Bolshevik Marxism and Fin de siécle Social Sciences

• In Event: Left Perspectives on State- and Post-Socialism III: Bolshevik Marxism

Abstract

The paper proposes to rethink the origin story of the Bolshevik Marxist tradition by situating it inside Bolsheviks’ turn-of-the-century intellectual milieu—European and Russian social sciences. Into focus come Lenin, Lunacharsky, Trotsky who, between 1890s and 1910s, upgraded Marx’s theory of society and revolution with insights from the emergent disciplines of sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, and even physiology. The slew of new concepts—and soon habits of thought—such as “class instinct,” “class psychology,” “class unconsciousness,” etc. dramatically changed the meaning of Marx’s analytics, created a psychologized map for a modern society, and had a profound impact on the Bolsheviks’ governance after 1917.

Author

• Anna Yu. Krylova, Duke U