This book traces the historical trajectory of one of the most momentous confrontations in the intellectual life of the Soviet Union--the conflict between Einstein's theory of relativity and official Soviet ideology embodied in dialectical materialism. Soviet attitudes toward Einstein's scientific and philosophical thought passed through several stages. During the pre-Stalin era, Marxist philosophers clashed over the problem of defining dialectical materialism in relation to the ongoing revolution in science. This controversy produced a full spectrum of Marxist attitudes toward the theory of...