Editing Lysenkoism (section)

=== 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>