During the half-century of its existence, the Soviet study of esthetics has achieved considerable success in developing the views of the founders of Marxism-Leninism with respect to the nature and social function of art. There is no need to list the authors and titles of the works in which the history of world thought about esthetics and the cardinal problems of esthetics have been treated from the Marxist standpoint. Suffice it to say that Soviet esthetic thought has been the first (...) to deal with such very important categories as the principle of partisanship in art, the creative method , the principles of socialist realism, the international and the national in art, and so forth. (shrink)

A new term, "the new conservatism," has recently appeared in the American sociopolitical lexicon. The meaning given it does not resolve merely to a description of the current conservative trends in the United States , which until recently were termed neoconservative in the critical literature. A number of American writers have begun to employ the term "new conservatism" in a narrower sense: to denote the evolution of the sociopolitical views of those ideologists of capitalist reformism who were, until recently, known (...) as neoliberals. The term "new conservatism" was first employed in that sense by the American radical sociologist Michael Harrington in analyzing the evolution, in the realm of political ideas and social policy, of the views of such prominent bourgeois ideologists as Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nathan Glazer, and others. To those listed, this identification appeared so well chosen and reflective of the essence of the matter that subsequently they themselves began to speak of themselves as new conservatives. This term has become firmly established in the American sociological literature. It is the purpose of the present article to examine the "legitimacy" of the use of this term and the points of contact between this group and the conservatives or neoconservatives and the lines of demarcation between them. (shrink)

The deep commonality of science and art lies in the fact that both phenomena arose as a means of breaking out of the self-contained shell of the self-sufficient world of everyday consciousness. Science and art arose as a means of escaping from the narrow bounds of natural existence, so as to recognize one's specifically human attitude toward the world, recognize the value of truth, beauty, and the right. In the course of history, science and art have created highly specialized superstructures. (...) Science became a means for technological mastery of the world, and even its deep-lying substrate is perceived by us today primarily from the standpoint of the technological power it attains. In art the primary task of discovering harmony is by no means always identifiable, because it is aimed at creating consumer-oriented esthetic values. Science and art have sharply parted company in pursuit of their utilitarian functions, and this interferes with seeing their basic unity. There float to the surface such secondary phenomena as the fruitfulness of a scientist's efforts in one or another sphere of art, whether it be amateur creativity, deep involvement in esthetic values, or the study of art by the methods of science. When they interact thus, science and art appear in such polar roles that no commonality between them is observed at all. (shrink)

The documents of the Twenty-seventh Congress of the CPSU, the new Party Program, the Political Report of the Central Committee to the Congress, and the welcoming addresses of the foreign delegations revealed a broad and multi-colored panorama of contemporary world development in all its variety and contradictions.

Two years ago, a professor at the University of California, Herbert Marcuse, an American social philosopher with traditional German training, came to be regarded as the recognized theoretician of the "New Left" movement. Marcuse's popularity compelled many writers, including ourselves , to make a careful examination specifically of the theoretical content of that teaching, which laid claim to performing the role of a critical and revolutionary theory of society. The development of a critique of the philosophical and theoretical foundations and (...) the internal contradictions of Marcuse's teachings was thus dictated by a real situation, by the actual struggle of ideas, and has perhaps still not lost its significance. Another problem, which aroused the interest of researchers even then but which had not found an answer in our article because of its specific purpose, had to do with the relationship between Marcuse's philosophical concept and the spontaneous consciousness of the "mass" participants in the real protest movement that came to be known as the "New Left" movement. (shrink)

I would like to tell you about my own road to the serious pursuit of philosophy, relying only on my own memory, although occasionally I shall check this against other testimony. These are merely the notes of a witness and participant in the events described.

In the years since World War II, the social critic has become a rather popular figure in the West. The demand for critical theories of society is readily explainable where the contradictions of social development take the form of sharp paradoxes recognized by the broad public. It may be assumed that interest in critical concepts of society will increase. People who recognize themselves as cogs without rights in the system of bureaucratic organization of state-supported monopoly capitalism, who react acutely to (...) the threat of social catastrophes , endow such concepts with the halo of humanism if only because they often find in them their own moods, given shape and seemingly elevated to the level of general social protest. These feelings represent a concrete dissatisfaction with the present situation, and the sense that the society in which they live is in crisis. (shrink)

There are words and concepts that almost automatically trigger bitter discussions in our country. And among them are the terms in the title of this article. True, there are occasional attempts to tone down the bitterness of the disputes surrounding them by using the more ideologically "neutral" terms "personal" or "individual." But the dispute is of course not about the words but about their meaning. Let us begin by looking in the dictionary.

Marx said that a science attains perfection when it is successful in employing mathematics.

The question of the nature and regularities of development of the socialist state is quite urgent at present, because identification and application of the objective laws of development of the socialist state will facilitate successful solution of practical problems of governmental, economic, and sociocultural construction and make possible a deep and comprehensive analysis of the course of evolution of statehood in the modern world. In the USSR these processes are proceeding under conditions in which a new Constitution, adopted two years (...) ago, is in force. (shrink)

The persistent struggle waged by the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries for peaceful coexistence among states with differing social systems has greatly increased the authority of this humanitarian policy in the eyes of the peoples of the world. Belligerent appeals for an outright rejection of peaceful coexistence are heard less and less frequently, even among the ideologists of imperialism. They are compelled to adapt themselves to the situation and to camouflage themselves with the masks of the peacemaker. Bourgeois (...) professors of social science say they are for peace and peaceful coexistence. However, these concepts are sometimes given such a distorted interpretation that all real content evaporates. "Peaceful coexistence and the cold war," we read, for example, in the words of the British professor, Hugh Seton-Watson, "are literally the same thing." [All quotations from non-Russian sources are retranslated from the Russian.] Thus, a single sentence suffices, by an act of sophistry, to transform peaceful coexistence into a state of international tension and intensive war preparations. The ideologists of imperialism deny, in essence, the possibility of cooperation between the socialist and capitalist countries in the process of peaceful coexistence. (shrink)

Seven decades separate us from the time when the workers raised the scarlet banner of revolution on the barricades of the Krasnaia Presnia district. The December armed insurrection in Moscow was the high point of development of the first Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution, which occurred in 1905-1907. Seventy years are enough to permit a comprehensive evaluation of the historic significance of the events of 1905, which exercised a lasting influence on the whole subsequent development of the world movement for liberation.

In the academic year just past, the Expert Commission on Philosophical Disciplines of the Higher Certification Committee [VAK] processed 441 cases pertaining to the award of degrees and ranks. Of these, positive decisions were handed down in 333 cases, and negative decisions in 9 cases, while final decisions have not yet been taken on 99. Of the total number, 418 cases were examined, 114 of these for the degree of Doctor of Philosophical Sciences and 304 for Candidate in Philosophical Sciences, (...) and final decisions were taken on 323, while 95 were referred to further expert examination. (shrink)

The general notion of the development of productive forces is, according to the materialist understanding of history, the point of departure for the solution of numerous concrete problems in Marxist-Leninist social theory and current revolutionary practice. It offers decisive arguments for the critique of Right and "Left" revisionism and reformism. In the course of the disputes that have recently begun in the Marxist economic and philosophical literature with regard to the basic questions involved in this problem, substantial gaps are found (...) specifically in the development of general theory. What is the internal contradiction moving within the forces of production; in what lies the distinction between their existence and essence, essence and appearance? A correct understanding of the processes involved in the resolution of this contradiction in real life, in revolutionary practice, depends upon attaining the utmost clarity with regard to these questions. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to find out to what demand of philosophical and scientific thinking is culturology a response, treating culturology from two aspects: as a set of approaches to culture and as a school subject in the system of education. The task is not to define the subject boundaries of some science . I am interested in the "metaphysical location" of the interest in culture, in the lacuna of man's understanding of the world and of himself it (...) seeks to fill. (shrink)

The triumph of the socialist revolution in Russia, the fiftieth anniversary of which the Soviet people are marking this year, the building of socialism in the USSR, and the coming into being of a world socialist system eliminated the ideological monopoly theretofore enjoyed by exploitative society in the contemporary world. For the first time in human history, an ideology of the toiling masses has extensively taken root in a number of countries. This has meant a narrowing of the sphere in (...) which bourgeois ideology is dominant, and could not fail to have a bearing upon all the forms of social consciousness in the capitalist world, including philosophy. (shrink)

A hundred years have passed since publication of the first edition of Engels's book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which Lenin regarded as "one of the basic works of modern socialism." Engels's interest in the remote past of mankind and Lenin's evaluation of his work were, of course, not coincidental. They may be explained by the tremendous role played by the concept of primitive history in a general materialist understanding of the universal historical process. What (...) was the nature of this very first term in the sequence of socioeconomic formations, this cornerstone of the Marxist concept of universal history? When did private property, antagonistic social classes, and state power, separate from the people, emerge, and what were they, original and permanent institutions, or historically determined institutions of human communal life? These problems are clearly of great philosophical importance. They were, and continue to be, the arena of a bitter ideological struggle, and inevitably attracted the most conscientious attention of the founders of scientific communism. (shrink)

Much attention was devoted, at the Twenty-fifth Congress of the CPSU, to the ideological struggle now in progress and to the need for prompt and decisive refutation of bourgeois ideology. The problem of the genesis of science is now central to fierce ideological debates.

The constantly accelerating progress of contemporary natural science is indissolubly associated with the development and use of mathematics and with the processes of mathematical modeling of the phenomena of nature. The essence of this diverse and highly fertile interaction of mathematics and natural science and the dialectics of this interaction can only be disclosed through analysis of the nature of theoretical notions in general. Today, above all in the ranks of materialistically minded researchers, it is generally accepted that theory possesses (...) a value of its own. Contrary to positivist concepts of the nature of our knowledge, the meaning and significance of theory do not consist merely of the recording of experimental data, their classification and notation in abbreviated form. The meaning of theory is considerably more significant and is revealed, above all, in its explanatory and predictive functions. Contemporary theoretical knowledge is quite advanced and comprises a highly complex system, relatively self-contained and capable of internal development. Mathematics is the most interesting and distinctive phenomenon in the system of theoretical knowledge, in the system of science in general. It is in its dialectical development that the internal force and dynamics of the development of theory, in the very broadest sense of that word, find expression. Paul Lafargue tells us that Karl Marx held that "science only attains perfection when it succeeds in making use of mathematics" . In many fields of research the formulation of new ideas and concepts rests upon mathematics, its concepts and notions, and "is suggested" by the latter. "Mathematics," writes F. Dyson, "is the main source of the notions and principles out of which new theories are created" . The basic significance of mathematics to theory has been noted by outstanding thinkers over the course of the entire history of development of science. Today the expressive phrase, "the mathematization of knowledge," has come into general currency as a description of the principal direction of growth of theoretical notions in natural science. However, with respect to the growth of modern theoretical physics in general, the statement that it develops primarily by the method of the mathematical hypothesis has general validity. For example, the principal findings and discoveries of quantum theory and particle physics, starting from the corpuscularwave dualism and terminating with the omega minus hyperon and hypothetical quarks, were obtained or made "at the tip of a mathematician's pen.". (shrink)

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the problem of the overman becomes one of the most discussed problems in Russia. This was mainly a consequence of the boom in the popularity of Nietzsche's writings; however, to a significant degree it was conditioned also by Solov'ev's works. The religious pathos of Solov'ev's philosophy prepared Russian specialists in the humanities to take an attentive interest in and eventually to accept precisely the "overhuman" aspect of Nietzschean thought. It would not be wrong (...) to assert that the special nature of the Russian Nietzscheanism of the Silver Age consists precisely in the fact that the idea of the overman firmly occupied a central place in it. While the representatives of academic scholarship and religious writers in the final years of the nineteenth century recoiled in horror from the Nietzschean overman, seeing in him the mark of Satanic origin, the embodied idea of evil, indeed the Antichrist himself, the young generation of idealist philosophers, the activists of the Russian religious renaissance of the beginning of the twentieth century, on the contrary, welcomed the Nietzschean image as a symbol of the approaching religious renewal of culture. The general mood of those years was accurately conveyed by D. Merezhkovskii: "The overman is the last point, the sharpest summit of the great mountain ridge of European philosophy, with its age-old roots in the rebellious, solitary, and aloof personality. One can go no further: precipice and abyss, fall or flight: the way of the overman-religion.". (shrink)

My reflections will have more of an interrogative than an affirmative character. And the questions will be posed not only to others but also to myself. At the outset let me broach two questions. First, why is this work ethic needed; and second, who needs it? And at the same time I should like to translate some of the general ideological and cultural problems that have been discussed here into the language of political economy and sociology. This should, it seems (...) to me, enable us more quickly to find the common language between our emotionally colored discussions about Russia and the "Western" understanding of it. Otherwise, regardless of whether we discuss our Russian situation from a Slavophile or a Westernizing point of view, what one always gets in the final analysis is that Russia cannot be understood with the intellect. And if that is so, then why all this "intellectual noise". (shrink)

ExcerptEvery new Chinese leader considers it his duty to make his contribution to state administration theory, which, while formally considered to be Marxist, is moving ever further away from the classical doctrines of Marx and Engels and from their Soviet, Leninist-Stalinist version. Chinese party theoreticians explain that it is the changing situation and specific nature of Chinese society, and not just the ambitions of the country’s leaders, that create the need for new theories. It is no coincidence that a whole (...) section of Xi Jinping’s report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was devoted to the “Sinification” (中国化) and “modernization” (时代化) of Marxism, which, together, are acknowledged as one of the CPC’s most important achievements in the field of theory. (shrink)

ExcerptSignificant political changes are taking place in contemporary China. The current Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has decisively changed the system for the succession of power established by Deng Xiaoping, the architect of Chinese reforms. Xi has eliminated the two-term limit on the presidency that was introduced to the Chinese constitution in 1982. He has centralized the system of governance significantly, reinforced the role of Party bodies in relation to state bodies, and transferred the main decision-making function from the traditional ministries (...) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee departments to numerous governing groups, most of which he personally heads. In foreign policy, Xi has effectively abandoned the principle of “keeping a low profile and biding your time” (tao guang yang hui) put forward by Deng Xiaoping. According to official Chinese ideology, the new theory of government is one of the foundations of the “Xi Jinping thought” that, along with the provisions of the founders of Marxism and some other Chinese leaders, should guide the people of China. This provision was enshrined in the country’s constitution in 2018. However, the most important change, from the point of view of the Chinese authorities, was the implementation of a multifaceted government reform that foreign observers dubbed the “fifth modernization.”1. (shrink)

From the Editors:Such was the topic considered by members of a new discussion club, "The Free Word" [Svobodnoe slovo] , along with specialists from the Institute of Philosophy, USSR Academy of Sciences.

Introduction. War as a social phenomenon has always been an object of philosophical reflection, since its results largely determine the further de- velopment of society and have a profound impact on all spheres of social life. In connection with the ongoing so-called special military operation which Russia is conducting in Ukraine and which is at the same time a proxy war of the collective West against our country, the modern philosophical discourse of war is clarified. One of the important aspects (...) of the ontology of war is considering its chronotopos. The space-time factor has a signifi- cant impact on the course and outcome of hostili- ties in modern warfare, which makes its study very relevant. The purpose of the study is to describe the chrono- topos of modern warfare, to show the influence of the space-time factor on the course and result of hostilities. Methods. Being supporters of the relational concept of space and time, the authors consider the chronotopos of war as its internal attributive property. In addition, they rely on the methodology of synergetics, which makes it possible, in addition to the external universal space-time, to single out the internal space-time of open complex non-equi- librium systems. The authors apply structural-func- tional analysis to study material and ideal objects that influence the characteristics of space and time in modern warfare. They also use general scientific methods: abstraction, comparison, description and explanation. Scientific novelty of the research. The authors give characteristics of the war chronotopos at the beginning of the 21st century, and consider the tendencies of its changes. The necessity of taking into account spatio-temporal changes in planning and conducting hostilities in modern warfare is substantiated. Results. New means of warfare, as well as the cor- responding changes in tactics, operational art and strategy, will significantly reformat the chronoto- pos of war. The space of modern warfare is being radically transformed due to the fact that the confrontation simultaneously takes place not only on the plane, but also in the air, in space, under water, and even in social networks. New capabili- ties of strike systems are changing the perception of such characteristics of the war space as the front and rear. What was previously considered a deep safe rear, in the era of using missiles and combat drones, is no longer such. The time of war is also changing. An increase in the flight speed of ammu- nition, aircraft, and missiles increases the dynamics of battles and intensifies all processes on the bat- tlefield. Hypersonic systems are changing the pace of war, space satellites, reconnaissance drones and new technologies make it possible for the com- mander officer of the battle to see everything that happens on the battlefield in real time, regard- less of the distance from objects. Each new war is fought in its own space-time continuum. To win the war, all this must be taken into account. Conclusions. The chronotopos of war within the framework of the relational concept of space and time prevailing in modern philosophy is changing due to the emergence of fundamentally new means of warfare with new capabilities, which requires a significant adjustment in combat management, ensuring the adequacy of human behavior in war, training troops, taking into account the character- istics of the space-time continuum of a particular war, understanding on the part of the command staff of the essence of changes in the space and time of modern war. Old stereotyped ideas about the chronotopos of war can cause disorientation of a person on the battlefield, which requires not only a philosophical reflection of the ongoing spatio- temporal changes, but also the practical consid- eration of new knowledge in training troops, in planning and conducting combat operations. (shrink)

Introduction. The need for a transition to a new system of motivating state and municipal employees’ activities has been widely discussed in recent years. Moreover, some government bodies have taken certain actions in this direction. But in general, there have not been any significant changes. The authors of the article are convinced that the transition to more effective management is impossible without changing the civil servants’ remuneration system, which should motivate them to achieve significant results in the areas for which (...) they are responsible. The paper considers the conceptual approach of transferring the civil servants’ remuneration to a new system, shows the advantages of using performance indicators to stimulate the employees’ activities. The purpose of the article is to justify the reasonability of using performance indicators when remunerating state and municipal employees. Methods. Within the framework of the systems approach, the authors use structural and functional analysis, as well as general scientific methods: abstraction, comparison, description and explanation. Scientific novelty. The authors show possibilities of using the personnel performance indicators in the state and municipal service in order to increase their motivation for obtaining significant results in their work. Results. The authors analyze the conditions for successful implementing the key personnel performance indicators in the state and municipal service, describe the typical mistakes militating the effectiveness of the personnel performance indicators in public authorities. The authors develop some recommendations to improve the use of the personnel performance indicators in the system of state and municipal administration. Conclusions. The proper use of key performance indicators of state and municipal employees will significantly increase their motivation in order to achieve high efficiency in their work. At the same time, the personnel performance indicators must be balanced and matched taking into account the goals of the organization. (shrink)

The aesthetic comprehension of works of art has two aspects: it sheds light on something of essential importance in the work itself and in its creator, and at the same time enriches and enhances its own problematic. For, "A work of art in which thought is alienated from itself is also part of the domain of comprehending thought; and the spirit, submitting itself to the requirements of scientific investigation, thereby clearly satisfies a need of its own most innermost nature.".

Changes in the productive forces and, consequently, in the economic structure of socialist society as a whole are being prepared by the current relationships of production. We refer particularly to the influence of socioeconomic processes under the conditions of the revolution in science and technology on the development of the individual as a factor in the productive forces and as subject in production relationships.

In the Western countries it has recently become fashionable to assert that a genuine socialist system is a pluralist society, not the "monolithic" systems established in the socialist countries that represent socialist societies of a supposedly less democratic order. This idea is also being employed by certain Left parties in the West, which also identify the concepts of so-called "true socialism" and "true democracy" with pluralism.

In recent years the science of what is to be, futurology, has become one of the most popular branches of knowledge in the West. A fever to prognosticate, the desire to penetrate the barriers of time, to predict or at least sense the central direction of history, possesses philosophers and historians, economists and sociologists, politicians and preachers, public figures, and the heads of scientific institutions and of the largest industrial firms. In the United States, England, France, and Italy, committees to (...) study the shape of the future organization of society appear one after the other. Journals of futurology are founded. Special conferences, seminars, colloquiums and even religious meetings are convened, which produce a veritable squall of prognoses, projects both abstract and narrowly practical, spiritualist prophecies, and predictions positive and irrational. (shrink)

In a fluent, clear, and lively style this translation by two of Maslov's junior colleagues brings the work of the late Soviet scientist S. Yu. Maslov to a wider audience. Maslov was considered by his peers to be a man of genius who was making fundamental contributions in the fields of automatic theorem proving and computational logic. He published little, and those few papers were regarded as notoriously difficult. This book, however, was written for a broad audience of readers and (...) describes elegant examples of applications in such fields as computer science, artificial intelligence, operations research, economic modeling, and biological modeling, among others. The book also brings to light the work by the American mathematician E. L. Post, which inspired Maslov's own work in the development of a general theory and which has been long neglected by mathematicial logicians and systems theorists in the United States. The book's first chapter introduces the Rules of the Game. Part I, Mathematics of Calculi, covers E. L. Post's canonical systems, deductive systems and algorithms, and probabilistic calculi and deductive information. Part II, Horizonal Modeling, takes up a "toy" economy, the calculi of technological possibilities, and the development of rules. Part III, Vertical Modeling, deals with the topics of "to fight and to search" and the consequences of the asymmetry of cognitive mechanisms. Vladimir Lifschitz is affiliated with the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University, and Michael Gelfond with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas, El Paso. Theory of Deductive Systems and Its Applicationsis included in the Foundation of Computing Series, edited by Michael Garey. (shrink)

In the period of the general crisis of capitalism and the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism, the trends and prospects for the historical development of society have become the central question in the ideological struggle.

Jardine examines the evolution of concepts of dialectics during the Renaissance and problems of methodology that influenced the teachings of the founder of philosophy in the modern era, F. Bacon. The work traces the sources of these problems in the dialectics of antiquity and its medieval interpretation. Sources little known to the Soviet reader are cited. In order to evaluate Bacon's reaction to the dialectics of his day, the author also describes works named in the statutes of Cambridge University in (...) the sixteenth century as textbooks on dialectics. They are writings by humanists — bearers of the ideas of the Enlightenment — I. Caesarius, R. Agricola, D. Seton, and others. To a certain extent they were based on the work by Peter the Spaniard Summulae Logicales, which is taken as a point of departure for the further evolution of dialectics. (shrink)

In the paper authors present, examine, and test elements of the vital idea of the philosophical morphology as a method and a technique of philosophical investigation. The paper consists of some applications mostly concerning the method applied by L. Wittgenstein in PI and related later works, and of a series of examples concerning daily phenomena. In the first part the philosophical morphology is explicated as a method, and in the second and in the third part basic “commandments” of morphological technique (...) are described and examined, namely the first one – which says that one should “look-at exhaustively”, and the second one – which says that one should “see-as and describe synoptically”. In these parts some objections and replies to crucial morphological ideas are provided and accompanied with examples. (shrink)

China and Russia are the main driving forces of Eurasian integration. Russia is pursuing its “pivot to Asia,” while China is branching out to the West through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The interests of Russia and China meet in Eurasia and their friendly relations have led to several cooperation projects there. The most important are linkages between the Eurasian Economic Union and Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative and the plan to create a broader Eurasian Economic Partnership or Greater (...) Eurasia. This article studies the reasons which led the two countries to intensify their cooperation in Eurasia and the current state and prospects of that cooperation. (shrink)

A hundred years have passed since the death of a man named Karl Marx. A whole century. A century of dramatic upheavals, revolutionary turmoil, and radical changes in the destiny of humankind. A century that has overturned and swept away a multitude of philosophical conceptions, social theories, and political doctrines. A century that has seen a continuous succession of victories of Marxism and its growing influence on social development.

The fundamentals of the Frankfurt school's conception of art were expounded in Horkheimer and Adorno's book, Dialectic of Enlightenment, where the "critical theory of society" appeared in the form of a specific philosophy of history—the history of bourgeois enlightenment, whose sources the authors trace to ancient Greek mythology.

Postmodernism as a mythologem reflecting the remarkable shift that has taken place in contemporary Western culture as a whole entered the consciousness of our intelligentsia with the usual delay. This is not surprising if one bears in mind the constantly "lagging" character of our consciousness, which also colors in corresponding tones the whole of "Russian civilization," and if one believes that it is condemned to be always "catching up" and making up for lost time. Having arisen in the West as (...) a concept describing certain special characteristics of the latest architectural style that no longer fitted into the rather passé category of modernism, the concept of the postmodern was initially current, both in the West and in Russia, among people close to architecture. At that time it had not yet been able to acquire the "philosophical" subtext that is already felt in the book of Charles Jencks that came out in 1977 in Germany under the gaudy title The Language of Postmodern Architecture. (shrink)