Soviet Theory of the History of Philosophy as Capstone of Soviet Philosophical Culture

In this essay, the author looks at the critiques that Soviet theoreticians of the history of philosophy, particularly Teodor Ojzerman and Aleksej Bogomolov, developed against the contemporary endeavors in the same scholarly field within the context of what, in the USSR, was called "contemporary bourgeois philosophy". What were the disputes about? Did Soviet philosophers have a point, or was it "sheer ideology" - or is that, perhaps, a false opposition? For the essay, the author uses primary sources from the Soviet Union as well as contemporary sources from France, Germany, and the USA. All of these are placed in their context of, on the one hand, the "Cold War" which, at least on the Soviet side, implied what one could label a "cold war on the philosophical front", but also, on the other hand, the various established traditions of research in the history of philosophy. [Publishers' text].