Abstract

The paper is about the Soviet philosopher Valentin Ferdinandovich Asmus (1894–1975) and his criticism of the fascist and Nazi appropriation of Hegel’s philosophy. The status of the Hegelian legacy was very controversial in Marxism-Leninism throughout the Stalinist era. Unlike the majority of Soviet academics of this time, Asmus did not recognize any valid intellectual legacy at the base of German fascism. Asmus heavily criticized attempts to portray Hegel as a pro-fascist thinker. When many Soviet philosophers defended only the method, dialectics, Asmus defended Hegel’s social and political views as humanistic and liberal. The first part of the article describes the “official” Soviet philosophy within the context of which Asmus had to act. The second part offers a comprehensive analysis of the criticism of Hegel’s fascist interpretation in Asmus’ Fascist Falsification of Classical German Philosophy (1942).