# Stalin’s War on Genetics

An episode of [HISTORY This Week](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1493453604), 6 Oct 2025, 38 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/tracking.swap.fm/track/v9Uiw3bGr54f6BVZKSyc/pscrb.fm/rss/p/serve.castfire.com/audio/8247342/8247342_2026-04-14-054342.192.mp3?rssID=6398

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. 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. -- Get in touch: historythisweekpodcast@history.com Follow on Instagram: @historythisweek Follow on Facebook: HISTORY This Week Podcast To stay updated: http://historythisweekpodcast.com

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.