Abstract
In the Soviet Union during its last several years Soviet ethics underwent radical changes in its category as far as it lost the traditional Marxist-Leninist values. The roots of this “conceptual revolution” in ethics must be in the 1950s–1960s. According to Russian ethicians’ periodisations of the history of Russian/Soviet ethics, Soviet ethics accomplished dramatic development once the time turns the 1960s.
After the October Revolution in 1917 Lenin noticed the importance of morality. Anatolii Lunacharskii gave advice to readers to get hint on establishment of moral system from Kant. Considering “Lunacharskii renaissance” after Stalin’s death this remark must be important for the history of Soviet ethics. The famous and influential Soviet pedagogist Anton Makarenko pointed out the necessity of systematic study of Communist ethics instead of old-fashioned ethics based on religion. The idea, which gave significant impact on Makarenko, was Maxim Gorky’s philosophy expressed in his play “The Lower Depth” “maxim respect to Man”. This idea was emphasised in Soviet ethicians Alexandr Shishkin’s text books on Communist morality published in 1955, as a combination with Immanuel Kant’s maxim “never treat the person merely as means but always at the same time as an end”.
The 1950s started with Stalin’s article on linguistics in which he announced new these on basis and superstructure which included morality. First academic work on Marxist ethics and duty was published an year after Stalin’s death. In 1955 the first text-book on Communist moral was published by the pedagogist, A. Shishkin, who had studied Kant’s and Rousseau’s pedagogic works. In this text he introduced Russian revolutionary democrat Chernyshevsky’s ideal image of personality in his novel “What Is To Be Done”. In the same year another Soviet ethician, Vasilii Sokolov, introduced Spinoza’s ethical theory. Sokolov supported Spinoza’s metaphysical idea of “Human Nature” and let it relate to freedom and democracy. In 1957 Viktor Klochkov in his article on similarities and differences between ethics view of Feuerbach and Chernyshevsky, appealed that guarantee of freedom is essential for personality’s development. He gave the latter high marks for having proposed a person who can defend self human dignity. Both of freedom of human personality and defence of human dignity would become an important factors in the mental current in the 1960s.
In 1958–59 Soviet education system underwent full reforms faced to the general atmosphere to avoid engaging in manual labour. And in the 21st Party Congress Party Guideline to strengthen the connection between school and daily lives was presented. Following the Khrushchev’s report, in Leningrad the congress on the ethical problems was held to make decisions of drafts lectures in Universities. In response to the results of this conference, it was decided to open courses of ethics in Moscow and Leningrad Universities. Concurrently, in this year in the journal “Problems of Philosophy” ethics and atheism got an independent section from historical materialism.
Thus, in the end of the 1950s Soviet ethicians and the Party leadership started to engage in the spade-work of Soviet ethics together.
