WI: Lysenkoizing Soviet Physics

Between the 20s and the 60s, the Soviet Union famously politicized genetics, when Trofim Lysenko gained effective control over the argonomic sciences in the USSR. Since Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics and was generally a complete fraud, but enjoyed the confidence of Stalin, this did incredible damage to the field in Russia.

What if something similar happened in physics? I've seen a few references to Communists describing quantum mechanics as "bourgeois". What if some similar figure, let's say in the early 30s, gained the confidence of Stalin arguing against the new field of nuclear physics, similar to the Deutsche Physik movement in Germany.

Of course, once the A-bomb - or even just the Manhattan Project - proves that there's something to this fission business after all, I'm sure Stalin would change course pretty quickly. But how much damage could be done in the meantime? Might the Soviet atomic bomb be delayed, or would their Manhattan Project intelligence be enough to make up for the damage?
 
I don't know if it was plausible. There were clear ideological reasons behind Lysenkoism in biology that really don't apply to physics, nuclear or otherwise. For one, the Nazis being anti-Relativity made a pro-relativity position pretty inevitable.

Secondly, the roots of Lysenkoism come from a mix of Mendelian genetic's sordid history within ruling class ideology. Reducing matters of social difference to biological difference had been the ultimate line of defense for every ruling class in history, and genetics had become part of that legacy. It allowed a veneer of science to be put on the idea that the ruling classes really were superior, and thus justified to rule.

The growth of eugenics was part of that, and Stalin ironically enough found eugenics to be uniquely horrifying and reactionary. One of the pivotal moments in the entrenchment of Lysenkoism was actually Stalin's personal displeasure at Hermann Joseph Muller's (a communist fellow traveller working in the Soviet Union in the 30s) book on eugenics, which led to an official political campaign against it. It also didn't help that Leon Trotsky was a supporter of Darwinian evolution, which gave another political reason for supporting neo-Lamarckian evolution.

Lamarckianism was also conveniently dialectical, which help fit it with dialectical materialism.

I don't see any of these parallels in physics, so I don't think it was possible for there to be such a sustained attack on it.
 
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