Hegel in the Mirrors of Soviet Philosophy

Abstract

The attitude towards Hegel in Soviet philosophy was contradictory and depended to a considerable extent on the ideological state of affairs. Waves of love and hate for Hegel alternated periodically. At different times, emphasis was placed on the “revolutionary” method, or on dialectics, or on the “reactionary” system, the justification of the old world. On one page, Lenin would admire Hegel’s logical discoveries, on the next, he would scold him in the most vulgar language for his idealism, mysticism and “goddikin.” The present article draws a parallel between the stylistics of Lenin’s philosophical works and the avant-garde artists and poets who gave a “slap in the face” to public taste. In Lenin’s hands, philosophy becomes the servant of politics; later on, the “principle of partisanship” would turn into the credo of Marxist dogma and the criterion of the truth of philosophical doctrines. The Hegelian wing of Soviet Marxism was formed in the 1920s. The party leader of the “Dialecticians,” Abram Deborin, initiated the publication of Hegel’s Collected Works, which was published with a number of large and small interruptions over the course of 30 years (and the last, 15th volume never saw the light of day). After the defeat of the Deborinites in 1931, Hegel’s popularity gradually declined. However, some original studies coloured by love for Hegel appeared. Vygotsky used Hegelian concepts of “mediation” and “cunning of reason” to create a cultural-historical psychology; he believed that Hegel “walked lamely to the truth”. Mikhail Lifshitz regarded Hegel as a “great conservative of mankind,” and György Lukács, who came to the Soviet Union, wrote his famous The Young Hegel here and defended this book as his doctoral thesis (1942). Lifshitz and Lukács concentrate on Hegel’s “historical dialectic” and on his comprehension of the revolutionary events of his epoch. By the end of the Second World War, Hegel’s philosophy had been declared an “aristocratic reaction to the French Revolution” (Stalin), and hatred of Hegel became reflexive. The party of persecutors of Hegelianshchina was led by Moscow State University Professor Zinovy Beletsky. It was only after Stalin’s death that serious research into Hegel’s philosophy could be resumed. Evald Ilyenkov interpreted dialectics as “the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete” and traced how this – materialistically reinterpreted – method works in Marx’s Capital. It was the Neo-Hegelians who brought the category of the concrete, understood as “diversity fused into unity” (Ivan Ilyin), to the fore. In this respect, Lenin was in complete agreement with them. In parallel with the European Marxists, Ilyenkov criticised the interpretation of dialectics as a universal picture of the world, a new metaphysics cultivated by diamat and istmat. He did not, however, share the anti-Hegelian sentiments of the schools of Galvano Della Volpe and Louis Althusser. For Ilyenkov, Hegel is the greatest revolutionary in logic since Aristotle. At the end of the article are the facts showing that interest in “Soviet Hegel” is still alive today.