Why are we fighting? A view of the “great war” from across the ocean

This article examines the dispute concerning the meaning of World War I among leading American intellectuals in the period 1915–1918. Taking center stage here are the views of one of the founding fathers of American pragmatism, John Dewey (1859–1952), on the causes of the “Great War,” its higher meaning and goals which led to America’s entry into the War and also its influence on the social reconstruction of American society and the post-War world order. The final section of the article is devoted to a critique of Dewey’s position towards American participation in the War by another famous American intellectual, Randolph Bourne (1886–1918), who laid the foundations for a tradition of social criticism in the U.S. in the twentieth century.     

The Russian University system and the First World War

This article considers the evolution of the Russian University system during the First World War. Most of the imperial period, until the end of 1916, thanks to the liberal policy of the Minister of People’s Education, Pavel Nikolayevi? Ignat’ev, a reformist course was implemented (drafting of a new statute, increasing the autonomy of universities). Particularly important and promising was the expansion of universities’ network and opening of new universities in Rostov-on-Don, Perm, as well as the expansion of Saratov and Tomsk universities. In 1917 Ministers of Education of the Provisional Government (A. Manuilov, S. Oldenburg, S. Salazkin) also followed the Ignat’ev’s liberal course received support with the bottom-up initiatives (introduction of regular institution of associate professors, attracting of younger lecturers to the university management). Paradoxically, for the university system the result of crisis which lasted through the war period and the beginning of the revolution marked the democratization of management and the expansion of the students’ enrollment and the number of universities.     

Mikhail Lifshits and the Soviet image of Giambattista Vico

Mikhail Lifshits’ interpretation of the scholarly work of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico is analysed against the background of other Soviet interpretations. M. Lifshits authored the introductory article for the first complete translation of Vico’s Scienza Nuova in 1940. In the second half of the 1930s, interest in Vico’s ‘historical theory of knowledge’ was important for the struggle against so-called ‘vulgar sociology’ in the field of aesthetics and literary criticism. Besides this, Vico’s theory of the ‘historical cycle’ was close to the interests M. Lifshits and G. Lukács and their circle in Stalin-era Moscow. This interest was connected with discussions about the preservation of the revolutionary impulse under the conditions of state socialism. However, such an interpretation of Vico (considering him only as a predecessor of Hegel’s and Marx’s philosophy of history) restricted a wide spectrum of his scholarly work. In particular, Lifshits, as an opponent of social-constructivism tradition, ignored Vico’s well-known doctrine of verum factum.

     

Max Weber and Peter Struve on the Russian Revolution

The author conducts a comparative analysis of the Russian Revolution developed by two prominent social-political thinkers of Germany and Russia in the early twentieth century—Max Weber and Peter Struve. The article focuses on their respective interpretations of the causes, course, and consequences of the Revolution as determined by their political ideals, i.e. a specific combination of nationalism and liberalism. The author pays special attention to Weber’s and Struve’s perception of the Russian Revolution, which, albeit for different reasons, was rejected by both thinkers.

     

Russian pre-revolutionary Marxism on the the personality

The article treated various concerns of Russian Marxists relating to the concept of personality. In fact, it was not the individual per se and the kindred conceptual constructs that shaped discussions inside Russian Social-Democracy. The individual, on the contrary, was seen as an alien concept, as a central idea of the opponents: the Narodniks, anarchists, Cadets, and liberals in general. The post-1907 Marxist writings demonstrated a significant shift of accent in their approaches to the category of individuality. This was the result of polemics on the psychological particularities of the “reactionary” period (1907–1910). This profound and frequently concealed interest in the individual was typical, in general, of the new generation of Social-Democrats (Bogdanov, Bazarov, Luna?arskij) disillusioned with the classical positivism of the “fathers” and the dogmatic materialism of the “older comrades.”