KYIV PHILOSOPHICAL CIRCLE AND THE CRISIS OF MARXISM-LENINISM AT TARAS SHEVCHENKO KYIV STATE UNIVERSITY (1980S – FIRST HALF OF THE 1990S)

Abstract

B a c k g r o u n d . The Kyiv Philosophical Circle of the1950s – 1990s, represented mainly by graduates of the Faculty of Philosophy of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv State University, both its professors and employees of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, was a leading participant in the destruction of the Stalinist ideology in Ukraine. The creators of our national philosophical education, science and culture from the Khrushchev's “Thaw” to the dead end of Gorbachev's “Perestroika” jointly contributed to the critical rethinking and a reasoned denial of the official Soviet ideology and philosophy. It was the Director of this Institute in 1968 – 2001 V. Shynkaruk, Deans of the said Faculty from V. Tancher to M. Tarasenko and A. Konversky, as well as a bunch of their colleagues from both these institutions. The purpose of our article is to consider the contribution of the the Kyiv Philosophical Circle to the reformation, criticism and destruction of the Marxist-Leninist philosophy both in the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv State University and philosophical education, science & culture of the Ukrainian SSR at all in the1980s and early 1990s.

M e t h o d s . To achieve this goal, the author used modern and classical methods of both philosophical & historical-philosophical analysis, as well as methods of some modern humanitarian disciplines. Along with the basic principles of scientific knowledge as objectivity, systematicity and historicism, the author used logical and historical general methods. Both the methods of structural and functional and comparative analysis of the evolution of contemporary domestic and foreign philosophy are also used, as well as the method biographical analysis of the figures of the said circle.

R e s u l t s . Four generations of this Circle took an active part in the processes of destroying the ideology of Stalinism, as well as Marxism-Leninism and its philosophical basis. They were P. Kopnin and his students, such as S. Krymsky, M. Popovych, H. Horak and I. Bychko, as well as their colleagues V. Shynkaruk,T. Yashchuk, Y. Bystrytskyi, A. Yermolenko, A. Loy, S. Proleiev and others. They are known as as the authors of a wide range of original works of the end of the “Stagnation” and “Perestroika” periods, wich spanned from creative analysis of philosophical issues of natural science to the keen consideration of the theory and history of ethics, aesthetics, sociology and religions. Both these works and the entire pedagogical experience of them at the said faculty clearly testified to their significant contribution to the democratization of Ukrainian philosophical education, science and culture in the context of creative assimilation by them of the best intellectual attainments of workd civilizational progress.

C o n c l u s i o n s . The article studied a wide range of scholarly & other works of the Ukrainian SSR's professional philosophical community of the 1970-s – 1990s as well as a series of interviews of the creators of the Kyiv Philosophical Circle in the projects on the oral history of philosophy of the early 21st century. The author used the memoirs of his family members, also participants of the said circle in the 1950s – 1990s. They clearly testify to its principled thematic & substantive involment in scholarly& pedagogical workat the end of the “Stagnation” and during the “Perestroika” in the Ukrainian SSR to the world Post-modern philosophical life. This circle initiated the de-ideologization of the philosophical higher education, based on the experience of the neo-Marxism and a lot of Post-modern philosophical ideas & teachings.