Written by Finley Farrell
22/03/2026
In the spring of 1954, Evald Ilyenkov and Valentin Korovikov presented a Theses on Philosophy, a document and presentation for which they received an assault of denunciation from the Moscow State University. Six resolutions were passed, condemning the two as pernicious idealists, Trotskyists, Deborinists, Positivists, Mensheviks: the full arsenal of nomenklatura insult. The thesis, only published in English in 2019, described what would be later known as Creative Soviet Marxism. They argued that, in practice, Marxist philosophy is a theory of knowledge, not concrete knowledge or doctrine itself, and that philosophers should treat the so-called dialectical method as a conception of the world’s structure, not a set of rules for enquiry. They also posited ideas on the development of thought and cognition that challenged the rigid idea of materialism codified in 1938, known as diamat. A key idea that contrasts diamat was that consciousness and the wider superstructure was driven by human activity, not a simple reflection of material relations. By looking at these conceptions of cognition and consciousness in tension, insight can be made into the role of Marxist philosophy in the Soviet Union. Later, under Brezhnev, Ilyenkov’s same arguments were wielded against physical determinism of the division of labour that was becoming prevalent. The place of Lenin and his philosophy within the work also shines a light on his complex symbolic role and importance within Soviet philosophical tradition. Ilyenkov’s works and ideas, at the core, argued against determinism, whether as a belief in an ‘achieved socialism’, in the division of labour, or within the Marxist canon.
After the controversy of the 1954 publications, Ilyenkov was suspended from teaching and his co-author fired from the Moscow State University. Yet through the Khruschev ‘thaw’ from 1956, he returned to a reformed Philosophy Institute and wrote prolifically through the early 1960s. He took the opportunity to challenge the mechanist diamat. The key break was in the nature of the ideal, specifically how consciousness arises from the material. Ilyenkov argues against Stalin’s interpretation of Marx that holds thought and consciousness as a derivative inside an individual’s mind. In Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism, he uses a quote from Marx to argue this: “It is impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks. Matter is the subject of all changes.” Stalin collapses these categories, thought and human physiology, into each other, whereas Ilyenkov saw them as mutually dependent, as two interacting parts in the process of constructing the ideal.
The ideal, he argues, is not purely a mental phenomenon, or a simple reflection derived from the real material world. Instead, it is part of a process of human activity and acting upon the material world. A key difference is that Ilyenkov believes the ideal is produced by humans acting on the material world, whereas diamat supposes the opposite. In this argument, he also critiqued the purely positivist view that all cognition comes from experience, opposing the view that an absolute object of knowledge can be held in observable matter. One can identify an object with only experience, but the interaction with the process of idealisation is where Ilyenkov believes we find the true essence of it. A consequence of this opposition to diamat is a critique of the Soviet Union’s idea of ‘real existing socialism’, the idea that the Soviet Union’s first few decades had achieved socialism to a realistic standard. While this distinction was partly historically justified, with the general failure of other socialist revolutions and the Third International, Ilyenkov’s critiques gives a framework to look at structural issues this caused.
Among these structural issues, such as a reduction of philosophy, stagnation of social progressiveness, and lack of internal Marxist critique, was one against which Ilyenkov fought particularly hard: biological determinism in the division of labour. This became especially pertinent under Brezhnev and the stagnation of his premiership. Through this period, education tended towards specialising children early given their natural proficiency, formulaically fast-tracking the division of labour. This was partly justified by pragmatic reasons related to production specialisation, and partly by the idea that Soviet labour relations were no longer in antagonistic contradiction under ‘really existing socialism’. Ilyenkov saw this as tied to the reductionist view of consciousness and feared it may perpetuate a deterministic division of labour. Specifically, he feared that this individual experience-based idea of consciousness being applied to the division of labour may erode the community and social aspects of work, one that socialism should champion. He argues in Dialectical Logic: Essays in its History and Theory, that “human beings think only in unity with society, in unity with a sociohistorical community reproducing its material and spiritual life. An individual, extracted from the social relations… thinks just as much as a brain extracted from the human body.” It seemed as there was a contradiction between a supposedly communal mode of production and labour-relations but individualist conception of the division of labour. Here it can be seen how this understanding of cognition contributed to the make-up and issues of the later Soviet Union. These underlying structural issues in the philosophy of the post-Stalin Soviet Union are also important to look deeper than the simplistic idea of Kruschev, Brezhnev, or the wider nomenklatura conspiratorially ‘betraying’ socialistic forms of production.
Another notable part of Ilyenkov’s work is his use of Lenin’s philosophy as both a theoretical framework and tool for legitimacy in Soviet philosophy. This use of it suggests that Lenin as a symbol had depth beyond a revolutionary figurehead, but also as a philosophical and political framework. Ilyenkov was educated and wrote in the period when the adoption of the “Leninist stage” was forming as a new chapter of Marxist orthodoxy. Lenin’s polemics with opposing thinkers were idealised into cultural frameworks and Marxist-Leninism as a distinct strain of Marxist tradition was formed. Many contemporaries and scholars have argued that this was a way for Stalin to consolidate ideological power. He supposedly authoring the influential “Fourth Chapter” in the 1938 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that would become the orthodoxy’s textbook. He certainly attempted to adopt the role of a guide and principled actor of the newly solidified tradition. However, Ilyenkov’s works show that this had more depth than a power-play by a despot. Much of the polemics Ilyenkov engaged in against cartesian dualism of the ideal and material was, in his reckoning, a continuation of Lenin’s polemic against Russian “Empiriocriticism”. These have similar themes, but Ilyenkov’s was far from a carbon copy, being better characterised as an ideological basis from which to draw out critiques of his time. It was also significant that Lenin’s works were mostly tied to practical political events around the revolution, giving further historical legitimacy to his writings. Ilyenkov followed analysis on how philosophy expanded to political strategy, using Lenin as a framework. It is possible that Ilyenkov also used Lenin’s work as a tool to gain legitimacy inside the philosophical community for his work. However, this usage also contributed to some attacks on him as diamat became increasingly solidified, as a ‘defacement’ of diamat’s version of Lenin the symbol. This shows how complex Lenin’s collective memory was in the mid-century Soviet Union, both as a philosophical framework, a symbol of the party line, but also a groundwork to combat the political order.
The study of Evald Ilyenkov and his work is a relatively new and small field, especially in English. However, the current research and his available work prove significant in their own right as philosophy, and to uncover new insights into the mid-century Soviet Union. His conception of consciousness as a process driven by personal and societal activity contrasts the view of the contemporary Soviet philosophy, known as diamat. The struggles Ilyenkov faced in arguing against parts of the new doctrine help to understand the place of the new Marxist-Leninist tradition in the late Stalin and Khruschev periods, its solidification and its shortcomings. Looking Ilyenkov’s work and own related political positions also gives insight into anxieties about the division of labour under Brezhnev, especially related to determinism and education. Finally, Ilyenkov’s use of Lenin as both the root of his Marxists tradition and as a legitimising force shows the complex symbolic and ideological force he held in this period, not just as a revolutionary hero. Scholarship continues to grow on Ilyenkov and his contemporaries, notably through conferences held in 2022 and 2018 discussing international views on what so-called Creative Marxism means in today’s world
Bibliography
Bakhurst, David. Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Bunce, Valerie. “The Political Economy of the Brezhnev Era: The Rise and Fall of Corporatism.” British Journal of Political Science 13, no. 2 (1983): 129–58.
Ilyenkov, Evald. Dialectical Logic: Essays on Its History and Theory. Progress Publishers, 1977.
Ilyenkov, Evald. The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital. Progress Publishers, 1982.
Stalin, J.V. Dialectical and Historical Materialism. 1938.
Levant, Alex and Oittinen, Vesa. Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism. Haymarket Books, 2013.
Lotz, Corinna. Finding Evald Ilyenkov: How a Soviet Philosopher Who Stood Up for Dialectics Continues to Inspire. Lupus Books, 2019.
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