The Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy

The standard Soviet textbook of dialectical and historical materialism - diamat and histmat, the philosophy every Soviet student sat examinations in - issued under the name of the academician F. V. Konstantinov, who had directed the official manuals of Marxist-Leninist philosophy for a quarter of a century, and written, as the title page concedes, by a committee of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Philosophy.

Twenty-two chapters carry the whole doctrine in its most systematic and official form: matter and consciousness, the theory of knowledge, the laws and categories of dialectics, then the materialist account of history, production, classes, the state, revolution, culture and the transition to communism. If you want the orthodoxy entire, in the shape in which it was actually taught, this is it.

The second half is unexpectedly useful as a dated document, because the philosophy is a container and the current Party line is the contents, decanted fresh at each congress. A treatise on matter and the categories has no obvious need of a five-year unemployment forecast, yet the social chapters carry the American jobless total for December 1981, the debts of the developing countries, and the peace programme of the moment.

Which fixes the real date. Whatever the front matter says, the text quotes the Twenty-Sixth Congress of February-March 1981 at least six times, follows Brezhnev's visit to West Germany in November 1981, and projects forward to 1983. Brezhnev is alive throughout. This is the revised edition of 1982.

New critical introduction by Dmitry Chasovennikov.