Deborin's pupil who led the attack on the mechanists; shot in 1936
Born in 1901 into a Russian peasant family, he took part in the October Revolution as a Left Socialist Revolutionary and joined the Communist Party in 1920. He studied philosophy under Abram Deborin at the Institute of Red Professors, edited Pod znamenem marksizma and became professor of philosophy at Moscow University at twenty-five. In the debates of the 1920s he was a chief polemicist of the "dialecticians" against the Soviet mechanists, and in 1926–1927 he joined the Left Opposition. He became deputy director of the Institute of Philosophy in 1929, but after the Deborinites were condemned as "Menshevizing idealism" he lost his posts and was expelled from the party in 1933. Exiled to Ufa in 1935, he was arrested again in 1936 and shot.
Activities and affiliations
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1917–1920
Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries
Social movements and organizing -
1920–1933
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Scholarship and theory -
1924–1927
Soviet Union state institutionsEditor of Pod znamenem marksizma
Ideology and propaganda -
1926–1927
Scholarship and theory
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1926–1933
Soviet Union state institutionsProfessor, Moscow University; deputy director, Institute of PhilosophyMain
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1917Joined the Left SRs; took part in the October Revolution
- 1920Joined the RCP(b)
- 1921–1924Studied philosophy under Deborin at the Institute of Red Professors, then in Germany
- 1924Co-founded the Society of Militant Materialists
- 1924–1927Editor of Pod znamenem marksizma
- 1926Professor of philosophy, Moscow University
- 1926–1927Member of the Left Opposition
- 1929Co-founded the Institute of Philosophy; deputy director
- 1931–1932Worked in the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences
- 1933Expelled from the party
- 1935Exiled to Ufa; headed the industrial economics sector of a research institute
- 1936Rearrested and shot