Mathematics and dialectics in the Soviet Union: The Pre-Stalin period (Q1300641)

The author describes attitudes of Marxist philosophers in the Soviet Union of the 1920s toward various philosophically relevant mathematical topics such as set theory, probability, non-Euclidean geometry, intuitionism, and formalism. He considers the 1920s ``despite portentous signs on the horizon \dots{} as a decade of limited and rather ineffective Marxist ideological-philosophical interference with the professional work of mathematicians'' (p. 121). Vucinich holds accountable for that both limited knowledge of mathematics on the part of philosophers and disunity among them. The so-called Communist Academy, headed by mathematician O. Iu. Schmidt, considered Marxism an open theory and strove for its effective adjustment to basic changes in scientific knowledge, as represented, e.g. by the achievements of the Moscow function-theoretic and topological school under N. N. Luzin. Opposed to them were the graduates of the Institute of the Red Professoriat who built the stepping stones to full-blown Stalinism which came to power around 1929.