The occasion for this work was provided by the recent Marxist-Leninist philosophic pUblications on problems involving the term 'information' and by the extensive discussions of ideas originating in cybernetics. Thus, the issues are quite recent, which explains some peculiarities of our ap- proach. Our main effort has been toward the clarification and systematiza- tion of questions on information, which arise in the context of cybernetics. Where basic questions are involved, one is brought back to traditional issues as is often the case when dealing with a novel subject. Stress on questions drawn from physics is due to the author's professional involve- ment in this field. This work was written under the direction of Professor J. M. Bochenski, principally in the context of a special program at the Institute of East- European Studies of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland); a program carried out by Professor Bochenski with the collaboration of Dr. S. Muller-Markus. Participation in the special program was made possible by a grant from the West German 'Innenministerium'. Completion of the work was subsidized by the Bundesinstitut fUr ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien in Cologne. Our thanks go to these persons and organisations, who are in no way responsible for the content of the work. Givisiez, May 1967 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE Although we have made use of the works of Cherry and MacKay, cited in the bibliography, our translation of many terms may still seem some- what arbitrary to some readers. The explanation for this is threefold.

Early in 1958 a number of research projects on Soviet philosophy were started at the Institute of East-European Studies at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) under the direction of the undersigned. At present, they are all completed or nearly so and their results are described in 18 different volumes. In spite of the fact that all of them have been already published or soon will be (mostly in German), it has been thought worthwhile to present their main conclusions in the form of short English reports. This book contains in the main these reports. Only the two programmatic papers (my own and that of Dr. Buchholz) and the study of Dr. Dahm are not direct results of the above-mentioned projects. But it will be clear to everyone that they, too, are closely connected with the subject envisaged and are written from a similar point of view. It will, perhaps, be convenient to briefly formulate this standpoint. All the writings included here are concerned with recent (i. e. mainly post Stalinist) developments in Soviet philosophy, where "Soviet" is taken in the wide meaning of the word, covering also Marxism-Leninism in Communist countries other than the Soviet Union. All the authors started with the assumption that there are interesting aspects to these more recent developments. There was also a common assumption that only specialized work on first-hand sources can be of relevance in this field."

The present work is a study of the method of contemporary Soviet philosophy. By "Soviet philosophy" we mean philosophy as published in the Soviet Union. For practical purposes we have limited our attention to Soviet sources in Russian in spite of the fact that Soviet philosophical works are also published in other languages (see B 2029(21)(38. The term "method" is taken in the sense usual in Western books on methodology .1 In view of the content of the first chapter it will be useful to explain the last term a little more fully. By method we mean a procedure and it is obvious that the principles according to which a procedure is carried out are rules, i.e. imperatives, which tell us not what is but what should be done. Such imperatives mayor may not be connected with and founded on certain descriptive statements (the fact that every rule of formal logic is based on a corresponding law has been well-known since Husserl's "Logische Unter suchungen" and is generally accepted in contemporary logic), but such a foundation is irrelevant to a methodological study. The object of such a study is to find out what these rules are, why they are accepted and how they are inter-connected and applied. This is how methodology - the science of method - is conceived in Western treatises on the subject and this is also the standpoint assumed here."

Contemporary philosophy is by its nature pluralistic, to a perhaps greater extent than at any moment of the preceding tradition, in that there are multiple forms of thought competing for a position on the center of the philosophic stage. The reasons for this conceptual proliferation are numerous. But certainly one factor is the increasing development of contemporary means of publication and communication, which in turn make possible the rapid dissemination of ideas as well as an informed reaction to them. And this in turn has increased the possibility for serious philosophic exchange by enhancing the available opportunities for the interaction of competing forms of thought. But, although informed philosophic interaction has in principle become increasingly possible in recent years, the frequency, scope and quality of such discussion has often been less than satisfactory. Contemporary philosophic viewpoints tend not to interact in a Hegelian manner, as complementary aspects of a totally satisfactory and a-perspectival view, facets of a singly and all-embracing true position. Rather, contemporary philosophic viewpoints tend to portray themselves as mutually exclusive alternatives only occasionally willing to acknowledge the possible validity or even the intrinsic interest of other perspectives. Thus, although the multiplication of different forms of philosophy in principle means that there are greater possibilities for meaning ful exchange between them, in practice the tendency of each of the various philosophic positions to raise claims to philosophic truth from its point of view alone has had the effect of impeding such interaction."

In this year of bicentennial celebration, there will no doubt take place several cultural analyses of the American tradition. This is only as it should be, for without an extensive, broad-based inquiry into where we have come from, we shall surely not foresee where we might go. Nonetheless, most cultural analyses of the American context suffer from a common fault - the lack of a different context to use for purposes of comparison. True, American values and ideals were partly inherited from the European tradition. But that tradition is in many ways an inadequate mode of comparison. Without going too far afield, let us note two points: first, European culture was the proud inheritor of the Renaissance tradition, and, going back still further, of classical culture; second, the European countries are compact. Their land masses are such that the notion of "frontier" simply would not have arisen in the same way as it did in America. On the other side of the globe, however, there does exist a country capable of serving as a suitable mirror. We speak, of course, of Russia. That country also came relatively late onto the cultural horizon, and was not privy to the Renaissance tradition. Furthermore, her land mass is such as to be "experi mentally infmite" in character - not unlike the American frontier. It is hoped that much can be leamed about the present cultural context by com paring the two countries in their youthful stages."

The Soviet philosophical scene has experienced remarkable growth since the innovations of the 50's and the renovations of the 60's. This volume of Sovietica is intended by the editors as a finger on the pulse of the Marxist-Leninist corpus philosophicum as we enter the 1970's. Published in the years between 1960 and 1970, the Filosofskaja en ciklopedija (FE) has replaced the Kratkij filosofskij slovar' (Short Philo sophic Dictionary: 1939, 1941, 1951 and 1954) and the Filosofskij slovar' (Philosophic Dictionary: 1963). It is an impressive work - 2994 pages in five volumes (I, 1960, 504 pp.; II, 1962, 575 pp.; III, 1964, 584 pp.; IV, 1967, 591 pp.; V, 1970, 740 pp.), with the editors and authors representing all the contemporary Soviet philosophers of note. The FE has been extensively reviewed in Kommunist (1972, 5, 119-127) and in Studies in Soviet Thought beginning with SST 12 (1972) 4]. Restrictions of space have forced us to omit much that was originally to be included. The same limitations have obliged us to deviate from the initial methodological rule which was 'to include only complete, un abridged articles' - in order to avoid distortion by selection. Only two articles have been shortened: only the basic portion of 'science' has been included; we have dropped 'natural science', 'sciences on man and society', and 'classification of sciences' (a total of thirteen pages in Russian) - this last with regret and with apologies to Professor Kedrov."

On February 24-25, 1956, in a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita S. Khrushchev made his now famous speech on the crimes of the Stalin era. That speech marked a break with the past and it marked the end of what J.M. Bochenski dubbed the "dead period" of Soviet philosophy. Soviet philosophy changed abruptly after 1956, especially in the area of dialectical materialism. Yet most philosophers in the West neither noticed nor cared. For them, the resurrection of Soviet philosophy, even if believable, was of little interest. The reasons for the lack of belief and interest were multiple. Soviet philosophy had been dull for so long that subtle differences made little difference. The Cold War was in a frigid period and reinforced the attitude of avoiding anything Soviet. Phenomenology and exis tentialism were booming in Europe and analytic philosophy was king on the Anglo-American philosophical scene. Moreover, not many philosophers in the West knew or could read Russian or were motivated to learn it to be able to read Soviet philosophical works. The launching of Sputnik awakened the West from its self complacent slumbers. Academic interest in the Soviet Union grew."

This book offers a complete survey of contemporary Soviet theory of knowledge. It is by no means meant to replace De Vries' excellent treatise on the same subject. Since De Vries depended mainly on the 'classics of Marxism' and the few contemporary Soviet works which were available in German translation, his account is at best an in troduction to the contemporary period. In a sense this book is com plementary to his: he presents the doctrines of the classics and criticizes them, this book recounts what came after and what is going on now. Epistemology and theory of knowledge are taken here as equivalent terms, representing the Soviet gnose%gija and teorija poznanija. No attempt to justify the existence of such a philosophical discipline will be attempted here. Even outside of this question of the legitimacy of epistemo logy, it is not easy to delimit the domain of its purvey. We have, therefore, taken it in a wider rather than narrow sense. This means that some ques tions of logic and psychology have been taken up - to the extent that they overlap with the field of philosophical consideration of knowledge."

Contemporary philosophy is by its nature pluralistic, to a perhaps greater extent than at any moment of the preceding tradition, in that there are multiple forms of thought competing for a position on the center of the philosophic stage. The reasons for this conceptual proliferation are numerous. But certainly one factor is the increasing development of contemporary means of publication and communication, which in turn make possible the rapid dissemination of ideas as well as an informed reaction to them. And this in turn has increased the possibility for serious philosophic exchange by enhancing the available opportunities for the interaction of competing forms of thought. But, although informed philosophic interaction has in principle become increasingly possible in recent years, the frequency, scope and quality of such discussion has often been less than satisfactory. Contemporary philosophic viewpoints tend not to interact in a Hegelian manner, as complementary aspects of a totally satisfactory and a-perspectival view, facets of a singly and all-embracing true position. Rather, contemporary philosophic viewpoints tend to portray themselves as mutually exclusive alternatives only occasionally willing to acknowledge the possible validity or even the intrinsic interest of other perspectives. Thus, although the multiplication of different forms of philosophy in principle means that there are greater possibilities for meaning ful exchange between them, in practice the tendency of each of the various philosophic positions to raise claims to philosophic truth from its point of view alone has had the effect of impeding such interaction."

In this year of bicentennial celebration, there will no doubt take place several cultural analyses of the American tradition. This is only as it should be, for without an extensive, broad-based inquiry into where we have come from, we shall surely not foresee where we might go. Nonetheless, most cultural analyses of the American context suffer from a common fault - the lack of a different context to use for purposes of comparison. True, American values and ideals were partly inherited from the European tradition. But that tradition is in many ways an inadequate mode of comparison. Without going too far afield, let us note two points: first, European culture was the proud inheritor of the Renaissance tradition, and, going back still further, of classical culture; second, the European countries are compact. Their land masses are such that the notion of "frontier" simply would not have arisen in the same way as it did in America. On the other side of the globe, however, there does exist a country capable of serving as a suitable mirror. We speak, of course, of Russia. That country also came relatively late onto the cultural horizon, and was not privy to the Renaissance tradition. Furthermore, her land mass is such as to be "experi mentally infmite" in character - not unlike the American frontier. It is hoped that much can be leamed about the present cultural context by com paring the two countries in their youthful stages."

Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science are devoted to symposia, con gresses, colloquia, monographs and collected papers on the philosophical foundations of the sciences. It is now our pleasure to include A. A. Zi nov'ev's treatise on complex logic among these volumes. Zinov'ev is one of the most creative of modern Soviet logicians, and at the same time an innovative worker on the methodological foundations of science. More over, Zinov'ev, although still a developing scholar, has exerted a sub stantial and stimulating influence upon his colleagues and students in Moscow and within other philosophical and logical circles of the Soviet Union. Hence it may be helpful, in bringing this present work to an English-reading audience, to review briefly some contemporary Soviet investigations into scientific methodology. During the 1950's, a vigorous new research program in logic was under taken, and the initial published work -characteristic of most Soviet pub lications in the logic and methodology of the sciences - was a collection of essays, Logical Investigations (Moscow, 1959). Among the authors, in addition to Zinov'ev himself, were the philosophers A. Kol'man and P. V. Tavanec, and the mathematicians and linguists, S. A. Janovskaja, A. S. Esenin-Vol'pin, S. K. Saumjan, G. N. Povarov."

Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science are devoted to symposia, con gresses, colloquia, monographs and collected papers on the philosophical foundations of the sciences. It is now our pleasure to include A. A. Zi nov'ev's treatise on complex logic among these volumes. Zinov'ev is one of the most creative of modern Soviet logicians, and at the same time an innovative worker on the methodological foundations of science. More over, Zinov'ev, although still a developing scholar, has exerted a sub stantial and stimulating influence upon his colleagues and students in Moscow and within other philosophical and logical circles of the Soviet Union. Hence it may be helpful, in bringing this present work to an English-reading audience, to review briefly some contemporary Soviet investigations into scientific methodology. During the 1950's, a vigorous new research program in logic was under taken, and the initial published work -characteristic of most Soviet pub lications in the logic and methodology of the sciences - was a collection of essays, Logical Investigations (Moscow, 1959). Among the authors, in addition to Zinov'ev himself, were the philosophers A. Kol'man and P. V. Tavanec, and the mathematicians and linguists, S. A. Janovskaja, A. S. Esenin-Vol'pin, S. K. Saumjan, G. N. Povarov."

This book offers a complete survey of contemporary Soviet theory of knowledge. It is by no means meant to replace De Vries' excellent treatise on the same subject. Since De Vries depended mainly on the 'classics of Marxism' and the few contemporary Soviet works which were available in German translation, his account is at best an in troduction to the contemporary period. In a sense this book is com plementary to his: he presents the doctrines of the classics and criticizes them, this book recounts what came after and what is going on now. Epistemology and theory of knowledge are taken here as equivalent terms, representing the Soviet gnose%gija and teorija poznanija. No attempt to justify the existence of such a philosophical discipline will be attempted here. Even outside of this question of the legitimacy of epistemo logy, it is not easy to delimit the domain of its purvey. We have, therefore, taken it in a wider rather than narrow sense. This means that some ques tions of logic and psychology have been taken up - to the extent that they overlap with the field of philosophical consideration of knowledge."

Dieser siebente Band der Bibliographie erfasst die sowje- tische philosophische Literatur der Jahre 1964-1966 und enthalt: 1. Die Titel philosophischer Artikel aus den folgenden zeit- schriften: Voprosy filosofii, Filosofskie nauki, Kommunist, Uspechi Fizi eskich NaUk, Vestnik AN SSSR, vestnik MGU, Vestnik LGU, Voprosy psicholOgii. Ebenso sind einige Artikel aus weniger be- kannten Zeitschriften erfasst. 2. Die Titel philosophischer Bucher, die in dieser Zeit veroeffentlicht wurden, mit eigenen Angaben der in Sammelwerken (sborniki) erschienenen Artikel. Die Literatur der Jahre 1967 ff.wird kunftig in den Studies in Soviet Thought laufend berichtet werden, zusammen mit den jeweiligen Verzeichnissen. Das Material fur den vorliegenden Band wurde von den Mitglie- dern des Instituts gesammelt. Besonderer Dank gilt P.J. Beemans, W.F. Boeselager, G.A. Collins (Boston College), D.D. Comey (Cornell), Anne Heidenreich, T.R. Payne und J.J. O'Rourke. Die endgultige Zusammenstellung des Materials besorgte Prof. T.J. Blakeley, Boston College. FOREWORD This seventh volume of the Bibliographie covers Soviet philosophie production during the period 1964-1966 and contains: 1. Titles of philosophie articles fram the following journals: Voprosy filosofii, Filosofskie nauki, Kommunist, Uspechi fizi es- kich nauk, Vestnik AN SSSR. vestnik MGU. Vestnik LGU, Voprosy psichologii. There are also occasional articles from lesser-known journals. 2. Titles of philosophie books published during the period, witn separate citation of the articles contained in the collective works (sborniki). Titles for 1967 ff. will appear on a current basis in Studie in Soviet Thought, supplemented by periodic indices.

Seit dern Eingreifen A. A. Zdanovs am 24 Juni 1947 hat die sowje tische Philosophie einen bemerkenswerten Aufschwung erlebt. Nach einer mit Recht als "still" bezeichneten Periode, die mit der Ver urteilung A. M. Deborins am 31 Januar 1931 begann und erst durch den genannten Eingriff ein Ende fand, kam es zu einem gleichzeitig quantitativen und qualitativen Wachstum: einmal erscheinen seit dieser Zeit viel mehr philosophische Schriften, und zweitens ist die sowjetische Philosophie von Neuem zum Kampfplatz verschiedener Tendenzen geworden, wobei die bisherige massive Zitatologie immer mehr durch echt philosophische Untersuchungen abgelost wird. Ei nige dieser Arbeiten sind auch fUr Philosophen der freien Welt nicht ohne Interesse - besonders fUr diejenigen unter ihnen, die, wie der Herausgeber dieser Reihe, mit den sowjetischen Philosophen den . Objektivismus, den erkenntnistheoretischen Realismus, die An erkannung der Ontologie und der formalen Logik sowie schliesslich einen ganzheitlichen Begriff vom Menschen teilen. Aber auch an dersdenkende Philosophen werden an der sowjetischen Philosophie mit ihrer fortschreitenden Entwicklung ein wachsendes Interesse haben kennen. Es scheint unter diesen Umstanden geboten, die zeitgenessische Philosophie der Sowjet-Union besser kennen zu lernen. Es bieten sich hier zweierlei Aufgaben: einmal mUssen spezialisierte Stu diengruppen eingehende und differenzierte Untersuchungen Uber ein zelne Denkrichtungen, vielleicht sogar Uber einzelne Denker, in Angriff nehmen; zweitens scheint es wUnschenswert, auch denjeni gen Philosophen, die des Russischen nicht machtig sind, zumindest einen Zugang zu den sowjetischen Quellen zu eroffnen."

Die ersten drei Hefte dieser Reihe enthalten die Titel der Aufsatze, die in den sowjetischen philosophischen Fachzeitschriften (VFund FN) zwischen 1947 und 1960 erschienen sind, sowie die Titel von Blichern die in diesen Zeitschriften angeflihrt oder in der Bibliothek des Freiburger Osteuropa Instituts vorhanden waren. Ursprlinglich flir den Gebrauch der Mitglieder des Instituts vorgesehen, wurden sie in der Hoffnung veroffentlicht andern Forschern auf diesem Gebiet nlitzlich zu sein, vor aHem da die sowjetischen Beitrage zur eigenen philoso phischen Bibliographie sehr fragmentarisch und schwer erhaltlich sind. Diese Hoffnung scheint berechtigt, da die ersten zwei Hefte bereits neu aufgelegt werden mussten. Es wurde daher beschlossen, die Basis der Bibliographie flir die genannte Periode zu erweitern, und zwar durch die Berlicksichtigung von Aufsatzen in anderen Zeitschriften, von Dissertationen und von Blichern, die durch die oben genannten QueHen nicht erfaBbar waren. Das vorliegende vierte Heft enthlilt die Ergebnisse dieser Erweiterung. Die gesamte Reihe enthlilt 7940 Titel, womit schlitzungsweise 85 Prozent der sowjetischen philosophischen Literatur zwischen 1947 und 1960 und - was noch wichtiger scheint - der flir die Entwicklung dieser Philo sophie entscheidende Teil derselben erfaBt ist. Ein flinftes Heft wird vollstandige Namen- und Sachregister enthalten."