Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was the organizer, propagandist, and military
leader of the communist seizure of power in Russia following the
revolution of 1917. He was communist dictator Lenin's heir apparent,
until Stalin usurped this position. Intolerant, tactless and impatient,
Trotsky had an unbounded faith in Marxism, which was reinforced by his
uncritical acceptance of Darwinism.

The Darwin/Trotsky connection

The Darwin/Trotsky connection

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i2/darwin_trotsky.asp

The Darwin/Trotsky connection

by Barry Woolley



Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was the organizer, propagandist, and military
leader of the communist seizure of power in Russia following the
revolution of 1917. He was communist dictator Lenin's heir apparent,
until Stalin usurped this position. Intolerant, tactless and impatient,
Trotsky had an unbounded faith in Marxism, which was reinforced by his
uncritical acceptance of Darwinism.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i2/darwin_trotsky.asp

The Darwin/Trotsky connection

by Barry Woolley



Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was the organizer, propagandist, and military
leader of the communist seizure of power in Russia following the
revolution of 1917. He was communist dictator Lenin's heir apparent,
until Stalin usurped this position. Intolerant, tactless and impatient,
Trotsky had an unbounded faith in Marxism, which was reinforced by his
uncritical acceptance of Darwinism.

His fanatical faith in these ideologies and his angry intolerance of
enemies saw him use the Red Army to crush the enemies of the newly
formed Soviet state in the Russian Civil War of 1918-20. He
instituted the militarization of civilian labour and the confiscation
of food from peasants. He crushed the Ukrainian Army of Insurgent
Peasants; and its anarchist guerrilla leader, Nestor Makhno
(1889-1934), who had been his ally against the White Russians, was
badly wounded but managed to flee the country with his family. Trotsky
brutally suppressed the Soviet sailors at Kronstadt,1 and committed
other acts of violence with ease, 'because of his absolute conviction
that they served the purposes of the proletariat and its permanent
revolution'.2

After the end of the Russian Civil War, Trotsky's boundless energies
were channelled into handling administrative details and carrying out
such pet projects as the leadership of the Society of the Godless,
which was responsible for the spread of the Soviets' antitheistic
propaganda. He was an ardent atheist and advocated an 'atheistic
substitute' for religion; this involved the use of the theatre for
antireligious propaganda, and Communistic rituals of 'red' baptisms,
'red' weddings, 'red' Easters, etc.3 He persecuted Christians,
desecrated church property, and hated all middle-class morality.

Trotsky advocated permanent worldwide revolution4 and called for the
communist seizure of power in Germany and other countries where he
thought conditions were ripe for such violent actions.

How could it have come about that Trotsky, the son of a rich Jewish
land-owner,5 became so vehemently prejudiced against his father's class
and against religion? It had a lot to do with his college failure and
his sexual sin.


Among the most recognized of the former Soviet regime's cultural
symbols is this stainless steel monument in Moscow, titled 'A Worker
and a Collective Farmer'; seen holding aloft the sickle and hammer.

At the age of 17, Trotsky dropped out of college to join a
revolutionary commune. The only Marxist member of this group was a
woman, some six years his senior, named Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya.
At first, he was ferociously antagonistic to both Alexandra and her
Marxist views, so much so that at a New Year's Eve party in 1896 he
proposed a toast with the words, 'A curse on all Marxists, and on all
those who want to bring hardness and dryness into all life's
relationships!'6

However, he then began an affair with her, which caused him to
reconsider her Marxism. After the commune's activities landed its
members in the Tsar's prisons,7 Trotsky had ample time to develop his
ideologies.

In prison in Odessa, Trotsky read Darwin's Origin of Species and his
Autobiography. Years later he wrote, 'Darwin destroyed the last of my
ideological prejudices. ... In the Odessa prison I felt something like
hard scientific ground under my feet. Facts began to establish
themselves in a certain system. The idea of evolution and
determinism-that is, the idea of a gradual development conditioned by
the character of the material world-took possession of me completely.


'Darwin stood for me like a mighty doorkeeper at the entrance to the
temple of the universe. I was intoxicated with his minute, precise,
conscientious and at the same time powerful, thought. I was the more
astonished when I read ... that he had preserved his belief in God.8 I
absolutely declined to understand how a theory of the origin of species
by way of natural selection and sexual selection and a belief in God
could find room in one and the same head.'9

The details would be filled in later, but in the age of great
scientists like James Clerk Maxwell and Louis Pasteur, who were
Christian creationists, Trotsky took up the faith of Marx and Darwin.
The conversion experience was genuine and thorough. Its legacy would be
written in the torrents of blood that flowed under his hand.

In 1940, Trotsky, while living in exile in Mexico, was assassinated on
the orders of Josef Stalin, another who was converted to an atheistic
view of life through reading Darwin. Stalin was perhaps history's
greatest mass murderer. He and Trotsky acted in a way that was quite
consistent with their presuppositions: if no one made me, no one owns
me, and there is no absolute right or wrong. In such an evolution-based
worldview, there is nothing intrinsically 'wrong' with murdering
people, even millions of them.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i2/darwin_trotsky.asp

The Darwin/Trotsky connection

by Barry Woolley

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i2/darwin_trotsky.asp

The Darwin/Trotsky connection

by Barry Woolley



Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was the organizer, propagandist, and military
leader of the communist seizure of power in Russia following the
revolution of 1917. He was communist dictator Lenin's heir apparent,
until Stalin usurped this position. Intolerant, tactless and impatient,
Trotsky had an unbounded faith in Marxism, which was reinforced by his
uncritical acceptance of Darwinism.

His fanatical faith in these ideologies and his angry intolerance of
enemies saw him use the Red Army to crush the enemies of the newly
formed Soviet state in the Russian Civil War of 1918-20. He
instituted the militarization of civilian labour and the confiscation
of food from peasants. He crushed the Ukrainian Army of Insurgent
Peasants; and its anarchist guerrilla leader, Nestor Makhno
(1889-1934), who had been his ally against the White Russians, was
badly wounded but managed to flee the country with his family. Trotsky
brutally suppressed the Soviet sailors at Kronstadt,1 and committed
other acts of violence with ease, 'because of his absolute conviction
that they served the purposes of the proletariat and its permanent
revolution'.2

After the end of the Russian Civil War, Trotsky's boundless energies
were channelled into handling administrative details and carrying out
such pet projects as the leadership of the Society of the Godless,
which was responsible for the spread of the Soviets' antitheistic
propaganda. He was an ardent atheist and advocated an 'atheistic
substitute' for religion; this involved the use of the theatre for
antireligious propaganda, and Communistic rituals of 'red' baptisms,
'red' weddings, 'red' Easters, etc.3 He persecuted Christians,
desecrated church property, and hated all middle-class morality.

Trotsky advocated permanent worldwide revolution4 and called for the
communist seizure of power in Germany and other countries where he
thought conditions were ripe for such violent actions.

How could it have come about that Trotsky, the son of a rich Jewish
land-owner,5 became so vehemently prejudiced against his father's class
and against religion? It had a lot to do with his college failure and
his sexual sin.


Among the most recognized of the former Soviet regime's cultural
symbols is this stainless steel monument in Moscow, titled 'A Worker
and a Collective Farmer'; seen holding aloft the sickle and hammer.

At the age of 17, Trotsky dropped out of college to join a
revolutionary commune. The only Marxist member of this group was a
woman, some six years his senior, named Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya.
At first, he was ferociously antagonistic to both Alexandra and her
Marxist views, so much so that at a New Year's Eve party in 1896 he
proposed a toast with the words, 'A curse on all Marxists, and on all
those who want to bring hardness and dryness into all life's
relationships!'6

However, he then began an affair with her, which caused him to
reconsider her Marxism. After the commune's activities landed its
members in the Tsar's prisons,7 Trotsky had ample time to develop his
ideologies.

In prison in Odessa, Trotsky read Darwin's Origin of Species and his
Autobiography. Years later he wrote, 'Darwin destroyed the last of my
ideological prejudices. ... In the Odessa prison I felt something like
hard scientific ground under my feet. Facts began to establish
themselves in a certain system. The idea of evolution and
determinism-that is, the idea of a gradual development conditioned by
the character of the material world-took possession of me completely.


'Darwin stood for me like a mighty doorkeeper at the entrance to the
temple of the universe. I was intoxicated with his minute, precise,
conscientious and at the same time powerful, thought. I was the more
astonished when I read ... that he had preserved his belief in God.8 I
absolutely declined to understand how a theory of the origin of species
by way of natural selection and sexual selection and a belief in God
could find room in one and the same head.'9

The details would be filled in later, but in the age of great
scientists like James Clerk Maxwell and Louis Pasteur, who were
Christian creationists, Trotsky took up the faith of Marx and Darwin.
The conversion experience was genuine and thorough. Its legacy would be
written in the torrents of blood that flowed under his hand.

In 1940, Trotsky, while living in exile in Mexico, was assassinated on
the orders of Josef Stalin, another who was converted to an atheistic
view of life through reading Darwin. Stalin was perhaps history's
greatest mass murderer. He and Trotsky acted in a way that was quite
consistent with their presuppositions: if no one made me, no one owns
me, and there is no absolute right or wrong. In such an evolution-based
worldview, there is nothing intrinsically 'wrong' with murdering
people, even millions of them.