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The Aleksandrov Story

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Percy E. Corbett
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Extract

In the Autumn of 1946, Georgi Aleksandrov, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Moscow and Chief of the Administration of Propaganda and Agitation in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, was one of Moscow's success stories. Only thirty-eight years old, he had already reached the top rung of the academic ladder. He was, besides, a key figure in that liaison of politics and science upon which the Soviet Government leans so heavily in mobilizing the creative energies of its population for the magnification of the State. In his post as Chief of Propaganda and Agitation for the Communist Party, Aleksandrov was responsible, under Andrei Zhdanov of the Politburo, for the fanatical indoctrination of party-workers and party-members and for spreading the gospel of Marx-Leninism through the broad massesof the people. He was an active member of the editorial board of Bolshevik, long a principal intellectual weapon of the party and government. When Culture and Life was inaugurated as special organ of Zhdanov's savage campaign to purge every branch of art and learning of elements not wholly imbued with aggressive Marx-Leninism, it was foreordained that Aleksandrov should be the moving spirit in the new publication. The Academy of Social Sciences, established in 1946 as the highest agency of political instruction, began its career under his leadership.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , January 1949 , pp. 161 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1949

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References

1 Text of the decree in Pravda, September 7, 1940.

2 It has been translated under the auspices of the Yale Institute of International Studies, and a limited number of copies of the translation is available there in photo-reproduction.

3 Pravda, December 5 and 6, 1946.

4 Istoriya Zapadno-Ebropeiskoi Filosofii, pp. 11 and 13. The reference, like those following, is to the Russian text, and the translation is mine.

5 Aleksandrov, , op. cit., pp. 12–15.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., pp. 478–79, quoting from The Collected Works of Stalin, Vol. I, p. 297.

7 Aleksandrov, , op. cit., p. 479.Google Scholar

8 Aleksandrov, , op. cit., p. 481.Google Scholar

9 Bolshevik, No. 16, August 30, 1947, pp. 18.

10 Bolshevik, No. 16, August 30, 1947, pp. 21–22.

11 Ibid. The quotations are from Zhdanov's speech to the conference of philosophers.

12 See Barghoorn, Frederick C.. “The Varga Discussion and Its Significance,” in The American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. VII, No. 3, October, 1948.Google Scholar

13 Bolshevik, No. 16, August 30, 1947, p. 21.