Editing Lysenkoism (section)

==In the Soviet Union==

===Lysenko's claims===

[[File:Trofim Lysenko portrait.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Lysenko in 1938]]

In 1928, rejecting [[natural selection]] and [[Mendelian genetics]], [[Trofim Lysenko]] claimed to have developed agricultural techniques which could radically increase crop yields. These included [[vernalization]], species transformation (one species turning into another), [[inheritance of acquired characteristics]], and vegetative hybridization (see below).<ref name="Leone 1952">{{cite journal |last1=Leone |first1=Charles A. |title=Genetics: Lysenko versus Mendel |journal=Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science |volume=55 |issue=4 |year=1952 |pages=369–380 |issn=0022-8443 |doi=10.2307/3625986 |jstor=3625986}}</ref> He claimed in particular that vernalization, exposing [[wheat]] seeds to humidity and low temperature, could greatly increase [[crop yield]]. He claimed further that he could transform one [[species]], ''[[Triticum durum]]'' (durum spring wheat), into ''[[Triticum vulgare]]'' (common autumn wheat), through 2 to 4 years of autumn planting. This species transition he claimed to occur without an intermediate form.<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal |last=Dobzhansky |first=Theodosius |date=February 1952 |title=I Lysenko's "Michurinist" Genetics |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.1952.11457270 |journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |language=en |volume=8 |issue=2 |pages=40–44 |doi=10.1080/00963402.1952.11457270 |bibcode=1952BuAtS...8b..40D |issn=0096-3402|url-access=subscription }}</ref> However, this was already known to be impossible since ''T. durum'' is a [[tetraploid]] with 28 chromosomes (4 sets of 7), while ''T. vulgare'' is [[hexaploid]] with 42 chromosomes (6 sets).<ref name="Leone 1952"/> This objection did not faze Lysenko, as he claimed that the chromosome number changed as well.<ref name=":7" />

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 [[Theory of forms|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 materialism|dialectical transformation]], and in parallel to the Party's program of creating the [[New Soviet man|New Soviet Man]] and subduing nature for his benefit. Lysenko refused to admit [[Evolution|random mutations]], stating that "science is the enemy of randomness".<ref name=":4">{{cite book |last=Kolakowski |first=Leszek |title=[[Main Currents of Marxism]] |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=2005 |isbn=978-0393329438}}</ref>

[[File:Lysenkoist Vegetative Hybridisation.svg|thumb|Lysenkoist ''vegetative hybridisation'' implying an effect of scion on stock  when a fruit tree is [[Grafting|grafted]]. Lysenko's Lamarckian conception is very weakly justified by the modern theory of [[horizontal gene transfer]].<ref name="LiuLi2009"/>]]

Lysenko further claimed that Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics occurred in plants,<!--''Soviet Biology'', 1948, page 36--> as in the "eyes" of potato [[tuber]]s, though the genetic differences in these plant parts were already known to be non-heritable [[somatic mutation]]s.<ref name="Leone 1952"/><ref name="Asseyeva 1927">{{cite journal |last1=Asseyeva |first1=T. |title=Bud mutations in the potato and their chimerical nature |journal=Journal of Genetics |date=1927 |volume=19 |pages=1–28 |doi=10.1007/BF02983115 |s2cid=6762283 |url=https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF02983115.pdf}}</ref> He also claimed that when a tree is [[Grafting|graft]]ed, the [[Scion (grafting)|scion]] permanently changes the heritable characteristics of the [[Stock (grafting)|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.<ref name="LiuLi2009"/>

===Rise===

[[Isaak Izrailevich Prezent]], a biologist politically out of favour, brought Lysenko to public attention. He portrayed Lysenko as a [[genius]] who had developed a revolutionary technique which could lead to the triumph of Soviet agriculture, a thrilling possibility for a Soviet society suffering through Stalin's famines. Lysenko became a favorite of the [[Propaganda in the Soviet Union|Soviet propaganda]] machine, which overstated his successes, trumpeted his faked experimental results, and omitted any mention of his failures.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Rispoli |first=Giulia |title=The Role of Isaak Prezent in the Rise and Fall of Lysenkoism |journal=Ludus Vitalis |date=2014 |volume=22 |issue=42 |url=http://www.ludus-vitalis.org/ojs/index.php/ludus/article/view/4 |access-date=2019-12-12 |archive-date=2019-12-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191212113106/http://www.ludus-vitalis.org/ojs/index.php/ludus/article/view/4 |url-status=dead }}</ref> State media published enthusiastic articles such as "Siberia is transformed into a land of orchards and gardens" and "Soviet people change nature", while anyone opposing Lysenko was presented as a defender of "[[mysticism]], [[obscurantism]] and backwardness."<ref name=":0" />   

Lysenko's political success was mostly due to his appeal to the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|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|ideological battle]] in both agriculture and Soviet society.<ref>{{cite book |last=Geller |first=Mikhail |title=Cogs in the wheel : the formation of Soviet man |publisher=Knopf |year=1988 |isbn=978-0394569260}}</ref><ref name="LiuLi2009" /> Following the disastrous [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|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]].<ref name="Graham1993">{{cite book |last=Graham |first=Loren R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m_wPpj64GqMC&pg=PA127 |title=Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-521-28789-0 |pages=124–128}}</ref><ref name="LiuLi2009">{{cite journal |last1=Liu |first1=Yongsheng |last2=Li |first2=Baoyin |last3=Wang |first3=Qinglian |title=Science and politics |journal=EMBO Reports |volume=10 |issue=9 |year=2009 |pages=938–939 |issn=1469-221X |doi=10.1038/embor.2009.198|pmid=19721459 |pmc=2750069 }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Graham1993" /><ref name="Borinskaya Ermolaev 2019"/> 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 "[[Drosophila melanogaster|fly]]-lovers and people haters",<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=xBvbQgWtgjsC&pg=PA149 ''Epistemology and the Social''], Evandro Agazzi, Javier Echeverría, Amparo Gómez Rodríguez, Rodopi, 2008, "Philosophy", p. 149</ref> and to decry traditional biologists as "[[wrecking (Soviet crime)|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:<ref>{{Cite web|last=Faulk|first=Chris|date=2013-06-21|title=Lamarck, Lysenko, and Modern Day Epigenetics|url=http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/06/21/lamarck-lysenko-and-modern-day-epigenetics/|access-date=2020-06-06|website=Mind the Science Gap|language=en-US}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|text=We biologists do not take the slightest interest in mathematical calculations, which confirm the useless statistical formulae of the Mendelists … We do not want to submit to blind chance … We maintain that biological regularities do not resemble mathematical laws.|author=|title=|source=}}

Lysenko presented himself as a follower of [[Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin]], a well-known and well-liked Soviet [[horticulture|horticulturist]], but unlike Michurin, Lysenko insisted on using only non-genetic techniques such as [[Heterosis|hybridization]] and grafting.<ref name="Leone 1952" />

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."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Cohen |first1=Richard |title=Political Science |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2001/05/03/political-science/ec1489dc-fc49-475c-a2a7-db396fee9160/ |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=3 May 2001}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Rossianov 1993">{{cite journal |last=Rossianov |first=Kirill O. |title=Editing Nature: Joseph Stalin and the "New" Soviet Biology |journal=Isis |issue=December 1993 |date=1993 |volume=84 |pages=728–745 |doi=10.1086/356638 |jstor=235106 |pmid=8307727 |s2cid=38626666 }}</ref> 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|Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences]], classical genetics began to be called "fascist science"<ref name=":1">{{cite book |last=deJong-Lambert |first=William |title=The Lysenko Controversy as a Global Phenomenon, Volume 1: Genetics and Agriculture in the Soviet Union and Beyond |date=2017 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-3319391755 |page=6}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Harper 2017">{{cite journal |last=Harper |first=Peter S. |title=Lysenko and Russian genetics: Reply to Wang & Liu |journal=European Journal of Human Genetics |volume=25 |issue=10 |year=2017 |pages=1098 |issn=1018-4813 |doi=10.1038/ejhg.2017.118|pmid=28905879 |pmc=5602019 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="Graham1993"/>

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.<ref name="Borinskaya Ermolaev 2019" /><blockquote>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.

Lysenko's letter to Stalin, October 27, 1947.<ref name="Borinskaya Ermolaev 2019" /></blockquote>

=== Peak ===
From July 31 to August 7, 1948, the [[VASKhNIL|Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL)]] held a week-long session,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lenina |first=Vsesoyuznaya Akademiya Sel'skokhozyaistvennykh Nauk im V. I. |url=https://archive.org/details/thesituationinbiologicalscience |title=The situation in biological science: proceedings of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the U.S.S.R. session, July 31-August 7, 1948, verbatim report. |date=1949 |publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House |location=Moscow}}</ref> organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin.<ref name="Borinskaya Ermolaev 2019">{{cite journal|last1=Borinskaya|first1=Svetlana A.|last2=Ermolaev|first2=Andrei I.|last3=Kolchinsky|first3=Eduard I.|year=2019|title=Lysenkoism Against Genetics: The Meeting of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of August 1948, Its Background, Causes, and Aftermath|journal=Genetics|volume=212|issue=1|pages=1–12|doi=10.1534/genetics.118.301413|issn=0016-6731|pmc=6499510|pmid=31053614|doi-access=free}}</ref> At the end of it, Lysenkoism was declared as "the only correct theory." As Lysenko performatively spoke at the end, "the Central Committee of the Communist Party has examined my report and approved it". Attendants recognized this as the birth of a new orthodoxy. Of the 8 scientists who advocated genetics during the session, 3 immediately announced repentance.<ref name="Borinskaya Ermolaev 2019" />

Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Wrinch |first=Pamela N. |jstor=2008893 |title=Science and Politics in the U.S.S.R.: The Genetics Debate |journal=[[World Politics]] |volume=3 |issue=4 |date=July 1951 |pages=486–519|doi=10.2307/2008893 |s2cid=146284128 }}</ref> and criticism was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist". The [[Ministry of Higher Education (Soviet Union)|Ministry of Higher Education]] commanded all biological institutes to immediately follow the Lysenko orthodoxy:<ref>Kaftanoff S, 1948, [http://www.libussr.ru/doc_ussr/ussr_4710.htm 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).</ref><blockquote>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.

Point 6 of the ''Order No. 1208'' (August 23, 1948) (trans. p. 125<ref name=":5">{{Cite Q|Q109407986}}</ref>)</blockquote>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<ref name=":5" />) Leading geneticists were being monitored by secret agents from the State Security Service. (p. 129<ref name=":5" />)

The same wave of [[Propaganda in the Soviet Union|propaganda]] supported a number of other [[Pseudoscience|pseudo-scientific]] "new Marxist sciences" in the Soviet academy, in fields such as [[Japhetic theory|linguistics]] and [[socialist realism|art]]. [[Pravda]] reported the invention of a [[perpetual motion]] engine, confirming Engels' claim that [[Entropy|energy dissipated]] in one place must concentrate somewhere else.<ref name=":4" /> Lysenko's journal ''Agrobiology'' published reports of wheat turning into rye, cabbages into rutabaga, etc.

In 1948, the film [[Michurin (film)|''Michurin'']] portrayed Michurin as an ideal Soviet scientist, bringing the propaganda to the masses.<ref name=":6" /> 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<ref name=":5" />)

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<ref name=":5" />) 

A prominent promoter of Lysenkoism was the biologist [[Olga Lepeshinskaya (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|heresies]]:<ref>{{Cite web |title=Лепешинская О.Б. Развитие жизненных процессов в доклеточном периоде |url=http://www.bioparadigma.spb.ru/lepeshiskaya2.htm |access-date=2023-08-27 |website=www.bioparadigma.spb.ru |archive-date=2008-12-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081212051855/http://www.bioparadigma.spb.ru/lepeshiskaya2.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|text=In our country there are no longer classes hostile to each other, and the struggle of idealists against dialectical materialists still, depending on whose interests it defends, has the character of a class struggle. Indeed, the followers of Virchow, Weismann, Mendel and Morgan, who speak of the invariability of the gene and deny the influence of the external environment, are the preachers of the pseudo-scientific teachings of the bourgeois eugenicists and of all perversions in genetics, on the soil of which grew the racial theory of fascism in the capitalist countries. The Second World War was unleashed by the forces of imperialism, which also had racism in its arsenal.|author=[[Olga Lepeshinskaya (biologist)|Olga Lepeshinskaya]]}}

Perhaps the only opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to escape liquidation were from the small community of Soviet [[Nuclear physics|nuclear physicists]]: 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."<ref name="Judt">{{cite book |last=Judt |first=Tony |title=Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 |location=New York |publisher=Penguin Books |year=2006 |page=174n}}</ref>

===Effects on scientists===
Genetics was eventually banned in the Soviet Union.<ref name="Soyfer Nature" /> Over 3,000 biologists were fired, and numerous{{How many|date=April 2025}} scientists were imprisoned, or executed<ref name=":2">{{cite book |last1=Birstein |first1=Vadim J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2XqEAAAAQBAJ |title=The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story Of Soviet Science |date=2013 |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=9780786751860 |page=216 |quote=Academician Schmalhausen, Professors Formozov and Sabinin, and 3,000 other biologists, victims of the August 1948 Session, lost their professional jobs because of their integrity and moral principles [...] "To arrest, torture, and execute opponents of scientists whose professional opinion was supported by the Party and the state was the OGPU/NKVD/NKGB method of solving professional disagreements in science." [...] " |access-date=2016-06-30}}</ref><ref name="Soyfer Nature" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Soyfer |first1=Valeriĭ. |title=Lysenko and The Tragedy of Soviet Science |date=1994 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=9780813520872 |page=194 |quote=Two weeks after the end of the August 1948 session...Lysenko seized this chair and the nation's oldest and most respected higher educational institution in the field of agriculture was now completely in Lysenko's hands. A wave of dismissals followed, in which about three thousand biologists lost the jobs they had held in institutions of research and higher education. The universities affected included those in Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky, Kharkov, Kiev, Voronezh, Saratov, Tbilisi, and many other towns. Some of the people who were dismissed were also arrested.}}</ref> for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism, and genetics research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953.<ref name="Soyfer Nature">{{cite journal |last=Soyfer |first=Valery N. |author-link=Valery Soyfer |date=1 September 2001 |title=The Consequences of Political Dictatorship for Russian Science |journal=Nature Reviews Genetics |volume=2 |issue=9 |pages=723–729 |doi=10.1038/35088598 |pmid=11533721 |s2cid=46277758|quote= Communist Party leaders wholeheartedly embraced Lysenko's promising claims. By 1934, Lysenko was proclaiming that genetics was a hostile science for those who supported communist ideology — a view that culminated in a ban on genetics. Political dictatorship in science in the USSR led to the complete collapse of not only genetics, but also soil sciences, mathematical economics, statistics, cybernetics and many other disciplines. Outstanding scientists who were considered the enemies of the Communist state were arrested and many were executed.}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{cite book |last1=Soĭfer |first1=Valeriĭ. |title=Lysenko and The Tragedy of Soviet Science |date=1994 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=9780813520872 |location=New Brunswick, N.J.}}</ref> Secret research facilties such as [[sharashka]] were where numerous scientists ended up imprisoned.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Birstein |first1=Vadim J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2XqEAAAAQBAJ |title=The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story Of Soviet Science |date=2013 |publisher=Perseus Books Group |isbn=9780786751860 |page=293 |quote=As mentioned in Chapters 1 and 2, special institutes for imprisoned scientists existed from the late 1920s. However, a system of secret sharashki under the NKVD Department of Special Design Bureaus was established in the late 1930s, on September 29, 1938. Even arrested NKVD specialists, especially those from the Foreign Intelligence, were transferred under the NKVD Special Bureau for some time for teaching and writing textbooks. Later, they were tried and usually executed. In July 1941, this department was renamed the NKVID/MVD Fourth Special Department, in which 489 imprisoned scientists and 662 NKVD officers worked.}}</ref>

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 [[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>{{cite journal |last=Cohen |first=Barry Mandel |title=Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov: the explorer and plant collector |journal=Economic Botany |volume=45 |issue=1 (Jan-Mar 1991) |date=1991 |pages=38–46 |doi=10.1007/BF02860048 |jstor=4255307|bibcode=1991EcBot..45...38C |s2cid=27563223 }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Carlson 1981">{{cite book |author=Carlson, Elof Axel |author-link=Elof Axel Carlson |title=Genes, radiation, and society: the life and work of H. J. Muller |publisher=Cornell University Press |location=Ithaca, NY |year=1981 |pages=184–203 |isbn=978-0801413049}}</ref> [[Iosif Abramovich Rapoport|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|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.<ref>{{cite web |date=2014-11-11 |title=VIVOS VOCO: В.Я. Александров, "Трудные годы советской биологии" |url=http://vivovoco.astronet.ru/VV/BOOKS/ALEXANDROV/CHAPTER_3.HTM |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140525201228/http://vivovoco.astronet.ru/VV/BOOKS/ALEXANDROV/CHAPTER_3.HTM |archive-date=2014-05-25 |access-date=2024-05-16 |website=vivovoco.astronet.ru}}</ref>

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 [[Resonance (chemistry)|Pauling resonance theory]] in chemistry.{{r|:5|p=133}}

In addition to the biological sciences, Lysenkoism had an impact on geological sciences, especially paleontology and biostratigraphy in the USSR.<ref>[https://www.sciengine.com/CAHST/doi/10.3724/SP.J.1461.2024.01125 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.</ref>

===Fall===

At the end of 1952, the situation started to change, and newspapers published articles criticizing Lysenkoism. However, the return to regular genetics slowed down in [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s time, when Lysenko showed him the supposed successes of an experimental agricultural complex. It was once again forbidden to criticize Lysenkoism, though it was now possible to express different views, and the geneticists imprisoned under Stalin were released or [[Rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitated posthumously]]. The ban was finally lifted in the mid-1960s.<ref name="aleksandrovvya">{{cite book |last=Alexandrov |first=Vladimir Yakovlevich |title=Трудные годы советской биологии: Записки современника |trans-title=Difficult Years of Soviet Biology: Notes by a Contemporary |publisher=Наука ["Science"] |year=1993 |url=http://vivovoco.astronet.ru/VV/BOOKS/ALEXANDROV/CONTENT.HTM}}</ref><ref name="KolchinskyKutschera2017"/>

Lysenkoism was never dominant in the West, and during the 1960s, it increasingly was seen as [[pseudoscience]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Gordin |first=Michael D. |author-link=Michael D. Gordin |date=2012 |title=How Lysenkoism Became Pseudoscience: Dobzhansky to Velikovsky |journal=Journal of the History of Biology |volume=45 |issue=3 |pages=443–468 |doi=10.1007/s10739-011-9287-3 |issn=0022-5010 |jstor=41653570|pmid=21698424 |s2cid=7541203 }}</ref> 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).<ref name="Casp" />

===Reappearance===

In the 21st century, Lysenkoism is again being discussed in Russia, including in respectable newspapers like ''[[Kultura (newspaper)|Kultura]]'' and by biologists.<ref name="KolchinskyKutschera2017" /> The geneticist Lev Zhivotovsky has made the unsupported claim that Lysenko helped found modern developmental biology.<ref name="KolchinskyKutschera2017">{{cite journal |last1=Kolchinsky |first1=Edouard I. |last2=Kutschera |first2=Ulrich |last3=Hossfeld |first3=Uwe |last4=Levit |first4=Georgy S. |title=Russia's new Lysenkoism |journal=Current Biology |volume=27 |issue=19 |year=2017 |pages=R1042–R1047 |issn=0960-9822 |doi=10.1016/j.cub.2017.07.045|pmid=29017033 |doi-access=free |bibcode=2017CBio...27R1042K }} which cites {{cite book |last=Graham |first=Loren |title=Lysenko's Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IUu6CwAAQBAJ |year=2016 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-08905-1}}</ref> Discoveries in the field of [[epigenetics]] are sometimes raised as alleged late confirmation of Lysenko's theories, but in spite of the apparent high-level similarity (heritable traits passed on without DNA alteration), Lysenko believed that environment-induced changes are the primary mechanism of heritability. [[Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance|Heritable epigenetic effects]] have been found, but are minor and unstable compared to genetic inheritance.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Graham|first=Loren|title=Lysenko's Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2016|isbn=978-0-674-08905-1}}</ref>