Bourgeois pseudoscience



Bourgeois pseudoscience was an epithet used by the Soviets, especially the Stalinists, to dismiss any science that was inconvenient to their ideology. Whereas bourgeois pseudoscience in the Soviet Union began with Darwinism, Soviet ideology was not inherently opposed to Darwinism, since the Soviets at times taught Darwinism as part of dialectical materialism. The problem was the Modern Synthesis of evolution (1936-1947), which reconciled Mendelian genetics with natural selection.

The concept of bourgeois pseudoscience developed from the fallout of the failed Seventh International Genetics Congress that was to be held in Moscow, and had been approved by the Soviet Politburo in 1937. Simultaneously however, and before the Congress could be organized, the Great Terror (or Great Purge) of 1936-1938 was taking place. Many prominent Soviet geneticists, including all geneticists connected with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the organizer of the congress died in the purge. Following the purge of the geneticists, Trofim Lysenko (a proletarian agronomist) was appointed as head of the national agricultural academy (VASKhNIL), setting the stage of Soviet Lysenkoism in opposition to Darwinism as official state policy. Lysenko was opposed to genetics, considering it a pseudoscience, thus Darwinism also came to be considered a pseudoscience after the field became reconciled with genetics. Initially, Darwinism was referred to as bourgeois science by communists in the 1920s, by 1947 Lysenko had written to Stalin, referring to Darwinism as bourgeois pseudoscience.

Other natural and social sciences labeled as "bourgeois pseudoscience" included:
 * Comparative linguistics (Soviet Union, c. 1921-1950), insofar as it disagreed with the Marxist of language
 * Cybernetics (Soviet Union, 1953-1958)
 * Psychology (China, 1966-1976)
 * Sociology (Soviet Union), China (1952-)

Gallery of people purged for genetics
In addition to Bubnov (above), a few of Soviet geneticists and genetics promoters who were purged during the Great Terror were: