Stalin’s War on Genetics | HISTORY This Week

Описание: October 11, 1955. Nearly three hundred of the Soviet Union’s top scientists sign a secret letter demanding the removal of one man: Trofim Lysenko. For decades, Lysenko had Joseph Stalin’s ear, ruling Soviet biology with an iron fist—banning genetics, rewriting textbooks, and sending dissenting scientists to prison or worse.

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Chapters:
00:00 Scientists Secretly Challenge Lysenko’s Control
04:12 Seeds Genes And The Science Of Heredity
05:24 Enter Trofim Lysenko The Peasant Scientist
08:04 Pravda Turns Lysenko Into A National Hero
16:26 Stalin Publicly Endorses Lysenko
18:25 Vavilov Fired Arrested And Silenced
23:34 Genetics Put On Trial And Officially Banned
25:40 Lysenkoism Becomes State Ideology
30:56 Stalin Dies And Scientists Revolt
31:23 The 1955 Letter Exposing Lysenko’s Damage
32:48 Lysenko Finally Loses Power

How did a peasant-turned-agronomist convince Stalin that wheat could turn into rye, and that ideology mattered more than evidence? And when politics replace science, what—and who—gets destroyed?

Special thanks to William deJong-Lambert, author of The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair; and Nikolai Krementsov, author of Stalinist Science.

Credits:
Jon Earle | Producer
Ben Dickstein | EP/Sound Designer
Sally Helm | Producer
Liv Fidler | Executive Producer
Eli Lehrer | Executive Producer

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Stalin’s War on Genetics | HISTORY This Week
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