The Soviet Precedent Haunts American Science
The Experiment That Tested Political Will
In 1930s Soviet Union, a simple agricultural experiment was meant to prove a revolutionary claim. Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist with what historian Lee Dugatkin of the University of Louisville calls “the equivalent of a mail order degree in agriculture,” proposed that soaking wheat seeds in freezing water would make them — and all their descendants — resistant to cold winters. [1] This process, called vernalization, was based on Lamarckian inheritance, a disproven idea that traits acquired during an organism’s lifetime could be passed to offspring. The classic example: a giraffe that stretches its neck to reach leaves produces young with longer necks.
The experiment revealed the limits of political interference in scientific measurement Mendelian genetics, which holds that genes control traits and are passed to offspring, predicted it would take five years to breed cold-tolerant crops. Lysenko claimed two to three years. Stalin did not have time to wait. He was trying to establish collective farms and needed to feed more than 150 million people. Large parts of the country had already suffered famine in 1932 and 1933, with about 6 million deaths. Some people resorted to cannibalism.
The experiment failed. Soaking seeds in freezing water hampered germination, leading to crop losses. Millions starved. But the political apparatus had already committed to the wrong answer. Princeton historian of science Michael Gordin notes that Stalin’s embrace of Lysenko’s quick-fix approach was “something that the majority of people at the time, and everyone since, considers the wrong side of the dispute.” [2]
The lesson was not about agriculture. It was about what happens when political expediency overrides scientific evidence. When leaders demand results that fit their timeline, they can accept claims that contradict established knowledge. The cost is measured in lives.
The Instrument That Measured Political Damage
The instrument that made this finding possible was not a microscope or a particle accelerator. It was the Soviet state itself, which became a case study for detecting how political interference distorts science. Until the 1930s, Dugatkin says, “the Soviet Union was a real powerhouse in the field of genetics.” Then Lysenko rose to power under Stalin. He was put in charge of a prestigious genetics institute. He forced his scientifically unsound farming practices on collective farms.
The measurement was devastating. Mendelian genetics was branded a “whore of capitalism.” Geneticists were forced to renounce their views or lose their jobs. Many were jailed. Almost a dozen were executed or died in prison. The Soviet Union lost its scientific leadership role. Gordin says the country sat on the sidelines for important discoveries of the 1950s and beyond, including “massively” productive hybrid corn, the discovery of DNA, and the advent of molecular biology. Soviet genetics fell decades behind the rest of the world.
The damage did not end with Lysenko’s fall. Soviet genetics did not recover until after the break-up of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gordin says, “I think you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who thinks that … Russia is today, or Ukraine, or any post-Soviet successor state, is a leading molecular biology country.”
The instrument measured not just immediate harm, but long-term consequences. A country that had been a powerhouse in genetics became a footnote. The cost of political interference was not just lost crops but lost generations of scientific progress.
The Open Question This Finding Raises
Now, scientists are warning that history could repeat itself — but in the United States. A new proposal from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget would put political appointees in charge of funding decisions traditionally overseen by scientists. The federal government has funded about 40 percent of basic science research in the United States in recent years. The OMB’s more than 400-page proposed rule change would let political appointees decide how to hand out federal research funds and who can get them.
The proposal would cut funding for collaboration with scientists in other countries. It would restrict scientists’ ability to communicate their findings. It could prevent research on matters the Trump administration has deemed “not in the national interest” — such as studies on health disparities, mRNA-based vaccines, and research that does not recognize biological sex as a strict binary. The new rules would also give OMB the power to rescind previously approved research funds.
The science advocacy group Stand Up for Science Foundation said the proposal ‘poses a sweeping threat to federal grantmaking and the responsible stewardship of American taxpayer dollars” It would also impact nonscientific grants supporting services for mental health, housing, education, veterans, and Tribal nations, affecting the health and well-being of millions. So far, OMB has received more than 98,000 comments on the proposal. The public comment period closes July 13. It then will be up to OMB to decide whether to keep the rule as is, revise it, or scrap it.
The editorial board of The New England Journal of Medicine wrote in June that ‘a similar threat now hangs over U.S. science.” Some researchers say the recent mass firings, policy changes, and grant cancellations at federal research institutions, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, closely mirror what happened in the U.S.S.R. under Stalin.
Biochemist and Nobel Prize Laureate Katalin Kariko grew up in Hungary, an Eastern Bloc country with strong ties to the Soviet Union. “We lived in a system that we knew that we cannot openly protest,” she says. She learned there was a difference between the truth and the official government position. “If you stood up against [it], you were crushed, so you had to compromise constantly.” At her university, Kariko had two genetics professors: one who taught Lysenko’s view and one who taught molecular biology. She and other students saw molecular biology as the key to the future, but they still had to take exams for the other professor and espouse Lysenko’s views. “We said the stupid things, because that’s what was required”
Kariko, who has returned to the University of Szeged in Hungary, won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2023 for basic research on messenger RNA, or mRNA, which ultimately led to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. That is one area of U.S. science already swept up in the shift in administrative priorities. Despite championing the technology during his first term, in the second term, the Trump administration pulled funds for research on mRNA therapies for cancer and genetic disorders and on vaccines against many infectious diseases. If the United States does not pursue mRNA technology, other countries will, Kariko says. China, which has already surpassed the United States in the number of clinical trials registered for mRNA therapies, is a prime example. Patients do not care where their medicine comes from, she adds.
At the CDC, firings gutted much of the public health workforce. Funding cuts hampered responses to measles outbreaks and other illnesses. The agency’s directorship has changed multiple times. Some career scientists were fired or resigned because they refused to sign off on policies they considered unscientific. The open question this finding raises is whether the United States will repeat the Soviet mistake — letting political expediency override scientific evidence — and suffer the same consequences: lost lives, lost progress, and lost leadership in fields that matter for human health and prosperity