Originally published in Russian in 1981, this unique history of early Soviet philosophy is now available for the first time in English, translated by Frederick Choate.Yehoshua Yakhot (1919-2003) was a professor of philosophy in the Soviet Union until forced to emigrate to Israel in 1975. While in emigration, he finished writing the book begun in Moscow years before. Yakhot's book is essential reading for an understanding of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism and its devastating impact on every aspect of (...) Soviet thought. Rare among works dealing with this period, Yakhot presents an objective account of the theoretical role of the major figures in the early Soviet Union—including, most significantly, that of Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution of October 1917.The book describes the flourishing of philosophical discussion after the revolution and ensuing Civil War. By 1922, the major theoretical journal Under the Banner of Marxism had been founded at Trotsky's urging. The first two issues contained letters from Trotsky and Lenin that constituted the program of the journal. By the mid-1920s, two contending camps had formed in philosophy: the mechanists and dialecticians. The relatively free debate between them on many complex issues was followed by Stalin's intervention in December 1930. In a ferocious reaction against the theoretical foundations of the October Revolution, Stalin sent countless genuine Marxists to their deaths during the Great Terror of 1936-38. Prior to the opening of the archives in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yakhot presents the largely unknown history of many of the Marxist philosophers victimized by Stalinism.The subjects covered in the book include: the subject matter of Marxist philosophy; the problem of contingency; the principle of partisanship in philosophy; Hegel and Marxist dialectics; Spinoza's place in the discussions of the 1920s and 1930s; the rejection of ideology by Marx and Engels; the influence of Bogdanov's ideas; the inevitable crisis of Soviet ideology; and continued attempts to conceal the crimes of Stalinism in the USSR.This new English edition contains photographs, biographical information, an index and two letters by Trotsky and Lenin. (shrink)

For almost the whole of the first half of the nineteenth century, philosophy at Moscow University was subjected to fierce persecution at the hands of the authorities. Their aim was, evidently, to smother in the cradle any manifestation of freethinking among students, the thinking part of Russian society. It was no coincidence that philosophy was chosen as the target of persecution, because the study of this science could lead by the shortest path to reflections concerning man's place in the (...) world, the role of the social sciences, the just or unjust nature of the existing state order in Russia, and so on. What would a student who got carried away by, for instance, Socrates's ideal of inner freedom or Spinoza's pantheistic system become? For a classical police state, which imperial Russia was, that was intolerable. One need merely recall that Chaadaev, Herzen, and many other rebels had at some time studied at the university. Russia's rulers clearly had no need of such people. (shrink)

В книге обсуждаются многие проблемные понятия современной российской жизни: разумность и недоумение, свобода и произвол, совесть и обман, честность и бесчестие, война, мир и другие.

In January 2019 the Faculty of Philosophy of the Lomonosov Moscow State University held the round table “Problems of Consciousness: Research Opportunities.” It was dedicated to problems of interdisciplinary studies of consciousness. Many famous Russian specialists whose academic interests include consciousness, brain and mind took part in this event: K.V. Anokhin, D.I. Dubrovsky, T.V. Chernigovskaya, M.A. Piradov, A.A. Potapov, V.Y. Sergin, V.V. Vasil’ev, Z.A. Zorina and others. At the round table, the following problems were discussed: the specificity of consciousness (...) problem, its relevance in various academic disciplines, contemporary research possibilities for consciousness studies to solve the problems that specialists actually face. Much attention was paid to the problems of neurobiology, empirical research of consciousness. Nonetheless, participants showed in their speeches that the problem of consciousness is also a philosophical problem. Hence it requires thoughtful consideration of philosophers. Participants decided that to progress in solving this problem researches from various disciplines have to cooperate. (shrink)

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Smirnov was born on March 2, 1931. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1954. From 1957 till 1961 he was a lecturer in philosophy and logic at the Tomsk University. Since 1961 his scientific activity continued in Moscow at the Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1970 and till the last days of his life V. A. Smirnov was lecturer and then Professor at the Chair of Logic at Moscow (...) State University. V. A. Smirnov played an important role at the Institute of Philosophy of Russian Academy of Sciences being the Head of Department of Epistemology, Logic and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and the Head of Section of Logic. Last years he was the leader of the Centre of Logical Investigations of Russsian Academy of Sciences. In 1990-91 he founded a new non-goverment Institute of Logic, Cognitive Sciences and Development of Personality for performing research, teaching, editorial and organization activity in the field of humanities. At the Department of Philosophy of Moscow State University and at the Institute of Philosophy V. A. Smirnov and his close colleagues have founded a Russian logical school which brought up many talented researchers who work at several scientific centres in various countries. (shrink)

The article discusses the methodology for studying reflective systems, which are very specific objects of study. However, such objects include almost all phenomena of the socio-humanitarian sciences, including scientific knowledge. It is noted that in the era of the “sixties” original concepts of reflexive analysis arose in Russian philosophy, among which the three most striking ones, associated with the names of V.A. Lefebvre (1936-2020), G.P. Shchedrovitsky (1929-1994), M.A. Rozova (1930-2011). The main attention is paid to the methodology that was built (...) within the framework of the theory of social relay races by M.A. Rosova. It is shown how systems with reflection function and why they are able to rebuild, changing the order of sociality. (shrink)

The present experimental status in the search for neutrinoless double beta decay is reviewed, with emphasis on the first indication for neutrinoless double beta decay found in the HEIDELBERG-MOSCOW experiment, giving first evidence for lepton number violation and a Majorana nature of the neutrinos. Future perspectives of the field are briefly outlined.

Our paper is an overview of the anniversary All-Russian scientific conference with international participation “Aleshin Academic Readings — 2022: Philosophy as a Way of Life. Dedicated to the 30th Anniversary of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Russian State University for the Humanities,” which was held at this faculty from December 15 to 17, 2022. The first day of its work was devoted to plenary reports, the other two days were connected with the work of sections and workshops. Speakers from (...) Moscow, Almaty (Kazakhstan), Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Yerevan (Armenia), Kaliningrad, Rome (Italy), St. Petersburg, Simferopol, Tyumen, Ufa, Bochum (Germany), Essen (Germany) performed their presentations at the conference. It discussed a wide range of topics, both classical and modern philosophy, having some bearing on philosophy as a way of life and on the significance of a philosopher’s way of life for philosophical knowledge. Particular emphasis in the course of reports and discussions was placed on the problems of the relationship between theoretical and practical in philosophy, the limited nature of the philosophy of forms and concepts and the possibilities of overcoming such limitations, the existential sense of philosophizing, the possibility of explication of living historical experience by means of philosophy, the role of philosophy for diagnosing modernity, the prospects of dialectics, the relationship between philosophy and governments. Sections of the conference were also devoted to methodological, historiographical, pragmatic and other problems of modern thought. No less wide was the range of materials on which the speakers relied, starting with pre-Socratic philosophy and ending with the most relevant examples of philosophy that have not yet received sufficient reception in our country. Many talks also referred to the history of Russian philosophical thought. (shrink)

Ethnic nepotism theory predicts that even in times of communal peace altruism is more pronounced within than between ethnic groups. The present study tested the hypothesis that altruism in the form of alms giving would be greater within than between ethnic groups, and greater between more closely related groups than between more distant groups. The three groups chosen for study were ethnic Russians, Moldavians, and Gypsies. Russians are genetically closer to Moldavians than to Gypsies. Observations were made of 128 ethnic (...) Russian, 25 Moldavian, and 25 Gypsy beggars receiving gifts from ethnic Russians in Moscow trains. The Gypsies were mainly girls, contrary to the Russian sample. Multivariate analysis identified three main strategies: active, personified, and appeasing-undirected. Russian strategies were most variable. Gypsies presented strong charity releasers: 84% were children who played music and sang and showed appeasing-undirected behavior. The few adults were highly submissive or friendly. Nevertheless, their success was limited compared with that of ethnic Russians despite the latter’s demanding behavior and their being mostly mature or elderly persons. Moldavians received an intermediate amount of charity. The hypothesis was supported. (shrink)

This article, for which the focus is an intellectual autobiography, examines the development of worldview of a young person who graduated from the Moscow University Faculty of Philosophy in 1970. I...

V.K.: Vladislav Aleksandrovich, you have come a long way in your scientific career: from a student of the class of 1955 in the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University to a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the sector of the theory of knowledge and head of the division of epistemology and logic at the Institute of Philosophy of the RAS, and editor in chief of our country's leading philosophy journal Voprosy filosofii. Your field of (...) research is the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science or, to be more specific, the cultural-historical analysis of knowledge from the point of view of the activity approach. As far as I know, the psychological aspect of the activity approach to the study of consciousness and knowledge was developed by the psychologists Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, his student Aleksei Nikolaevich Leontiev, Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, and Petr Iakovlevich Galperin. Leontiev, Luria, and Galperin were professors at the Philosophy Faculty of MGU at the time you were studying there. Tell me, did you develop your scientific interests under the influence of the Moscow school of cultural-historical psychology? (shrink)

I think I would not err in saying that Dvoretskii's chronicle of our times, The Man from Outside, is stimulating unusual interest on the part of theater companies and audiences. It has been produced on two Moscow stages, something that is quite rare. It is playing in Leningrad, Kiev, Vilnius, Arkhangelsk, Barnaul, Vladivostok, Volgograd, Kuibyshev, Murmansk, Novokuznetsk, Petrozavodsk, Pskov, Sverdlovsk, Simferopol, Stavropol, and other cities. Judging by the reviews, the play and its productions are successful everywhere. It is as (...) hard to get a ticket to Moscow's Malaia Bronnaia Theater as to Spartacus at the Bolshoi or Hamlet at the Taganka. (shrink)

Modern epistemology adopted the idea of historicism, of the historicity of knowledge and the self-consciousness of the cognizer. The research, undertaken within cultural–historical epistemology, also spread in the context of the prevailing tendencies in the sphere of modern epistemology. The specificity of this type of epistemology is related to a special interpretation of the history of cognition. On this interpretation knowledge represents a cultural phenomenon that has an existentially-symbolical meaning for the cognizer. Therefore this type of epistemology returns us to (...) the dimension of knowledge, which has in fact been lost today. It returns us to the original antique notion of knowledge as “good,” as something that changes the person who acquires it. And here in this context comes forth such a feature of knowledge as its integrity. At the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Russian philosophers turned to the problem field of “integral knowledge,” the core of which lies in the unity of the integral and cognitive, which is reflected in the concreteness of knowledge. Such an understanding of knowledge enabled the articulation of a number of ideas that enriched European traditions of socio-humanitarian research and influenced the development of semiotics and structuralism both in Europe and in Russia. The ideas of R. Jakobson that stimulated the structure-semiotic research in the first half of the twentieth century are very well-known to world humanity science. Yet their epistemological potential is related to the idea of the integral knowledge. The epistemological turn towards historicism in semiotics in Russia was accomplished by G. Shpet. Jakobson communicated with Shpet at the Moscow linguistic circle in the 1920s. They both referred to the ideas of Husserl, and, as Jakobson acknowledged himself, he borrowed many ideas from Shpet—in particular, the idea of semiotics. Shpet’s helped implement the idea of “integral knowledge” that opened a perspective of the analysis of knowledge as an open symbolic sign system. This methodological approach appears to be especially topical nowadays in the sphere of humanities, which scientific character does not exclude historicism. The ideas of Russian philosophers, then, provide a productive context immediately as well as long-term prospects for developing the methodology of the humanities. The concepts that prevail in modern methodology accentuate the historical relativity and the outer social determinacy of scientific knowledge. Meanwhile the problem of the cultural–historical status of the humanities and the problem of addressing the idea of “integral knowledge” become increasingly topical and allow the transfer of the epistemological search for the conditions and the landmarks of scientificity. (shrink)

On November 19, 1985, a seminar on the topic "Mind and the Brain: Philosophical Aspects" was held at the M. V. Lomonosov State University at Moscow. It was organized by the journal Philosophical Sciences [Filosofskie nauki], the Division on Scientific Method and the Philosophical Problems of Natural Science of the Philosophical Society of the USSR, the administration of the "Knowledge" [Znanie] Society of the RSFSR, and the Department of Philosophy of the Natural Science Faculties of Moscow State University. (...) Over three hundred persons participated in the seminar, ranging from students, graduate students, instructors at Moscow State University and other institutions of higher learning, to students at the Moscow University Institute for Advanced Teacher Training, associates the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Social Sciences attached to the CPSU Central Committee, and the Institute of Philosophy of the Latvian SSR Academy of Sciences, etc., to representatives of the editorial boards of the journals Philosophical Sciences, Problems of Philosophy [Voprosy filosofii], The Moscow University Herald [Vestnik MGU], and members of the Scientific Method Council on Philosophy of the "Knowledge" Society of the RSFSR. The seminar attracted the attention of psychologists, physiologists, physicians, biologists, philosophers, physicists, students of literature, etc. (shrink)

Abstract I develop the idea that there exists a special dimension of depth, or of scale. The depth dimension is physically real and extends from the bottom micro-level to the ultimate macro-level of the Universe. The depth dimension, or the scales axis, complements the standard three spatial dimensions. I discuss the tentative qualities of the depth dimension and the universal arrangement of matter along this dimension. I suggest that all matter in the Universe, at least in the present cosmological epoch, (...) is in joint downward motion along the depth dimension. The joint downward motion manifests itself in the universal contraction of matter. The opposite direction of motion, upward the dimension, would cause the expansion of matter. The contraction of matter is a primary factor, whereas the shrinking of space in the vicinity of matter is a derivative phenomenon. The observed expansion of the Universe is explained by the fact that celestial bodies become smaller due to matter contraction, while the overall space remains predominantly intact. Thus, relative to the contracting material bodies, the total span of cosmic space appears to be becoming vaster. I attempt to explain how the contraction of matter engenders the effect of universal gravity. I use over thirty animated and graphical color visualizations in the text to make the explanation of the proposed ideas more lucid. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-39 DOI 10.1007/s10516-011-9178-4 Authors A. Alyushin, Department of Philosophy, The Higher School of Economics, 20 Myasnitskaya Street, 101000 Moscow, Russia Journal Axiomathes Online ISSN 1572-8390 Print ISSN 1122-1151. (shrink)

Russian idea as philosophy of longing future of Russia was formed by humanists in opposition to real state of life in the country. Beginning from Moscow kingdom in Russia there were often oppression, injustice, loutishness, bribery, cultural backwardness, lack of education. The number of civilized, highly educated, high-moral people was very narrow. But the part they played in the history was extremely great; they were always the social vanguard of our motherland. They themselves brought really human properties for their (...) country, which would be developed later and would be discovered in the lives of majority of the population of our country. What is really human or simply human in opposition to inhuman in a person? Everything is very simple. Good will in people appears when they begin to follow the commandments: don’t kill, don’t tempt, don’t steal, don’t use foul language etc. And vice versa, if a person breaks these rules, he loses his humanity. Its essence is simple; the main idea is that it is important for the highest moral principles to become the attribute of life for the majority of people in the country, just like mobile phone or computer became an integral part of people’s life today. Today Russian idea becomes global one. One cannot use other people for achieving their goals. It means that while different nations and states treat each other cautiously and suspiciously, with secret desire to gain something by deception, to acquire something fraudulently, to make a fortune by fraud, none of global problems will be solved positively. (shrink)

It is always interesting to describe the life of people whose paths diverged substantially from the path of the majority. Such people attract the attention of historians in every age, for a path "against the current" always has something tragic about it. The Russian philosopher and Moscow University professor Lev Mikhailovich Lopatin can fully be ranked in the pleiad of such people. This is borne out by the assessments of not only his supporters but also his opponents. "You were (...) pervaded by the conviction that this old business, i.e., that to which philosophers have devoted themselves from ancient times down to the modern age [i.e., metaphysics—N.M.] is also its [philosophy's—N.M.] eternal business, and you decided to move ‘against the current’ under the banner of the great leaders of the past," wrote students and friends to Lopatin in an introductory article to the Philosophical Anthology [Filosofskii sbornik] dedicated to the thirtieth anniversary of Lopatin's activities as scholar and teacher. "Against the current" here means against the philosophical views that prevailed at that time in Russia, and abroad as well—views that repudiated metaphysics in favor of pure epistemology and various empirical theories. (shrink)

We present a case study of grammatical constructions and how their function in a single language can be captured through semantic and syntactic classification. Since 2016 an on-going joint project of UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow has been collecting and analyzing multiword grammatical constructions of Russian. The main product is the Russian Constructicon, which, with over two thousand two hundred constructions, is arguably the largest openly available constructicon (...) resource for any language. The combination of this large size with depth of analysis, containing both syntactic and semantic tags, makes it possible to view the interrelation of constructions as families and to discover trends in their behavior. Our annotation includes 53 semantic tags of varying frequency, with three tags that are by far more frequent than all the rest, accounting for 30% of the entire inventory of the Russian Constructicon. These three semantic types are Assessment, Attitude, and Intensity, all of which convey a speaker’s evaluation of a topic, in contrast to most of the other tags. Assessment and Attitude constructions are investigated in greater detail in this article. Secondary semantic tags reveal that negative evaluation among these two semantic types is more than twice as frequent as positive evaluation. Examples of negative evaluations are: for Assessment VP tak sebe, as in Na pianino ja igraju tak sebe “I play the piano so-so [lit. thus self]”; for Attitude s PronPers-Gen xvatit/xvatilo, as in S menja xvatit “I’m fed up [lit. from me enough].” In terms of syntax, the most frequent syntactic types of constructions in the Russian Constructicon are clausal constructions [constituting an independent clause like s PronPers-Gen xvatit/xvatilo ] and constructions with the anchor in the role of adverbial modifier. Our semantic and syntactic classification of this large body of Russian constructions makes it possible to postulate patterns of grammatical constructions constituting a radial category with central and peripheral types. Classification of large numbers of constructions reveals systematic relations that structure the grammar of a language. (shrink)

U drugom delu teksta o Filotejevoj doktrini o Moskvi kao?Trecem Rimu? autor se bavi njenom recepcijom u kasnijim periodima ruske intelektualne i politicke istorije. Iako u svom izvornom obliku to ucenje nije sadrzavalo imperijalnu, spoljno-politicku konotaciju, u radu su analizirane interpretacije ideje Treceg Rima koje su imale i znacajne politicke konsekvence. Na unutrasnjem planu ona je posluzila knezu Kurbskom za kritiku vlasti Ivana Groznog, kao i za odbacivanje crkvenih reformi patrijarha Nikona u literaturi Staroveraca. Ipak, obnova interesovanja za ideju Treceg (...) Rima karakterise ruski XIX vek u kome su vodjene diskusije o odnosu Rusije i Zapada. Slovenofilski kriticari reformi Petra Velikog u proslosti Moskovskog carstva nasli su potvrdu kulturne originalnosti i superiornosti Rusije. Autor naglasava razlike izmedju slovenofilske i panslovenske interpretacije ruskog mesijanizma. U zavrsnom delu rada mesijanska ideja dovodi se u vezu sa radjanjem nacionalizma u imperijalnom kontekstu. Na taj nacin, autor dovodi u pitanje rasirene interpretacije o njenim distinktivno ruskim karakteristikama. PR Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179014. (shrink)

Muslim scholars have defined ethics as enduring traits and characteristics in the individual that cause actions appropriate to those traits to be issued spontaneously without the need for human thought and reflection. Islamic ethics state the rightness or wrongness of these attributes within the framework of Islamic concepts, while the concepts of Islamic work ethics deal with the functioning of the framework of Islamic concepts in the form of human work activities in various organisations. Furthermore, work ethics can be effective (...) in the organisation when it can shape the culture of the organisation. Research shows that Islamic work ethics have a significant relationship with various individual, professional and organisational factors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between Islamic work ethics and organisational culture. The statistical population of this research consists of 1500 Muslim staff of 30 service organisations (financial, educational, medical and hotel organisations) in Moscow, Russia, in 2021, of which 306 people have been selected as statistical samples using Krejcie and Morgan's sample size table. Data analyses were performed by statistical software, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The results of this study confirm the significant and positive relationship between Islamic work ethics and organisational culture among the Muslim Russian staff (β = 0.53; T = −8.65). CONTRIBUTION: This study examines the relationship between Islamic work ethics and organisational culture in Russia and has expanded the results of previous studies conducted in other contexts. (shrink)

The review is devoted to a new book by the writer and literary historian Natalia A. Gromova, in which, on the basis of letters and archival documents, the love story of Varvara Malahieva-Mirovich and Lev Shestov is reconstructed. According to Gromova, their relationship became an impulse that had a key influence on the formation of Shestov as an existential thinker, whose philosophy is not based on speculative contemplation, but is inextricably linked with life experience. Shestov’s philosophy of tragedy grows out (...) of the relationship between Shestov and Malakhieva-Mirovich. On the basis of Shestov’s letters addressed to Malahieva-Mirovich, recently found in the family archive of Shik-Shakhovskie, the author of the book reconstructs the autobiographical events of the philosopher’s life, when for him “the time is out of joint” and he experienced an ideological and psychological crisis that marked the beginning of a new stage in his work. Gromova shows how the events of his life are reflected in Shestov’s writings: in his writings, the philosopher seeks answers to the questions that his relationship with Varvara Malahieva-Mirovich poses to him. Gromova introduces into scientific circulation the previously unpublished correspondence between Shestov and Malahieva-Mirovich, letters from Malahieva-Mirovich to her friend Leonilla N. Tarasova, as well as the memoirs of Malahieva-Mirovich about the actress of the Moscow Art Theater Nadezhda S. Butova. The book contains unique information about Shestov’s circle in Russia (for example, about the decadent poetess Anastasia Mirovich), including the so-called “shestovites”, a.i. the poetess and writer Varvara G. Malahieva-Mirovich, philosopher, lawyer and publisher Semyon M. Lurie, actress Nadezhda S. Butova, who is trying to find a philosophical and religious “justification” for the actor’s craft. (shrink)

The article devotes to the initial stage of I.S. Turgenev’s creativity path, when he intended to devote himself to philosophy. The first part of the historical and philosophical research covers the studentship stage of his life, Turgenev’s involvement to the University course of philosophy primarily in Moscow, then in St. Petersburg universities. Everything happened at Moscow University due to Professor M.G. Pavlov, Shelling’s philosophy follower, who was teaching physics in a philosophical format. He listened course of lectures on (...) metaphysics at St.-Petersburg University, given by A. A. Fisher, who was one of the first who started to teach philosophy in accordance with Uvarov’s ideological triade “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality”. The second part touches upon the period of education abroad. After he had finished the philological faculty of St.-Petersburg University in 1837, he became convinced that Russian universities could provide only preliminary education and real source of knowledge could be found only abroad; that is why he goes “to finish his education” in Berlin. There he studied ancient languages, history and Hegel’s philosophy under the guidance of Professor Werder. Turgenev also prepared different parts of Shelling’s teaching for publishing in Russian periodic, after famous philosopher had given lectures in University of Berlin. The last part of this article gives a picture of Turgenev attempts to receive masters’ degree and tries to take place at the Department of Philosophy. At the beginning of 1842, after presenting the diploma of candidate, granted by St.-Petersburg University, he asked Moscow University Council to give him a permission to receive the masters’ degree; his utter motive was to occupy the place at the Department of Philosophy, which was vacant for a long time. But he failed to do so in Moscow and moved to St.-Petersburg, where he tried to pass exams needed to get degree again. However, he failed again due to not giving the dissertation work; as the result, he didn’t receive masters’ degree and, furthermore, he dedicated himself entirely to literature. However, Turgenev saved his interest to philosophical problems, which he tried to solve in prose format. (shrink)