Consciousness And Revolution In Soviet Philosophy

A critical study of the philosophical culture of the USSR.

The present volume of "Sovietica" offers a short synopsis of the newest version of Soviet philosophic dogma. It is a presentation of the content of the Osnovy marksistskoj filosofii which was authorized for publi cation Aug. 7, 1958, and appeared before the end of October of that year in a printing of 250 000 copies. The book was published by the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Su. The responsible editors were P. Pavelkin and G. Kurbatova and the text was prepared by eleven eminent Soviet philosophers (Y.F. Berestnev, M.A. Dynnik, P.N. Fedoseev, Ju. P. Francev, G.E. Glezerman, M.D. Kammari, F.V. Konstantinov, P.V. Kopnin, I.V. Kuznecov, M.M. Rozental', A.F. Siskin) under the direction of Konstantinov. As stated in the preface (p. 5) of the book, it was read in manuscript form by numerous scholars and professors of philosophy and then thoroughly discussed in three separate sessions (in the Academy of Sciences, and the Universities of Leningrad and Moscow). This work presents a reliable account of Soviet dogma as of 1958, i.e.

The political uncertainty following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rejection of the revolutionary model has brought Russian political thought full circle as democratic forces contend with authoritarian nationalism. This volume is essential to understanding the antidemocratic tradition in Russia and the persistent danger of totalitarianism.

On February 24-25, 1956, in a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita S. Khrushchev made his now famous speech on the crimes of the Stalin era. That speech marked a break with the past and it marked the end of what J.M. Bochenski dubbed the "dead period" of Soviet philosophy. Soviet philosophy changed abruptly after 1956, especially in the area of dialectical materialism. Yet most philosophers in the West neither noticed nor cared. For them, the resurrection of Soviet philosophy, even if believable, was of little interest. The reasons for the lack of belief and interest were multiple. Soviet philosophy had been dull for so long that subtle differences made little difference. The Cold War was in a frigid period and reinforced the attitude of avoiding anything Soviet. Phenomenology and exis tentialism were booming in Europe and analytic philosophy was king on the Anglo-American philosophical scene. Moreover, not many philosophers in the West knew or could read Russian or were motivated to learn it to be able to read Soviet philosophical works. The launching of Sputnik awakened the West from its self complacent slumbers. Academic interest in the Soviet Union grew.

In this interdisciplinary and controversial work, Igal Halfin looks at Marxist theory in a new light, attempting to break down the divisions between history, philosophy, and literary theory. His approach is methodological, combining intellectual and social history to argue that if we are to take the Bolshevik revolutionary experiment seriously, we have to examine carefully the ideological presupposition of both communist ideological texts and the archival documents that social historians believe truly reflect lived experience in order to see what effects these texts had on reality. Igal Halfin aims to turn Marxism, class, and consciousness from subjects of analysis to its objects. From Darkness to Light begins by examining the Marxist philosophy of history as understood by the Russian revolutionary movement. Halfin argues that the Soviet government took its cues to how it could bring about a classless society from a peculiar blending of eschatological thinking and modern techniques of power. Halfin then offers a case study of the Bolshevik attempt in the 1920s to create the “Communist New Man” by amalgamating the characteristics of the intellectual and the worker in order to eradicate the petit-bourgeois traits attributed by the regime to the pre-revolutionary individualistic and decadent student. Halfin’s conclusions raise important questions about Marxist theory as it relates to class, historical progress, and communism itself. His approach suggests that “proletarianization” should be understood not as a change in the social composition of the student body, but as the introduction of the language of class into the universities. Through the examination of the process of the literary construction of class identity, Halfin concludes that the student class affiliation in the Soviet Union of the 1920s was not simply a matter of social origins, but of students’ ability, using a set of ritualized procedures, to defend their claims to a working-class identity. Halfin’s conclusions raise important questions about Marxist theory as it relates to class, historical progress, and communism itself.

Philosophical Thought in Russia in the Second Half of the 20th Century is the first book of its kind that offers a systematic overview of an often misrepresented period in Russia's philosophy. Focusing on philosophical ideas produced during the late 1950s – early 1990s, it reconstructs the development of genuine philosophical thought in the Soviet period and introduces those non-dogmatic Russian thinkers who saw in philosophy a means of reforming social and intellectual life. Covering such areas of philosophical inquiry as philosophy of science, philosophical anthropology, the history of philosophy, activity approach as well as communication and dialogue studies, the volume presents and thoroughly discusses central topics and concepts developed by Soviet thinkers in that particular fields. Written by a team of internationally recognized scholars from Russia and abroad, it examines the work of well-known Soviet philosophers (such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Evald Ilyenkov and Merab Mamardashvili) as well as those important figures (such as Vladimir Bibler, Alexander Zinoviev, Yury Lotman, Georgy Shchedrovitsky, Genrich Batishchev, Sergey Rubinstein, and others) who have often been overlooked. By introducing and examining original philosophical ideas that evolved in the Soviet period, the book confirms that not all Soviet philosophy was dogmatic and tied to orthodox Marxism and the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. It shows Russian philosophical development of the Soviet period in a new light, as a philosophy defined by a genuine discourse of exploration and intellectual progress, rather than stagnation and dogmatism. In addition to providing the historical and cultural background that explains the development of the 20th-century Russian philosophy, the book also puts the discussed ideas and theories in the context of contemporary philosophical discussions showing their relevance to nowadays debates in Western philosophy. With short biographies of key thinkers, an extensive current bibliography and a detailed chronology of Soviet philosophy, this research resource provides a new understanding of the Soviet period and its intellectual legacy 100 years after the Russian Revolution.

The present work is a study of the method of contemporary Soviet philosophy. By "Soviet philosophy" we mean philosophy as published in the Soviet Union. For practical purposes we have limited our attention to Soviet sources in Russian in spite of the fact that Soviet philosophical works are also published in other languages (see B 2029(21)(38». The term "method" is taken in the sense usual in Western books on methodology .1 In view of the content of the first chapter it will be useful to explain the last term a little more fully. By method we mean a procedure and it is obvious that the principles according to which a procedure is carried out are rules, i.e. imperatives, which tell us not what is but what should be done. Such imperatives mayor may not be connected with and founded on certain descriptive statements (the fact that every rule of formal logic is based on a corresponding law has been well-known since Husserl's "Logische Unter suchungen" and is generally accepted in contemporary logic), but such a foundation is irrelevant to a methodological study. The object of such a study is to find out what these rules are, why they are accepted and how they are inter-connected and applied. This is how methodology - the science of method - is conceived in Western treatises on the subject and this is also the standpoint assumed here.