Soviet States and Beyond: Political Epistemologies of/and Marxism 1917-1945-1968

Moscow, 21-22 June 2018

Venue: Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI), National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow

Organisers: Jan Surman and Alexander N. Dmitriev in cooperation with Friedrich Cain, Dietlind Hüchtker, Bernhard Kleeberg

Funded by: IGITI, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow /// Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt /// Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), Leipzig

Contact: Jan Surman

Contributors: Alexander N. Dmitriev, Igor Kaufmann, Daria Drozdova, Karl Hall, Geert Somsen, Galina Babak, Ilia Kukulin, Angelina Lucento, Michał Murawski, Anna Echterhölter, Aleksei Lokhmatov, Sascha Freyberg, Daria Petushkova, Alexander Bikbov, Rossen Djagalov, Christopher Donohue

Programme | Report | Publication

The October Revolution of 1917 proclaimed the rise of a new society based on the Marxist(-Leninist) philosophy. Dialectics, materialism, proletarianism etc. have since then dominated Soviet discussions in arts, scholarship, sciences etc. However, the epistemic questioning of the boundaries between science, ideology, politics – but also between science and arts, or between science and technology – could now immediately effect changes in legislation, education, or administration. Yet, Marxist epistemology still transgressed Soviet territories, since discussions of Marxism and its intellectual importance were carried out from Paris to Peking, from Almaty to Avenida Viena. After 1945, new geopolitical conditions gave power to certain Central European Marxisms. Clearly, both continuities, but also breaks occurred to the whole intellectual sphere on personal, social, epistemic etc. levels, influencing not only the Soviet Union but the whole globe.

Our conference concentrated on the political epistemologies of broadly understood intellectuals – in the first place scholars and scientists, but also artists or literati. Following Yehuda Elkana's ideas on "anthropology of knowledge," and Karl Mannheim's description of epistemologies as "aspect structures," we concentrated on the question how individual and collective epistemologies were structured by, and at the same structured political attitudes of intellectuals, scholars or scientists, but also artists and literati. Accepting the malleability and interchangeability of what we analytically describe as cultural, social, political etc., we inquired how these categories, with their key epistemic concepts, like truth, proof, experiment, but also critical intervention or autonomy, were framed and also how they informed the identity building of individuals and groups intending to represent them.

With a wide range of examples, from the sciences and the newly appearing projects of a "science of science," through arts to a broader intellectual and academic sphere, we encouraged interdisciplinary approaches. This brought together aspects Marxism intended to amalgamate and which since the demise of Marxism have grown apart. At the same time, looking at the ways Marxist epistemology was differently appropriated and contested, allowed us to bring forward its specificity and the specificity of approaches adjacent or contesting.