On 23 August 1948 he became victim of order 1208, one of a series signed by Minister of Higher Education in the USSR, , which led to the mass dismissals of many university professors. This destroyed his career, as it removed his professorship and also decreed the destruction of his books and research projects. This action came about due to accusations of Weismannism and pro-Morganism, and of promoting the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, at a time when Trofim Lysenko and his followers were emphasising a process of heredity that focused on interaction with the environment and the inheritance of acquired characteristics along Lamarckian lines. (Lysenko put his theory into practice in agriculture, claiming to have improved wheat using Lamarckian techniques. Lysenkoism played a major role in Stalin's politics, stressing that hard work led to improvement in future generations.)