Canadian Slavonic Papers

Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov byDavid BakhurstReview by: Sean SayersCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 34, No. 1/2 (March-June1992), pp. 176-177Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40869377 .

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176 BOOK REVIEWS

seen as the source of a gentry myth of a past golden age whose counterpart is Chernyshevsky' s What Is To Be Done? with its famous dream of a perfect future.

Wachtel advances this last point only as a hypothesis in the last few pages of his book and I do not find it very convincing. In fact, he has not persuaded me that the gentry descriptions of childhood were necessarily politically conservative or even that they were biased in favour of the gentry class. Gorky may have read Childhood that way, but did A.K. Chertkova, wife of Tolstoy's close friend V.G. Chertkov and author of an autobiography that relies heavily on the master in its description of childhood (pp. 93- 94)? Chertkova, like the later Tolstoy, was as much on the side of the people as Chernyshevsky had been.

My quarrel with this very interesting book is with its general critical assumptions. Wachtel practises a genre of literary criticism that attempts to be value-neutral. In his own words (p. 202), the critic tries to "stand back" from his subject. But to do so, he has to find a place to stand. Pure stylistic criticism is too narrow to encompass the subject. Class struggle does not do justice to it either and Wachtel himself seems to acknowledge this when he argues that the leftist Gorky, unlike Tolstoy, remembered childhood in order to put it behind him in the name of progress (pp. 147-148). Ideas rather than class - in this case the idea of rational progress as opposed to that of natural, intuitive goodness - seem to define the fundamental difference between Gorky's and Tolstoy's notions of childhood. To finally make sense of his subject, Wachtel turns to a twentieth-century theory of myth that he briefly elaborates in his conclusion. This is the weakest part of his book. I questions whether this theory of "sociocultural," "bipolar" myths really contributes much to an understanding either of Tolstoy and Chernyshevsky or their influence.

Donna Orwin, University of Toronto

David Bakhurst. Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov. Modern European Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xi, 292 pp. Index. Cloth.

There are only a few books in English on Soviet philosophy. Some are by "sovietologists" like Wetter (1958) and Bochenski (1963), others by philosophers in the Marxist tradition like Marcuse (1958) and Kolakowski (1978). They all agree that after the 1920s, philosophy in the Soviet Union became pure Party ideology, devoid of intellectual merit. "Soviet philosophy," as the joke has it, is a contradiction in terms. Bakhurst challenges that view in this important and interesting book, which is almost unique in taking Soviet philosophy seriously.

The scope of Bakhurst' s book is not as broad as its title suggests. It begins with a brief account of the philosophical debates between the "mechanists" and the followers of Deborin in the 1920s. Then there is a clear and useful account of the work of Vygotsky, and a brief review of Lenin's contribution in philosophy. However, the purpose of these initial chapters is to sketch in the background to what is the main topic of the book: the work of the philosopher E.V. Ilyenkov (1924-1979).

Ilyenkov receives barely a mention in the existing literature on Soviet philosophy. Nevertheless, he is the most important and original Soviet philosopher of the postwar period. He develops a Hegelian and dialectical interpretation of Marxism which is of enduring relevance and interest. He criticizes the dualism and empiricism of the mechanistic Marxism which dominated Soviet philosophy after the rejection of Deborin' s ideas in the early 1930s. Drawing on Hegel's philosophy and the concept of "objectification" of the early Marx, he develops a highly original and suggestive account

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BOOK REVIEWS 177

of "ideal" phenomena: values, language, mind and the self. These he portrays as social and objective phenomena, though ultimately the results of human activity. As Bakhurst shows, Ilyenkov's ideas have clear continuities with the work of Deborin and Vygotsky; and they have exercised a major influence on subsequent Soviet philosophy.

A number of Ilyenkov's works are available in English. However, the translations are so poor that they have had only a limited impact. Bakhurst succeeds in bringing Ilyenkov's philosophy to life in a way that these translations fail to do. He gives an outstandingly clear, vivid, and compelling account of Ilyenkov's ideas, and defends them persuasively against criticism. His account falters only on the topics of dialectic and contradiction (chapter 5), where he is radically out of sympathy with Ilyenkov's Hegelian approach.

Bakhurst demonstrates that Ilyenkov's work constitutes an original contribution of major importance to the Hegelian tradition of Marxism. He makes useful, though sporadic, attempts to relate Ilyenkov's thought to current discussion in analytical philosophy. In particular, he shows that Ilyenkov develops and clarifies certain Hegelian themes concerning the social character of values and the self, recently defended by writers like Charles Taylor, Sandel and Maclntyre. Ilyenkov's philosophy has an even greater relevance to the controversy within Western Marxism between dialectical and analytical approaches. An attempt to relate Ilyenkov's ideas to this debate would constitute a valuable extension of Bakhurst' s account.

Although Ilyenkov was a sincere and committed Marxist, his ideas were always regarded with suspicion by the Soviet authorities. Bakhurst gives only a brief account of his life, which gives little idea of the extremely difficult conditions with which he had to cope. For example, his major work, The Dialectic of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's "Capital" (based on his doctoral dissertation), had to be rewritten four times - each time to dilute its philosophical content - before it was accepted for publication; and he more or less deliberately drank himself to an early death.

Bakhurst does not mention these things. His book is addressed mainly to other philosophers, and his primary concern is with the philosophical content of Ilyenkov's work. Nevertheless, his book raises some important questions for Soviet studies. Bakhurst shows that writers like Ilyenkov and Vygotsky made original and important contributions to philosophy, even in the apparently impossible conditions imposed by Stalinism. Why, one is led to ask, has it taken so long for the value of their work to be appreciated in the West? Perhaps, as Bakhurst suggests, it is only now, with the ending of the Cold War, that it is becoming possible to reach a true estimate of Soviet philosophy.

Sean Sayers, University of Kent at Canterbury

Mark Jaroslav Bandera. The Tsymbaly Maker and His Craft The Ukrainian Hammered Dulcimer in Alberta. Canadian Series in Ukrainian Ethnology, vol. 1. Bohdan Medwidsky and Andriy Nahachewsky, eds. Edmonton: Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, and Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1991. 74 pp. Map. Photographs. Charts. Discography. Bibliography. $9.95, paper.

One of the few outlets in North America for publishing material based on fieldwork is the Canadian Series in Ukrainian Ethnology. This series is only just beginning, and under review here is the first volume. Bandera's monograph is a brief study of one instrument and some of its performers in Alberta. The instrument is the tsymbaly, a hammered dulcimer, which is an instrument type known over most of Europe, throughout west Asia and the lands of Islam, in India, and as far away as Korea. This study does not claim to be anything other than an introduction to the subject. The author discusses the instrument

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