The Debates on Major Theoretical Issues in the Soviet Union

Since the late 1920s to the end of the World War II, the Soviet Union realized the socialist industrialization and agricultural collectivization. The questions of the socialist construction brought an urgent demand for the development of Marxist theory, and the current situation of the Soviet theoretical front could hardly meet this demand, therefore, Stalin and the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) demanded that this situation should be rapidly reversed. Shortly after the end of the debate between the Deborin school and the Mechanists, a new discussion broke out in the Soviet philosophical circles. This discussion was directly caused by Stalin’s speech at the “Conference of Marxist Students of Agrarian Questions” on December 27, 1929, and this speech was published under the title “Concerning Questions of Agrarian Policy in the USS.R.”. In this speech Stalin criticized the fact that the theoretical work lagged behind the actual situation of socialist construction.

According to the new developments in practice, Stalin asked theorists to “put forward new approaches” on the questions of NEP, of classes, of the rate of construction, of the bond with the peasantry, of the Party’s policy, so as to fill the gap between practical successes and the development of theoretical thought in the Soviet Union. Stalin’s speech produced strong repercussions among the Soviet theorists, consequently various scientific research institutions organized special discussion meetings and criticized the tendency of theoretical work detached from reality and social practice. These criticisms and debates greatly promoted and deepened the study of Marxism-Leninism.

(1) During the debate the philosophical tendency advocated by the Deborin school was criticized for ignoring Leninist philosophy. During the late 1920s to the beginning of 1930s, philosophers represented by Mitin, Ral’tsevich and Eugene Sokolov exposed the situation that theory, especially philosophy, under the leadership of Deborin, lagged behind practice. They argued that in the period of “great transformation of Soviet Union”, the task of Marxist-Leninist philosophy should be to deeply study the philosophical heritage of Lenin. This great philosophical discussion which centered on the critique of the Deborin school as the actual content reflected the urgent requirement that philosophical work must be linked with practice and the central work of the party and the state. Thanks to this debate, not only the erroneous views circulated at that time were exposed and criticized, and the situation that the theory was divorced from the reality began to be reversed, but also important progress was made in exploring the Leninist stage of the development of Marxist philosophy, which laid the foundation for further study of Lenin’s philosophical heritage in the future.

(2) The discussion criticized the relatively backward situation of historical materialism studies. Historical materialism was a relatively backward aspect of Marxist Philosophy studies in the Soviet Union after the victory of the revolution. It was also one of the main manifestations of theoretical work on the philosophical front criticized by Stalin and the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) lagged behind the practice.

During the 1930s, the Soviet Marxist philosophers positively responded to the call of the Central Committee of C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik), strengthened the study of historical materialism, and reached a consensus on some major questions. According to the erroneous view of the Deborin school that historical materialism was only a social research methodology, most Soviet philosophers argued that historical materialism was not only a general theory of society and revealed its general development law, but also a methodology of social research, whose research object was the general law of the whole historical development. In addition, new progress was made in the study of several categories and their relations of historical materialism. For example, many achievements were made in the study of socio-economic forms, the Asian mode of production, the relationship between productive forces and production relations, the relationship between economic foundation and superstructure, and the relationship between science and productive forces, which to a certain extent deepened the theory of historical materialism.

(3) The debate put forward reflections on the theory and methodology of literature and art. Since the 1920s, there were several discussions on the creation ways and methods of socialist literature and art, focusing on several issues: First, the essence of proletarian literature and art. In the discussion, Trotsky’s viewpoint of denying the existence of proletarian culture and proletarian literature was criticized, and these criticisms enabled the writers and critics to improve their understanding of the essence and interrelationship of proletarian literature and socialist literature and enhanced their consciousness of arming themselves with proletarian world outlook and communist spirit. Second, the discussion was about the relationship between the literature and art and the reality. During that period, a group of experts and critics of literature and art in the Soviet Union were keen to explore the question of literature and art forms, and put forward a series of formalist views, such as “art is the art of form”, “art is always free from life”, “art is a game”, etc. In view of this situation, Bukharin focused on the dialectical relationship between the literary content and the literary form, and he pointed out that emphasizing form over content or emphasizing content over form is one-sided in the treatment of the relationship between them. However, he proposed that compared with the form, the content is the decisive aspect, the content determines the form, not the opposite.

For him, there was no way out to study literary form, style and structure without social reality and social relations. Third, the discussion was about the political tendency and party spirit in the creation of literature and art. Some artists argued that literature and art were not supervised by ideology, which in fact negated the guiding role of Party spirit in the creative activities of artists. On the one hand, according to the viewpoint of post writers, Bukharin, Lunacharski, and others stressed the need to strive to establish a unique position for the proletariat in all fields of ideological science and life, on the other hand, they also affirmed the uniqueness of cultural undertakings and the particularity of cultural policies decided by it, and advocated a comprehensive method suitable for rational criticism in literary criticism compatible with rational criticism, which laid the theoretical foundation for correcting the deviation in understanding and implementing the Bolshevik Party’s literary and art policy. Fourth, the question of socialist realism. The establishment of the creative principles and methods of socialist realism was a major achievement of the Soviet literary and artistic circles in studying and implementing Marxist Leninist philosophical thought and literary and artistic theory in this period, and an important symbol of the development of Marxist literary and artistic theory. Through discussion, most writers and artists gradually armed themselves with the philosophical thoughts and literary theories of Marx, Engels and Lenin, which played a significant role in the development of Soviet literature and art. In this period, the study of Marxist aesthetics has also made a great progress.

(4) The discussion criticized the tendency of historical research which was divorced from reality. In view of the fact that the research on the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, the history of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) and the history of revolution in the history study circles of the Soviet Union could not meet the needs of socialist construction, the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) was determined to take measures to fundamentally change the backward situation of history. First, it was carried out a discussion of historical theory and methodology, which focuses on the relationship between history and sociology. During this discussion, the authors criticized various wrong views and expounded on Marxist historical theory. In the second half of the 1920s and the early 1930s, a discussion on the mode of production in Asia was held in the Soviet historiography circle (including the philosophy circle and the economics circle to a certain extent). This was a continuation of the discussion on the relationship between history and sociology after the victory of the October Revolution, which was still a discussion on the methodology of history. During this discussion, most historians tended to deny the so-called “Asiatic Mode of Production” stage in the evolution of social and economic forms, thus the views of Soviet historians on the stages of social development became unified on the basis of the theory of “five main social and economic forms”.

Second, the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) rectified the history teaching and criticized M. Polkovsky’s theory of history. On September 5, 1931, the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) made a decision on the cirruculums of primary and secondary schools in order to restore the history courses in secondary schools and to teach them as an independent subject. On May 16, 1934, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USS.R. and the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) jointly issued the resolution titled “On Civil History Teaching in the Schools of the USS.R.”, which required to provide students with clear and specific historical materials and guide them to comprehend the history from the Marxist point of view. Under Stalin’s personal interventions and specific guidance, on January 26, 1936, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USS.R. and the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) once again jointly made a decision on the compilation of history textbooks, and at the same time launched a public criticism of M. Polkovsky, so as to eliminate the non-socialist, subjectivist, and “abstract and formulaic” tendencies existed in the Soviet history. The positive result of this criticism was that the Soviet history science has entered into a new stage, and the history teaching had begun to proceed on the right track. Through this critical movement, historians have gradually overcome some of the aforementioned some shortcomings and they became more mature in theory and politics, and a group of young historians have trained and made great achievements in explaining major problems in the history of the Soviet Union and the world history from the Marxist point of view.

The problem with these criticisms and discussions was that they groundlessly made political accusations against those who hold different opinions and they linked theoretical problems directly with the anti-Party tendency, thus, this simple and crude way of dealing with academic problems would become harmful for the normal academic discussions in the future. After the end of the debate, the Soviet philosophy circles once had the disadvantages of extremism and one-sidedness, paying too much attention to the specific problems in the socialist construction and being satisfied with the interpretation of specific policies, while ignoring an in-depth discussion of the Marxist Leninist theory; and there was also a tendency to deny the role of Hegel’s philosophy and Feuerbach’s philosophy in the formation of Marxist philosophy, and Plekhanov’s role in the dissemination and development of Marxism. This situation seriously hindered the healthy development of academia.

(5) The Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) attached importance to the criticism of bourgeois ideology. Especially during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the fascism was criticized ideologically and theoretically. This criticism included exposing the political, economic and class essence of fascism, criticizing their ideology of hatred for humanity, exposing the consanguineous relationship between reactionary thoughts such as racism, imperialism and national socialism and idealistic theories such as Nietzsche’s philosophy of voluntarism, Neo-Hegelianism, Malthusianism and Spengler’s theory. At the same time, it carried forward the spirit of Soviet patriotism, fully expounded the great role of he source of strength and moral factors of socialism, educated the Red Army commanders and soldiers and all the working masses, and effectively mobilized and encouraged the Soviet people to fight against fascism.