ABSTRACT
I would like to thank the editors very much for initiating this project including two productive meetings at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki as well as for their remarks on an earlier draft of this paper. I also acknowledge the support which the ERC endeavour EarlyModernCosmology (Horizon, 2020, GA 725883) provided to the preparation of this article.
This chapter analyses the work of Mikhail Lifshits in terms of an attempt to develop a Marxist–Leninist cultural critique and philosophy of culture with a special focus on Lifshits’ article ‘O kul’ture I ee porokakh’ (‘On Culture and Its Faults’) from 1934. This work is seen as engaging with problems of a common modernity in the context of Stalin-era culture and the cultural debates about the Fascism of the 1930s. Lifshits’ statements concerning his overall project at the time and throughout his oeuvre trying to develop a dialectical theory of culture as an uneven process can be confirmed on the philosophical basis and the problem of cultural heritage he engaged with. In the face of oppressive circumstances, Lifshits tried to gain influence with his writings and editions to inscribe these ideas into the very history and philosophy of Marxism. The axiological, political, and aesthetical consequences are discussed to show what this particular case of intellectual engagement has in common with similar attempts of the time.
