Biography After World War II, the Soviet regime led by Joseph Stalin began to distance itself from Western ideas and concepts, and science was no exception. Stalin declared genetics and cybernetics to be Anti-Soviet and ideologically unfit; Lysenko was put in charge of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of Soviet Union and made responsible for ending the propagation of these harmful ideas among Soviet scientists. He served this purpose faithfully, causing the expulsion, imprisonment and death of hundreds of scientists and the demise of genetics (a previously flourishing field) throughout the Soviet Union. Particularly, he is responsible for the death of the greatest Soviet biologist, Nikolai Vavilov[?], at the hands of the NKVD. After Stalin's death in 1953, Lysenko retained his position, enjoying a relative degree of trust from Nikita Khrushchev.
In 1962 three of the most prominent Soviet physicists, Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich[?], Vitaly Ginzburg[?] and Peter Kapitza[?], set out against Lysenko, his false science and his policy of political extermination of scientific opponents. This happened as a part of a greater trend of fighting the ideological influence that has caused so much harm to Russian society and science. Lysenko was then dismissed by Khrushchev.
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