"From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Isaak Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943."
"Thus, Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet knowledge of biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to find real solutions to agricultural problems, throwing their support behind a charlatan at the expense of many human lives."
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. - Karl Marx
I read Solzhenitsyn's account of Lysenkoism. He wasn't so charitable as to declare it anything less than deliberate genocide.
Farce is orchestrated tragedy.