Whatever they were, Lysenko had nothing to do with it. His argument with Vavilov was a purely scientific one - Lysenko campaigned for epigentic heredity, while

Whatever they were, Lysenko had nothing to do with it. His argument with Vavilov was a purely scientific one - Lysenko campaigned for epigentic heredity, while Vavilov was a reductionist geneticist who was against epigentics on principle. (Modern science vidicated Lysenko, by the way.) Their argument was very dirty - "administrative resource" was mobilised and political sides were picked, but there is no way Lysenko had enough clout to be anywhere near setting government policy.