The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia
Trofim Lysenko’s spurious research prolonged famines that killed millions. So why is a fringe movement praising his legacy?
Wheat, rye, potatoes, beets—most everything grown according to Lysenko’s methods died or rotted, says Hungry Ghosts. Stalin still deserves the bulk of the blame for the famines, which killed at least 7 million people, but Lysenko’s practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages. (Deaths from the famines peaked around 1932 to 1933, but four years later, after a 163-fold increase in farmland cultivated using Lysenko’s methods, food production was actually lower than before.) The Soviet Union’s allies suffered under Lysenkoism, too. Communist China adopted his methods in the late 1950s and endured even bigger famines. Peasants were reduced to eating tree bark and bird droppings and the occasional family member. At least 30 million died of starvation.
Lysenko’s grip on power began to weaken after Stalin died in 1953. By 1964, he’d been deposed as the dictator of Soviet biology, and he died in 1976 without regaining any influence. His portrait did continue to hang in some institutes through the Gorbachev years, but by the 1990s, the country had finally put the horror and shame of Lysenkoism behind it.
Until recently. As the new Current Biology article explains, Lysenko has enjoyed a renaissance in Russia over the past few years. Several books and papers praising his legacy have appeared, bolstered by what the article calls “a quirky coalition of Russian right-wingers, Stalinists, a few qualified scientists, and even the Orthodox Church.”
There are several reasons for this renewal. For one, the hot new field of epigenetics has made Lysenko-like ideas fashionable. Most living things have thousands of genes, but not all those genes are active at once. Some get turned on or off inside cells, or have their volumes turned up or down. The study of these changes in “gene expression” is called epigenetics. And it just so happens that environmental cues are often what turn genes on or off. In certain cases, these environmentally driven changes can even pass from parent to child—just like Lysenko claimed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-lysenko-soviet-union-russia/548786/
Brilliant OP. I can’t imagine the thought that you must have put into it. Kudos.
Russia’s version of the DI’s fight against the tyranny of evidence.
Glen Davidson
Well, not like Lysenko claimed, but there are heritable non-genetic epigenetic changes in genetic clones. What are those heritable changes? METHYLATION patterns on the DNA, yeah baby! You know, one of the forms of DNA Random Access Memory (RAM) I get keep getting criticized for mentioning at TSZ.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/07/12/a-tale-of-two-trees-epigenetics-makes-clones-diverge/#.Wjv5HVhy7cs
There you go, the methylation patterns on the trees DNA was different. This is the DNA Methylome. And look at all my detractors at TSZ who hate me mentioning these -OMES! There’s some vindication for the OMES right there baby!
Merry Christmas! Bwahaha!
Definitely a thought-provoking article, but I’m genuinely trying to figure out whether you are being sarcastic. You don’t generally seem inclined to lavish praise.
I think he’s just acknowledging his dearth of imagination.
Seriously, my contribution is posting the link and quotes. I have no idea why that’s relevant. The parallel between Lysenkoism and ID’s version of epigenetics has been mentioned frequently. I am just amused and horrified that there are people who think that is a good thing.
From the Atlantic article:
I feel like we will soon be looking back with nostalgia on the days when science was a major component of Western (or at least US) culture.
There isn’t much to ID’s version of epigenetics. I’m about the only IDist (except maybe Tom Woodward and James Gills (after whom 3 endowed chairs at John’s Hopkins are named) who promote ID epigenetics). Most IDists aren’t familiar with the biochemical aspects of it.
Larry Moran is quite dismissive of epigenetics, but the NIH isn’t. They’ve thrown close to billion dollars at the study of it like:
http://www.roadmapepigenomics.org/
Is this Lysenkoism x 10? No. It’s doing epigenetics the right way.
This is the ID proponent of Epigenetics, one of the least know but most accomplished IDist:
https://professorships.jhu.edu/professorship/james-p-gills-professorship-ophthalmology/
He co-authored this book:
I have over the last year watched a lot of youtube historys on Soviets/Russia.
Stalin commie years are presented as so evil that actually more people were murdered then in Hitlers time. quite more.
i don’t see just stalin but all the commie elite and the establishment generally and it must of been millions of the common people. while not the other tens/hundreds of millions.
in fact i wonder if the wwii was a punishment for the evil on the soviet union? did God allow it? i’m not sure!
in the historys they say the famine, at least in the Unkraine, was on purpose to control them and to sell food abroad. Not about less crop yields.
Russia is doing better but does still have problems.
I think they might be disapointed they are not further ahead in wealth.
however they should realize its better then ever.
Actually at the early commie rebellion things were better then ever.
However a expectations had risen too far.
Communism did raise all those peoples and very quickly. In fact one of the fastest rising economies in history.
However i see it as simply they forced the people to get more intelligent and offered some means of production. the commie stuff however got in the way of a rising intellectual curve.
Did you already add him?