New Article: John Biggart, Plekhanov as politician 1905—1912

Abstract During 1910 Lenin and Plekhanov entered into a relationship that both were at pains to avoid describing as a “fractional”, preferring instead to speak of a “rapprochement” (“sblizhenie”). Alexander Bogdanov would later allege that Lenin had been “hypnotized” by the success of Petr Arkadievich Stolypin, Chair of the Council of Ministers, who had made […]

New Article: David G. Rowley, The influence of Friedrich Engels on Alexander Bogdanov’s Basic Elements of the Historical View of Nature

Studies in East European Thought (2021) Abstract: Alexander Bogdanov’s first work of philosophy, Basic Elements of the Historical View of Nature, was fundamentally influenced by Friedrich Engels. As a Marxist philosopher seeking to elaborate a comprehensive, systematic, and scientific worldview appropriate for worker–students, Bogdanov found inspiration in Engels’s Anti-Dühring, which provided him with his monist conception of being […]

New Article: John Biggart, Lunacharsky at the Copenhagen Congress of the Socialist International (1910)

Abstract The Copenhagen Congress of the Socialist International of 28 August—3 September 1910 was the last Congress of the International in which the RSDRP participated as a formally united party. Though a truce had been negotiated between the warring factions at the Plenum of the Central Committee of 15 January—5 February 1910, a study of […]

Vpered Publications – Вперед (Женева) №5 (8 июня 1916) and №6 (1 февраля 1917)

Posting these last two issues of Vpered‘s Geneva-based newspaper here without much commentary since I meant to share these before but over a year passed and I haven’t had a chance to prepare these. Issue №5 contains only two signed articles (Polyansky and Manuil’sky), the rest are reports and statements. Issue №6 has an interesting […]

New Article: David G. Rowley,Alexander Bogdanov’s holistic world picture: a materialist mirror image of idealism

Studies in East European Thought (2020) ABSTRACT: Between 1899 and 1906, Alexander Bogdanov developed a scientific philosophy intended to substantiate the basic principle of historical materialism—the idea that existence determines consciousness—in terms of the most advanced science and empiricist epistemology/ontology of his day. At the same time, however, he strove ‘to answer the broad needs of […]

New Article: Maja Soboleva, Ontologism in the Theoretical Philosophy of Nikolai Bukharin 

Soboleva, M. Ontologism in the Theoretical Philosophy of Nikolai Bukharin. Stud East Eur Thought (2020). LINK https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-020-09365-3 Abstract This paper focuses on the theoretical philosophy of Bukharin as developed in his book Filosofskie arabeski (Philosophical Arabesques). I analyze three concepts—perception, being, and dialectics—and show that and how they deviate from the meaning that they commonly have among other Russian […]