Abstract

It is time to pose directly and seriously the question of the fate of Marxist philosophical theory at the end of the twentieth century. And not only the question of Marxism in general, but more specifically the question of Leninism, of the essence of the "Leninist stage in the development of the philosophy of Marxism," of Lenin the philosopher. It is Lenin's theoretical legacy that calls for an especially careful investigation today, because it above all is what has undergone canonization and distortion for over half a century. The time has finally come, it seems, for an assiduous analysis of the set of ideas dubbed "Lenin's creative contribution to the philosophy of Marxism" and even the "Leninist stage in the history of Marxist philosophy." Of course, renunciation of a cultist, essentially religious relation to Leninism is bound to be painful and is bound to affect the interests of those for whom it is easier to believe than to know…. But there is simply no other way to a genuine, noniconographic Lenin than a scholarly study of his activity and the ideas he developed