Philosophy in the Soviet Union
Encyclopedia
Philosophical research in the Soviet Union was officially confined to Marxist-Leninist
thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical
truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought
were repressed (many philosophers emigrated, others were expelled). Joseph Stalin
enacted a decree
in 1931 identifying dialectical materialism
with Marxism Leninism, making it the official philosophy which would be enforced in all Communist states and, through the Comintern
, in most Communist parties. Following the traditional use in the Second International
, opponents would be labeled as "revisionists". From the beginning of Bolshevik
regime, the aim of official Soviet
philosophy (which was taught as an obligatory subject for every course), was the theoretical justification of Communist ideas. For this reason, "Sovietologists", whom the most famous were Józef Maria Bocheński
and Gustav Wetter, have often claimed Soviet philosophy was close to nothing but dogma
. However, since the 1917 October Revolution
, it was marked by both philosophical and political struggles, which call into question any monolithic reading. Evald Vasilevich Ilyenkov
was one of the main philosophers of the 1960s, who revisited the 1920s debate between "mechanicists" and "dialecticians" in Leninist Dialectics & Metaphysics of Positivism (1979). During the 1960s and 1970s Western philosophies
including analytical philosophy and logical empiricism began to make a mark in Soviet thought.
in Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908) around three axes: the "materialist inversion" of Hegelian dialectics, the historicity
of ethical principles ordered to class struggle
and the convergence of "laws of evolution
" in physics (Helmholz), biology (Darwin
) and in political economics (Marx). Lenin hence took position between a historicist
Marxism (Labriola
) and a determinist
Marxism, close to what was later called "social Darwinism
" (Kautsky
). Lenin's most important philosophical rival was Alexander Bogdanov
(1873-1928), who tried to synthesize Marxism with the philosophies of Ernst Mach
, Wilhelm Ostwald
, and Richard Avenarius
(which were violently criticized in Materialism and Empiriocriticism). Bodganov wrote a treatise on "tectology
" and was one of the founders of Proletkult
after the war.
Following the 1917 October Revolution
, Soviet philosophy divided itself between "dialecticians" (Deborin
) and "mechanists
" (Bukharin
, who would detail Stalin's thesis upheld in 1924 concerning "socialism in one country
"), was not a "mechanist" per se, but was seen as an ally. The mechanists (A.K. Timartizev, Timianski, Axelrod, Stepanov...), came mostly from scientific backgrounds, claimed that Marxist philosophy found its basis in a causal explanation of Nature. They upheld a positivist
interpretation of Marxism which asserted that Marxist philosophy had to follow the natural sciences. Stepanov thus wrote an article flatly titled "The Dialectical Understanding of Nature is the Mechanistic Understanding". To the contrary, "dialecticians", whose background was Hegelian, insisted that dialectics could not be reduced to simple mechanism. Basing themselves mainly on Friedrich Engels
' Anti-Dühring
and Dialectics of Nature
, they maintained that the laws of dialectics could be found in nature. Taking support on the theory of relativity
and quantum mechanics
, they responded that the mechanists' conception of nature was too restricted and narrow. Deborin
, who had been a student of Georgi Plekhanov
, the "father of Russian Marxism", also disagreed with the mechanicists concerning the place of Baruch Spinoza
. The latter maintained that he was an idealist metaphysician, while Deborin, following Plekhanov, saw Spinoza as a materialist and a dialectician. Mechanism was finally condemned as undermining dialectical materialism and for vulgar evolutionism
at the 1929 meeting of the Second All-Union Conference of Marxist-Leninist Scientific Institutions. Two years later, Stalin settled by fiat the debate between the mechanist and the dialectician tendencies by issuing a decree which identified dialectical materialism as the philosophical basis of Marxism-Leninism. Henceforth, the possibilities for philosophical research independent
of official dogmatics virtually vanished, while lysenkoism
was enforced in the scientific fields (in 1948, genetics
were declared a "bourgeois pseudoscience
"). However, this debate between "mechanists" and "dialecticians" would retain importance long after the 1920s.
Otherwise, David Riazanov
was named director of the Marx-Engels Institute, which he had founded, in 1920. He then created the MEGA (Marx-Engels-Gesamt-Ausgabe), which was supposed to edit Marx and Engels' complete works. He also published authors authors, such as Diderot
, Feuerbach or Hegel. Riazanov was however excluded from any political functions in 1921 for defending trade union
s' autonomy.
During the Fifth Comintern
Congress, Grigory Zinoviev
condemned for "revisionism" the works of Georg Lukács
, History and Class Consciousness (1923) and of Karl Korsch
, Marxism and Philosophy. History and Class Consciousness was disavowed by its author, who made his self-criticism
for political reasons (he thought that, for a revolutionary, being part of the party was the priority). It became however a leading source of Western Marxism
, starting with the Frankfurt School
, and even influenced Heidegger
's Sein und Zeit (1927). Lukács then went to Moscow
in the beginnings of the 1930s where he would continue his philosophical studies, and returned to Hungary
after World War II
. He then took part to Imre Nagy
's government in 1956
, and was closely watched afterwards.
Lev Vygotsky
's (1896-1934) studies in developmental psychology
, which opposed themselves to Ivan Pavlov
's works, would be expanded in the activity theory
developed by Alexei Nikolaevich Leont'ev, Pyotr Zinchenko
(a member of Kharkov School of Psychology
), and Alexander Luria
, a neuropsychologist who developed the first lie detector
.
in 1956, albeit only on the 'outskirts' of philosophy: the philosophy of the natural science
(B. Kedrov, I. Frolov), theory of perception and gnoseology (P. Kopnin, V. Lektorsky, M. Mamardashvili
, E. Ilyenkov), the history of philosophy (V. Asmus, A. Losev, I. Narski), ethics (O. Dobronitski), aesthetics
(M. Kagan, L. Stolovitsh), logics (G. Shtshedrovitski, A. Zinovyev
) and semiotics
and system theories (Y. Lotman
, who set up the Sign Systems Studies
journal, the oldest semiotics periodical; V. Sadovsky). The works of the young Marx, such as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
, which had been first published in 1932 but suppressed under Stalin because of its incomplete break with German Idealism
, also started being discussed.
(1910-1997) was interested mainly in the philosophy of probability and its biological, mathematical, and linguistic manifestations. He also studied the roles of gnosticism
and mysticism
in science. Nalimov is usually credited with proposing the concept of citation index
.
2) The so-called "communist morality" was an important part of Soviet Union philosophy. It was a new kind of morality developed to inhibit traditional defenses against evil. According to Lenin and Stalin, morality should be subordinated to the ideology of proletarian revolution. Denying the validity of religion-based morality, they wrote: what is useful to us is moral, what is harmful to us is immoral. Morality is a weapon in class struggle. Party and Komsomol members were drilled to accept that position, and to act accordingly.
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought
Russian philosophy
Russian philosophy includes a variety of philosophical movements. Authors who developed them are listed below sorted by movement.While most authors listed below are primarily philosophers, also included here are some Russian fiction writers, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, who are also known as...
were repressed (many philosophers emigrated, others were expelled). Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
enacted a decree
Decree
A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures . It has the force of law...
in 1931 identifying dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
with Marxism Leninism, making it the official philosophy which would be enforced in all Communist states and, through the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, in most Communist parties. Following the traditional use in the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
, opponents would be labeled as "revisionists". From the beginning of Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
regime, the aim of official Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
philosophy (which was taught as an obligatory subject for every course), was the theoretical justification of Communist ideas. For this reason, "Sovietologists", whom the most famous were Józef Maria Bocheński
Józef Maria Bochenski
Józef Maria Bocheński was a Polish Dominican, logician and philosopher.-Life:...
and Gustav Wetter, have often claimed Soviet philosophy was close to nothing but dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
. However, since the 1917 October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, it was marked by both philosophical and political struggles, which call into question any monolithic reading. Evald Vasilevich Ilyenkov
Evald Ilyenkov
Evald Vassilievich Ilyenkov was a Marxist author and Soviet philosopher who did original work on the materialist development of Hegel's dialectics...
was one of the main philosophers of the 1960s, who revisited the 1920s debate between "mechanicists" and "dialecticians" in Leninist Dialectics & Metaphysics of Positivism (1979). During the 1960s and 1970s Western philosophies
Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
including analytical philosophy and logical empiricism began to make a mark in Soviet thought.
Philosophical and political struggles in the Soviet Union
Dialectical materialism was first elaborated by Vladimir LeninVladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
in Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908) around three axes: the "materialist inversion" of Hegelian dialectics, the historicity
Historicity
Historicity may mean:*the quality of being part of recorded history, as opposed to prehistory*the quality of being part of history as opposed to being a historical myth or legend, for example:** Historicity of the Iliad**Historicity...
of ethical principles ordered to class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
and the convergence of "laws of evolution
Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the biological concept of evolution, specifically to a widely held 19th century belief that organisms are intrinsically bound to increase in complexity. The belief was extended to include cultural evolution and social evolution...
" in physics (Helmholz), biology (Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
) and in political economics (Marx). Lenin hence took position between a historicist
Historicism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
Marxism (Labriola
Antonio Labriola
Antonio Labriola was an Italian Marxist theoretician. Although an academic philosopher and never an active member of any Marxist political party, his thought exerted influence on many political theorists in Italy during the early 20th century, including the founder of the Italian Liberal Party,...
) and a determinist
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
Marxism, close to what was later called "social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
" (Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...
). Lenin's most important philosophical rival was Alexander Bogdanov
Alexander Bogdanov
Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov –7 April 1928, Moscow) was a Russian physician, philosopher, science fiction writer, and revolutionary of Belarusian ethnicity....
(1873-1928), who tried to synthesize Marxism with the philosophies of Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves...
, Wilhelm Ostwald
Wilhelm Ostwald
Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald was a Baltic German chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities...
, and Richard Avenarius
Richard Avenarius
Richard Heinrich Ludwig Avenarius was a German-Swiss philosopher. He formulated the radical positivist doctrine of "empirical criticism" or empirio-criticism....
(which were violently criticized in Materialism and Empiriocriticism). Bodganov wrote a treatise on "tectology
Tectology
Tectology is a term used by Alexander Bogdanov to describe a discipline that consisted of unifying all social, biological and physical sciences, by considering them as systems of relationships, and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems...
" and was one of the founders of Proletkult
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
after the war.
Following the 1917 October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, Soviet philosophy divided itself between "dialecticians" (Deborin
Abram Moiseyevich Deborin
Abram Moiseyevich Deborin was a Soviet Marxist philosopher and academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences .Entering the revolutionary movement by the end of the 1890s, Deborin joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903...
) and "mechanists
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
" (Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
, who would detail Stalin's thesis upheld in 1924 concerning "socialism in one country
Socialism in One Country
Socialism in One Country was a theory put forth by Joseph Stalin in 1924, elaborated by Nikolai Bukharin in 1925 and finally adopted as state policy by Stalin...
"), was not a "mechanist" per se, but was seen as an ally. The mechanists (A.K. Timartizev, Timianski, Axelrod, Stepanov...), came mostly from scientific backgrounds, claimed that Marxist philosophy found its basis in a causal explanation of Nature. They upheld a positivist
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
interpretation of Marxism which asserted that Marxist philosophy had to follow the natural sciences. Stepanov thus wrote an article flatly titled "The Dialectical Understanding of Nature is the Mechanistic Understanding". To the contrary, "dialecticians", whose background was Hegelian, insisted that dialectics could not be reduced to simple mechanism. Basing themselves mainly on Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
' Anti-Dühring
Anti-Dühring
Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, commonly known as Anti-Dühring, is a book written in German by Friedrich Engels, published in 1878. It had previously been serialised in a periodical. There were two further editions in German in the lifetime of Engels...
and Dialectics of Nature
Dialectics of Nature
Dialectics of Nature, by Friedrich Engels , is an unfinished work which applies Marxist ideas, and in particular the principles of Dialectical Materialism, to science....
, they maintained that the laws of dialectics could be found in nature. Taking support on the theory of relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
and quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
, they responded that the mechanists' conception of nature was too restricted and narrow. Deborin
Abram Moiseyevich Deborin
Abram Moiseyevich Deborin was a Soviet Marxist philosopher and academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences .Entering the revolutionary movement by the end of the 1890s, Deborin joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903...
, who had been a student of Georgi Plekhanov
Georgi Plekhanov
Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist." Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where...
, the "father of Russian Marxism", also disagreed with the mechanicists concerning the place of Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
. The latter maintained that he was an idealist metaphysician, while Deborin, following Plekhanov, saw Spinoza as a materialist and a dialectician. Mechanism was finally condemned as undermining dialectical materialism and for vulgar evolutionism
Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the biological concept of evolution, specifically to a widely held 19th century belief that organisms are intrinsically bound to increase in complexity. The belief was extended to include cultural evolution and social evolution...
at the 1929 meeting of the Second All-Union Conference of Marxist-Leninist Scientific Institutions. Two years later, Stalin settled by fiat the debate between the mechanist and the dialectician tendencies by issuing a decree which identified dialectical materialism as the philosophical basis of Marxism-Leninism. Henceforth, the possibilities for philosophical research independent
Suppressed research in the Soviet Union
Suppressed research in the Soviet Union refers to scientific fields which were banned in the Soviet Union, usually for ideological reasons. Science and humanities were placed under a strict ideological scrutiny in the Soviet Union. All research was to be founded on the philosophy of dialectical...
of official dogmatics virtually vanished, while lysenkoism
Lysenkoism
Lysenkoism, or Lysenko-Michurinism, also denotes the biological inheritance principle which Trofim Lysenko subscribed to and which derive from theories of the heritability of acquired characteristics, a body of biological inheritance theory which departs from Mendelism and that Lysenko named...
was enforced in the scientific fields (in 1948, genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
were declared a "bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience
Bourgeois pseudoscience was a term of condemnation in the Soviet Union for certain scientific disciplines that were deemed unacceptable from an ideological point of view....
"). However, this debate between "mechanists" and "dialecticians" would retain importance long after the 1920s.
Otherwise, David Riazanov
David Riazanov
David Riazanov , born David Borisovich Goldendakh , was a political revolutionary, Marxist theoretician, and archivist. Riazanov is best remembered as the founder of the Marx-Engels Institute and editor of the first large-scale effort to publish the collected works of these two founders of the...
was named director of the Marx-Engels Institute, which he had founded, in 1920. He then created the MEGA (Marx-Engels-Gesamt-Ausgabe), which was supposed to edit Marx and Engels' complete works. He also published authors authors, such as Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
, Feuerbach or Hegel. Riazanov was however excluded from any political functions in 1921 for defending trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s' autonomy.
During the Fifth Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
Congress, Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
condemned for "revisionism" the works of Georg Lukács
Georg Lukács
György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic. He is a founder of the tradition of Western Marxism. He contributed the concept of reification to Marxist philosophy and theory and expanded Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. Lukács' was also an influential literary...
, History and Class Consciousness (1923) and of Karl Korsch
Karl Korsch
-Biography:Korsch was born in Tostedt, near Hamburg, to Carl August Korsch, a secretary at the cantonal court and his wife Therese. In 1898 the family moved to Meiningen, Thuringia and Korsch senior attained the position of a managing clerk in a bank...
, Marxism and Philosophy. History and Class Consciousness was disavowed by its author, who made his self-criticism
Self-criticism
Self-criticism refers to the pointing out of things critical/important to one's own beliefs, thoughts, actions, behaviour or results; it can form part of private, personal reflection or a group discussion.-Philosophy:...
for political reasons (he thought that, for a revolutionary, being part of the party was the priority). It became however a leading source of Western Marxism
Western Marxism
Western Marxism is a term used to describe a wide variety of Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe, in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet Union...
, starting with the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
, and even influenced Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
's Sein und Zeit (1927). Lukács then went to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
in the beginnings of the 1930s where he would continue his philosophical studies, and returned to Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He then took part to Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary on two occasions...
's government in 1956
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
, and was closely watched afterwards.
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...
's (1896-1934) studies in developmental psychology
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
, which opposed themselves to Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....
's works, would be expanded in the activity theory
Activity theory
Activity theory is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or theoretical framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N...
developed by Alexei Nikolaevich Leont'ev, Pyotr Zinchenko
Pyotr Zinchenko
Pyotr Ivanovich Zinchenko was a Soviet developmental psychologist, a student of Lev Vygotsky and Alexei Leontiev and one of the major representatives of the Kharkov School of Psychology...
(a member of Kharkov School of Psychology
Kharkov School of Psychology
Kharkiv School of Psychology is a tradition of developmental psychological research conducted in the paradigm of Lev Vygotsky's "sociocultural theory of mind" and Leontiev's psychological activity theory....
), and Alexander Luria
Alexander Luria
Alexander Romanovich Luria was a famous Soviet neuropsychologist and developmental psychologist. He was one of the founders of neuropsychology and the jointly led the Vygotsky Circle.- Biography :...
, a neuropsychologist who developed the first lie detector
Lie Detector
"Lie Detector" is a CD single by The Reverend Horton Heat. It was released in October 1998 on Sub Pop.-Personnel:*Jim "Reverend Horton" Heath - lead vocals, guitar*Jimbo Wallace - upright bass, vocals*Scott Churilla - drums, vocals...
.
After the 20th Congress of the CPSU
Nevertheless, the conditions for creative philosophical work began to emerge in the mid-1950s, after the 20th Congress of the CPSU20th Congress of the CPSU
The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held during 14– 25 February 1956. It is known especially for Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech", which denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin....
in 1956, albeit only on the 'outskirts' of philosophy: the philosophy of the natural science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
(B. Kedrov, I. Frolov), theory of perception and gnoseology (P. Kopnin, V. Lektorsky, M. Mamardashvili
Merab Mamardashvili
Merab Mamardashvili was a Georgian philosopher, Doctor of Sciences , Professor . He was born in Gori . In 1955 he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Moscow State University...
, E. Ilyenkov), the history of philosophy (V. Asmus, A. Losev, I. Narski), ethics (O. Dobronitski), aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
(M. Kagan, L. Stolovitsh), logics (G. Shtshedrovitski, A. Zinovyev
Aleksandr Zinovyev
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinovyev was a prominent Russian logician and dissident writer of social critique....
) and semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
and system theories (Y. Lotman
Yuri Lotman
Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman – a prominent Soviet literary scholar, semiotician, and cultural historian. Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences...
, who set up the Sign Systems Studies
Sign Systems Studies
Sign Systems Studies is internationally the oldest semiotics periodical, initially published in Russian, since 1998 in English. The journal was established by Juri Lotman in 1964. Since 1998 edited by Peeter Torop, Mihhail Lotman and Kalevi Kull.It is published by the semiotics department of Tartu...
journal, the oldest semiotics periodical; V. Sadovsky). The works of the young Marx, such as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 are a series of notes written between April and August 1844 by Karl Marx. Not published by Marx during his lifetime, they were first released in 1927 by researchers in the Soviet Union.The notebooks are an early expression of Marx's analysis of...
, which had been first published in 1932 but suppressed under Stalin because of its incomplete break with German Idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
, also started being discussed.
Others
1) Vasily NalimovVasily Nalimov
Vasily Nalimov was a Russian philosopher, humanist and wrote on Transpersonal Psychology. His main areas of research were the philosophy of probability and its biological, mathematical, and linguistic manifestations. He also studied the roles of gnosticism and mysticism in science...
(1910-1997) was interested mainly in the philosophy of probability and its biological, mathematical, and linguistic manifestations. He also studied the roles of gnosticism
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
and mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
in science. Nalimov is usually credited with proposing the concept of citation index
Citation index
A citation index is a kind of bibliographic database, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. The first citation indices were legal citators such as Shepard's Citations...
.
2) The so-called "communist morality" was an important part of Soviet Union philosophy. It was a new kind of morality developed to inhibit traditional defenses against evil. According to Lenin and Stalin, morality should be subordinated to the ideology of proletarian revolution. Denying the validity of religion-based morality, they wrote: what is useful to us is moral, what is harmful to us is immoral. Morality is a weapon in class struggle. Party and Komsomol members were drilled to accept that position, and to act accordingly.
Publications and propaganda
The USSR published voluminous materials to disseminate its philosophical ideals and justifications. These took the form of academic or professional journals or notes in the pattern of peer-reviewed material. For example the book below challenges the idea of a medical deontology, or ethics based on moral rules, versus ethics based on utilitarian rules decided on the best outcome for the greatest number of people.See also
- Andrey KolmogorovAndrey KolmogorovAndrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov was a Soviet mathematician, preeminent in the 20th century, who advanced various scientific fields, among them probability theory, topology, intuitionistic logic, turbulence, classical mechanics and computational complexity.-Early life:Kolmogorov was born at Tambov...
(a mathematician) - Activity theoryActivity theoryActivity theory is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or theoretical framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N...
- Dialectical materialismDialectical materialismDialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
- Dmitry LikhachevDmitry LikhachevDmitry Sergeyevich Likhachov was an outstanding Soviet Russian scholar who was considered the world's foremost expert in Old Russian language and literature. He has been revered as "the last of old St Petersburgers", "a guardian of national culture", and "Russia's conscience".-Biography:Likhachov...
- Fundamentals of Marxism LeninismFundamentals of Marxism LeninismThe Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism is considered to be one of the fundamental works on dialectical materialism and Leninist communism. The book remains important in understanding the philosophy and politics of the Soviet Union, by consolidating the work of important contributions to Marxist...
- Historical MaterialismHistorical materialismHistorical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...
- Marxist sociologyMarxist sociologyMarxist sociology refers to the conduct of sociology from a Marxist perspective. Marxism itself can be recognized as both a political philosophy and a sociology, particularly to the extent it attempts to remain scientific, systematic and objective rather than purely normative and prescriptive....
- Marxist philosophyMarxist philosophyMarxist philosophy or Marxist theory are terms that cover work in philosophy that is strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory or that is written by Marxists...
- MaoismMaoismMaoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
- Russian philosophyRussian philosophyRussian philosophy includes a variety of philosophical movements. Authors who developed them are listed below sorted by movement.While most authors listed below are primarily philosophers, also included here are some Russian fiction writers, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, who are also known as...
- Western MarxismWestern MarxismWestern Marxism is a term used to describe a wide variety of Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe, in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet Union...
External links
- Excerpts from Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy, From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov (1991), David Bakhurst
- "Marxism-Thaxis" - Mechanists versus Dialecticians in early Soviet philosophy
- Russian and Soviet Women's Studies - Religion and Philosophy
- Gallery of Russian Thinkers edited by Dmitry Olshansky