Mathematics, religion, and Marxism in the Soviet Union in the 1930s (Q1888446)

Mathematicians and traditional pure mathematics in the U.S.S.R. came under attack in the 1930s from the platforms of religion and nationalism in an attempt to establish dialectical materialistic mathematics. These platforms came to light at the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party in 1930. A leader of the attacks was the mathematically inclined Marxist/Stalinist ideologue Ernst Kolman (1892--1979), in whose writings randomness and probability (more amenable to philosophical discourse than other areas of mathematics) are recurring issues. The recently rediscovered booklet ``Mathematics and Religion'', written in 1933 under the influence of Kolman by the mathematician and political activist Mikhail Kh. Orlov (1900--1936), encompasses the Bolshevik position on mathematics and religion. A nucleus of vilification in Orlov's book for his religiously inclined pre-revolutionary writings is the mathematician Pavel Alekseevich Nekrasov (1853--1924), and by extension, the Moscow Mathematical Society, a focus of attack by Kolman and others. The outstanding mathematicians/probabilists of the time, Andrei N. Kolmogorov (1903-1987) and Sergei N. Bernstein (1880--1968), prominent opponents of the ``reforms'' of Kolman (in Moscow) and Orlov (in Ukraine), respectively, are featured in this study.