Trofim Lysenko's campaign against genetics and biology during the era of Stalin and Khrushchev is one of the great tragedies of modern science. In the purges that Lysenko (1898-1976) instigated, even the greatest of Soviet scientists were not safe. Only in 1964, when Khrushchev fell from power and when massive crop failures revealed the emptiness of the peasant-scientist's theories, did Lysenko lose favor.

Even now, his long shadow stretches over the countries of the former Soviet Union as they deal with the disastrous consequences of Lysenkoist policies on science, agriculture, medicine, and the environment.

As a young student in the 1950s, Valery N. Soyfer saw Lysenko's power - and charismatic charm - at first hand. In the 1970s, when Soyfer found himself stripped of his scientific degrees and positions because he had supported physicist Andre Sakharov and joined the dissident movement in the USSR, he used his time to find out all he could about the man who had destroyed Soviet science. This is the fullest account yet of Lysenko's life and times.

It draws on extensive interviews, archives long inaccessible to scholars, and Soyfer's own memories. With the passion of a novelist and the precision of a scientist, Soyfer re-creates this terrible episode in twentieth-century history.

1. The original Russian manuscript of this unique biography circulated as an underground samizdat book and was to the West for publication. When Dr. Soyfer was unexpectedly allowed to leave the USSR in 1988, Rutgers University Press greeted him with a contract for the work.