The Soviet denial of science actually went much more beyond relatively minor details like the prosecution of Vavilov.
I have read a large number of school manuals from the sixties, both from the Soviet Union and from a few of the East European countries dominated by the Soviet Union.
All these school manuals were extremely ridiculous, because they always included some pseudo-historical sections where for every useful scientific or technical discovery or invention, or even for every innovation in sports, it was claimed that there was some unknown Russian scientist, worker or even peasant, who had discovered or invented that, much earlier than their well-known discoverers or inventors from West-European countries.
Additionally, all the biology manuals included a pseudo-historical section containing criticism against the "Mendelo-Morganism", where Gregor Mendel, Thomas Morgan and the other people with well-known contributions to modern biology and genetics were presented as a gang of crooks who belonged somehow to some kind of international conspiracy that promoted some kind of pseudo-science for some unspecified but certainly evil purposes.
On the contrary, Lysenko and a few other Russian geneticists were presented as some luminaries who are the only source of truth about biology.
Reading any of those Russian school manuals, which tried to poison the minds of many generations of students in Russia and in the countries controlled by them, is enough to make you understand the relationship between the Soviet Union (and communists in general) and the true sciences.