Soviet Philosophy Revisited

This present volume of the Boston College Studies in Philosophy presents thematically a commentary on the articles that appeared in the preceding issue of this series. In Volume IV, under the title Philoso- phical Investigations in the USSR, there appeared six articles by contemporary Soviet philosophers on topics of concern for those in- terested in philosophical dialogue. An interesting introduction was prepared by Professor L. Mitrokhin, head of the department of Con- temporary Western Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In his introduction, Professor Mitrokhin presented biographical data concerning the Soviet authors and listed their major research and publications in their respective fields. I would like to quote from Professor Mitrokhins introduction to indicate to the reader something about the general themes and impor- tance of that volume and to urge those who have not yet investigated its content to do so, not only because it is quite necessary as background for this volume, but also because of the light those articles shed on the developments that are occurring in Soviet philosophical thinking. Hence allow me to quote: " ... I regard this special edition represented by a number of articles written by Soviet philosophers as an extremely useful and symptomatic matter. Soviet philosophy has greatly changed during the past decade. New talented scholars have appeared introducing their individual style, problems and ways of thinking.