The article introduces the special issue on the “Soviet” phenomenon, examining it as a distinct reality at the intersection of the material and the imaginary, the institutional and the existential. Three modes of engaging with this reality – thinking, remembering, and describing – are not merely juxtaposed but interwoven into a research optic rooted in Soviet intellectual traditions themselves: from the Formal Method and activity theory to phenomenology and historical poetics. Drawing on the issue’s contributions, the article demonstrates how the “Soviet” canon was constructed in rewriting the concepts of space and man, in debates over the “majolica” of the Palace of the Soviets, in the transformations of Lenin’s monumental propaganda plan, in “Soviet” Eurasianism, and in the complex reception of Karsavin and Losev. The inner dramaturgy of Soviet thought is analyzed, from Matyushin’s avant-garde experiments to the epistolary dialogues of late Soviet intellectuals. Special attention is paid to contemporary strategies for working with the Soviet legacy, from ironic recycling to the construction of a rigorous theory of humanistic knowledge.

The article is devoted to the searches and experiments of M.V. Matyushin, one of the key figures of the Russian avant-garde, in the field of the theory of “expanded viewing” (the “Zorved” system) and the “fourth dimension”, the main ideas of which are presented in the article “The Experience of a New Sensation of Space”. The ideological commonality and creative affinity with E.G. Guro and K.S. Malevich are noted. The main theoretical works of Matyushin and his activities at GINKhUK (State Institute of Artistic Culture) in Leningrad from 1923 to 1926, where he headed the Department of Organic Culture, are examined. Matyushin believed in the limitless physical capabilities of the human being, their eye, and optic nerve, viewing them as a tool for perceiving the “infinitely changing image of the world”. His concept of “Zorved” (sorkost + vedenie: vigilance + knowledge) was aimed at revealing the hidden abilities of the human being, expanding the habitual boundaries of sound and color perception, and transforming the human being into a cosmic force.

The appendix publishes the authorized text of the article “The Experience of a New Sensation of Space” with the author’s corrections, preserved in the archive of N.I. Khardzhiev at RGALI.

The article introduces a series of documents from the 1930– 1940s related to the controversy surrounding the project of the famous Palace of the Soviets. The publication was prompted by a discussion about the appropriateness of using the term “majolica” to describe works of Russian ceramic art, particularly in the field of architectural ceramics. The documents provide insights into the views of leading Russian ceramic artists, such as A.V. Filippov, D.M. Tsipirovich, and their contemporaries, including art historians and architects. As a result, it is recommended that the term “majolica” continue to be used in relation to the architectural elements of Russian architecture. This is how it has been used by artists and art historians throughout the 20^th century.

This article puts forward a hypothesis regarding the paradoxical nature of Russian Formalism’s influence on early Soviet cultural policy. The early manifestos of Russian Formalism, with their calls for the autonomization of literary theory and the study of the specific principles of “plot construction” outside of social and biographical contexts, can be viewed as a symptom of the revolutionary situation. According to Viktor Shklovsky’s later assessments, early formalism was an expression of a peculiar nominalism that perceived isolated “things” and did not raise the problem of the unity of the world. However, it was precisely this distinction between “cultural” or “superstructural” and “infrastructural” series that could be used to study the principles of cultural evolution, an understanding of which was required for early Soviet linguistic and national construction. This idea is illustrated by an example from the works on linguistic evolution by one of the founders of OPYAZ, the linguist and student of Baudouin de Courtenay, Evgeny Polivanov, who became an active participant in Soviet linguistic and cultural construction. Polivanov, like Shklovsky, argued that it was impossible to establish a direct correlation between linguistic evolution and social development. According to the hypothesis put forward in the article, this kind of formalist methodology was well suited to the tasks of early Soviet language and cultural building taking into consideration institutional transformation and the political context of historical moment.

The adoption of the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars “On the Monuments of the Republic” on April 12, 1918, set before artists the task of promoting the ideas of the revolution through the erection of monuments. The Monument to the Soviet Constitution, unveiled on the eve of the first anniversary of the October Revolution, was among the earliest works made under this project. This article reconstructs the stages of the monument’s creation, with a focus on the complex iconography of the figure of Freedom designed by Nikolai Andreev. It offers a retrospective examination of art-historical assessments of Andreev’s Statue of Freedom, which in Soviet scholarship tended toward an interpretation aligned with Realism. A formal stylistic analysis is undertaken, making it possible to attribute the work to the Art Nouveau style. The article substantiates the hypothesis that a combination of factors led to the decision to demolish the monument in April 1941, including political and ideological considerations (a paradigm shift), artistic factors (the incompatibility of the Art Nouveau stylistics with the aims of the new Soviet culture), and philosophical ones (the incongruity of the idea of “freedom”, imported by the Bolsheviks from the experience of the Great French Revolution, with the Soviet public opinion).

The article is devoted to the problem of determining the extent to which the name and legacy of the medieval historian and religious philosopher Lev Platonovich Karsavin were present in the scientific and socio-political spaces of the USSR after his forced emigration in 1922. The author examines the references to Karsavin in the official press in the context of historical events. It is shown that the leading factors that attracted the attention of Marxism-Leninism specialists were the publication of books on Soviet Diamat by the Neotomist G.A. Vetter, works on the history of Russian philosophy by V.V. Zenkovsky and N.O. Lossky, and the need for Soviet delegations to participate in world philosophical congresses. The appearance of an article about L.P. Karsavin in the Philosophical Encyclopedia was an act of legitimizing his name as a significant figure.

In historiographical science, there was a more attentive attitude towards the scientist’s legacy, which, along with criticism, allowed for the recognition of the valuable aspects of his work. This attention continued to grow, and by the mid-1980s, L.P. Karsavin’s historical legacy had already become the subject of dissertation research.

The significance of S.S. Averintsev’s interpretation of Oedipus’s guilt lies in Oedipus’s later role as a hero of subjectivity. Oedipus is the man who first experienced the tragic collision of subjectivity and overcame it: it is precisely this Hegelian postulate that Averintsev addresses. The discovery of myth by modern man and his constitution of his own myth of history form the basis of the “question of the archetypal”. Formulated in this way, the problem is directly linked to the participation of modernist thought in the intellectual and political dramas of the twentieth century. The myth must be elucidated and transformed into a symbolic (i. e., historical) narrative, relying on the presumption of the symbol’s original transcending capacity. In this sense, the article on Oedipus is a continuation of that logic of self-transcendence found in myth, which also proves to be the semantics of history. This presumption is a supporting element of Averintsev’s theology, which is embedded in his cultural-historical research.

This publication is the final part of a work dedicated to the epistolary legacy of late Eurasianism. The preface to the publication raises the question of whether Eurasianism can be considered a single process, from its origins in 1910–1913 to the present day. The right-wing stage of the development of the Eurasian idea is classical Eurasianism, which was based on the ideas of Nikolai Trubetskoy. After 1928, it developed under the leadership of P.N. Savitsky until the beginning of World War II, followed by the arrest of the leader and many ordinary members of the movement. The article shows that the second stage of Eurasianism was its “Soviet” version, represented by L.N. Gumilev and A.N. Zelinsky. The unity of these two stages can be seen in the Eurasian correspondence organized by Savitsky around 1956. Savitsky, by connecting G.V. Vernadsky, L.N. Gumilyov, A.N. Zelinsky, and other participants through their correspondence, created a Eurasian scientific community and thus a new stage in the history of Eurasianism. The article includes letters from this scientific correspondence that have not previously been introduced into academic discourse.

This article presents the publication of archival materials from Alexei Losev’s collection at the Russian State Library, four letters written by the Sverdlovsk philosopher Vladimir Kuzmich Bakshutov (1926–2015) to A.F. Losev between 1980 and 1986. The published letters contain discussions of philosophical and political questions, issues of Soviet ideology, and cultural policy during the perestroika period. The source reveals an alternative image of Losev, presented by Bakshutov as a thinker loyal to the Soviet project, which contrasts with the later canonical representation of the philosopher as the ‘last Soviet idealist’ and bearer of pre-revolutionary cultural tradition. The article analyzes the contradictory figure of Bakshutov himself, a provincial philosopher combining elements of Soviet discourse, national-conservative views, and internal opposition in KPSU, and examines the significance of the Ural intellectual community for the history of Soviet social sciences.

This article provides a comparative analysis of the artistic strategies of the art group Doping-Pong and the creative duo Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubossarsky within the context of post-Soviet art of the 1990s– 2010s. The study reveals differences in the artists’ approaches to working with Soviet heritage: Doping-Pong employs the practices of “cultural recycling” and “fake nostalgia”, creating stylized images of a lost past through a neo-academic painterly style. Vinogradov and Dubossarsky, by contrast, embrace kitsch aesthetics, capturing contemporary reality through a blend of Soviet-era symbols and the realities of post-Soviet capitalism. The article demonstrates how different models of post-Soviet identity are formed within the realist painting tradition: Doping-Pong’s nostalgic reconstruction of memory and Vinogradov and Dubossarsky’s ironic documentation of the present.

Based on cinema studies, the article substantiates the fundamental possibility of forming full-fledged scientific knowledge in the context of humani- ties. To this end, it shows the initial level structure of knowledge, which is specified taking into account the nature of research implementation in the context of humanities (the empirical level of knowledge is divided into the “dimensions” of historical and ontological research, the theoretical level of cognition is defined as a specific “dimension” of the abstract level of cognition, in which the “dimension” of conceptual cognition is also defined, and the “dimensions” of historical reconstructions and historical interpretations are taken to a separate, concrete level of cognition). Taking into account what is cognizable, which for the humanities is human activity, the methodology that makes it possible to introduce ideal objects on which theory can be built determines the activity approach. Since the existence of theory presupposes the accessibility of extrasensory cognition of the possible, which exists in conditions of physical reality, this possible, as well as its conceptual explanations, can be defined in the context of humanities as something cognizable, existing in the very “dimension” of theoretical research. Thus, film studies, or any of the humanities, turns out to be a full-fledged scientific discipline, in which it is possible to form knowledge about the entire range of variability possible according to theory, whereas a single cognizable entity existing in physical reality will always remain only one of the realized possibilities, and the realized possibility, in relation to which historical reconstruction is carried out, will remain the only variant of the theoretically derived possible.