AbstractsPhilosophy & Theology

This thesis traces the relationship between UNESCO director-general Julian Huxley and the Soviet Union from 1945 to the completion of UNESCO's History of Mankind: Scientific and Cultural Development in the 1960s. I argue that Soviet participation in the UNESCO project was one of several instances of confrontation between Huxley's philosophy for UNESCO, Scientific or Evolutionary Humanism, and Soviet ideology during the late-Stalinist and Khrushchev periods. As Huxley formulated his philosophy for UNESCO in the 1940s, he depicted the Soviet Union as an example of the ideological particularity that his universalist philosophy sought to overcome. The influence of Huxley's philosophy on UNESCO's History of Mankind determined the venture's ideological parameters and excluded Soviet contribution to the main narrative of the work, while the presence of Soviet commentary in the endnotes of the History undermined Huxley's original intention that the project show the universality of humanity's scientific and cultural development.