A timely and comprehensive volume by Vladislav Lektorsky and Marina Bykova offers a rich and thought-provoking discussion on a period largely neglected or misunderstood both inside and outside of Russia. The authors bring together different perspectives on philosophical ideas allowing for a systematic and unbiased account of a controversial intellectual conversation of the late 1950s—early 1990s in Russia. Preceded by an international conference on Soviet philosophy and originally published in Russian, the present volume invites the English-speaking audience to join in the debate about the value and diversity of philosophy in Soviet Russia in the post-Stalin epoch and beyond.

There is an apocryphal story that Iosif Stalin planned an all-Union meeting of physicists devoted to philosophical problems aimed at eliminating idealism in physics. When he was told, however, the words of Igor Kurchatov, the head of the Russian atomic project, that they could have either philosophy or the bomb, the meeting was canceled. Unfortunately, non-dogmatic Russian philosophers did not have this kind of leverage to persuade the authorities that either official ideology or genuine philosophy can exist. They had to develop original ideas while surviving in a suffocating atmosphere.

The book opens with an illuminating introduction by the editors calling into question a largely shared attitude of western Sovietology that denies any value or originality of Soviet philosophical thought, thus reducing it to a merely dogmatic worldview. Contrary to that, and in solidarity with an intellectual minority who opposed this dogmatic approach, the authors demonstrate that despite all the oppressions and unbearable conditions of the Soviet regime, Russian philosophical thought was far from homogeneous. Providing an overview of the development of Russian philosophy, Bykova and Lektorsky focus on the period starting from Nikita Khrushchev's “thaw” and finishing with the official dismantling of the Soviet Union. Creating “an illicit hybrid” (9), while “still committed to the ethos of Marxism, this new thought undermined Marxist orthodoxy from within, thus preparing its inevitable collapse. Furthermore, some scholars began to deviate from Marxism and launched searches for new ideas and forms of philosophical expression” (9–10).

The volume, consisting of twenty-five chapters organized into six parts is diverse in its scope, styles, and approaches. The editors invited a variety of opinions from distinguished scholars, including those not sharing the largely optimistic attitude of most contributors about the overall productivity of Russian philosophy during the 1950s–90s. The book is not an all-inclusive encyclopedia; its purpose is to highlight the most resourceful philosophical areas and the most original thinkers, from the titans of the Russian philosophical renaissance to those largely unknown in the west, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Alexei Losev, Lev Vygotsky, Iurii Lotman, Merab Mamardashvili, Evald Ilyenkov, Alexander Zinoviev, Georgii Shchedrovitsky, Boris Grushin, Bonifaty Kedrov, Valentin Asmus, Sergei Rubinstein, Genrikh Batishchev, Vladimir Bibler, Vyacheslav Stepin. It includes contributions of traditional scholarship and those quite unconventional for a philosophical anthology in English: chapters written in the genre of philosophical reflection sharing personal experience of the authors directly involved in the events they describe.

In Part I, Vladislav Lektorsky, Mikhail Epstein, David Bakhurst, Karen Swassjan, Abdusalam Guseynov, and Vadim Mezhuyev focus on the emerging non-dogmatic Russian thought on philosophy of knowledge and consider this cognitive turn in a broader context of culture and science. This part contains the first English translation of the “Theses on Philosophy” (1954) by Evald Ilyenkov and Valentin Korovikov (translated by David Bakhurst), regarded as an awakening point in Russian philosophy of the period.

In Part II, Stepin, Alexander Ogurtsov, and Boris Pruzhinin account for Russian philosophy of science and consider theories of scientific knowledge, as they were developed in the 1950s–90s. They conclude that the Russian works of the period demonstrate an original and deep understanding of the interaction between philosophy and science different from the western positivist approach. The new understanding of a scientific theory as a multilayered open system allowed Russian thinkers to bring in broader sociocultural knowledge and resulted in new typologies.

The philosophical inquiries by Vesa Oittinen, Marina Bykova, Tom Rockmore, and Maryse Dennes in Part III reconstruct views that treat philosophy as the history of philosophy. They examine both the Russian reception of western tradition, including Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, and the western reception of Russian philosophers, notably, Losev. The authors emphasize the relevance and productivity of the new approaches to the tradition.

The subject of Vladislav Lektorsky, Petr Shchedrovitsky, David Bakhurst, and Vadim Rozin's chapters in Part IV is the special “activity approach” in philosophy, methodology, psychology and cognitive studies, which not only has historical value but also is relevant to the present context. The chapters explore the various roles of activity (deiatel΄nost΄), as developed by Ilyenkov, Rubinshtein, Shchedrovitsky and Batishchev, and extend the applicability of the concept to diverse areas of human knowledge.

Natalia Avtonomova, Vitaly Makhlin, Maja Soboleva and Viktor Malakhov revisit the philosophy of dialogue and communication (Part V). The authors reconstruct philosophical conversations between Bakhtin and Lotman, argue for a need in a further discussion of Bakhtin's “dialogism,” and discuss Bibler's “dialogue of logics” and Batishchev's “deep communication.”

In Part VI, Alexander Khamidov, Yuri Pushchaev, Daniela Steila, and Abdusalam Guseynov examine philosophical anthropology, focusing on human ontology and the problems of morality and responsibility. The discussions center on the concept of human beings in relation to Others and Being advanced by the theories of Rubinshtein, Batishchev, Zinoviev, Mamardashvili, and Oleg Drobnitsky.

A chronology of key events in the Russian philosophy from 1954 to 1991 includes biographical information related to the discussed figures and an overview of major books and articles published (or banned!) during those decades. The book also contains an extensive bibliography.

This publication sheds light on many overlooked heroes and concepts of Russian intellectual life in the second half of the twentieth century. It will be an eye-opening experience for anyone seeking more evidence for the existence of genuine, deep, and original philosophical thought in Russia during the 1950s–90s.