Lysenko was an idiot who linked his failed theories to the failed communist system via Stalin and indirectly killed millions of Russians - it led directly to the downfall of the USSR via starvation.
Many genomes have the ability to express silenced genes in adverse situations - mostly these are bacterial genomes, but all the higher genomes have this adaptibility that sometimes manifests. It is referred to as epigenetic alteration - more here:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics