Stalin's favorite scientist was Trofim Lysenko, to whom he gave an enormous amount of power to direct research in the USSR. And Lysenko was pretty ruthless in u

Stalin's favorite scientist was Trofim Lysenko, to whom he gave an enormous amount of power to direct research in the USSR. And Lysenko was pretty ruthless in using that power to suppress science he didn't like, esp with regards to genetics and evolution. He set back Soviet science by decades. And Mao repeated his mistakes: Lysenko's literal bad seeds contributed to the famine of the Great Leap Forward.