Hungarian-born philosopher and logician who came to the USSR after the 1919 revolution and sided with the mechanists
Born in 1885 into a Jewish tailor's family in Hungary, he is Varjas Sándor in Hungarian. He took a doctorate in philosophy at Budapest, joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1919 and under the Hungarian Soviet Republic was professor at Budapest and head of scientific propaganda in the education commissariat. Sentenced to twelve years in prison after its fall, he came to the USSR in a prisoner exchange in 1922 and taught the history of philosophy and of mechanics at the Institute of Red Professors and Moscow University. He wrote on formal and dialectical logic, and in the philosophical debates of the 1920s he was counted among the Soviet mechanists. He died in Moscow in 1939.
Also known as: Sándor Varjas · Sandor Varjas · Aleksandr Varyash
Activities and affiliations
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1905–1919
Hungarian Social Democratic Party (MSZDP)
Ideology and propaganda -
1919
Hungary state institutionsHead of scientific propaganda, Hungarian education commissariat
Ideology and propaganda -
1919–1922
Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP)
Ideology and propaganda -
1922–1939
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Scholarship and theory -
1923–1939
Soviet Union state institutionsLecturer, Institute of Red Professors; professor, Moscow UniversityMain
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1905Joined the Hungarian Social Democratic Party
- 1908Doctorate in philosophy, Budapest
- 1918Professor of philosophy, University of Budapest
- 1919Joined the Hungarian Communist Party; head of scientific propaganda in the education commissariat
- 1920Sentenced to twelve years in prison
- 1922Came to the USSR in a prisoner exchange; joined the Soviet party
- 1923–1926Lecturer at the Institute of Red Professors
- 1925–1929Researcher in the methodology of natural science, Timiryazev research institute
- 1928Logic and Dialectics; Dialectics in Lenin
- 1932Professor, Moscow University faculty of mechanics and mathematics