Page 44 - Communism in Ambush

COMMUNISM IN AMBUSH
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Lenin tried applying Pavlov's methods to Russian society. In his book, A
People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, Orlando Figes
writes about Lenin's desire to "educate" the Russian people as an animal
trainer would, and how the roots of this ambition lie in Darwinism:
In October 1919, according to legend, Lenin paid a secret visit to the labo-
ratory of the great physiologist I. P. Pavlov to find out if his work on the
conditional reflexes of the brain might help the Bolsheviks control human
behaviour. 'I want the masses of Russia to follow a Communistic pattern of
thinking and reacting,' Lenin explained… P Pavlov was astounded. It
seemed that Lenin wanted him to do for humans what he had already
done for dogs. 'Do you mean that you would like to standardize the popu-
lation of Russia? Make them all behave in the same way?' he asked.
'Exactly' replied Lenin. 'Man can be corrected. Man can be made what we
want him to be.'… [T]he ultimate aim of the Communist system was the
transformation of human nature. It was an aim shared by the other so-
called totalitarian regimes of the inter-war period…As one of the pioneers
of the eugenics movement in Nazi Germany put in 1920, 'it could almost
seem as if we have witnessed a change in the concept of humanity…We
were forced by the terrible exigencies of war to ascribe a different value to
the life of the individual than was the case before.'
...The notion of creating a new type of man through the enlightenment of
the masses had always been the messianic mission of the nineteenth-cen-
tury Russian intelligentsia, from whom the Bolsheviks emerged. Marxist
philosophy likewise taught that human nature was a product of historical
development and could thus be transformed by a revolution. The scientific
materialism of Darwin and Huxley, which had the status of a religion
among the Russian intelligentsia during Lenin's youth, equally lent itself
to the view that man was determined by the world in which he lived. Thus
the Bolsheviks were led to conclude that their revolution, with the help of
science, could create a new type of man...
...Although Pavlov was an outspoken critic of the revolution and had often
threatened to emigrate, he was patronized by the Bolsheviks. After two
years of growing his own carrots, Pavlov was awarded a handsome ration
and a spacious Moscow apartment... Lenin spoke of Pavlov's work as