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Rudenko and Liashenko’s (2020) “Chinese studies in Ukrainian philosophy of the Soviet period” explores the philosophy and political thought of that time through the study of a Soviet-era book on Chinese philosophy. Their article argues that the content and structure of Dmytrychenko and Shynkaruk’s (1958) book “The development of philosophical thought in ancient China” reflects its authors’ political education intentions. This analytical argument is comprehensively presented in the paper and effectively articulates the particularity of this Ukrainian book on Chinese philosophy. In this article, I examine Rudenko and Liashenko’s paper from the perspective of positivism and of an individual who received a traditional Chinese education. Through a comparison with other books on Chinese philosophy, I discuss Rudenko and Liashenko’s argument regarding the materialist historical view of Dmytrychenko and Shynkaruk’s book. The lack of excerpts from the original Chinese texts affects the correctness of some interpretations in the reviewed article. Nonetheless, through a dialogue between the two authors and contemporary philosophers, the reviewed article touches upon many philosophical ideas and research topics that are worth reading and studying, especially in terms of socialist philosophy, the historical development of Marxism, and the study of Ukrainian philosophy.

Relevance. The socio-philosophical analysis of the current phase of social development is carried out in view of occurrence of “digital society”, which is being formed under the influence of development and integration of cutting-edge technologies of different scientific branches and production industries. This leads to transformation of social environment and rise of the new mode of development. Aim. Interpretation and anticipation of current and coming state of digital society, thought of as a new stage of post-industrial development; reveal of reasons of transfer from industrial mode of development to informational one and pursuit of relation between modes of development and modes of production; determination of the role of digital and information technology in the process of the transfer; identification of the mode of production relevant to the informational mode of development. Results. The paper demonstrates the formation of the theory of post-industrial society. Its relationship with the Marxian theory of social development is detected. The authors have carried out phenomenological analysis of “digital society” concept and revealed its correlation to “post-industrial society” and “information society” concepts. The socio-philosophical analysis of social development phases as evolutionary stages of digital society is carried out from the view point of the theory of post-industrial society. Conclusions. The theory of postindustrial society can be used for explaining and anticipating social and economic tendencies, emerging under the influence of transformative technologies of the “fourth industrial revolution”. No direct dependency between mode of production and mode of development has been detected, though processes of capitalism restructuring and informationalism development correlate with each other: the transfer from the industrial mode of development to the informational one is caused by logic and interests of advanced capitalism, but not confined to them. It is notable that digital and information technologies were not the root cause of the transfer, though contributed to it in the long term. The development mode concomitant to the informational mode of development is defined as “informational capitalism”.

This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: – how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the Soviet Union in the 1930s–50s? – what can the virulent anti-Saussurean criticism in Russia at that time tell us about the specificity of the Marxist-Leninist theory of sign? We will propose here an apparently narrow angle of attack: the recurring theme of this criticism, namely that Saussure’s Cours presents a ”theory of hieroglyphics” (or symbols), therefore a type of bourgeois idealist theory that Lenin assailed in his 1909 book Materialism and Empiriocriticism about E. Mach, and which was upheld for a time by Plekhanov. But thinking about hieroglyphics is based on much older controversies, dating back to the 17th century about the deciphering of Egyptian writing. The issue which arises here is semiotic in nature: it is the scalar opposition between transparency and opacity of the sign that is at stake. Does the sign hide or reveal? The Soviet discourse on language and signs in the 1930s–50s seems entirely to be based on an interrogation of the sign/referent, language/thought, form/content relationship. A part of the history of semiotics can thus be discovered from the critique of the “hieroglyphic theory”, a little-known episode in a debate on the interpretation of Saussurism.

The article presents a comparative analysis of I.V. Goethe’s “The Word to Young Poets” („Ein Wort für junge Dichter,“ 1833) and the article written in connection with A.M. Gorky death by the theorist of Marxist aesthetics D. (G.) Lukács “The Liberator” („Der Befreier,“ 1936). The subject of the analysis is Lukách’s interpretation of the ‛liberator’ concept used by Goethe in relation to his own work. Lukács, who chose this keyword from Goethe’s paper as the title of his own article, tries within the framework of the theme set by Goethe about the liberating mission of the writer to prove the validity of applying the theses of the German classic in the era of proletarian art. In the course of the undertaken analysis, the author of the article comes to the conclusion about the selectivity of Lukács’s approaches to research material. That was dictated by the specificities of the functional-target settings the author of “The Liberator,” dedicated not just to a great writer per se, but to the classic of socialist realism, was guided by. Therefore, Lukács’s interpretation of Goethe’s text isn’t based on a comprehensive analysis of the German classic and the Soviet writer views on a given topic, but is limited to the juxtaposition of iconic semantic constants that are embedded in the word “liberator,” important for Lukács in terms of their relevance to Gorky’s personality and work.

This paper briefly outlines the historical and cultural context of the linguistic discussion about Marxism in linguistics that took place in the Soviet Union in 1950; the materials of the discussion were published in the main Soviet newspaper “Pravda”. I describe the reaction of the academic community to this (undoubtedly incorrect) statement that the Kursk-Orel dialect formed the basis of the Russian national language. The reaction mostly amounted to ritual quotations of this Stalin’s claim (without detailed argumentation) in studies on Russian language and dialectology published by Soviet Slavicists in the 1950s. I discuss proposed explanations for the emergence of the “Kursk-Oryol dialect” theory, in particular, Yu. M. Lotman's hypothesis about the influence of Maxim Gorky's statements on the origin of classical Russian literature in Kursk-Orel steppes as well as several more speculative assumptions. I demonstrate the unsatisfactory character of the proposed explanations and put forward a new hypothesis, which draws attention to the possible influence of F. Engels’ work "The Franconian Dialect".

This study examines the phenomenon of the so-called ‘Vojvodinian historiography’ which flourished in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina from the late 1960s until the early 1990s as a special kind of party historiography. The paper focuses on the ‘Vojvodinian historiography’s’ institutional framework, theoretical and methodological features and general ideological profile as well as its outcomes. As a result of its close ties with the ruling Communist League of Vojvodina, the political collapse of the Vojvodinian communists marked the disappearance of this extremely ideological kind of historiography.

This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the USSR in the 1930s–1950s; and, what can the virulent anti-Saussurean criticism in Russia at that time tell us about the specificity of the Marxist-Leninist theory of signs? We propose the following angle of attack: the recurring theme of this criticism, namely that Saussure’s Cours presents a “theory of hieroglyphics”, therefore a type of “bourgeois idealist” theory that Lenin assailed in his 1909 book Materialism and Empiriocriticism about Ernst Mach. Yet thinking about hieroglyphics is based on much older controversies, dating back to the 17th century and concerning the deciphering of Egyptian writing. The issue which arises here is semiotic in nature: it is the scalar opposition between transparency and opacity of the sign that is at stake. Does the sign hide or reveal? The Soviet discourse on language and signs in the 1930s–1950s seems to be based on an interrogation of the sign/referent, language/ thought, form/content relationship. A part of the history of semiotics can thus be discovered from the critique of the “hieroglyphic theory”, a little-known episode in a debate on the interpretation of Saussurism.

The article is devoted to the presentation of metaphysical ideas about the free will of the individual, hidden in political ideologies, through conceptual analysis and the thesaurus of analytical philosophy. In this paper, we analyze the extent to which the metaphysical postulates of the most famous ideological projects of modernism (communism, Nazism and liberalism) are compatible with modern theories of freedom in analytical metaphysics, and show their poor compatibility. At the same time, we have proposed an alternative to modern ideologies in the form of republicanism, which does not seem to have unsolvable metaphysical problems in its own definition of freedom. In this article we have demonstrated that the fundamental metaphysics of individual freedom is a legitimate criterion for assessing the relevance, validity and relevance of political ideologies, as it is not an abstract detached theorizing, but the founder of our ideas about the constitution of normative in terms of personal responsibility.