 Lysenko played an active role in the famines that killed millions of Soviet people and his practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages.The Soviet Union's allies suffered under Lysenkoism, too.The People's Republic of China under Mao Tse-Tung adopted his methods starting in 1958, with calamitous results, culminating in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1962, in which some 15 million people died.