Emigrant publicist Nikolai Berdyaev and “the general line of Soviet philosophy”: contextual issue

Abstract

The article is devoted to the perception of Russian philosopher N.A. Berdyaev, who was in exile, of philosophical struggle in the USSR at the end of the 20s – beginning of the 30s. Being an opponent to Russian materialism in the times of the First Russian Revolution, Berdyaev saw that his former ideological opponents suffered a crushing defeat and thatin the USSR a new theoretical model of Marxism was formed, which was based on the synthesis of the matter and dialectics. That synthesis changed the essence of Marxism, in Berdyaev’s understanding, turning it into extreme idealism, because matter was endowed with the properties of the creative substance. However, such metamorphosis did not mean that Berdyaev became closer to Soviet philosophy. The main arguments regarding the empiric critics of the beginning of the century remained valid, and when it came to the new situation in Soviet philosophy. For the thesis about the value of impersonal philosophy, dissolved in the interests of the proletariat and the Bolshevik party, remained unchanged in the Marxism of Stalin’s time. Marxism still professed both its hatred for metaphysics and its total rejection of the idea of the rights of the individual to be metaphysically higher than the collectivist principles.