Re: A fable about Stalin and Darwin? (was Nancy's source)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Nield" <d.nield@auckland.ac.nz>
To: <mahaffy@mtcnet.net>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 12:34 AM
Subject: A fable about Stalin and Darwin? (was Nancy's source)

> James Mahaffy wrote:
>
>>I don't recall that anyone (myself included) asked James if Pearcy
>>footnoted her reference. I don't
>>recall that James gave a reference from Pearcy's account. Did she
>>provide a written source for her
>>assertion that Stalin read Darwin in seminary and afterwards became an
>>atheist? If she gave a
>>reference, then one could check it out and assess the soundness of the
>>source. If she did not, then
>>I wonder about the quality of her scholarship. How about it, James?
>> In response to George I said:
>>
>>[snip] Nancy's footnote says the story was originally told in E.
>>Yaroslavsky Landmarks in the Life of stalin, 8-9."
>>
>>However, i don't know this source.
> I have just been to our library.
> Landmarks in the Life of Stalin, by E. Yaroslavsy, 1st English ed. 1942,
> Lawrence & Wishhart, London, reads: pp. 8-9. (Stalin was born 21 Dec.1979)
> " From 1888 to 1894 he attended the eccelesiastical school in Gori ...
> While still a schoolboy, Stalin would often talk to workers and peasants
> and explain to them the causes of their poverty. G. Elisabedashvili, a
> schoolfellow of Stalin's tells how once, while walking in the country they
> came upon a group of ploughmen resting in a field; " ... Comrade Stalin
> explained step by step why the peasants lived so poorly, who exploited
> them, who were their friends and who their enemies. he spoke so simply and
> interestingly that the peasants begged him to come and talk to them."
> At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiatical school, he
> developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments; he began to read
> Darwin and became an atheist.
> G. Glurdjidze, a boyhood friend of Stalin's, relates:
> " I began to speak of God. Joseph heard me out, and after a moment's
> silence said:
> " ' You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.....
> I'll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all
> living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk
> about God is sheer nonsense,' Joseph said.
> " ' What book is that?" I enquired.
> ' ' Darwin. You must read it,' Joseph impressed on me."
>
> Judging by the number of copies in our library, the standard biography of
> Stalin is
> Stalin: A Political Biography, by I. Deutscher, Oxford U.P., New York,
> 1949. Page 8 reads.
> "Official Soviet biographers and memoirists claim that already at Gori
> their hero had read Darwin and become an atheist. One may doubt whether he
> could have read Darwin at so early an age. But he may have acquired a
> vague notion of the theory from popular summaries, and his mind may have
> turned against religion.
>
> Joseph Stalin: Man and Legend, by Ronald Hingley, McGraw-Hill, New York,
> 1974, page 7, wrote:
> "Turning from such frivolities to the sensitive topic of politics, we find
> one gospeller of the developed Cult period-- Yaroslavsky--
> antedating the boy's active interest in this key theme. He has the child
> Joseph haranguing the worker and peasants of Gori on the causes of their
> poverty ... Yet Stalin himself had virtually disclaimed such political
> precociousness when he stated that he had not joined the revolutionary
> movement until his sixteenth year. Yaroslavsky may also be improving on
> Stalin's own version of the Gospel when he reports G. Glurdzhidze's tale
> of the boy Comrade converting his friend to atheism at Gori ... ' ...I'll
> lend you a book to read ..."
>
> Draw your own conclusions about Nancy's scholarship!
> Don

Thanks to Don for locating the Yaroslavsky reference. It clearly is, as Bob
said, hagiography. Note that Stalin is supposedly explaining to peasants
the causes of their poverty (presumably, i.e., Marxism) even before he
started seminary, when we know in fact that he was then a pious Orthodox
schoolboy.

I don't know what the standard bio of Stalin today is - or if there is such
a thing. The one I mentioned earlier by Dmitri Volkogonov, _Stalin:
Triumph and Tragedy_ (Grove Weidenfeld, NY, 1991 English edition of the 1989
Russian edition) is the 1st by a Russian with access & freedom to tell the
truth publically about Stalin. While very critical of Stalin for many
things, it is not a pure hatchet job. The author was, among other things,
deputy chief of the main political section of the Soviet army and navy.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Wed Jul 27 09:03:42 2005