The Modernization of the Russian Marxist Concept of the Nation in the Social Sciences and Humanities in the USSR in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

• Author: Vyacheslav Vilkov and Sergii Rudenko
• Position: Ph.D. (Philosophy), Associate Professor, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Kyiv, Ukraine)/Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Kyiv, Ukraine)
• Pages: 69-84

Ukrainian Policymaker, Volume 4, 2019 69

The Modernization of the Russian Marxist Concept of

the Nation in the Social Sciences and Humanities

in the USSR in the Second Half

of the Twentieth Century

Vyacheslav Vilkov1

Ph.D. (Philosophy), Associate Professor, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

(Kyiv, Ukraine)

E-mail: tvvvilkof59@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3542-0756

Sergii Rudenko2

Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

(Kyiv, Ukraine)

E-mail: rudenkosrg@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9069-0989

The paper analyses the processes of modernization of the “Marxist-Leninist historical and economic”

interpretation of the concept of the “nation” in social and human sciences in the USSR in the second half

of the 20th century. In the paper, from the standpoint of modern scientism, on the basis of the principle of

historicism, methods of systematic, comparative, discursive and content analysis, semantic innovations,

determinants and leading trends of improvement of the concept of the national community were studied.

The concept, which was not only the ideological core of the Marxist-Leninist “historical and economic

theory of the nation”, but an important conceptual element in the whole complex of social and political

sciences in the USSR, had its own dominating social communist ideology with its world-historical

process narrative.

The material of the article is of particular importance for adequate understanding of the history of

the development of socio-philosophical and political sciences in the USSR and Ukraine in the second

half of the 1960s, the rst half of the 1990s, as well as for the scientic understanding of the dominant

analytical and ideological prescripts of Soviet Marxism in its ideological confrontation with the Western

political science, and for understanding of the theoretical foundations of nation-building and nation-

state building during the years of Soviet power.

Keywords: socio-political studies, USSR, Stalin, the Stalin’s denition of the nation, “Russian

Marxist Theory of the Nation”, Marxist-Leninist historical and economic theory of the nation, Austro-

Marxism, Scientic communism, Communist metanarrative, concept of the “nation”, concept of the

“Soviet people”

© Vilkov, Vyacheslav, 2019

© Rudenko, Sergii, 2019

The Modernization of the Russian Marxist Concept of the Nation in the Social Sciences and Humanities

in the USSR in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century by Vyacheslav Vilkov and Sergii Rudenko

Ukrainian Policymaker, Volume 4, 2019

70

Received: March 1, 2019; accepted: March 30, 2019

Ukrainian Policymaker, Volume 4, 2019: 69-84.

https://doi.org/10.29202/up/4/10

Introduction

In the second half of the 20th century, in the Soviet scientic and educational literature

(adapted versions of their reproductions) for the system of higher and specialized secondary

education, social scientists and, rst of all, the representatives of the scientic community

of philosophers and political researchers, classied the Marxist conception of the nation as

“historical and economic”. They proved that this conception, unlike all theoretical models that

were created by the Western scientists, is considered to be scientic and true to life, expresses

and upholds democratic values.

In the publications of Russian and Ukrainian authors attitudes changed. It happened in the

post-Soviet period. Being “historical and economic”, the Marxist interpretation was considered

as one the of several main paradigms (approaches, theoretical models, conceptions) in the

system of modern theoretical knowledge of nations and nationalism, which retains scientic

inuence and has a practical value, but in the world of science (outside the post-Soviet

intellectual space) it does not have a competitive advantage over the political, psychological,

cultural and ethnic theories of the nation, developed by the Western researchers during the

second half of the 20th, beginning of the 21st centuries.

Literature review and problem statements

It should be especially mentioned that some Ukrainian leading experts in the eld of

studying the history of theoretical ideas about the nation in the publications of the late 1990s,

referring to the statements done by their Western colleagues, began to popularize the opinion

that the independent “Marxist-Leninist historical and economic theory of the nation” had not

been created. For example, George Kasyanov said, “According to many modern researchers

(B. Anderson, T. Bottomor, R. Debre, Oras B. Devis, N. Pulantsas, and others), “traditional”

or orthodox Marxism did not have its own theory of the nation at all” [Kasyanov, 1999: 49].

Another authoritative Ukrainian scientist Alexey Kartunov, in his publication for the

general reader (in textbooks), relying on the statements of the Western researchers (Walker

Connor, Alfred Low, Charles Herod) and the assessments of some Ukrainian specialists in

the history of theories of the nation, and by accusing Stalin of direct borrowing of the key

ideas in interpreting the essence of the national community from the works of Karl Kautsky

(and, ostensibly without mentioning their authorship), called this German social democrat

the developer of the “historical and economic (i.e. Marxist — Authors) theory of the nation”

[Kartunov, 2007: 65-66; Kartunov, 1999: 138-139].

According to our estimates, among the representatives of the Western scientic community,

the most famous and radical about the “scientic status” of the Marxist conception of the

nation was the world-famous leader in the research direction of the “theory of nations and

nationalism”, the English scientist Antony Smith, “Neither Marx nor Engels, Lenin nor Stalin,

Luxemburg nor Kautsky, endeavoured to present a theory or model of nations and nationalism