If anyone is interested there was a huge body of work undertaken in the Soviet Union by a now mostly forgotten geneticist: Nikolai Vavilov. He has quite a story of persecution by the Soviet govt, and a great book on the topic may be found here:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=2mi7NAOxe-8C&...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov