The ambivalent genius: On the metamorphoses of Darwinism in Russia

Annotation

The article gives a brief overview of main peculiarities that have characterized the reception and development of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in Russia (prior to 1917) and in the Soviet Union. It is shown that the attitudes of the English biologist and his theory were defined not only by the scientific content of Darwinism but also by its placement into the context of a specifically Russian dichotomy: “West (Europe) – East (Russia)”. Until the mid-1960s, the attitude towards Darwin and Darwinism in our country remained largely ideologically motivated, which caused a pronounced ambivalence in the perception of evolutionism in Russia and in the USSR. Only after the collapse of the so-called “Michurinist biology” (Lysenkoism) in the USSR, the debates about Darwin’s theory began to be conducted outside any ideological context, at least in the scientific biological community.

Keywords

Darwin, Darwinism, reception, Russian philosophy, Lysenkoism

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