Russian pre-revolutionary Marxism on the the personality

pp. 105-112

in: Nikolaj Plotnikov (ed), The Discourse of personality in the Russian intellectual tradition, Studies in East European Thought 61, 2009.

Abstract

The article treated various concerns of Russian Marxists relating to the concept of personality. In fact, it was not the individual per se and the kindred conceptual constructs that shaped discussions inside Russian Social-Democracy. The individual, on the contrary, was seen as an alien concept, as a central idea of the opponents: the Narodniks, anarchists, Cadets, and liberals in general. The post-1907 Marxist writings demonstrated a significant shift of accent in their approaches to the category of individuality. This was the result of polemics on the psychological particularities of the "reactionary" period (1907–1910). This profound and frequently concealed interest in the individual was typical, in general, of the new generation of Social-Democrats (Bogdanov, Bazarov, Lunačarskij) disillusioned with the classical positivism of the "fathers" and the dogmatic materialism of the "older comrades."