Intelligence? Civilization?

The photograph, taken in 1908 on the Island of Capri, is of Gorki kibitzing at a chess match between Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov--proof that, in some things at least, Lenin was not an unscientific idiot.  And yet, and yet...he believed in the existence of an Ether.  He believed that Dialectical Materialism was true in the sense that its truths are supreme even over the truths of empirical science.  He believed that there was truth in the fustian cobwebs of Hegelianism and German Idealism.  But how could such a barbarian play chess?