In Lysenko’s scientific view, if you plucked all the leaves off a tree, the next generation of trees would also be leafless, a remarkably Marxist-Leninist approach to science. Lysenko convinced the Soviet Agriculture Academy that the study of genetics was bad for the country and the cause, so schools removed any references to genetics in their books and curriculum. Soviet scientists learned to fall in line, publishing articles with absurd results that echoed Lysenko’s theories.
