Communism’s Other Forgotten Victim
June 14th, 2007 RWA Posted in News |
The Memorial to the Victims of Communism worldwide finally received its formal dedication on June 12. The President gave an impassioned speech reminding us that we still have lessons to learn from this great tragedy of the 20th century, about the lives lost in the name of ideology and the need to fight evil whenever it raises it head. It is truly tragic that there are still many who continue to fail to recognize this fact, just as they did during the Cold War. But there is still yet another lesson to be learned here. While the left no longer applauds the murders committed by communism, it continues to either ignore or excuse them. The right, meanwhile, while correctly recognizing the sheer amorality of communism and the inevitable misery it has caused, has completely overlooked that science was one of communism’s greatest victims. Although the Ukranian famine was a deliberate act of genocide, agriculture and biology in the entire Soviet Union was set back years thanks to Stalin’s embrace of the anti-evolutionary ideas of Trofim Lysenko. Not only did starvation occur in the Soviet Union and beyond, as Lysenko’s unworkable ideas spread to Mao’s China, but scientists who dared to speak out and criticize Lysenkoism found themselves shipped to the gulags, where they met either hard labor or death. Scientists in the West who had formerly embraced communism, such as Herman Muller and JBS Haldane, both giants in biology, suddenly spurned it (although Haldane remained a committed Marxist), and although the anti-anti-communism mentality would resurface once Lysenkoism was no longer state doctrine, as long as it was in place, the Soviet Union recieved no respect from the Western scientific community.
History is now repeating itself, right here in America, not only among the useful dupes of the left who excuse or deny the very real danger of Islamic fundamentalism, but among the useless idiots of the right who deny the equally hard facts of biological evolution. With the creationists pressing for the dumbing-down of the scientific community, how will the United States be able to compete in the rapidly emerging biotechnology industries? With a Gallup poll indicating most Republicans reject evolution, how does the party expect to gain the respect of the scientific community or any intelligent voter, for that matter? If these trends go on, there may very well be a tragedy of Stalinist proportions.
Addendum:
Welcome NRO readers! And thank you, Derb! For further information on the Soviet suppression of science, just Google the names of Lev Landau, Pyotr Kapitsa, or Andrei Sakharov, or pick up a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitshyn’s The First Circle, which is based on the author’s personal experiences in the Soviet prison camps where scientists and engineers were specially assigned to. If you can stand PDF files, I also recommend this excellent piece by physicist William Happer, which in addition to providing a good, detailed history of the Lysenko affair, draws lessons to be learned in the politicization of science in other areas. Happer, it should be noted, has first hand experience of this sort of thing, having been dismissed from his DOE post in 1993 by Mr.Assault on Reason himself, Al Gore, when he dared question some of Gore’s rasher claims about ozone depletion.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:38 am
It’s not just that Republicans tend to reject evolution and Democrats accept it, either. Independents accept evolution TO A GREATER DEGREE than even Democrats!
The socons have really painted themselves into a corner on this issue.
July 27th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Why must we accept or reject anything. I for one beleive in Devine guidance through evolution. I consider myself a conservative independant.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:34 am
You make a fundamental error by equating communism with Stalinism. Stalin’s regime represented a sharp break with the 1917 revolution, as evidenced by Stalin’s ruthless liquidation of the leaders of that revolution. The year 1937 marked the beginning of the wholesale massacre of revolutionary Bolsheviks. The Left Opposition, led by Leon Trotsky, was brutally dealt with. Trotsky fled to Turkey and then to Mexico, where he was murdered by one of Stalin’s agents.
The Soviet elite or ‘nomenklatura’ , who flourished under Stalin, dominated the Soviet state up until the demise of the Soviet Union. Naturally, they were also the best placed to take advantage of the dismantling of Soviet era industries and have consequently become astoundingly wealthy through what is effectively the looting of the state.
Citizens of the former Soviet Union have grown poorer, their life expectancy has decreased, and they have not seen the supposed benefits of capitalist restoration.
Today, a 16 year old boy growing up in Russia has less chance of making it to 60 years of age than a 16 year old boy living in 1918. Hardly an improvement, I would say.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Dear Dabulamanzi:
Stalinism had nothing to do with communism? Yeah right, and intelligent design is not creationism. Look at the entire history of communist regimes: EVERY SINGLE ONE has led to dictatorship and genocide. Soviet oppression did not end with the death of Stalin, nor did it begin with him. And Lysenkoism was the logical outgrowth of blind adherence to the principles of Marxism and Leninism; the same mistakes would have occurred regardless of whether a Lenin, a Stalin or a Trotsky was in charge. How much is Putin paying you to write this apologist tripe?
August 14th, 2007 at 6:05 am
I am not a supporter of Putin (one of the nomenklatura), nor is this an apologetic. Rather, it is a matter of historical truth. Rather than regurgitating received opinion much in the manner of a creationist Luddite, you should perhaps do a little investigation yourself.
Lysenkoism is not the logical outcome of ‘blind adherence to the principles of Marxism and Leninism.’ The late Stephen Jay Gould was a lifelong Marxist and certainly no Lysenkoist. Indeed, his theory of ‘punctuated equilibria’ owes something to dialectical materialism. “Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature, matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity” stated Gould.
Richard Lewontin, the student of the great Theodisius Dobzhansky, was also an avowed Marxist. Indeed some of his work is thoroughly imbued with Marxist concepts and thought.
I would suggest that it is only in your mind that Lysenkoism is the logical outcome of adherence to Marxist principles.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:14 am
# I would suggest that it is only in your mind that Lysenkoism is the logical outcome of adherence to Marxist principles. #
Hey, I’ve got an idea, why don’t you address what RWA actually said, instead of what you’d rather misquote him as saying?
Hint: He said that Lysenkoism is “the logical outgrowth of *blind* adherence to the principles of Marxism and Leninism”, not “the logical outcome of adherence to Marxist principles” of any sort as you have dishonestly misquoted him.
Also, I’d like to see support for your claim that Gould was “a lifelong Marxist”. I have seen this claim made occasionally, and I have to date seen people run away from requests that they document it. And no, the “Marxism at my father’s knee” quote doesn’t cut it. Nor, frankly, does the quote you gave support your claim about how P.E. is somehow in any way related to Marxist views.
In any case, even if you can document that Gould was a “lifelong Marxist”, and that in some way P.E. owes anything to “dialectical materialism” (which contrary to your apparent confusion is not the same as “materialism” in general as used in Gould’s quote), that still doesn’t help you to refute RWA’s assertion, because it’s clear that whatever he may have been, Gould was hardly suffering from “*blind* adherence” to the principles of Marxism, or any other -ism for that matter. Gould was a very thoughtful man, not the kind to fall into habits of “blind adherence” to any creed.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:26 am
> You make a fundamental error by equating communism with Stalinism. Stalin’s regime represented a sharp break with the 1917 revolution, as evidenced by Stalin’s ruthless liquidation of the leaders of that revolution. The year 1937 marked the beginning of the wholesale massacre of revolutionary Bolsheviks. The Left Opposition, led by Leon Trotsky, was brutally dealt with. Trotsky fled to Turkey and then to Mexico, where he was murdered by one of Stalin’s agents.
Ah yes. Communism would have triumphed - if only the psychopaths hadn’t managed to rise to the top of the government.
Sheesh!
August 15th, 2007 at 1:40 am
It’s frequently been argued that punctuated equlibrium owes something to dialectical materialism, but it should be noted that this was argument usually made by opponents of Gould, not Gould himself. Indeed, it actually goes against dialectical materialism and other attempts at predictive historicism by trying to explain why some species remain static in their variations over long periods of time, why some go suddenly extinct, and why others are able to diversify very quickly in the absence of any outward adaptative pressure.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:01 am
“And Lysenkoism was the logical outgrowth of blind adherence to the principles of Marxism and Leninism.”
Please explain how “blind adherence to the principles of Marxism and Leninism” lead to Lysenkoism. To what principles are you actually referring. Having read Marx and Lenin extensively, I cannot recall anything in their writings that resembles the ideas of Lysenko.
The truth is that Lysenko would probably have flourished even under a fanatically ant-communist dictatorship, simply because of his willingness to subjugate himself to the dictator of the moment. If he were alive today he might even be shilling for the creationist loons.
August 19th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Did you even read any of the links in my original post? They make it clear that the very reason Lysenkoism appealed so much to Stalin and other Soviet leaders were its origins in marxist and leninist doctrine, and tried to warp biology to conform to their dogmas. Even Wikipedia’s entry on Lysenko notes the heavy influence of Lenin on Lysenko’s thinking. Its approach and intellectual roots are so different from those of creationists, that to say Lysenko would be “shilling” for them is ludicrous in the extreme, even if they are both equal in their scientific vacuousness.
Now let me ask you this: if someone told you that your native South Africa was better off under the old system of minority rule, and that “true” apartheid has never been tried, you would be justifiably angry at such an uninformed and immoral perspective. Yet it is no different than your own attempts at excusing both an oppressive system of rule and the ideology which allowed it to perpetuate itself.