Philosophy In The Soviet Union
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, professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum 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.
Read more about Philosophy In The Soviet Union: Philosophical and Political Struggles in The Soviet Union, After The 20th Congress of The CPSU, Others, Publications and Propaganda
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