Re: Darwin's influence on Stalin

Hello ASA,

This is my first post at ASA, but I’ve been viewing threads for several weeks. Glad to be here with you folks in a Christian scientific association! I look forward to future communication and reading on this channel.

In regard to J. Stalin reading C. Darwin, I must concur with those here who think it faulty to make such a connection between Stalin’s atheism and his evolutionary tendencies or interpretive reading of Darwin’s writings. F. Dostoevsky read T. Malthus and Darwin also, in Russian translation, and it did not ultimately determine his religious beliefs.

One semi-relevant article to this thread I have come across, that is available on-line, is by K. Rossiyanov, called “Stalin as Lysenko’s Editor.” The article, which touches on Darwin’s influence on Stalin, can be found at: http://eserver.org/cyber/stalin.txt

‘Bourgeois science’ and ‘bourgeois biology’ – though Russian views of evolution differ considerably from British and other western scientific, social views, I wonder how much these categories have any resonance today? Surely there is a kind of evolutionary or (neo)-Darwinian orthodoxy still functioning in some places. Though, this doesn’t mean that censorship of evolutionism or dissent from neo-Darwinism is the correct course to take by anti-evolutionists or anti-Darwinists.

Warm regards,

G. Arago

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Received on Mon Jul 25 15:50:59 2005