The doyen of Soviet Marxist history of philosophy who alone survived his institute's purge
In the 1930s, every researcher at the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy except Chagin was arrested; the overwhelming majority were shot.
A Marxist philosopher who alone survived when all his colleagues at the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy were executed in the Stalin purge. He became the foremost authority on Georgi Plekhanov, editing his collected philosophical works, for which he won the Plekhanov Prize, and was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1920–1921Fought in Civil War and Kronstadt rebellion suppression; joined RCP(b)
- 1922–1931Began teaching; graduated from Institute of Red Professors (philosophy)
- 1930sTaught Marxism-Leninism at Red Army institutions and Leningrad Communist Academy
- 1940–1941Dean, Philosophy Faculty, Leningrad State University
- 1946Doctor of Philosophical Sciences
- 1956–1967Head, Dept. of History of Philosophy, Leningrad State University
- 1960Elected Corresponding Member, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1963–1987Senior researcher, then head, Leningrad Philosophy Section, USSR Academy of Sciences
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRed Army participantHe fought in the Civil War in 1920–1921.
- 1921.03The Kronstadt RebellionRed Army soldier in the suppressionHe fought as a Red Army soldier in the suppression of the March 1921 mutiny, then left the ranks the following year for a lifetime in philosophy.
Plekhanov Scholarship and the 'Subjective Factor'
Chagin's scholarship centered on the history of Marxist philosophy, above all the recovery and reappraisal of Georgi Plekhanov's intellectual legacy. He led the editing of Plekhanov's five-volume Selected Philosophical Works (1956–1958) and the three-volume Philosophical-Literary Legacy (1973–1974), and wrote Plekhanov and His Role in the Development of Marxist Philosophy (1963) and Plekhanov's Elaboration of the General Sociological Theory of Marxism (1977). His second abiding concern was the problem of human agency, the 'subjective factor' in history: in Lenin on the Role of the Subjective Factor in History (1967) and The Subjective Factor: Structure and Laws (1968) he analyzed the structure of consciousness, organization and will in their dialectical interplay with objective conditions. His Outline of the History of Sociological Thought in the USSR, 1917–1969 (1971) framed the field's Soviet historiography. For this body of work he received the USSR Academy of Sciences Plekhanov Prize in 1973.