The grandparent overgeneralizes—Soviet genetics was pretty much absent, but the rest of biology was fine (well, at least as fine as it could be expected to be under the Soviet regime).
I have difficulty seeing how you can do biology beyond pure description (“Here’s a species of bird with appearance X and behavior Y”) while ignoring both genetics and natural selection. Doing cellular biology seems near-impossible if you can’t mention DNA, while ecology is similarly linked to selection pressure.
If I understand correctly, Soviet biology was in shambles because of Lysenko.
I’m not sure how long this lasted: My dad is a gifted biochemist who emigrated in 89. So they must’ve had some way of teaching real useful science
The grandparent overgeneralizes—Soviet genetics was pretty much absent, but the rest of biology was fine (well, at least as fine as it could be expected to be under the Soviet regime).
I have difficulty seeing how you can do biology beyond pure description (“Here’s a species of bird with appearance X and behavior Y”) while ignoring both genetics and natural selection. Doing cellular biology seems near-impossible if you can’t mention DNA, while ecology is similarly linked to selection pressure.