The present work is the outcome of a course of lectures originally delivered by the author in the summer of 1945 at the Papal Oriental Institute in Rome, in which, as part of a more general survey of the history of Russian philosophy, he also had to deal with pre-revolutionary Russian Marxism, and with Soviet dialectical materialism. From these lectures there sprang the first version of this book, which was published in Italian late in 1947. It was followed in l952 by a very extensively revised German edition, which had to be reissued, in unaltered form, in 1953 and 1956. The present English translation is based on the text of the fourth German edition, now in the press, which has again been very thoroughly revised and supplemented with new material.
The doctrinal edifice of Soviet philosophy is divided into two parts: dialectical and historical materialism. The author has here had to confine himself to the first of these, namely, dialectical materialism, including the philosophy of science; in effect to the properly philosophical portion, as the term ‘philosophy’ is understood in the West. Historical materialism, which in Soviet usage includes the theory of society, could not be dealt with as such. The problems of ethics, aesthetics and the philosophies of history and law arc also assigned, under the Soviet scheme of things, to the field of historical materialism. There would certainly have been some justification for enlarging the scope of the account to some extent and bringing these subjects also within our purview, since in Western usage, at all events, they undoubtedly rank among the philosophical disciplines properly so called. The reason why this has not been done is that the author originally hoped later on to be able to follow up the volume on dialectical materialism with a second one on historical materialism, and because lack of both time and space have compelled him to this self-imposed restriction.