The Lysenko affair: a comeback for the Fake News that led to millions of deaths?

In a recent article in The Atlantic, Sam Kean, a US historian, says that Lysenkoism is regaining popularity in Russia. As a reminder, this ideology, which emerged in the 1920s in the USSR, held sway over the agricultural policy of the Soviet empire for almost half a century and was the cause of many famines. Trofim Denissovich Lysenko was primarily responsible for it. Born on September 29th, 1898 in Karlivka, a city which is today in Ukraine, this Soviet agricultural technician has a tragic claim to fame. As Sam Kean speculates “Although it’s impossible to say for sure, Trofim Lysenko probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history. Other dubious scientific achievements have cut thousands upon thousands of lives short: dynamite, poison gas, atomic bombs. But Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned perhaps millions of people to starvation through bogus agricultural research—and did so without hesitation. Only guns and gunpowder, the collective product of many researchers over several centuries, can match such carnage.”  ^[1] Based on Lysenko’s theories, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Joseph Stalin undertook a “modernisation of Soviet agriculture” by forcing millions of people to relocate to the kolkhozes, which resulted in widespread famines that killed more than 7 million people. It should be noted that the Soviet Union’s allies also adopted Lysenko’s methods. For example, China, in the late 1950s, where the population suffered even more, as the number of victims is estimated at more than 30 million.

How could such disasters happen? You only have to look at the works of “The Barefoot Scientist” (as was his nickname) to understand. It was in 1928 that Lysenko first wrote about vernalisation, a technique that allows a plant to move from the vegetative stage to the reproductive stage by exposing it to cold.  According to the biologist this technique would quadruple the agricultural yield of wheat; some historians however assume that he rigged his experiments and announced faked results^[2] . It hardly mattered, because the theory was perfect for the cadres of the Communist Party, since it privileges the dominance of environmental factors over the genetic to the point of totally denying the latter. As a result, although the “pseudo-discovery” confers only a small advantage, with the support of Soviet propaganda, its promoter became a real hero, a peasant genius, inventor of a miraculous technique; in 1938, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR fast tracked him to the head of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences. It should be noted in passing that as Lysenko ascended the ranks of power, he attacked scientists who defended genetic theories (Mendelians) whom he described as enemies of the Soviet people. These opponents were then deported to the Gulag. In addition to having contributed to starving the population, Lysenko also caused the annihilation of the community of Soviet geneticists. All this with the support of Stalin, and afterwards that of Nikita Khrushchev. According to Marxist ideology, only the environment could affect formation of plants and animals. ^[1] “To this end, Lysenko began to ‘educate’ Soviet crops” – Sam Kean notes –  “to sprout at different times of year by soaking them in freezing water, among other practices. He then claimed that future generations of crops would remember these environmental cues and, even without being treated themselves, would inherit the beneficial traits. According to traditional genetics, this is impossible.””^[3] .

Although Lysenko’s influence gradually diminished, especially after the Krushchev era and up to his death in 1976, it was not until the 1990s that the horrors of Lysenkoism were recognized. But as Kean informs us, Lysenkoism has been having something of a revival in Russia in recent years. The main reason for this renaissance is an increasing feeling of rejection of Western culture. In addition, new advocates of Lysenkoism “accuse the science of genetics of serving the interests of American imperialism and acting against the interests of Russia”^[4]

What can we learn from this story? The recipe for Lysenkoism is simple enough: it requires political authorities to interfere in science by supporting the dubious scientific ideas of an individual or a group of individuals and to continue to do so without correcting the situation, even in the face of radical contradiction with reality (millions of deaths). The theory continues to impose its diktat and to achieve its ends resorts to eliminating any dissenting voice.  The whims of politics steamroller any objectivity and make use of a pseudo-scientific discourse in order to further their own ends. They superimpose their discourse onto reality to dictate how the world should be described.  Clearly, Lysenko wanted to transpose political beliefs onto the living world instead of trying to describe it based on scientific observation. As a result, he only ended up producing another political discourse that bore no relationship to reality. At a time when everyone is worried about the “truthfulness” of information and is quick to denounce “fake news”, it is important to remember the very real danger that some pseudo-sciences may pose to us…. Especially when this is in the hands of politicians whose agenda favours the acquisition of power over that of truth. So we can never be too cautious, and not only of the unlikely large-scale return of Lysenkoism, but more generally of any meddling of politics in science to transform it into a destructive ideology.

^[1] “Although it’s impossible to say for sure, Trofim Lysenko probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history. Other dubious scientific achievements have cut thousands upon thousands of lives short: dynamite, poison gas, atomic bombs. But Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned perhaps millions of people to starvation through bogus agricultural research—and did so without hesitation. Only guns and gunpowder, the collective product of many researchers over several centuries, can match such carnage.”  Sam Kean, The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia, The Atlantic, Dec 2017

^[2] “Lysenko claimed to have conducted a set of experiment in which grain crops, including wheat and barley, produced much higher yields during stretches of cold weather after their seeds were frozen in water before planting. This method, he said, could quickly double the yield of farmlands in the Soviet Union in just a few years. In truth Lysenko never undertook any legitimate experiments on increased crop yield. Any ‘data’ he claimed to have produced he simply fabricated” Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut, How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) : Visionary Scientists and a Siberian tale of Jump-Started Evolution, The University of Chicago Press, 2017

^[3] “To this end, Lysenko began to ‘educate’ Soviet crops to sprout at different times of year by soaking them in freezing water, among other practices. He then claimed that future generations of crops would remember these environmental cues and, even without being treated themselves, would inherit the beneficial traits. According to traditional genetics, this is impossible” Sam Kean, The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia, The Atlantic, Dec 2017

^[4] “accuse the science of genetics of serving the interests of American imperialism and acting against the interests of Russia.” Sam Kean, The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia, The Atlantic, Dec 2017

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