The turbulent events of Stalin’s ‘Great Break’ have often been seen as a turning point and the beginning of a Stalinist politics sensu stricto. A sharp philosophical debate occurred at this turning point. This chapter discusses how this shift occurred in Soviet Marxist philosophical circles. It analyses the concept of ‘Menshevising Idealism’, an idea coined (maybe by Stalin himself) d…
Nikolai Bukharin’s (1888–1938) anti-fascist activity in the mid-1930s and his status as a cultural theoretician have been a neglected topic thus far. After losing his position as General Secretary of the Comintern’s executive committee and being expelled from the Politburo in 1929, Bukharin still found a platform as the chief editor of Izvestiya, in which he published several analyses of …