The Poverty of Soviet Philosophy
Essays on Literature, Philosophy and Music.
by Andrei Zhdanov.
International Publishers. 96 pp. $.60.
The Daily Worker recently reported that toy manufacturers in the Soviet Union had been reprimanded for making green rabbits and unrecognizable ducks, thereby departing from the principles of “socialist realism” and, it seems, confusing the minds of Soviet children. Perhaps because its ideology was less elaborate and its personnel more cynical, not even the Nazi regime achieved a totalitarianism so total as to exclude even Donald Duck. The adult mind of Andrei Zhdanov revealed in these essays reflects yet another distinctive trait of the Soviet cultural terror: assuming as an axiom that socialism has been realized in the USSR, his own logic forces him to attribute the shortcomings of the artists and scholars he criticizes to personal moral corruption. So error becomes identical with malicious lying, heresy, and sin; and he must invite his readers to believe that the Soviet intelligentsia are an incredibly perverted and venal lot.
Zhdanov’s “essays” are in fact directives and scoldings delivered to professional groups; in them he announces the postwar purge that came to be associated with his name. One scans his words in vain, however, for any reflection of his own tastes or interests; in every case his critical criteria are extra-literary, extra-musical, or extra-philosophic—in short, they are political. Each group is accused of a cultural “cringing before the West.” The writers are found guilty of allowing an “art for art’s sake” attitude to creep into their work and of protecting “rotten and corrupt” colleagues. The musicians are scolded for inclinations toward “music that deliberately ignores the normal human emotions, and shocks the mind and nervous system of man,” and for flouting “the demands of the people.” The errors of the philosophers are equally numerous and, in some ways, more revealing.
Zhdanov reveals that, in 1947 at least, there did not exist in the entire USSR a single journal devoted specifically to philosophical discussion. Zhdanov’s own attitude toward this state of affairs is a masterpiece of diplomatic ambiguity. On the one hand he justifies the situation by stating that to enclose philosophical discussion in a professional journal would reflect “an obvious underestimation of the high level of our readers and their demands,” and make philosophy the “property merely of a group of professional philosophers.“ At the same time he asks his audience not to regard him as an opponent in principle of such a journal Ça great country like the Soviet Union should have, as a matter of pride, its philosophical journal, even if philosophy really has nothing new to say) and actually holds out the prospect of one like a carrot before their noses, provided they remedy the “poor quality” and “insufficient quantity” of their writings.
One wonders, however, what possible task the Soviet philosopher can set himself. In contrast even to the situation of the Soviet artist, his tether is brutally short. Either he must compete professionally with Marx and Engels—an obviously lunatic procedure—or confine himself to a heresy hunt of philosophers of the contemporary democratic world. Consider the other alternatives: If he treats some philosopher upon whom judgment has been passed, he is, according to Zhdanov, being redundant. “The problem of Hegel was settled long ago. There is no reason whatever to pose it anew.” If he treats some aspect of the history of philosophy which has escaped an official pronouncement, it is by definition trivial and, in another Zhdanov phrase, he is encouraging a “revival of Scholasticism.” If he fails to find any portion of the contemporary philosophical scene outside the USSR abominable, he has forgotten that philosophy is first and foremost a weapon in a total struggle in which neutrality is a contradictory concept. If he is circumspect and does not go beyond a dreary rehash of the clichés of dialectical materialism, he commits the “metaphysical” error of regarding Marxism-Leninism as a completed theory. No wonder Zhdanov finds that “monographs and articles on philosophy are a rare occurrence”!
A grim note for the future is sounded by Zhdanov after a scathing criticism of C. F. Alexandrov’s textbook A History of Western European Philosophy. He suggests, pointedly, that such a task is beyond the powers of one man and ought to be undertaken by large groups of authors working collectively. If one originally had doubts about the possibility of a Soviet philosopher’s being able to express his own views, those doubts harden into certainties when one reflects on the inducements to shun personal responsibility and personal integrity provided by collective authorship on the scale Zhdanov forecasts. Intellectual integrity, as the following quote makes quite clear, is only a bourgeois prejudice: “Comrade Alexandrov finds it possible to say something good about almost every philosopher of the past. The more eminent the bourgeois philosopher, the greater the flattery that is offered him. All of this shows that Comrade Alexandrov . . . is himself a captive of bourgeois historians, who proceed from the assumption that every philosopher is first of all an associate in the profession and only secondarily an opponent. Such conceptions, if they should take hold among us, would inevitably lead to objectivism, to subservience to bourgeois philosophers and exaggeration of their services, toward depriving our philosophy of its militant, offensive spirit.”
In an attempt to explain the inexplicable paucity of philosophical literature in the Soviet Union, Zhdanov has to resort to character assassination. Ignoring a somewhat inconvenient Marxist dogma to the contrary, he says: “Obviously, the cause for the lag on the philosophical front is not connected with any objective condition. The objective conditions are more favorable than ever. . . . The causes for the lag . . . must be sought in the subjective sphere.” What they are, is left in the grim twilight of implied personal corruption. The implication holds for the rest of the intelligentsia, too. How could it be otherwise, after all? Where the system is sacred, only men are vile.
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