Sources and Method

Abstract

We have attempted to present a critical study of Russian Dialectical Materialism in its essential features as it is taught at the present time(1956). It is impossible to understand this Dialectical Materialism correctly by studying it only at second hand in the writings of Western European or American Bolshevists and ‘fellow travellers’. For such writers are all too frequently bent on propaganda and seek to adapt Russian Dialectical Materialism as much as possible to the mentality of Westerners. In doing so they take liberties in their interpretation which would be quite unthinkable in Russia. Non-Bolshevists, too, when they try to explain ‘Marxism’ often follow an interpretation which is diametrically opposed to the Russian one: Desroches’ book is a classical example of such a non-Russian interpretation of Marxism, nay of Stalin himself.