“a central plank in Marxist doctrine today. The Nazis were convinced, as are communists today, that evolution had taken place, that all biology had evolved spontaneously upward, and that inbetween links (or less evolved types) should be actively eradicated. They believed that natural selection could and should be actively aided, and therefore instituted political measures to eradicate the handicapped, the Jews, and the blacks, whom they considered as ‘underdeveloped’
Darwin, however, opened the door to Marxism by providing what Marx believed was a ‘scientific’ rationale to deny Creation and, by extension, to deny God.4 His denial of God, and his knowledge of Darwin, inspired Marx to develop his new godless worldview now known as communism. And like other Darwinists, Marx stressed that his communistic worldview was ‘scientific’ and, as such, employed a ‘scientific methodology and scientific outlook’.5 Bethell notes that Marx admired Darwin’s book,
“not for economic reasons but for the more fundamental one that Darwin’s universe was purely materialistic, and the explication of it no longer involved any reference to unobservable, nonmaterial causes outside or ‘beyond’ it. In that important respect, Darwin and Marx were truly comrades … ”6
Lenin greatly admired his father, who was a hard-working, religious and intelligent man. Koster adds:
“The only piece of art work in Lenin’s office was a kitsch statue of an ape sitting on a heap of books—including Origin of Species—and contemplating a human skull. This … comment in clay on Darwin’s view of man, remained in Lenin’s view as he worked at his desk, approving plans or signing death warrants … . The ape and the skull were a symbol of his faith, the Darwinian faith that man is a brute, the world is a jungle, and individual lives are irrelevant. Lenin was probably not an instinctively vicious man, though he certainly ordered a great many vicious measures. Perhaps the ape and the skull were invoked to remind him that, in the world according to Darwin, man’s brutality to man is inevitable. In his struggle to bring about the ‘worker’s paradise’ though ‘scientific’ means, he ordered a great many deaths. The ape and the skull may have helped him stifle whatever kindly or humane impulses were left over from a wholesome childhood.”38
The importance of Darwin’s ideas is stressed by Parkadze, a childhood friend of Stalin’s:
“We youngsters had a passionate thirst for knowledge. Thus, in order to disabuse the minds of our seminary students of the myth that the world was created in six days, we had to acquaint ourselves with the geological origin and age of the earth, and be able to prove them in argument; we had to familiarize ourselves with Darwin’s teachings. We were aided in this by … Lyell’s Antiquity of Man and Darwin’s Descent of Man, the latter in a translation edited by Sechenov. Comrade Stalin read Sechenov’s scientific works with great interest. We gradually proceeded to a study of the development of class society, which led us to the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. In those days the reading of Marxist literature was punishable as revolutionary propaganda. The effect of this was particularly felt in the seminary, where even the name of Darwin was always mentioned with scurrilous abuse. … Comrade Stalin brought these books to our notice. The first thing we had to do, he would say, was to become atheists. Many of us began to acquire a materialist outlook and to ignore theological subjects. Our reading in the most diverse branches of science not only helped our young people to escape from the bigoted and narrow-minded spirit of the seminary, but also prepared their minds for the reception of Marxist ideas. Every book we read, whether on archaeology, geology, astronomy, or primitive civilization, helped to confirm us the truth of Marxism.”47
As a result of the influence of Lenin, Stalin and other Soviet leaders, Darwin became ‘an intellectual hero in the Soviet Union. There is a splendid Darwin museum in Moscow, and the Soviet authorities struck a special Darwin medal in honour of the centenary of The Origin’.48
