The culturologists struck a powerful blow at the dogmatic consciousness — not only at particular dogmas but at this type of thinking generally, at positivist or national-‘Christian’ dogmatism no less than at the ‘Marxist’ variety. From now on it was impossible to work in the old way. On the other hand the culturologists, especially A. Gurevich, did a great deal to reconstruct historical materialism, eradicating various outworn schemas and pseudo-determinist notions.
The role played by members of the culturological school in public life is quite important. They teach how to think, and on that plane their significance is not reducible to their contribution to science. It is hard to define the ideological position of the culturologists. This school is resolutely opposed to every sort of reactionary nationalist tendency and at the same time its ideas are closely linked to Marxism, even though this link is not, as a rule, given much emphasis. Without the contribution to science made by Marx and Gramsci the new culturology would have been as impossible as if Bakhtin had never existed. However, it is risky to talk openly about that in some circles.
The crisis of the oppositional ideology in the Khrushchev period left the word ‘Marxism’ extremely unpopular among a certain section of the intellectuals. Rakovski regrets that since 1968 not only are serious works on the development of Marxist thought difficult to find — ‘it is Marxists themselves who are now difficult to find in Eastern Europe’60. Nevertheless, in the sixties and seventies oppositional Marxist thought not only went on developing in the USSR, it achieved some great successes. Apart from anything else, it became more Marxist and acquired the opportunity to constitute a real alternative to the dead official ideology and the neo-dogmatism of the Right opposition.
It is possible to distinguish between legal and illegal Marxist thought in the USSR. Legal does not mean officiaclass="underline" on the contrary, the legal Marxists carry on a systematic struggle against official dogmatism, but prefer to do this in censored publications which are available to the general public, although many of them also express themselves in samizdat. Thus P. Egides and M. Gefter moved in the seventies from censored publications into the uncensored Moscow journal Poiski.
I have already spoken here about the unity of the cultural-political process and the close link between censored literature and samizdat. It is easy to observe how legal and illegal literature supplement each other. In any case, Marxist samizdat owes a great deal to legal Marxism.
In the West, Roy Medvedev is seen as practically the sole supporter of Marxism in our country. Some émigrés also try to depict the situation like that,61 but this does not fit the facts at all. Of course, Roy Medvedev deserves the international recognition given to his works of research, which differ so markedly from the dogmatic philosophizing of the Soviet New Right, but he is far from being a lonely Don Quixote or a fighter defending the last barricade. On the other hand, although Medvedev’s writings are published abroad, he can be regarded rather as a representative of legal Marxism in the USSR. He expounds the same system of ideas that we can find in the works of Karyakin, Batishchev, Butenko or Vodolazov, except that because his books are not subject to censorship, he is able to formulate his conclusions openly.
Moreover, Medvedev is one of the theoreticians of a moderate tendency. There are among Soviet Marxists, including those who publish legally, theoreticians who draw more radical conclusions and go much further in their critique of statocracy and neo-Stalinism.62 Samizdat helps to formulate the ultimate conclusions drawn by these critics. At the end of the seventies a number of periodicals of a socialist tendency appeared together. The best-known of these was the journal Poiski, which carried articles not only by Marxists but also by representatives of other trends (for example, V. Sokirko-Burzhuademov collaborated with Poiski). In Leningrad the New Left published the journal Perspektivy. Both journals later ceased to appear, as a result of repressive measures. Leningrad socialists belonging to the Kolokol group (Ronkin and Khakhaev) issued in samizdat the symposium Cherez Top [Through the Swamp], in which they tried to revive the ‘orthodox Marxism’ of G.V. Plekhanov. In Moscow in 1977 an almanac of socialist thought appeared, under the title Varianty. Between 1977 and 1980 four issues came out, but in 1981 publication ceased. Although much of its material could have been better, Varianty was a very interesting and successful attempt to enliven the theoretical discussion in samizdat.63 Typical of Varianty was its endeavour to utilize the ideas of Gramsci, of Western neo-Marxism, Kardelj and other Yugoslav theoreticians, and also, in some articles, contemporary Social Democratic ideas. The new achievements of socialist thought in the West were bound to be of help in studying Soviet problems, but most of the articles in Varianty were not mere students’ expositions of foreign works. Besides Varianty, several other samizdat publications of a Left tendency appeared at the end of the seventies.
However, legal Marxist literature differs in many ways from samizdat, and for the better. Some of the wiser dissidents have admitted the superiority of a number of censored publications. V. Chalidze writes that in legal literature, authors and scholars wage a constant struggle for culture against the statocracy:
This is that section of the intelligentsia which, in full continuity with previous generations, is creating and upholding Russian culture and the culture of other peoples. Although the émigrés boast of famous names and of the uncensored character of their work, our country’s culture is being created by the group mentioned, and not by the émigrés, despite the need sometimes to use phraseology acceptable to the authorities.64
There is no abuse of the authorities in legal literature, but from time to time its contributors show great intellectual boldness, bringing forward new ideas, which samizdat often fails to do.
What I have here called ‘legal Marxism’ is diverse. In the first place we find in this category a right wing, consisting of those whose views could be described as Social Democratic or technocratic. When publishing their works legally they doubtless have to give them a ‘Marxist look’. As an example of a technocrat one may take V. Lukin. Generally speaking, the Institute for Study of the USA and Canada is a place where openly pro-American and technocratic attitudes predominate. However, the representatives of this trend are the most loyal to the statocracy and restrained in their criticism. Also among the legal Marxists there is a neo-Communist centre — G. Vodolazov or M. Cheshkov — and an extreme left wing, close to K. Maydannik, This schema does not exhaust the differences among them; nevertheless, the existence of a common problematic and the similarity between many of their chief conclusions enables us to speak of legal Marxism as a single entity.