journal=Journal of Popular Film and Television |language=en |volume=8 |issue=2 |pages=19–26 |doi=10.1080/01956051.1980.10661859 |issn=0195-6051|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

[[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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dobzhansky |first=Theodosius |date=May 1949 |title=The Suppression of a Science |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.1949.11457065 |journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |language=en |volume=5 |issue=5 |pages=144–146 |doi=10.1080/00963402.1949.11457065 |bibcode=1949BuAtS...5e.144D |issn=0096-3402|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

[[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.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ellman |first=Michael |date=June 2007 |title=Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited |url=http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman1933.pdf |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |volume=59 |issue=4 |pages=663–693 |doi=10.1080/09668130701291899 |s2cid=53655536 |access-date=2019-12-12 |archive-date=2007-10-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071014232729/http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/mjellman/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>