This week’s edition of In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg focuses on the life and times of Stalin’s “Barefoot Scientist” Trofim Lysenko. As always it is a thoughtful and interesting discussion not only on how a fraud like Lysenko could rise in Stalin’s Russia, but also the regime’s general relationship to science, particularly to genetics. The discussion features Robert Service, Professor of Russian History at the University of Oxford, Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London, and Catherine Merridale, Professor of Contemporary History at Queen Mary, University of London. You can listen to the program here.
