The role of Isaak Prezent in the rise and fall of Lysenkoism

The establishment of an “official” biology in the Soviet Union is often associated with the rise of Trofim D. Lysenko and with the unbridled power that he exercised with the active complicity of Stalin. However, Lysenko did not apply his tyrannical methods with the same effectiveness and to the same ends throughout his career. The institutionalization of the new agronomy involved a complex combination of factors, and the power and charisma of those who surrounded Lysenko greatly facilitated his indoctrination of this branch of science. One of the most influential collaborators of Lysenko was the Marxist ideologist and Party official Isaak Izrailevich Prezent, whose relationship with Lysenko is crucial to understand Lysenko’s development from a simple plant breeder to a political force of the Soviet Union.