SOURCE: "Stalin's Contribution to Soviet Philosophy," International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. V, No. 2, May, 1965, pp. 267-303.

It has been said that "throughout the whole of the Stalinist period Stalin himself was the only person in the Soviet Union who ever dared to say anything new."¹ This was especially true in the field of philosophy. The history of Dialectical Materialism in the Soviet Union from the death of Lenin on January 21, 1924 until the ascendency of Khruschev in the later 1950's is largely the history of Stalin's philosophical activities. It will be the purpose of this paper to present an account of these activities, to examine any significant contribution made by Stalin to Soviet Dialectical Materialism, and, finally, to attempt to determine how the so-called "de-Stalinization" has affected this contribution in respect to the contents of selected, current Soviet textbooks in philosophy.

In order to place his contribution to Soviet Marxism in its proper historical context I shall preface my remarks with a short prologue dealing with the origins of Russian Marxism and the philosophical situation in the Soviet Union at the time of Stalin's rise to power.

PHILOSOPHICAL SITUATION BEFORE STALIN

The spread of Marxism in Russia as an economic theory began in the 1870's but it did not emerge as a social movement until the 1880's. As a consequence of the revolutionary activities of certain Russian exiles and their polemic with a Russian form of socialism known as Narodnichestvo, there arose that socio-political phenomenon later to be known as Soviet Marxism.

The acknowledged leader in the emergence of Russian Marxism was Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856-1918). Son of a prosperous landowner, he left Russia both to escape the government and to learn the sources of influence that European socialism was having upon other exiled Russians. He went (1881) as a Narodnik but in ten years he had entered wholly into the Marxist camp. His works attack the Narodnik position on the "subjective" method in history and sociology (denying that the social sciences involve "ideals"), on the role of the individual in history (denying that history is made by heroes and not the masses), and on the idea that Russia possessed some sort of peculiar historical destiny (denying that, unlike the rest of Europe, Russia would by-pass capitalism on its way to socialism because of the peculiar Russian obschina system of peasant communes).

This polemic gained for Plekhanov the respect of Lenin, a respect that remained unabated when Plekhanov became a Menshevik. In 1914 Lenin remarked: "The best exposition of the philosophy of Marxism and of historical materialism is given by G. V. Plekhanov."² In 1921, in a discussion of the role of trade unions in Soviet society, Lenin wrote:

It is appropriate, I think, to observe for young members of the Party that one cannot become a class-conscious real Communist without studying—and I mean studying —everything written by Plekhanov on philosophy, for it is the best of all the international literature on Marxism.

And, in a footnote, he added:

Incidentally, I cannot but express the wish, first, that the edition of Plekhanov's works now appearing should separate out all the articles on philosophy into a special volume or special volumes, with a more detailed index, etc. For this must form part of a series of obligatory text-books of Communism. Secondly, a workers' state in my opinion ought to require of professors of philosophy that they should know Plekhanov's exposition of Marxism and be able to pass on this knowledge to students.³

It must be pointed out that Plekhanov's legacy, for the Soviets, excludes the works of his later menshevik period (after 1903). Unlike Lenin's application of Marxism to the imperialistic state of capitalism, so the Soviets say,

Plekhanov proved unequal to the tasks of the new era. [He] was too much under the sway of the traditions of the Second International, and in his later works he not only resisted the further development of Marxism, but deviated from the Marxist philosophy and distorted it in several respects.⁴

In 1903 ideological differences divided the infant group into two main factions. Lenin came to control the majority group, known as the Bolsheviki. In the decade before the First World War Lenin had reason for grave concern within the very ranks of the Bolsheviks. It took all his talents to offset the attempts of certain intellectuals to salvage the practical aspects of Marxism by putting them on a new theoretical basis, one called "empirio-criticism."

This was the name given to a group of positions based on sense experience and tending toward epistemological idealism. The group included men such as Mach, Avenarius, Poincaré, Bogdanov, and certain Neo-Kantians. Out of this controversy grew Lenin's famous Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), a book in which he attempted to destroy any efforts at Marxist philosophical revisionism and to show that a theory of knowledge and a theory of matter can be developed from the principles of Marxism.

Recent Soviet historians of philosophy tell us that, although the book generally was praised as dealing a deathblow to Machism (empirio-criticism),

Stalin did not understand the scientific character and the importance . . . of the battle that Lenin decreed against this revision of Marxism. In contradiction to the facts, Stalin characterized the fight by Lenin against Machism and Ostzovism as a "tempest in a glass of water."⁵

Certain letters of Stalin tell us that he considered Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-criticism as a "unique summary of its kind of the theses of the philosophy (epistemology) of Marxism," but at the same time to contain "certain errors." He even expressed a sympathy for Bogdanov's attack against Lenin (in Science and Faith, 1910). We are told by these same Soviet sources that the position of Stalin during this controversy was that of an eclectic, in that he was for the assimilation by Dialectical Materialism of the "positive aspects" of Machism, an assimilation Lenin had declared revisionistic.

In the years immediately following the Bolshevik victory of October, 1917 it was not considered obligatory for the members of the Party to follow Lenin's philosophy. In fact, such freedom in the field of philosophy existed that not only materialist philosophy but a variety of idealist systems were put forward and allowed to be taught. When the positive work of reconstruction began, these views came into open conflict and the non-Leninist professors of philosophy were dismissed from their positions.

When Stalin came to power in 1924 there were two trends in materialism in philosophical circles in the Soviet Union. The most prevalent variety was the "mechanistic" view that all higher-order phenomena, including psychic and social phenomena, could be reduced ultimately to mechanical processes. The other trend was rather positivistic in temper and denied philosophy had any right to existence now that science had developed.⁶

STALIN'S PHILOSOPHICAL CONTRIBUTION

It was in such an atmosphere that Stalin took the reins of power, although it would be six years before he could consolidate that power. Previous to 1924 he had written little in general and almost nothing on philosophy. His literary career began in 1901 and consisted for the most part of articles published in various newspapers. R. H. McNeal, speaking of Stalin's early career, reports:

As a political writer he attracted little attention. His compositions appeared only in exceedingly obscure newspapers in the Caucasus and many of them (including the largest single essay he ever wrote, Anarchism or Socialism) were written in the Georgian language, which neither Lenin nor other leading Bolsheviks could read.⁷

Contemporary Soviet historians of philosophy, speaking of the contribution of Georgia, have the following to say concerning this early work by Stalin:

The articles of J. V. Stalin, Anarchism or Socialism?, published during 1906 and 1907 in the Georgian Bolshevik newspapers Ajaili Tsjovreba (New Life), Ajali Droeba (New Times) and Dro (The Times), contributed to the battle against the anarchists and towards the diffusion of the fundamentals of dialectical materialism and of historical materialism in Georgia. These articles were considered later by Stalin himself as the work of a novice Marxist. In this work are popularized certain theses of dialectical materialism. Nevertheless, there is also grave error found therein. The author of this work affirmed, for example, that nature exists in two distinct forms: the material and the ideal, and that "we are not able to imagine one without the other." Consequently, in this he departed from the materialistic solution of the fundamental problem of philosophy, that is to say, of the recognition of the primary character of matter, and of the derived character of consciousness [mind]; and, as such, conceded to idealism. Also erroneous was his manner of viewing Darwinism, even accusing it of rejecting development in a dialectical sense; that is, Darwinism was interpreted as a vulgarly evolutionistic doctrine. Such a coarse error was in contradiction with the appreciation of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in regard to Darwinism. This error of Stalin had its origin in his identification of evolutionary changes with quantitative and revolutionary changes with qualitative changes. He also was mistaken in presenting neo-Lamarckism as a progressive dialectical doctrine, considering it as part of a tendency as idealistic and reactionary as psycholamarckism; the other current (mechanolamarckism) was frankly mechanistic, that is, antidialectic.⁸

Actually, Stalin's debut as a theoretical (i.e., ideological or philosophical) writer came in 1913 with his contribution to a journal of an article entitled "The National Question and Social Democracy" (later known as "Marxism and the National Question"). He had been replaced earlier as editor of Pravda and given a short leave to try his ability as a theoretician.

Although this did not establish him as a peer of the prolific and theoretically minded leaders of Russian socialism, it was successful enough to be reprinted as a booklet a year after its publication in a journal, and it gave Stalin some standing as a Bolshevik expert on the problem of nationalities, to which his long service in the Caucasus also entitled him.⁹

Of Stalin's pre-1924 works the only one even remotely significant for philosophy is the series of articles of 1906-07 entitled Anarchism or Socialism? However, reference for philosophical purposes is seldom made to it and I will omit it in my more detailed consideration. I shall concentrate instead on the following four major philosophic works by Stalin: Foundations of Leninism (1924), Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), Marxism and Linguistics (1950), and Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (1952).¹⁰

Beginning in April, 1924, three months after Lenin's death, Stalin delivered a series of lectures at the Sverdlov University in Moscow. The lectures, dedicated to the new members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union recruited in the Lenin memorial enrollment, were published as Foundations of Leninism. As Stalin rightly observed, "the foundations of Leninism is a big subject." Omitting an exposition of those Marxist aspects of Lenin's philosophy, Stalin discusses only those points Lenin contributed as new to the "general treasury of Marxism." In answering the question "What is Leninism?" Stalin tells us that it is more than just an application of Marxism to the peculiar conditions of Russia, for Leninism is an international phenomenon. Also, Leninism is more than just a revival of the revolutionary elements of the early writings of Marx, for Lenin developed Marxism under the new conditions of imperialistic capitalism. What, then, in the last analysis, is Leninism? Here are the words of Stalin:

Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and of proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians' preparation for a revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet a direct, practical inevitability. Lenin, however, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.¹¹

These lectures on Leninism were the extent of Stalin's participation in the philosophic activity of the times. It was to be four years before he stepped, in 1929, into the disputes concerning interpretation of Dialectical Materialism.¹² At that time he complained, in a speech, that the theoreticians had not kept pace with the practical developments of Marxism in the Soviet Union and accused philosophers in general of dragging their feet in the battle on the two fronts against Rightist and Leftist deviationism. By 1931 he was instrumental in having the Central Committee of the Party condemn both mechanism and its positivistic ally, as well as the "menshevizing idealism" of a third faction.

This double condemnation by the Central Committee marks a decisive turning point in the history of Soviet philosophy.

Whereas previously there had at least been a continuing opposition between rival tendencies within Soviet philosophy, and a resultant conflict of schools and opinions, with discussion and controversy, all such contention is from this time forward abolished; the course of philosophy flows in the narrow channel of officially prescribed opinion; all controversy is now directed outwards merely, against the "bourgeois" ideology which is striven against as a class enemy. To be sure, "discussions" are still conducted to promote the emergence of truth from an interchange of conflicting opinions, being devoted merely to discovery and "rooting-out" deviations on the part of individual authors from the course laid down by the "classics of Marxism," Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.¹³

Nothing much happened philosophy-wise for a long time, but when it did it was associated with the name of Stalin. Indeed, to read the journals of the times, we are lead to believe that there was really only one productive philosopher in all of the Soviet Union. As Mitin wrote:

The further advancement of Marxist-Leninist theory in every department, including that of the philosophy of Marxism, is associated with the name of Comrade Stalin. In all Comrade Stalin's practical achievements, and in all his writings, there is set forth the whole experience of the world-wide struggle of the proletariat, the whole rich storehouse of Marxist-Leninist theory.¹⁴

A criticism of philosophy was included in the general political and social house-cleaning that marked the new Soviet Constitution of 1936. Soviet philosophy was told that it was "out of date," too abstract and too scholastic in presenting the subject, too polluted with quotations from such deviationists as Trotsky. Like all conscientious Bolsheviks, the leading philosophers acknowledged these faults, thanked the government for setting them straight "just in time," and set out to repair the damage. Soviet philosophers at last came to acknowledge the dictatorship of the proletariat in their sphere.

In the years that followed there was a striking decline of philosophical literature and discussion. It is probably inaccurate to attribute this entirely to fear of Party criticism, although this factor had its effect. That any member of the Party should have feared criticism was extremely bourgeois and unbolshevik. It was the required norm in the Soviet Union that all phases of socialist activities should progress only and solely by the dictum of "criticism and self-criticism." This meant that in every field the members of the Party were to cooperate for the advancement of socialism and the realization of communism by working together, by acknowledging their own faults and shortcomings for the benefit of all, and by criticizing each other. As a matter of historical fact, what actually occurred is that criticism came from above, from the superiors, and self-criticism came from below, from the subordinates who acknowledged this criticism. This occurred throughout the last fifteen to twenty years of Stalin's rule. And periodically the philosophical journals would be full of such criticism and self-criticism—a philosophical chapter of faults!

Exactly what was lagging on the part of philosophy in socialist construction may be seen in the following:

It should also be borne in mind that ideology was underrated in many Party organizations, and propaganda and agitation work neglected. For a long time a part of the Party cadres did nothing to improve their knowledge of Marxism-Leninism. The result was that, as a whole, ideological work lagged behind the scale of the Communist construction going on. Taking into consideration the general requirements of Communist construction and the specific circumstances of the post-war [Second World War] period, the Party launched an offensive on the ideological front.¹⁵

The most important philosophical work to appear after 1936 and before the end of the Great Patriotic War was The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviki). It was published in 1938 and at first was listed as edited by a Commission of the Central Committee headed by Stalin. However, and especially since 1948, the entire work was attributed to his personal authorship. This is probably so only in an indirect way; but there has never seemed to be any doubt that Stalin himself did write Section 2 of Chapter 4, "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism," for it would have been the most dangerous portion of the history to have been entrusted to a subordinate.¹⁶

Soviet philosophical circles greeted its appearance as epoch-making, as having raised Dialectical Materialism "to a new and higher level" and as being "one of the pinnacles of Marxist-Leninist philosophical thought."¹⁷ At any rate, the essay is extremely easy reading and its clarity and conciseness makes it excellent for pedagogical purposes, its main use in the Soviet Union until a few years after Stalin's death. For the purpose of a brief exposition, the work can be divided into three parts: Marxist Dialectical Method, Marxist Philosophical Materialism, and Marxist Historical Materialism. In speaking of the dialectical method, Stalin discusses its four principal features: (1) nature is an integrated whole; (2) nature is in a state of continuous change; (3) quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes; and (4) natural phenomena contain internal contradictions. These four principles then are applied to the study of the history of society to show us that: (1) each society must be studied contextually; (2) societies are not eternal; (3) a change in the way we make our living leads to a change (called "revolution") in our thinking; and (4) the contradictions in society are the economic classes of exploiter and exploited.

In presenting Marxist philosophical materialism Stalin lists its three principal features: (1) the world is material, not spiritual; (2) matter or nature exists outside and independent of our consciousness of it; and (3) the world and its laws are fully knowable, i.e., there is no "thing-in-itself ' forever barred to the human mind. He then applies the materialism to the study of society and history to show that, just as it is possible to have a science of living things, or biology, and to predict and control by means of its laws, so it is possible to have a science of society and history and to predict and control by means of its laws. This new science is socialism; and it tells us that there are two aspects to society, the spiritual and the material. The spiritual aspect includes a society's political, moral, religious, philosophical, and cultural ideas or ideals. This aspect is secondary in origin to the material aspect, which includes all the factors that enter into the way a society makes its living.

This is not to say that the spiritual aspects are of no significance to a society. Far from it! Historical materialism, Stalin tells us, stresses the importance of these factors. The old social ideals are significant because they hamper the development and progress of society; the new social ideals are important because, once they have emerged from the material conditions, they hasten the further development of these same material conditions. For example, modern technologically advanced capitalism has engendered a cooperative and social mode of making a living by bringing together a great number of individuals to work in huge corporations. Thus, the material conditions of society are social, at least in this respect. Such a condition has given rise to new socialistic spiritual ideals, which once they have emerged must be re-applied in an orderly manner by the Party of the Proletariat to bring into balance the superstructure with the basis or foundations of the society.

With the above as his background Stalin launches into an examination of the "conditions of material life of society," to determine, in the final analysis, what precisely determines the ideas and views of a given society. He lists three determining factors of the material life of a society: (1) geography, (2) population, and (3) mode of production. Of these, the mode of production, or the method of procuring the means of life necessary for human existence, is the chief factor that ultimately determines the way a society thinks, its ideological superstructure. A change in the mode of production will generate, eventually and necessarily, a corresponding change in ideology in an effort to yield a synthesis of the contradictions existing between antithetical superstructure and basis. There have been, in the course of history, five main relations of production or ideological superstructures: the primitive communal, the slave, the feudal, the capitalist, and the socialist systems. In each case, the change in system occurred because of a change in the mode of production, which change began with a modification of the old productive forces.

During the period from 1938 to 1950 the many incursions of the Party into the philosophical sphere were made by subordinate personalities or party institutions.¹⁸ It was twelve years before Stalin personally found it necessary to take pen in hand and lay down the law on matters of Marxist ideology. The occasion was the current "free discussion" in the seemingly innocent subject of linguistics.¹⁹ On May 9, 1950 such a discussion was opened in Pravda on linguistic problems, an area hitherto dominated by Marr's theory of languages, a theory formulated after the Bolshevik Revolution and before his death in 1934.

In brief, the theory considered language to be part of the super-structure of society, along with religion, art, ethics, etc. Accordingly, language is the result of class structure. Before the rise of classes there had prevailed a system of hand-signals or gesture-language. This passed into articulate speech, reflecting formal thinking, which, in turn, reflected the split-up of society into classes. This formal logic and its speech will be superseded, once the classless society is reached, by dialectical materialist thinking. In this classless society "thought gains the upper hand over language, and will continue to gain it, until in the new classless society not only will the system of spoken language be done away with, but a unitary language will be created, as far, and even further, removed from articulate language as the latter is from gesture."²⁰ Thought will no longer be dependent on its phonetic and material expression in language; thought itself will replace language to give a universal means of communication to the members of the new classless and universal society.

Stalin's entrance into the discussion followed more than a month of "free discussion" by others.²¹ The first point that he stressed is that, contrary to Marr, language is not to be assigned to the super-structure of society since it is not the outcome of the mode of production but of society as a whole. Moreover, language is not part of the basis of society.

Language, as has been said, is created by society in general, for the benefit of the whole of society, not in the interests of any one class and at the expense of other classes. In fact, class-conditioned words constitute barely one percent of the total vocabulary. Language grows according to the developmental laws of society as a whole and not by the laws of either the superstructure or the basis.

This means that unlike ideology, which develops by sudden eruptions or explosions, language grows by way of a gradual accumulation of new elements and the equally gradual dying away of old ones. And, as far as the unitary and universal thought-language predicted by Marr, according to Stalin this is no "language" at all, but rather a soundless and immediate communication of thoughts implying idealism and leading to the destruction of Marxist materialism. To separate material language from thought would make thought immaterial—to Stalin, plainly a contradiction.

These letters of Stalin on linguistics had a most important effect on Soviet philosophy and were to dominate the field until his death.

The last important work by Stalin bearing on philosophy appeared in October 1952. It was his Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., originally published in the periodical Bol'shevik. In its external trappings the work purported to be Stalin's concluding comments on a discussion begun in 1951 on a new textbook on political economy.²² However, as it came immediately prior to the XIXth Party Congress that met in the same month,²³ the comments are much more pertinent and were an opportunity for Stalin of rebuking the impatience of certain youthful party-members who supposed that the Soviet regime "can do anything" in the area of economics. On the contrary, says Stalin, the Soviet regime is bound by objective economic laws, existing independently of the will of man, and can create no new laws of its own. Even under socialism these economic laws retain their objective, necessary character, just as do the laws of physical nature. Man can do no more in economics than he can do in any other science—he can do nothing but recognize economic laws, utilize them by guiding their operation into particular channels willed by him, and "impart a different direction to the destructive action of some of the laws."

The work contained many other questions, but all are of lesser philosophic interest.

EVALUATION OF STALIN'S CONTRIBUTION

I now turn to an evaluation of Stalin's contribution to Marxism. Concerning any evaluation of Stalin's definition of Leninism, as given in his 1924 lectures on the Foundations of Leninism, it must be pointed out that, due to Stalin's political position, his definition managed to become the official one among the many advanced by various individuals. Stalin took great pains to dispel the misinterpretation of Leninism as practical Marxism only. He quotes from Lenin to show that for his predecessor "without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement."²⁴

Anyone who wishes to be scientific in his attack on contemporary imperialistic capitalism must be a Leninist, says Stalin. And anyone who wishes to be a Leninist must adopt the "special Leninist style" in his revolutionary activities. This "style" has two specific features: (1) the Russian revolutionary sweep and (2) American efficiency.

The Russian revolutionary style is an antidote to inertness, routine, conservatism, mental stagnation and slavish submission to ancestral traditions . . . without it no progress is possible.

This characteristic runs the danger of degenerating into empty revolutionizing, i.e., to empty slogan-making and a lack of plain everyday work. American efficiency is the antidote to this.

American efficiency is that indomitable force which neither knows nor recognizes obstacles; which with its business-like perseverance brushes aside all obstacles; which continues at a task once started until it is finished, even if it is a minor task; and without which serious constructive work is inconceivable. But American efficiency has every chance of degenerating into narrow and unprincipled commercialism if not combined with the Russian revolutionary sweep.²⁵

The combination of the two is the "essence" of Leninism in Party and State work.

Of the works I have considered, the first to be praised by the Soviet philosophers themselves in the most glowing terms was the short essay of 1938, On Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Stalin was praised not so much for what he said concerning dialectical method but more for the fact that he said something. After all, Engels was unable to bring to completion his projected Dialectic of Nature: and Lenin was not able to correlate into book-form his collected material on the dialectical method. "To Stalin alone it has. been reserved to give the first comprehensive, systematic account of the doctrine of the materialist dialectic."

In previous treatments of Marxism, philosophical materialism had always been examined before dialectical method. That Stalin reversed the order was deemed highly significant as an indication of the importance of the dialectic. It is generally recognized, however, that in the portion of his essay dealing with historical materialism Stalin is much more in his element. When the work first appeared, Soviet philosophers discovered in its very appearance something significant for historical materialism, namely, that Stalin was the first to disclose the laws of development of socialism after its victory in the U. S. S. R. and to establish the road to communism—socialist industrialization and collectivization of agriculture.

He was also held to have improved upon Leninism in regard to a number of problems, such as those of the State, social classes, labour, the drivingforces of social development, and the position of nationalities under socialism and communism.²⁷

Discounting the characteristic Soviet exaggeration of the times, Stalin does indeed show some originality in these areas and makes considerable departure from the original Marxist views. This is true especially in three areas: (1) the great emphasis he places on the "retroactive" influence of the superstructure; (2) an elaboration of the developmental laws in a socialistic classless society; and (3) the great stress he placed on the "national" factor. I shall now examine these in more detail.

Once the new ideological superstructure has arisen from a change in the basis of society, it acts in a "retroactive" manner to organize and carry the changing mode of production to its completion. That is, once ideas have arisen they can react, in turn, upon the material basis to contribute powerfully to its further development. This is seen, in principle, in Lenin; but the great emphasis placed by Stalin upon the "subjective factor" in completing the process of socialization has led some to conclude that he held this factor to be the decisive force in history. If true, nothing could be further from Marx. There seems to have been little change in official Soviet doctrine on this point as a result of the "de-Stalinization" policy.²⁸

In a classless or socialist society any further development of the basis does not take place by "leaps" or revolutions; otherwise the dictatorship of the proletariat would be overthrown. Rather, the development now occurs according to a different type of "leap," a gradual change, since socialism is the end of the explosive type of dialectic. Certain further changes in the mode of production, such as complete collectivization of agriculture, take place now, not by "revolution from below" as in nonsocialist societies, but by the process termed "revolution from above." This means, as Stalin was to point out in Marxism and Linguistics, that the socialist government takes the initiative in such actions.

Nowhere is Stalin's teaching seemingly more different from the original intention of Marxist historical materialism than it is on the national question. This emphasis on the "national" is coupled with his drive to reinstate the individual in his old rights. He still held, in general, that the driving force of social development is the proletariat as a class and not specific individuals, but he put a new interpretation on the individual.

From 1934 onward there was an ever-increasing degree of national patriotism spreading in the Soviet Union. Certain figures of the country's history were resurrected to places of honor, as seen in the literature of the times. This provided an opportunity for the deification of the founders of Marxism-Leninism and later for the glorification of Stalin himself.

By the early forties this Soviet emphasis on the national became clearly visible. In the political and military sphere the Second World War was declared a contest between socialism and imperialism and turned into the "Great Patriotic War." It is probably no exaggeration to say that Stalin's marriage of communism and nationalism (especially the Russian variety) prevented the defeat of the Soviet Union. In the historical and cultural sphere the Soviet Union was depicted increasingly as the "heart and backbone of human history." Everything of historical importance that ever had taken place within its territories, as far back as the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians, was declared as evidence for the superiority of socialism. Everything occurring outside its boundaries was reckoned as more or less marginal. The exaggerated, often ludicrous, reports that the Russians had first discovered or invented "such-and-such" stem from this era.

Stalin had been concerned especially with the national question for a long time, and had come to be acknowledged as an expert in that area (the field of nationality affairs or the relations of peoples in the multinational Soviet Union), even while Lenin lived. At the XVIth Party Congress of 1930 he coined the celebrated formula that national cultures should be "national in form but socialist in content." He was to maintain that the period of building socialism in the U. S. S. R. is the opposite of the period of the collapse and abolition of national cultures—it is a period of the "flowering" of national cultures so as to fulfill their potentialities and create the appropriate conditions for merging them into one common culture with one common language in the period of worldwide socialism. Is this contradictory? Certainly, says Stalin, but "anyone who fails to understand this peculiar feature and 'contradiction' of our transition period, anyone who fails to understand these dialectics of the historical process, is dead as far as Marxism is concerned."²⁹ Stalin, despite his apparent intellectual crudity, seemed to have sensed that nationalism goes a long way in cementing any society, socialist or otherwise. His marriage of communism and nationalism was to be of the greatest practical advantage to the Communist regime in the U. S. S. R., and one of his shrewdest strokes of practical genius in politics.

When Stalin's booklet on Marxism and Linguistics appeared, it was greeted as a "new, world-historical contribution to the treasury of Marxism." It is quite possible that this time the praise was accurate, for Stalin appeared to have introduced an entirely new theory in his amplification of historical materialism. What was so historymaking in these letters of 1950 was the implication that a phenomenon, language in this case, could belong to neither the superstructure nor the basis of society, nor to an "intermediate" area but to society as a whole. This third area had never before been referred to in Marxist theory.³⁰

All in all, it is not difficult to agree that "what he [Stalin] said was sensible, temperate, and on the whole far better linguistics doctrine than much that had preceded it" in the Soviet Union.³¹ In this consideration of language Stalin was led to an examination of the development of socialism. In reality this was a further elucidation of his 1938 contribution of the active role of the superstructure and the manner in which the dialectic occurs in a socialist society, namely, by gradual and not by explosive leaps.

The main contribution of Stalin to the development of Soviet Marxism in this essay, as well as in all his others, is, in my considered opinion, his practical genius to justify in theory what he had been doing already in fact. The new course in the field of Bolshevik politics that Stalin had been pursuing for at least sixteen years was to find a theoretical anchorage in Marxist-Leninist theory as a result of this essay. According to Marxism-Leninism, theory and practice must proceed simultaneously. That this was not always the case in actual fact can be seen from the periodic rebukes by the Party to Soviet philosophers. It is to Stalin's credit that he saw the importance of grounding his practices in theory, of making his decisions according to Marxist theory. And he was not adverse to amplifying the main body of Marxism to accomplish this, for he recognized that it gave his decisions a sort of "scientific" necessity. More than anyone in the history of Marxism, Stalin has proven himself nimble in replacing out-dated formulas with new ones. In Stalin we see the relativism and pragmatism of Soviet Marxism.³²

Is this the hated heresy of "revisionism?" Your answer will depend on who you are. Trotsky called Stalin a "revisionist"; but, on the other hand, Stalin called Trotsky a "falsifier" of Marxism. Stalin himself would have answered the charge of "revisionism" by reminding us that Marxism, above all else, is not dogmatic! Stalin is emphatic (dogmatic?) in his denial of dogmatism in his Marxism and Linguistics. Marxism is not a collection of unchanging dogmas. He who thinks so sees only the letter of Marxism but not its essence or content.

Marxism is the science of the laws of development of nature and society, the science of the revolution of the oppressed and exploited masses, the science of the victory of socialism in all countries, the science of the building of the communist society. Marxism is a science and cannot stand still; it develops and perfects itself. In the course of its development Marxism cannot but be enriched by new experience, by new knowledge; consequently, its separate formulas and deductions cannot but change in the course of time, cannot but be replaced by new formulas and deductions corresponding to the new historical tasks. Marxism does not recognize any immutable deductions and formulas, applicable to all epochs and periods. Marxism is the enemy of dogmatism.³³

Again: in an effort to embarrass Stalin, Trotsky and Kamenev attempted to show that Marx, Engels, and Lenin did not believe in the possibility of socialism in one country.

Stalin, who normally depended heavily on scriptural authority, neatly shifted his ground and argued that "Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action," that if Engels were alive he would say, "To the devil with all old formulas! Long live the victorious revolution in the U.S.S.R.!" And if Lenin had plainly said that the victory in one country is impossible, said Stalin, he must have meant merely that the 'complete' victory is impossible.³⁴

The entire series dealing with Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (1952) is most interesting, but the most important part of it, philosophically speaking, is the first section wherein the Soviet economists, especially the younger and often over-enthusiastic ones, are told that the laws of economics are as objective for a socialist society as are the laws of physical nature. To think otherwise is to be a "subjective idealist."³⁵

Some historians see in this emphasis by Stalin on complying with reality, or the objective character of laws, a sign of pessimism and conservatism. True, Stalin by this time had learned by practice that the inevitable communist society was not just around the corner, and that unrealistic views in a centralized economy could cause national crises. However, in my opinion, this issue is part of the greater, overall problem of how the laws of the dialectic affect socialism as a society. The dilemma remains that either the laws of the dialectic apply to all societies, including socialism (and it, too, will pass away), or socialism is not a true society.³⁶

The booklet on Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. is virtually Stalin's last testament. His death is recorded as follows in the 1960 edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:

On March 5, 1953 soon after the [19th Party] Congress Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died. The enemies of socialism counted on confusion breaking out in the ranks of the Party and in its leadership, and on vacillation appearing in the conduct of home and foreign policy. But their hopes were dashed. The Communist Party rallied still closer round its Central Committee, and raised the allconquering banner of Marxism-Leninism higher than ever. The Leninist Central Committee successfully led the Party and the entire people forward, along the road to Communism.³⁷

STALIN AND SOVIET TEXTBOOKS

The downgrading of Stalin began openly at the XXth Party Congress in 1956.

The months leading to this event in February, 1956 were full of subtle bargaining and maneuver [between those seeking the leading position of power in the Party], in which the major issue was Stalin. Ever since the old man's death his status had been ambiguous. His bemedalled corpse had been placed beside Lenin's in the public mausoleum, under the direction of mortician Khrushchev ("Chairman of the Commission for the Funeral of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin"), and remained enshrined in statue, picture, book, and toponymy. But his sanctity had been called into question in a number of implicit but fairly clear respects.³⁸

An immediate and important reversal of Stalinism was the retreat from rule by terror. The revelation of the sorrowful state of the agricultural situation cast doubts on Stalin's ability as planner in this field. Stalin's charge of heresy was discredited with the renewal of friendly relations with Yugoslavia. More important for the purposes of philosophy was the so-called thaw in intellectual life.

From the opening session of the XXth Party Congress on February 14th until February 25th the only speaker to raise any specific criticism of Stalin was Mikoyan. On the last day Khrushchev delivered his famous attack on Stalin at a meeting closed even to foreign Communist observers.³⁹ He attacked Stalin for his vanity, arbitrariness, brutality, and blundering. The H.C.P.S.U. speaks of the event as follows:

The question of overcoming the personality cult, alien to Marxism-Leninism, and of eliminating its consequences, occupied an important place in the proceedings of the Twentieth Congress. . . . It criticized, from the standpoint of principle, the mistakes brought about by the cult of Stalin, and planned measures to eradicate its consequences completely.

In criticizing the personality cult, the Party was guided by the well-known propositions of Marxism-Leninism on the role played in history by the masses, parties and individuals, and on the impermissibility of the cult of the personality of a political leader, no matter how great his services.

The Party was aware that open criticism of the errors stemming from the cult of the personality would be used by the enemies for anti-Soviet purposes. Nevertheless, it decided on that step, which is regarded as a matter of principle and prompted by the interests of Communist construction. It proceeded from the fact that, even if its criticism gave rise to some temporary difficulties, it would indisputably yield positive results from the point of view of interests of the people and of the ultimate goal of the working class. The personality cult had to be denounced above all in order to provide sure guarantees that phenomena of this kind would never again arise in the Party and the country, that Party leadership would be based on the collective principle and on a correct, Marxist-Leninist policy with the active, creative participation of millions of people. The criticism of this cult was of tremendous importance for the consolidation of the Party and the creative development of Marxism-Leninism, the extension of Socialist democracy, and also for the whole of the international Communist movement.40

During all this criticism Khrushchev was emphatic on the point that:

He had many defects but Stalin was a devoted Marxist-Leninist, a devoted and steadfast revolutionary. Stalin committed many mistakes in the later period of his activity but he also did much that was useful for our country, for our party, for all international workers' movements. Our party, the Soviet people, will remember Stalin and give him his due.

The de-Stalinization never meant to deny that Stalin rendered great services to the cause of Communism and was "an outstanding theoretician."⁴² Stalin was attacked more for his political methods than for his theoretical contributions to Soviet Marxism. Nevertheless, there have been significant changes since the so-called de-Stalinization in the presentation of Dialectical Materialism, as seen from the various current Soviet textbooks we shall presently examine.

The definition of Leninism presented by Stalin in the Foundations of Leninism (1924), with his apologia for the coming of the proletarian revolution to relatively backward Russia, continues to dominate ideology.⁴³ The greatest change in Stalin's philosophical contribution has been in connection with his famous essay of 1938 on Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Within a year of his death reviewers of textbooks on Marxism, which books followed the method of exposition inaugurated by Stalin in his booklet, "now declared that it would have been more to the purpose if the exposition had begun, not by dealing with problems of method, but with a description of Marxist philosophical materialism."⁴⁴ The reason given by one critic is that "it is not possible to throw light on the manner and method of investigating the material world without having previously explained what this material world itself consists in."⁴⁵ Soviet philosophers had come to recognize the pedagogical advantages of presenting the dialectic, as the rhythm of development in reality, after it has been explained what reality is.

One critic, B. M. Kedrov, of the Moscow Academy of Social Sciences, went further in his criticism and declared that textbooks on Marxism would be better to dissociate themselves entirely from the exposition by Stalin. The four points listed by Stalin as the principal characteristics of the dialectical method are said to omit a whole series of important problems. (This will be the same reason for objecting to Stalin's exposition of philosophical materialism.) Foremost among the omitted problems of dialectics is the "law of the negation of negations," the characteristic Lenin especially emphasized in his great admiration of Hegel's methodology. Briefly, it explained the re-emergence of the old negated aspect in a form higher than the original. Although not examined, this category of the dialectic is recognized as a fundamental law in a recent Soviet text on the Categories of Dialectical Materialism.⁴⁶ The book appeared after the XXth Party Congress and exhibits the ideological theses proposed by that meeting. It is significant that the lengthy bibliography contains no reference to Stalin's works. While Lenin is cited throughout the text, there is only one brief reference to Stalin, in connection with the cult of the personality.⁴⁷

A text that does illustrate the return to the Leninist mode of presentation, of philosophical materialism first⁴⁸ and then dialectical method, is F. V. Konstantinov, editor, The Fundamentals of Marxist Philosophy. Its "Prologue" tells us that the authors are against idealism and metaphysics (which means the same in Soviet Marxist thought) as well as revisionism, "which actually constitutes the principal danger in the bosom of the worker and communist movement and against dogmatism." They emphasize their agreement with the declaration made by the representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties of the Socialist countries at their conference in Moscow, November 14-16, 1957, namely, that the basic theory of Marxism-Leninism is Dialectical Materialism and that its application is the task of the workers' parties. The book is divided into an introduction and two parts. The first part, dealing with Dialectical Materialism, introduces the subject by first speaking of matter, its forms of existence, and consciousness before presenting the fundamental laws of the dialectic. An entire chapter (IX) is devoted to the "law of the negation of negation." The only work by Stalin included in the bibliography is Questions of Leninism, to which reference is made in connection with an attempt to show the indissoluble unity of Marxism-Leninism.⁴⁹

However, that Stalin has not lost all his recognition as a "classicist" in Soviet philosophy can be seen from the following.

After Lenin, the philosophy of Marxism was developed and carried forward by his disciples, among them including the eminent Marxist J. V. Stalin. Except for a series of statements and errors, in relation to the cult of the personality, into which Stalin slipped during the last period of his life, his works constitute a valuable contribution to Marxist thought.⁵⁰

F. V. Konstantinov, presently Director of the Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., is also general editor of a textbook on Historical Materialism. There is no mention of Stalin in connection with the reference to the cult of the personality as idealistic, as seen in section four (dealing with the role of the leaders of the worker class) of the chapter.⁵¹ This can be explained by the fact that the Prologue of the text is dated March 1954. However, there also is no reference to Stalin in the chapter (VIII) dealing with "The Role of the Popular Masses and of the Individual in History." This may be taken as an indication of the ambiguous position Stalin had in the years preceding the XXth Party Congress and his official re-evaluation.

The only recent textbook on Marxism-Leninism to appear in English translation has been Fundamentals of Leninism-Marxism. It, too, is authored by "a group of scholars, Party officials and publicists." The "Authors' Note" reminds us that criticism is still very much a part of the philosophical science in the U.S.S.R. Note the following:

The authors are fully aware of the complexity of their task, which was to provide a scientifically competent and, at the same time, popular exposition of Marxism-Leninism, a science which is being constantly developed and enriched owing to changing historical conditions. It is only natural, therefore, that this attempt, the first in many years, to summarize in a single book the basic propositions of Marxism-Leninism cannot be free from shortcomings and defects. All readers' criticisms and advice for improving the book will be gratefully taken into account in preparing the second edition.⁵²

Of the numerous footnotes only three refer to Stalin. One, from Problems of Leninism, deals with the fact that the rising bourgeoisie did not realize that their innovations in production means would lead eventually to a re-grouping of social forces.⁵³ The second deals with Stalin's definition of "nation;"⁵⁴ and the third is a reference to Stalin's realization (in 1931) that a high rate of industrial growth for the Soviet Union was a matter of life or death for the first socialist state in the world.

The text exhibits the non-Stalinist form of presentation of Marxism, philosophical materialism first (Chap. 1) and materialist dialectics secondly (Chap. 2). In the chapter dealing with the role of the masses and the individual in history there is a consideration of the contradiction between the cult of the individual and Marxism-Leninism and a mention, in the usual words, of Stalin as an example of the harm of such a cult.

A significant departure in form can be detected in the latest edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Historically speaking, the book has been rewritten to place Stalin in proper perspective in history and to avoid the exaggerations and lies connected with the cult of the personality. Philosophically speaking, there is absent a section that summarizes the theory of Soviet Marxism. Stalin's exposition in the 1938 edition has been removed but not replaced. The only references to ideology are of a historical nature, namely, sections of Lenin's development of Marxist philosophy and theory of the party, as well as his theory of socialist revolution.⁵⁵

There has also been a notable lessening of the cultural isolationism between the Soviet Union and the West. Thus, the 1960 edition of the H.C.P.S.U. acknowledges (p. 630) that, while patriotism has led to a rise in the ideological level of the people,

. . . at the same time certain mistakes were made in propagating Soviet patriotism. The press frequently portrayed all life in the capitalist world as being a mass of corruption. The activity of the progressive forces was underrated and achievements in science and technology abroad were ignored. This hindered the speedy utilization of major discoveries made in science and technology abroad, limited creative contacts between Soviet and foreign scientists and engineers, and impeded the establishment of close ties with the democratic, progressive section of the people in the capitalist countries.

This lessening of isolationism in regard to philosophy has taken, among other means, the path of participation, in an ever-increasing degree, in the last three world congresses of philosophy. In an effort to extend its participation to the greatest possible number of attending delegates, the Soviet Union, unlike any other country, had translated into English and distributed gratis copies of the papers delivered by her delegation at the latest congress, the XHIth, held in Mexico City, September 7-14, 1963.⁵⁶

This does not mean that peaceful co-existence has entered the area of philosophy. According to the late Premier Khrushchev, in the course of his castigation of those comrades who signed a "petition" calling for such coexistence, those who wish to propagate ideological coexistence are the enemies of the Soviet people, for they wish to replace the "cement" of communist ideology, which unites the Party into a monolithic whole, with the "salt" of a bourgeois ideology that would destroy all that the Soviets have built and hold dear.⁵⁷

Despite the lessening of cultural isolationism, the Communist regime has continued Stalin's emphasis on nationalism, without acknowledging him as its source.⁵⁸ Lenin's name increasingly is attached to this policy. For example, N. S. Khrushchev, in his report to the Extraordinary Twenty-First Congress of the Party (1959), tells us: "The Leninist national policy, which provides ample opportunities for the all-round economic and cultural progress of all peoples, finds vivid expression in our plans."⁵⁹ This continued emphasis on Soviet patriotism does not, however, interfere with what the 1960 edition of the H.C.P.S.U. calls "proletarian internationalism." This name refers to the fraternal co-operation, mutual aid and sincere mutual support in the struggle for Communism to be found between the U.S.S.R. and the Peoples' Democracies of Europe and Asia.

Stalin's booklet on Marxism and Linguistics, greeted as a "new, world-historical contribution to the treasury of Marxism," was not considered much of a reference work by the time D. P. Gorski, among others, wrote Thought and Language. This series of essays is based on the thesis that thought and language constitute an indissoluble organic unity; that it is impossible to understand either the naturalness of thought as a generalized reflection and mediation of reality or the naturalness of language as a means of communication, of an exchange of thoughts between persons, if thought and language are considered isolated and separated from each other.⁶⁰ Of the six essays only two mention Stalin. D. P. Gorski, in his "Language and Knowledge," quotes Stalin when discussing language as a means of exchanging thought. V. Z. Panfilov, in his "On the Correlation Existing between Language and Thought," refers to and discusses Stalin's position that: (1) phonetic language constitutes the only material basis for abstract and generalized thought; and (2) given the fact that deaf mutes are deprived of a phonetic language, their abstract and generalized thoughts are founded on images of perception and representation. Panfilov disagrees with Stalin's contention that sign language is not, properly speaking, a language.⁶¹

In the recent Soviet Manual of Political Economy, Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the U. S. S. R. (1952) is referred to approximately twice, the second time in order to point out not only the important problems it raises but also its errors. We are told that:

. . . in his last work, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U. S. S. R., Stalin expounded some important problems of Marxist-Leninist theory: of the objective character of the economic laws of socialism, of the law of planned and proportional development, and others. It must be pointed out, nevertheless, that in this work and in certain others by Stalin are contained erroneous theses, such as, for example, that the mercantile traffic already represents, in actuality, a curb for the development of productive forces and that the time already has come for the necessity of a gradual passage to direct change of products between industry and agriculture; an insufficient appreciation of the force of the law of value in the sphere of production, in particular that touching on the means of production, etc.⁶²

The singularly most valuable essay in English on some of the developments in Soviet philosophy since the XXth Party Congress is an article of that same title translated from the Russian original. It informs us that:

During the years that have elapsed since the 20th Party Congress, changes of great importance have occurred .. . in ideological developments. . . . All this has produced a creative environment in our country and has stimulated activity in the field of philosophy. It may be stated without exaggeration that the 20th Congress of the Party, by creatively solving pressing problems of the present epoch, marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of social sciences generally in our country.⁶³

It is said that ". . . research in the field of philosophy has increased in variety and deepened in content, that its ties with life and with those great tasks which the Party is fulfilling in organizing extensive communist construction [Khrushchev had called the post XXth Party Congress period a time of "taking apart and cleaning up"] have been strengthened."⁶⁴ The greatest evil of the Stalinist cult was that "works of commentary were elevated to first place." This meant that "only one person had the right to create anything new or original." That "one" person was, of course, Stalin.

Philosophic writings degenerated into "gray" works "in which elementary declarations and philosophical definitions are repeated ad nauseam in place of profound study and analysis of. . . [current] reality."⁶⁵ This "citationism," as Okulov refers to it, resulted in separation of theory from practice, for "many workers in philosophy ceased to deal with pressing problems of the day in terms of historical philosophical subject matter," and dogmatism, for which the "dictation of theory" and "a subjective evaluation of certain writings among the classics of Marxism-Leninism" prevented an accurate understanding of these same classics.⁶⁶

Okulov maintains that the Soviet philosophers, unshackled by the cult of the personality of Stalin, are remedying this situation. He reminds us that the finest philosophical works of the past speak of their own epoch; and this "contemporaneity," the very "soul of progressive philosophy and a major source of its development," is what Soviet philosophy must exhibit and is exhibiting once more. In his words: "Today, more than at any previous time, the problem is that of rendering philosophy a moral weapon in the struggle of the Soviet people for the construction of communism."⁶⁷

In summary, it might be pointed out that the so-called de-Stalinization has affected Soviet philosophy mainly by freeing it from the dictatorship of any one individual and subordinating it to the dictatorship of the proletariat.⁶⁸ The renewed emphasis on cooperative writing of philosophical texts (most textbooks had been so written even during the Stalin epoch) aims to eliminate, through criticism and self-criticism, a recurrence of the cult of the individual. Stalin still is recognized as having contributed to the development of Marxism-Leninism but is rarely quoted,⁶⁹ and is not considered the "classic" he once was thought to be. Gone is any reference to Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. His main theoretical work, On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, has been omitted from the latest edition of the singularly most important book in the Soviet Union, namely, the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; and his method of the presentation of theory has been abandoned in favor of a return to Lenin.⁷⁰ In spite of all this, Stalin still remains the most "realistic" of all the contributors to the "treasury" of Marxism, and this by his ability to bring theory (by "developing" it) in line with practice (his own political activities).⁷¹

NOTES

¹ Gustav A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 209. The "Stalinist period" coincides with the years during which Stalin held totalitarian powers, from approximately 1930 onward, rather than from the death of Lenin in 1924. The 'twenties' were years in which Stalin had to combat the ambitions of the other powerful Bolsheviks. He did not succeed in consolidating his power until at least December, 1929. Wetter's book is not without its limitations and shortcomings. For a critical review of the work, see John Somerville, "Approaches to the Critique of Soviet Philosophy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 23 (1962), 269-73. For an example of Soviet criticism of Wetter, see F. T. Tarjiptsev, La Materia como Categoría Filosofíca (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1962), pp. 18, 138, 151-53, 168-69, 178, 190, 204, 227-28, 235. Also, see A. F. Okulov, "Some Developments in Soviet Philosophy since the 20th Party Congress" Soviet Studies in Philosophy, 1 (1962), 5, where both Wetter and Bochenski (see n. 12, below), are referred to as "well-known falsifiers of Marxism."

²The Teaching of Karl Marx, as quoted in the "Introduction" by Andrew Rothstein of his English translation of Plekhanov's On the Development of the Monist View of History (London, 1947), p. 25. The other two important works of Plekhanov on historical materialism are The Materialist Conception of History and The Role of the Individual in History.

³ Ibid., p. 21. There is a five-volume Selected Philosophical Works of Plekhanov in Russian (Moscow, 1956) that is being translated into English. Each volume contains an introductory essay. At present only the first volume has been completed; it contains an informative essay by V. Fomina. Also in Russian is the study by V. Fomina, The Philosophic Ideas of G. Plekhanov (Moscow, 1955). Besides the English translations of Plekhanov mentioned above, see his Unaddressed Letters and Art and Social Life (Moscow, 1957) and The Bourgeois Revolution, a pamphlet issued by the American Socialist Labor Party (New York, 1955). His Fundamental Questions of Marxism exists in French translation (Paris, 1947). Studies on Plekhanov have been made by S. H. Baron. See his "Plekhanov and the Origins of Russian Marxism," The Russian Review, 14 (1955) 315-30; "Plekhanov's Russia: The Impact of the West Upon an Oriental Society,'" Journal of the History of Ideas, 19 (1958), 388-404. A truly major contribution is his Plekhanov, The Father of Russian Marxism (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1963), especially pp. 286-95 for the treatment of his philosophy.

⁴ Unsigned "Editor's Preface" in G. Plekhanov, Essays in Historical Materialism: "The Materialist Conception of History" and "The Role of the Individual in History" (New York: International Publishers, 1940), p. 9.

⁵ M. A. Dynnik y Otros, eds. Historia de la filosofía, Tomo V, "Desde finales del siglo XIX hasta la revolución socialista de octubre de 1917" (Mexico, D. F.: Grijablo, 1963), pp. 155-56. The Russian edition was published in 1957.

⁶ For a recent critique of contemporary positivism by a Soviet philosopher, see B. M. Kedrov, "Philosophy as a General Science," The Soviet Review, 4 (1963), 49-70. The article, of which this is an English translation, is an attack prompted by A. J. Ayer's article on "Philosophy and Science" that appeared in Voprosy filosofa, 1962, No. 1. Kedrov's own reply originally appeared in Voprosy filosofii, 1962, Nos. 5 and 6.

⁷ R. H. McNeal, The Bolshevik Tradition (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 78.

⁸ Dynnik, op. cit., V, pp. 319-20.

⁹ McNeal, op. cit., p. 79. See also n. 54.

¹⁰ Fourteen volumes of Stalin's official Works were planned. Only thirteen have appeared. It required eleven volumes to contain his works prior to 1934. After January 1934, when Stalin's political supremacy was assured, his public speeches and published writings dwindled greatly. According to McNeal, op. cit., p. 107, "the rarity of his addresses or writings made it easier to build up gigantic campaigns of acclaim for these 'classics.'" More will be said about Stalin's "genius" on matters of theory in the concluding portion of this paper.

¹¹ Josef Stalin, Foundations of Leninism (New York: International Publishers, 1939), pp. 10-11.

¹² One other contribution during these years (1926) by Stalin to Marxism should be mentioned. This is the weighty essay entitled "On Questions of Leninism," published as a discourse on theory after his victory against various oppositions in the ruling circles of Leningrad. Later the essay was printed as part of a larger anthology of didactic works, Problems of Leninism. "The book, from that time until Stalin's death, served as the basic reference work on Stalinism." McNeal, op. cit., 95. The Stalinism mentioned is a reference to matters more political than philosophic. This is probably the reason why J. M. Bochenski considers it a "misinterpretation" to cite Problems of Leninism as a philosophical work. According to him, the book does not deal with philosophy except in a few marginal comments. See Soviet Russian Dialectical Materialism (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1963), p. 34. The philosophic nature of the work is due to the inclusion of Foundations of Leninism, which is said to form the nucleus of the celebrated collection. See Wetter, op. cit., p. 210.

¹³ Wetter, op. cit., p. 175.

¹⁴ M. B. Mitin, Dialektichesky materialiszm (Dialectical Materialism) (Moscow, 1933), p. 347. English translation in Wetter, op. cit., p. 177. Earlier Stalin had been praised as a loyal disciple of Marxism-Leninism, especially after December 1929 when he successfully crushed the last serious attempt against Bolshevik unity and his power. On December 21 Stalin was honored with the following birthday message by Pravda: "To the true continuator of the cause of Marx and Lenin, to the staunch fighter for the purity of Marxism-Leninism, for the steel-like unity of ranks of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) and the Communist International, for international proletarian revolution; to the organizer and leader of socialist industrialization and collectivization of the Soviet land; to the old Pravada-ist; to Comrade Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin from Pravda—militant Bolshevik greetings." Cited by McNeal, op. cit., p. 102.

¹⁵ B. N. Ponomaryov et Al., History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960), p. 629 (hereafter referred to as H.C.P.S.U., 1960).

¹⁶ The Russian title of this work has been translated also as History of the All-Union Communist Party. In the first ten years of its appearance at least thirty-six million copies were printed. The essay on "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" was reprinted in periodicals, as a brochure, and later as part of Stalin's anthology, Problems of Leninism, to increase its printing to many more millions. It was mainly upon this essay that Stalin's claim to theoretical omniscience was based.

¹⁷ J. Stalin, A Short Biography (London, 1943), p. 56.

¹⁸ From a low of 1.9 million in 1938, due to expulsion and terrorism, Party membership increased by 1946 to approximately 6 million, of whom half had joined during the war. HC.P.S.U. (1960), pp. 629-30, 632, tells us that since "a sizeable section of the Party membership had not had time to receive the necessary theoretical training," it was decided not to press for further growth but to organize education on a large scale. "Between 1946 and 1952 the bulk of Party and government workers went through refresher training" in an effort to destroy "the survivals of bourgeois views and ideas." "On the initiative of the Central Committee, discussions were held on philosophy (1947), biology (1948), physiology (1950), linguistics (1950), and political economy (1951). Serious shortcomings in the elaboration of Marxist-Leninist philosophy were revealed and criticized during the discussion of philosophical problems. These shortcomings were disregard of Party principles, attempts to gloss over the contradictions between Marxism-Leninism and philosophical trends alien to it, isolation from urgent problems of the day, and manifestations of scholasticism.

The discussion mapped out ways of reorganizing the front of philosophical science."

¹⁹ A "free discussion" is an open debate on those matters or points upon which the Party has not pronounced definitively.

²⁰ N. Y. Marr, Izbrannye raboty (Selected Works), III, p. 118; English translation in Wetter, op. cit., p. 196.

²¹ On June 20, 1950 he sent a letter to Pravda, followed by four others published on July 4 and August 2. That same month the letters appeared for the first time in booklet form, under the title of Marxism and Linguistics.

²² Of the discussions initiated by the Central Committee, that on political economy began in 1951. According to H.C.P.S.U. (1960), pp. 632-33: "The economic discussion dealt with the features distinguishing the economic development of modern capitalism, the basic laws governing the socialist reorganization of society, and the ways of effecting the gradual transition from Socialism to Communism. Subjective and voluntarist views were condemned. The advocates of these views denied the objective character of economic laws; they could be made, transformed or abolished at will. This point of view led to an arbitrary approach to economic management and to adventurism in politics. The discussion revealed the serious consequences of the prolonged isolation of the economic sciences from the actual development of socialist society."

²³ The XIXth Party Congress was held in October 1952. It was the first such meeting in thirteen years. By then the membership of the Party was 6,013,259, with 868,886 candidate members. For a résumé of what occurred see H.C.P.S.U. (1960), pp. 633-36. It will be seen that it was at this congress that the name "Bolshevik" was dropped from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

²⁴ Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, p. 29. While Lenin lived Stalin played a most limited role in the high-level discussions of theory within the Party. "But after the demise of the chief dogmatist, Stalin began to promote himself as the prime interpreter of Leninist theory. His effectiveness was all the greater among the masses of new and less sophisticated party members because he presented himself as a simple apostle of Lenin, too modest to be an original theoretician in his own right, as were Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin, among others. In this spirit Stalin delivered a series of lectures at the Sverdlov University in Moscow. . . . In this didactic work he presented what came to be the official Bolshevik apologia for the coming of a 'proletarian' revolution in a country which had not achieved the high level of capitalism that Marx had predicted as the basis for the dialectical upheaval. Stressing Lenin's theory that the most advanced stage of capitalism was the worldwide development of imperialism, Stalin argued that Russia, although not very advanced economically, was the country in which all of the 'contradictions' of world capitalism were most highly concentrated. This justified the Bolshevik revolution and moved toward the dogma of 'socialism in one country.' set forth in December, 1924 It might be quite a while, he argued, before revolution would come in the West, owing to Lenin's 'law of uneven development of capitalism,' which Stalin interpreted to mean that revolution comes in successive waves rather than all at once." McNeal, op. cit., pp. 91-92.

²⁵ Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, p. 126. With this definition Stalin places Bolshevik revolutionary practice firmly upon a theoretical foundation. Marxism-Leninism cannot deemphasize theory in favor of practice only. Contemporary Soviet Marxists continue to stress the union of theory and practice. Note the following, from a paper given at the recent XIIIth World Congress of Philosophy: ". . . Although at times people may achieve practical successes before they are aware of the inner workings of the phenomena and things they are using, in the long run knowledge and ability to act tend to merge. The boundless possibilities of action and cognition merge in the infinite progress of mankind." Y. K. Melvil, "Man in the Space Age" (Moscow, 1963), p. 14.

²⁶ Wetter, op. cit., p. 212 and n. 2. It is with this essay that Stalin laid aside his role of mere continuator and loyal disciple of Marx and Lenin and took up the task of elaborating the science of Marxism-Leninism. His contribution entitled him to be listed among the "classics" of Dialectical Materialism. Henceforth began the practice of referring to Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. "The veneration of Stalin especially emphasized the versatility of the leader's genius. Stalin's program for Soviet Russia was comprehensive in scope, omitting no department of life and culture, and it is natural that an all-embracing program should be directed by an all-round genius." McNeal, op. cit., p. 107.

²⁷ Wetter, op. cit., p. 215.

²⁸ Note the following: "In the conditions of transition from Socialism to Communism, when the importance of the subjective factor, the conscious guidance of society, increases, the Party, equipped with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, is called upon to direct the creation of new economic and political relations on the basis of the principles of Communism." H.C.P.S.U. (1960), p. 684.

²⁹ Reviewing the results of the Party's activity at the head of the Soviet People for forty years, the 1960 edition of the H.C.P.S.U. reminds us, with no reference to Stalin, that: "the Party ensured the all-round development of culture that is national in form and Socialist in content. The culture of each people influences that of other peoples, and shares in the common process of creating a Soviet socialist culture (p. 691)."

³⁰ This innovation seems to have eluded most students of Soviet Marxism. In my opinion it provides an opportunity to examine critically the possibility that many more social phenomena, hitherto considered a reflection of class struggle, may be the result of the development of society as a whole. The revolution within Marxism that such a reevaluation could bring about cannot be overstated.

³¹ These are the words of Professor Margaret Schlauch, one-time professor of New York University and then (1951) of the University of Warsaw. Her article on Stalin's contribution to linguistics is reprinted as Appendix III of Joseph Stalin, Marxism and Linguistics (New York: International Publishers, 1951), pp. 57-58. She reminds us that the implication ". . . that Stalin's statement came as a fiat unexpectedly imposed on linguistics from without; that they [the linguists] had no voice in the matter at all, and no choice but to accept an unwelcome decree issued from above by a non-specialist; in fact, by an unqualified interloper"—this implication is all quite the opposite of the truth. According to her: "Stalin is actually a student and specialist in those fields of sociology which border immediately on linguistics (nationalities, minorities, and so on). . . . Moreover, he did not suddenly descend upon the body of Soviet linguists with an unsolicited decree concerning their special subjects. A lively debate on the matter had been going on for some weeks, chiefly in the columns of Pravda. Stalin entered it upon invitation, in response to questions posed to him directly by several young students."

Concerning Stalin's qualifications, these are his own words, in the opening paragraph (p. 9) of the booklet under discussion: "A group of comrades of the younger generation have asked me to give my opinion in the press on questions relating to the science of language, particularly in reference to Marxism in linguistics. I am not a linguist and cannot of course satisfy these comrades fully. But as to Marxism in linguistics, as well as in other social sciences, this is a subject with which I have a direct connection."

³² For a critique of American pragmatism and relativism, see the following: Harry K. Wells, Pragmatism, Philosophy of Imperialism (New York: International Publishers, 1954); and Maurice Cornforth, Science versus Idealism (London: Lawrence & Wishart, Ltd., 1955), Chap. 18.

³³ Stalin, Marxism and Linguistics, p. 47.

³⁴ McNeal, op. cit., p. 97.

³⁵ Joseph Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (New York: International Publishers, 1952), p. 63. Soviet philosophers took the hint from this warning to the economists and resolved to pay greater attention themselves to the objective laws of social development, and especially to avoid subjective conceptions of these laws—all of which set off another series of criticisms and self-criticism in philosophic circles.

³⁶ Various solutions have been proposed, examples of which range from the affirmation that the contradictions existing in a socialist society are not of the type ("antagonistic" economic exploitation) that find their resolution in revolution to the assertion that socialism as a society does not exist and hence is not a violation of the law of dialectics. This latter view stems from an interpretation of history as the development of socialism. Once socialism is reached, history as revolutionary transitions has ended. Still others would have it that the socialist society is the beginning of history and that all "presocieties" leading to it are part of "pre-history." The presence of economic contradictions is characteristic of prehistory only.

See: V. Pirozhkova, "Problems of Historical Materialism," Bulletin, Institute for the Study of the U. S. S. R. (1958), pp. 31-37; I. V. Malyshev, "The Motivating Forces of the Development of Socialist Society," Voprosy filosofii, (1953) No. 5; V. I. Gazenko and M. N. Rutkevich, "A Profound Study of the Problems of Dialectical Materialism," Ibid. (1954), No. 2; T. A. Stepanyan, "Contradictions in the Development of a Socialist Society and Ways of Overcoming Them," Ibid. (1955), No. 2; D. F. Krivoruchko, "On the Basic and Chief Contradictions of a Communist Structure," Ibid. (1957), No. 4; and O. G. Yurovitsky, "The Basic Economic Law and the Basic Economic Contradiction of Socialism," Ibid. (1957), No. 6.

³⁷H.C.P.S.U. (1960), p. 636.

³⁸ McNeal, op. cit., p. 150.

³⁹ This was the same man who had exclaimed in 1939: "Hail the greatest genius of mankind, teacher and leader, who leads us victoriously to Communism, our own Stalin!" N. Krushchev, 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Russian edition, Moscow, 1939), p. 174. Translation in Soviet World Outlook (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1959), p. 43.

⁴⁰H.C.P.S.U. (1960), pp. 669-70. Herein the reasons for the rise of Stalin's personality cult are given in such a manner that it is made to appear to have been historically inevitable.

⁴¹ N. Khrushchev, "For a Close Tie of Literature and Art with the Life of the People," Kommunist (1958), No. 12, p. 17. Translation in Soviet World Outlook, p. 44. Also, see N. Khrushchev, "Speech at Reception in Chinese Peoples' Republic Embassy," Pravda, January 19, 1957; English translation in Soviet World Outlook, p. 47. Finally, see H.C.P.S.U. (1960), p. 671, for a quote from Khrushchev that appeared in Pravda, August 28, 1957. What stands out in all this is Krushchev's "prayer" that "God grant that every Communist will be able to fight as Stalin fought."

⁴²H.C.P.S.U. (1960), p. 670.

⁴³ In The Fundamentals of Marxist Philosophy the only reference made to Stalin's works is to his Questions of Leninism, in connection with an attempt to show the indissoluble unity of Marxism-Leninism. "As J. V. Stalin has shown, Leninism is the direct continuation of Marxism in the new historical conditions, in the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution." F. V. Konstantinov, ed., Los Fundamentos de la Filosofía Marxista (Mexico: D. F.:Grijalbo, 1960), p. 107.

⁴⁴ Wetter, op. cit., p. 237. See Bochenski, op. cit., pp. 60-61.

⁴⁵Voprosy filosofa (1954), No. 5, p. 199; English translation in Wetter op. cit., p. 237.

⁴⁶ See "Prologo," M. M. Rosental y G. M. Straks, ed., Categorías del Materialismo Dialectico (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1960). This work is the Spanish translation of a 1957 Russian edition. The text was written by members of the Chair of Philosophy of the State Pedagogical Institute, "K. D. Ushinski" of Yaroslavsk, U. S. S. R., in collaboration with other investigators from other scientific institutions. The basis of the text was an elaboration of an article entitled "Categories of Dialectical Materialism" published in 1954 in Scientific Sketches by the aforementioned Institute. We are told that the book does not pretend to be a complete exposition of all the categories of the Marxist dialectic. In particular, there is not included a study of the categories that express the fundamental laws of the dialectic (quality, quantity, contradiction, negation, etc.), for these had been the object of a more lengthy examination. Chapter headings are: the categories of dialectical materialism; phenomenon and essence; cause and effect; necessity and causality; laws; content and form; possibility and reality; the singular, the particular and the universal; the abstract and the concrete; and the historical and the logical.

A more recent book, M. M. Rosental, Principios de Lógica Dialéctica (Montevideo: Pueblos Unidos, 1962), devotes the last section of Chap. III (p. 171) to the law of the negation of negation. In his "Prólogo" the author tells us that this book is, "in a certain sense," the continuation of an earlier work by himself, namely, Los Problemas de la Dialéctica en "El Capital" de Marx (Montevideo: Pueblos Unidos, 1961). An entire chapter (7) is devoted to this law in A. D. Makarov, A. V. Vostrikov, y E. N. Chesnokov, eds., Manual de Materialismo Dialéctico (Montevideo: Pueblos Unidos, n. d.). Finally, for a recent treatment of the dialectic of the development (evolution) of inorganic matter, see: S. Meliujin, Dialéctica del Desarrollo en la Naturaleza Inorganica (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1963). The references are to Engels and Lenin, with no mention of Stalin.

⁴⁷ Rosental and Straks, op. cit., pp. 151-52, in which Stalin's cult of the personality and the errors resulting therefrom are said to have been inevitable once Stalin stopped taking into account the role of the popular masses in history ". . . Isolating himself from the masses, believing in his own infallibility, he began to fall into arbitrariness and committed a series of grave faults. . . . "

⁴⁸ For a recent treatment of philosophical materialism, see F. T. Arjiptsev, La Materia como Categoría Filosófica (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1962). Stalin is not listed in the lengthy bibliography nor is he quoted. Lenin's Materialism and Empirlo-Criticism is referred to constantly.

⁴⁹ F. V. Konstantinov, ed., Los Fundamentos de la Filosofía Marxista (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1960), p. 107. This text was published first in Russian in July 1959 and is authored by a board of thirteen. Its "Prologue" tells us that "the manuscript of the book was read by many scientific workers and professors of Marxist philosophy, and discussed in a full session of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the U. S. S. R. with participation by the most active philosophic sector, by the professors of the establishments of higher learning. It also was submitted to a discussion in the chairs of philosophy of the higher schools of Moscow and Leningrad." Ibid., p. 11. This shows the care taken to avoid doctrinal error and the Soviet principle of criticism and self-criticism in cooperative endeavors.

See Okulov, op. cit., pp. 5a and 8a. Herein we are told that: "Textbooks on dialectical materialism have been published in a number of the constituent republics. In these texts, the authors have overcome many of the short-comings of previous years when works differed from each other only in the number of examples or quotations cited. In the past, these books were largely monotonous both in theoretical content and in style of presentation. The new textbooks are much more varied, lively, and stocked with factual materials." We are told what care went into the authoring of Fundamentals of Marxist Philosophy. Note the following: "A very important step in the stimulation of work in philosophy has been the holding of competitions for the writing of textbooks on philosophy. These contests have received active support from our scholars. It is well known, for example, that about 100 groups of authors entered into the competition to take part in the writing of the popular book entitled Fundamentals of Marxist Philosophy. More than 100 applications were submitted for participation in the contest for the preparation of a popular book devoted to the fundamentals of communist morality. It may be assumed that in the years immediately ahead competitions will become one of the most important means of bringing out interesting and creative works in philosophy."

⁵⁰ Konstantinov, ed., op. cit., p. 110. The only reference to Stalin is to be found on pages 593-94 in connection with the cult of the personality. The attack is substantially the same as that found in all books in the post-Stalin (post-XXth Party Congress) period.

⁵¹ F. V. Konstantinov, El Materialismo Histórico (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1960), p. 296. This work is the Spanish translation of the second Russian edition dated in the "Prologue" March 1954 but published in October 1956. The first edition appeared in 1951. For a Soviet critique of bourgeois (idealistic?) philosophy of history, see the extremely interesting I. S. Kon, El Idealismo Filosófico y la Crisis en el Pensamiento Histórico (Buenos Aires: Platina, 1962).

⁵² O. V. Kuusinen, ed., Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1961), p. 14. This manual is indeed a summarization of the entire position of Marxism-Leninism. It is divided into five parts: I. The Philosophical Foundations of the Marxist-Leninist World Outlook; II. The Materialist Conception of History; III. Political Economy of Capitalism; IV. Theory and Tactics of the International Communist Movement; and V. Socialism and Communism. The Spanish edition appeared the previous year as Manual de Marxismo-Leninismo (Mexico: D. F.: Grijalbo, 1960).

⁵³ This is reminiscent of the portion of Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism dealing with the third feature of production and the fact that the new productive forces and relations arising from old ones do not do so as a result of the deliberate and conscious activity of man, but spontaneously, unconsciously, independently of the will of man. That is, "when improving one instrument of production or another, one element of the productive forces or another, men do not realize, do not understand or stop to reflect what social results these improvements will lead to, but only think of their everyday interests, of lightening their labour and of securing some direct and tangible advantage for themselves." Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, p. 41.

⁵⁴ Stalin's definition of "nation," given as early as 1913 in "Marxism and the National Question," is still considered a classic. It is interesting to note that when referring to this work, contemporary Soviet historians of philosophy emphasize the fact that it was written "with the advice of Lenin." This, by implication, accounts for its orthodoxy and accuracy. See: Dynnik, op. cit., V, 185-86.

⁵⁵ B. N. Ponomaryov, et Al., History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1960). For Lenin's development of Marxist philosophy and his theory of the Party, see Chap. 4, sect. 3, p. 147. For his theory of socialist revolution, see Chap. 6, sect. 3, p. 199.

⁵⁶ For an observation of Soviet participation at this Congress, see Carl Cohen, "The Poverty of a Dialogue," Problems of Communism 13 (1964), 11-20. Also, see George L. Kline, "Soviet Philosophers at the Thirteenth International Philosophy Congress," Journal of Philosophy, 40 (1963), 738-43. Professor John Somerville took exception to some of Professor Kline's observations and sought to make these known through the same Journal of Philosophy. His "Comment" was declined publication. Consequently, he sent it in mimeographed form to various of his fellow philosophers. For a published account of this Congress, with its meeting between American philosophers and the Soviet "delegation," see Professor Somerville's "The American-Soviet Philosophic Conference in Mexico," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 25 (1964), 122-30. For the Soviet account of this much publicized American-Soviet meeting, see M. B. Mitin and M. E. Omel'ianovskii, "Soviet-American Philosophic Discussions," Soviet Studies in Philosophy 3 (1964), 1-4 in its reprint form. However, the article, translated from the original Russian that appeared in Voprosifilosofii (1964), No. 5, deals mainly with Soviet participation in the meetings of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Dialectical Materialism. This is an American society, founded largely through the efforts of Professor Somerville at the Detroit meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Mid-Western Division) in the Spring of 1962. At the symposia organized by the Society, held in connection with the meetings of the American Philosophical Association, philosopher-guests are invited from the U.S.S.R. for a most interesting and frank exchange of ideas with their American colleagues.

⁵⁷ See N. Khrushchev, El Marxismo-Leninismo Es Nuestra Bandera, Nuestra Arma Combativa (Marxism-Leninism Is Our Banner, Our Fighting Arm) (Mexico, D. F.: Embassy of the U. S. S. R., n.d.), especially pp. 11-12, 14-15. This is a speech delivered on January 21, 1963 by the then Premier before the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.

H.C.P.S.U. (1960), p. 630.

⁵⁹ N. Khrushchev, Control Figures for the Development of the U.S.S.R. for 1959-1965. English edition, pp. 49-50, cited in H.C.P.S.U. (1960), p. 724. Note the following: "Distortions of the Leninist policy on nationalities, committed during the Great Patriotic War [certainly referring to Stalin's policies], were eradicated. The national autonomy of the Balkars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingushes and Karachais was re-established and they were thus enabled to develop unhampered in the fraternal family of peoples of the U. S. S. R. The friendship of the Soviet peoples benefited thereby." H.C.P.S.U. (1960), p. 657; italics added. No mention is made of Stalin in connection with what is the State in the recent Soviet text on the topic, namely, N. C. Alexandrov y Otros, Tería del Estado y del Derecho (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1962).

⁶⁰ D. P. Gorski y Otros, Pensamiento y Lenguaje (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1962), p. 7. This is the second edition in Spanish, the first having appeared in 1958, Ediciones Pueblos Unidos, Montevideo (Uruguay). The work consists of six essays: A. G. Spirking, 'The Origin of Language and Its Role in the Formation of Thought"; D. P. Gorski, "Language and Knowledge"; V. Z. Panfilov, "On the Correlation Existing between Language and Thought"; A. S. Ajmanov, "Logical Forms and Their Expression in Language;" V. M. Boguslavski, "The Word and the Concept"; P. V. Kopnin, "The Naturalness of the Judgment and Its Forms of Expression in Language"; and E. M. Galkina-Fedoruk, "Form and Content in Language." Not only do the authors invite criticism from their readers but they include the address at the Institute of Philosophy to which it may be sent.

⁶¹ For the reference by Gorski, see ibid., p. 70; and for that by Panfilov, see ibid., pp. 138-39.

⁶² K. V. Ostrovitianer y Otros, Manual de Economía Política (Mexico, D. F.: Grijalbo, 1960), p. 706. Translated from the corrected and enlarged third Russian edition, according to the "Prologo," it incorporates the decisions of the XXth and XXIst Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as of the Central Committee meetings. There are approximately eight references to Stalin in this gigantic manual. The only one of significance is an earlier reference made to the contributions and erroneous theses of Stalin, as part of the chapter on "The Economic Doctrines of the Epoch of Capitalism." Herein, pp. 328-29, Stalin is credited with "clarifying" certain issues, as well as with expounding certain errors.

⁶³ Okulov, op. cit., p. 3b. This work appeared originally in Woprosy filosofa (1962), No. 1.

⁶⁴Ibid., p. 4a. For an interesting article on how philosophy is taught in the Soviet Union, see S. Kaltakhchyan and Y. Petrov, "The Teaching of the Philosophical Sciences," University of Toronto Quarterly 28 (1958), 37-46. For a syllabus of the courses on Dialectical and Historical Materialism that are taught in the Soviet Union, see Administration of Teaching in Social Sciences in the U. S. S. R., "Syllabi for Three Required Courses: Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Political Economy, and History of the C. P. S. U," (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1960). It will be of interest to non-Soviets that up to 140 hours in the study of philosophy is required in Institutions of Higher Learning. See pp. 7-35.

⁶⁵ Even in 1962 there were said to be not a few of these "stereo-type" books "which contain nothing but description and in which the essence of phenomena and their causes and fundamental principles and tendencies of development are not revealed." Okulov, op. cit., p, 13a.

⁶⁶ibid., p. 14a.

⁶⁷Ibid., p. 13a.

⁶⁸ Both the XXth and XXIst Party Congresses have emphasized that the role of ideology is to further the cause of socialism and that the task of the Party is to guard the purity of Marxist-Leninist theory by combating the survival of bourgeois ideology. Ideological work still is criticized, as in the days of Stalin, primarily for its lack of connection with the practical tasks of Communism, as well as for dogmatism (not changing according to new historical situations) and for "quotation-mongering" (lacking creativity or being too scholastic). For reference to the XXth Congress and ideology, see H.C.P.S.U. (1960), pp. 672-75, 700, 706-07; for such references in connection with the XXIst Congress, consult pp. 719, 731-32, 741-44.

⁶⁹ See Bochenski, op. cit., p. 53.

⁷⁰ See C. Olgin, "Lenin's Philosophical Legacy: The Reconstruction of Dialectical Materialism," Bulletin, Institute for the Study of the U. S. S. R. (1959), pp. 3-15; also, Okulov, op. cit., p. 10a.

⁷¹ As a final word, I wish to refer to the existence of Volume VI of the History of Philosophy, edited by M. A. Dynnik and others, which treats of philosophy after the October Revolution of 1917. Thus, it treats of the four main works by Stalin that I considered in my essay. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate a copy before this essay had to go to press, either in Spanish translation from Editorial Grijalbo of Mexico City (who implied that they had not even begun their translation) or in the original Russian from Moscow (my booksellers having been unable to locate it and my inquiries directed to the Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., having brought no reply). Frankly, I have no way of knowing if it has been published. Professor Okulov, op. cit., p. 10b, tells us that "the sixth volume, which went to the printers early in 1962, is devoted chiefly to the history of the development of Marxist-Leninist thought in the present epoch." Even if it returned from the printers, it may have been in a "trial" form to be circulated for criticism until the corrected final copy was approved. If this was the case, the "trial" copy may still be circulating. (This would not be surprising because the volume is the most pertinent in the series, dealing as it does with issues still not quite settled.) If it has appeared (or when it will appear), it is the singularly most valuable volume in determining current Soviet appraisal of the philosophic contribution of Stalin to Marxism. Compared with this volume, the current Soviet textbooks I have examined can only be regarded as "secondary" means to determine this appraisal. Likewise, I have no way of knowing if the planned multi-volume history of philosophy in the Soviet Union has been written. (The six-volume work deals with the history of philosophy throughout the whole world.) Professor Okulov also tells us (p. 10a) that: "In the years immediately ahead, a multi-volume history of the philosophy of our own country will be written." When this work appears (or, if it has appeared), it will be even more valuable than the Dynnik-edited series.