Kiona N. Smith

Contributor

I cover the history of science, technology, and exploration.

Dec 31, 2017,05:33pm EST

Updated Dec 31, 2017, 06:42pm EST

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Colonel Kanatzhan "Kanat" Alibekov, who has since changed his name to Ken Alibek, wrote a detailed history of the Soviet biowarfare agency Biopreparat. His book, Biohazard, is a fascinating and deeply unnerving read, but the most frightening story Alibek tells, however, isn't about anthrax or smallpox. It's an account of how one man stifled the study of biology in the Soviet Union for over twenty years.

"We had gone from being one of the world's powerhouses of immunological and epidemiological research to a backwater of demoralized and discredited scientists," wrote Alibek. "The cause was one man - a Russian agronomist named Trofim Lysenko."

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By the 1940s, Lysenko had gained the ear, and the support, of Joseph Stalin. Lysenko's powerful connections propelled him to the top of the Soviet scientific community, where he imposed what Alibek describes as "an iron brand of political correctness" on Soviet biologists. Genetics or evolution were not to be studied, discussed, or published. It sounds crazy, but it worked terrifyingly well. Scientists who so much as dabbled in the "bourgeois discipline" found themselves facing public ridicule, and some even ended up in Stalin's infamous prison camps. Journals bold enough to publish research that mentioned genetics or evolution got shut down, one way or another.

And Alibek wasn't talking about some ultra-specific line of research -- altering human pathogens to make them more dangerous, for instance. It's almost impossible to do biological research of any kind without starting with at least the basics of genetics and evolution. Lysenko and his political patrons had blocked access to the fundamental science needed to make advances in agriculture, ecology, medicine, and other vital areas. By the 1950s, the whole broad field of Soviet biology was in the tank, and it remained decades behind the rest of the world until the early 1970s. That's roughly 20 years of lost time when Soviet scientists could have been developing new vaccines or treatments for diseases, or breeding more resilient and productive crops.

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a little more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/12/31/trofim-lysenko-is-a-perfect-cautionary-tale-for-2018/