FromPartiinost'toNauchnost'and Not Quite Back Again: Revisiting the Lessons of the Lysenko Affair

Abstract

Stalin's support for Trofim Lysenko in the late 1940s has come to exemplify Stalinist science and the deleterious effects of gross political intervention in scientific affairs. In this article, Ethan Pollock turns our attention to the harsh criticism of Lysenko that occurred in the Central Committee in the last years of Stalin's life and situates that criticism within a broader move in Soviet ideology towardnauchnost'or scientific truthfulness. In the later 1950s nauchnost' grew even stronger in nearly every other field of science. Still, Lysenko prolonged his hold on power in Soviet agricultural science as Nikita Khrushchev attempted to reassert the importance ofpartiinost’or partymindedness. Lysenko's promises of great agricultural rewards and plans to radically transform nature were only fully rejected by the party when Khrushchev himself was removed from office.

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