Abstract

The role of philosophy in Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) society over the past 100 years is considered. A century in this case is not only a generally accepted important key measure of world history but also the anniversary of the first national state research center in the field of philosophy, the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, celebrated in 2021. In the general methodological introduction, the author focuses on the place of philosophy in the system of social division of labor. The 100-year history of the academic institution, counted by the author from the establishment of the Institute of Scientific Philosophy in 1921 under the leadership of G.G. Shpet, is further subdivided into four stages: the 1920s, the victory of Lenin’s ideas and the formation of an independent Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism; the 1930s–early 1950s, criticism of “Menshevik idealism” and the subordination of philosophy to the goals of party–political ideology; the 1960s–1980s, a humanistic turn of Soviet philosophy, at the origins of which were A.A. Zinov’ev and E.V. Il’enkov; and the post-Soviet period, philosophical pluralism and the loss of common orientations.