Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich

LYSENKO, TROFIM DENISOVICH

(1898–1976), agronomist and biologist.

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was born in Karlovka, Ukraine, to a peasant family. He attended the Kiev Agricultural Institute as an extramural student and graduated as doctor of agricultural science in 1925. A disciple of horticulturist Ivan Michurin's work, Lysenko worked at the Gyandzha Experimental Station between 1925 and 1929 and coined his theory of vernalization in the late 1920s. His vernalization theory described a process where

winter habit was transformed into spring habit by moistening and chilling the seed.

During the agricultural crisis of the 1930s, Soviet authorities started supporting Lysenko's theories. By the mid-1930s Lysenko's dominance in agricultural sciences was clearly established as he founded agrobiology, a pseudoscience that promised to increase yields rapidly and cheaply. He became president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1938 and director of the Institute of Genetics at the Academy of Sciences in 1940. Lysenko and his followers, Lysenkoites, have long been thought to have had a direct line to the Stalinist terror apparatus as they targeted geneticists that they thought opposed Lysenkoism, most famously noted scientist Nikolai Vavilov.

As Lysenko's political influence increased, he expressed his views more forcefully. His view of genetics was irrational and based neither on reason nor scientific experimentation. His theory of heredity rejected established principles of genetics, and he believed that he could change the genetic constitution of strains of wheat by controlling the environment. For example, he claimed that wheat plants raised in the appropriate environment produced seeds of rye.

By 1948 education and research in traditional genetics had been completely outlawed in the Soviet Union. The 1948 August Session of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences gave the Lysenkoites official endorsement for these views, which were said to correspond to Marxist theory. From that moment, and until Josef Stalin's death, Lysenko was the total autocrat of Soviet biology. His position as Stalin's henchman in Soviet science has been compared to Andrei Zhdanov's role in culture during this time of high Stalinism.

In April 1952 the Ministry of Agriculture withdrew its support of Lysenko's cluster method of planting trees, but Lysenko was not publicly rebuked until after Stalin's death in 1953. Nikita Khrushchev tolerated criticism of Lysenkoism, but it took eleven years to completely confirm the uselessness of agrobiology. It was only with Khrushchev's ousting from power in 1964 that Lysenko was fully discredited and research in traditional genetics accepted. He resigned as president of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1956, and his removal from the position of director of the Institute of Genetics in 1965 signified the full return of scientific professionalism in Soviet science. Lysenko kept the title of academician and held the position of chairman for science at the Academy of Science's Agricultural Experimental Station, located not far from Moscow, until he died in November 20, 1976.

See also: agriculture; science and technology policy; stalin, josef vissarionovich; vavilov, nikolai ivanovich

bibliography

Joravsky, David. (1970). The Lysenko Affair. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Medvedev, Zhores A. (1969). The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. New York: Columbia University Press.

Medvedev, Zhores A. (1978). Soviet Science. New York: Norton.

RÓsa MagnÚsdÓttir