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The Religious Affiliation of Communist leader
Joseph Stalin


Communism was a comprehensive, all-embracing religion and not simply a political party, political system or philosophy. This fact is illustrated by the numerous ways in which Communism embraced and attemped to promulgate peculiar quasi-religious (and often clearly anti-scientific) beliefs which had nothing all to do with politics or government. Although Communism typically touted itself as anti-religious and pro-science, it was, in fact, deeply anti-scientific and clearly a religion. One of Communism's hallmarks in the Soviet Union and China was its aggressive and violent suppression of other religions. Communism was "anti-religious" only in the sense that it forcibly suppressed all religions other than itself. From: Colin MacCabe, Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York (2003), page 398:
It is this dual allegiance to the philosophy of science and the Communist Party which explains Althusser's lack of publications in the fifties. In the late forties a Soviet, Lyssenko, challenged Darwinism by arguing for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Stalin backed the fraudulent scientist and argued for a distinction between proletarian and bourgeois science so that science itself became a function of the class struggle. Communist philosophers and scientists were pressured to back both Lyssenko and the philosophical distinction in a campaign whcih effectively severed any serious links between scientists and the Communist movement.

From: "Religious Affiliations of Celebrities" page in "Celebrity Religion" section of "Religion Facts" website (http://www.religionfacts.com/celebrities/religions_of_celebrities.htm; viewed 26 April 2007):

Below is an index of the religious affiliations or belief systems of celebrities (both living and dead; in film, television, music, literature, academics and politics), listed in alphabetical order by last name...

Celebrity: Joseph Stalin

Religion/Belief: Atheism

Quotes, More Information, Sources:
The Soviet dictator said, "You know, they are fooling us, there is no God... all this talk about God is sheer nonsense." - E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin

Webpage created 17 September 2005. Last modified 26 April 2007.
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