[Marxism] Russian marxism

["Sayan Bhattacharyya" <ok.president+marxmail@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Lilla, Review of : "MOTHERLAND A Philosophical History of
Russia." By Lesley Chamberlain.
The Rookery Press/The Overlook Press.

The New York Times,
July 29, 2007
Full: <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/books/review/Lilla-t.html?ref=world>

"It is in this light that she considers the history of Marxism, down
through the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. These are
her most engaging pages. Marxism was in fact a late import into Russia
and was never philosophically deep; Lenin, we learn in an endnote, did
not read Hegel until 1914. And the bogus science of dialectical
materialism, though dogmatically imposed in Soviet education right up
until the end, did not decisively shape the vision or practice of
Soviet communism, Chamberlain maintains. Rather, Marxism permitted a
modern expression of old Russian ideas of solidarity, sacrifice, hope
and collective redemption. The noble peasant would be transformed
through revolution into the noble laborer; the Holy Fool would be
reborn as Stakhanov, the mythic Soviet worker who exceeded every daily
quota. It was not the stuffed suits of the Kremlin who were the
rationalists, it was the dissidents — the Andrei Sakharovs and Elena
Bonners — who became physicists and doctors in order to cut through
Russian dreaminess and devote themselves to truth."

Mark Lilla, Review of : "MOTHERLAND A Philosophical History of
Russia." By Lesley Chamberlain.
The Rookery Press/The Overlook Press.

The New York Times
Full: <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/books/review/Lilla-t.html?ref=world>

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