Abstract
This article covers Valentin Asmus’s first book Dialectical Materialism and Logic and response thereto among émigré and Soviet intellectuals. The interest in Asmus’s first book is not only related to the demonstration of his ideas. It records and discusses the main problems that emerged in early Soviet theory of cognition, and reveals the existence of a latent Hegelian trend within it. Asmus presents the dialectical method by situating it within the development of philosophical ideas from Hegel to Marx. The article particularly focuses on the perception of Asmus’s book “on the two shores,” on the discussion of philosophy’s subject and method. Lenin’s name, featured in the book’s title, turns out to be essentially absent from the study itself. Asmus argues that only thinking taken in its dialectical development can be the true subject of philosophy (30 years later, Evald Ilyenkov would assume this stance as well). The second part of the article considers critical responses to Asmus’s first books in both émigré and Soviet press.
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Notes
For more details, see the article “Saving philosopher Descartes” in this issue of Studies in East European Thought (A. Maidansky and M. Maidansky 2023).
In the 1920s, Abram Deborin (Ioffe) (1881–1963) was the most influential philosopher in the Soviet Union. In 1921, with Lenin still living, Deborin became the head of the philosophy department at the Institute of Red Professors; later, he held the offices of Director of the Institute of Scientific Philosophy and Editor-in-Chief of the Pod Znamenem Marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism) journal.
Chizhevsky Dmitry Ivanovich [Dmytro] (1894–1977). A Russian-Ukrainian philosopher and literary scholar. After the October Revolution, he emigrated and worked in Halle. He used the pseudonym “P. Prokofiev” (sometimes “PP”).
Abram Deborin was associated with the journal from the moment of its launch in 1922 for a period of 9 years first as a member of the editorial board, and then as its chief editor (from 1923 onwards).
“It issued the journal of the Marx and Engels Institute, where Abram Deborin was its vice director and head of the Philosophy Department. The review notes those features of dialectics in Kant and Fichte from the book by Valentin Asmus, which Abram Deborin himself highlighted in his works on German classical philosophy”. (Korsakov 2018).
Nikolay Afanasievich Karev (1901–1936), Deborin’s comrade-in-arms, a specialist in materialist dialectic, was expelled from the communist party in 1933 and executed by firing squad on October 11, 1936.
Bammel’ Grigory Konstantinovich (1900–1937) was a full member of the Institute of Philosophy in 1928–1931. He was arrested on 23 February 1937. He was condemned on 9 April 1938 to 8 years of a correctional Labour Camp. He was imprisoned in the Sevvostlag Labour Camp ran by the NKVD of the USSR (Nagaev Bay, Far Eastern Region). He died on 10 October 1939.
References
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The work on this article was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under grant No. 19-18-00100.
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Klimova, S.M. Valentin Asmus’s first book in émigré and in Soviet criticism in the 1920s. Stud East Eur Thought 75, 575–588 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09571-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09571-9