“I strongly advise you to re-read the preface written by V.F. Asmus to his Selected Philosophical Works, published in the end of 1960s (…) in such times, when rules become exceptions, and anti-values replace values, when the scene of life is overflowing with anti-heroes, those people, who decisively and consistently assume and fulfill the role of guardians of simple, clear, immutable rules, are especially important”
Nelly V. Motroshilova (2001, p. 53).
Abstract
The article investigates the issue and the mechanisms of censorship and self-censorship in Soviet philosophy. The major forms of censorship are described and analyzed together with their epistemological implications and the peculiar policy of truth. The philosophical problem of defining and describing “facts” and ideological judgments during the “double” technique of reading and re-reading was exposed in the articles of V.F. Asmus and V.V. Bibikhin, thinkers, who experienced the self-censorship and reflected upon this in their texts. Analyzing the complex relation between the “dogmatic” or “critical” foreword and the original word is important, as is reconstructing and deconstructing the way we can reread the ideologically biased foreword, which might be a certain reliquary or protective camouflage, acting as, potentially, either a deactivator or an inhibitor of the reader’s own interpreting efforts. The given case of an attentive reading of V. Asmus’ foreword to the Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus can itself become an interesting philosophical language game. Interpretation of the foreword may reveal a hidden sense and references and encourage reflection based on the “common sense” assessments and perception of text. These hermeneutical exercises on reading forewords may paradoxically provoke starting the dialogue with the alternative foreword by B. Russell and the text of L. Wittgenstein himself, on one hand, and Marxism-Leninism and its variations in the form of historical materialism and Soviet dialectical materialism, on another. The situation of attentive reading with “a throat, strangled by ideology” is opposed to the power of imaginative “broadening of vocal ranges of the Others” thinking, whereas an inattentive reading of the text leaves a complete disability to object, or reply, to the censorship.
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17 June 2023
The original version of this article has been revised: The missing Acknowledgement section has been added.
28 June 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09570-w
Notes
Both Mamardashvili and Bibikhin were those Soviet intellectuals who directly encountered censorship themselves, and most of their papers were published in 1990–2000s.
Shibboleth here means a certain way of speaking, choice of phrasing or even a single word, which distinguishes one group of people from another: those who believe in the Soviet Marxist interpretation of the history of philosophy versus those who were forced to mimic this belief for censorship and security reasons. In its Soviet context, a Shibboleth would be hidden in a misprint in foreign word, ironic logical tautology or fallacy, list of names in footnotes, or ambiguous judgment, which tends to deny the significance of some ideologically “wrong” text, but it becomes evident that the criticism is a form of apology and appraisal.
The example of the latter is the ban of Bakhtin’s literary work Formal method in literature, which by no means assaulted Soviet ideology, but mentioned L. Trotsky. See: (Emeljanov and Ionaitis 2016, p. 110).
It is important to note that Samizdat publishing began only around 1966, when L. Brezhnev became the general secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union; in the very same year in April, it was the first meeting of Pope Paul VI and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in the Vatican.
See: “Samizdat” (Green and Karolides 2014, pp. 491–492).
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This article was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under grant No. 19-18-00100-\(\Pi\).
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Khan, K.I. Deciphering Soviet philosophical forewords: an attentive reading of V.F. Asmus. Stud East Eur Thought 75, 641–652 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09558-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09558-6