10. Reviving Discredited Nineteenth-Century Pseudo-Science in the Twentieth Century Soviet Union
The discredited nineteenth-century pseudo-scientific theory of Lamarckian Inheritance experienced an odd twentieth-century revival in the Soviet Union. In the 1930s, a quack Soviet biologist and agronomist named Trofim Lysenko modified Lamarckism into a theory that came to be known as Lysenkoism. Lysenko falsely claimed to have discovered that, among other things, rye could be transformed into wheat, wheat could be transformed into barley, and that weeds could be transformed into grain crops. It was gobsmacking ridiculous, but he got away with it.
Lysenko’s take might have been laughably ludicrous, but in a sinister twist, he found a powerful supporter for his cockamamie theories: Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. In the bizarre political environment of the Stalinist Soviet Union, criticism of Lamarckian theories came to be treated as criticism of Stalin. As Stalinist terror grew by leaps and bounds, it became clear that if you knew what was good for you, you did not criticize Stalin, or even hint that you might disagree with Stalin.