VASKhNIL (Russian: ВАСХНИЛ), the acronym for the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences or the V.I.

In the 1930s–40s, meetings of the academy members ('sessions' of VASKhNIL) provided the floor for debates between Lysenkoists and geneticists.

The proverbial among Russian biologists August session of VASKhNIL [ru] (July 31–August 7, 1948) organised under control of the Communist Party (Joseph Stalin personally corrected the drafts of the Lysenko's opening address "On the Situation in Biological Science") led to a formal ban on teaching "Mendelist-Weismannist-Morganist" genetics (a pejorative label based on the names of Gregor Mendel, August Weismann, and Thomas Hunt Morgan), which was effective until the early 1960s.

Soviet plant breeding efforts - largely carried out by the VASKhNIL - were well funded, however not as effective as they might have been.

[1] The end of the Soviet era in 1991 brought a sudden fall in funding for plant breeding.