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On Soviet criticism of fascist interpretation of Hegel: the case of V. F. Asmus

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Abstract

The paper is about the Soviet philosopher Valentin Ferdinandovich Asmus (1894–1975) and his criticism of the fascist and Nazi appropriation of Hegel’s philosophy. The status of the Hegelian legacy was very controversial in Marxism-Leninism throughout the Stalinist era. Unlike the majority of Soviet academics of this time, Asmus did not recognize any valid intellectual legacy at the base of German fascism. Asmus heavily criticized attempts to portray Hegel as a pro-fascist thinker. When many Soviet philosophers defended only the method, dialectics, Asmus defended Hegel’s social and political views as humanistic and liberal. The first part of the article describes the “official” Soviet philosophy within the context of which Asmus had to act. The second part offers a comprehensive analysis of the criticism of Hegel’s fascist interpretation in Asmus’ Fascist Falsification of Classical German Philosophy (1942).

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Notes

  1. A name for alumni of The Institute of Red Professors (Russian: ИКП, IKP), an institution founded in 1921 to quickly train new, ideologically loyal academia.

  2. Hegeliansshina: a Bolshevik ideological stigma, denoting a deviation from orthodox Marxist views towards Hegelianism, excessive fascination with Hegelian philosophy.

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Funding

This article was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 19-18-00100, https://rscf.ru/project/19-18-00100/.

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  1. School of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, HSE University, Moscow, Russia

    Nikita Tinus

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Tinus, N. On Soviet criticism of fascist interpretation of Hegel: the case of V. F. Asmus. Stud East Eur Thought 75, 629–640 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09552-y

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