An editorial in Pravda, titled “Concerning agricultural science and the false positions of the Journal of Botany" and published on 14 December 1958, constituted a milestone in Soviet history. The editorial appeared a day before the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party convened a five-day meeting on agriculture, and it sharply criticized the editorial board of the Journal of Botany for its critical stance against Lysenkoism. A few days later, the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences replaced the entire editorial board of the Journal of Botany with scientists who were Lysenkoists. Other changes soon fol lowed, including the replacement of V. A. Engel’gardt with N. M. Sisakian as aca demician-secretary of the Division of Biological Sciences, and the dismissal of N. P. Dubinin from the directorship of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics at the Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Division. For genetics and geneticists, the “Khrushchev thaw” had ended. On the pages of the Journal of Botany, the Soviet scientific community, including some of the top leaders of the Academy of Sciences, waged a battle against Lysenkoism. The spirit and, until now, largely unknown circumstances of this struggle can be followed through letters selected from the personal archive of D. V. Lebedev and published in this essay.