Abstract

Although Soviet philosophers today are virtually unanimous in condemning Stalinism, which they see as not only a failed ideology but the source of monstrous evils in Soviet life, they disagree sharply on the intellectual sources of that ideology. Was it a perversion of authentic Marxism, a departure from the true principles of Marx and Lenin, for which only the megalomaniac Stalin and his followers can be blamed? Or was it a logical continuation of tendencies inherent in Marxism-Leninism, so that Stalin's guilt must be shared, at least, by Lenin and perhaps by Marx himself?