The Philosophical Party Membership Card or New Rules for a New Philosophy

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of those figures in European intellectual history whose presence is impossible to overlook and who cannot simply be dismissed or overruled by political decree. While his texts could be removed from bookstores, libraries, and curricula, his ideas continued to circulate in the intellectual sphere, shaping language, imagery, ways of thinking, and cultural concepts. For this reason, Nietzsche’s position and role in the Soviet Union are of great interest, both to researchers studying the history of his influence and the specifics of his reception, and to those seeking to understand the functional mechanisms of a totalitarian culture.

In the early years of Soviet rule, philosophy had not yet been definitively reduced to a uniform party canon, but the direction of its future realignment was already becoming apparent very early on. A telling example of this is the definition of the tasks for the journal Under the Banner of Marxism¹ by Lenin in March 1922, in language that left little room for academic innocence: the journal was to become a "militant organ" and engage in the "relentless exposure and persecution" of representatives of contemporary philosophical reaction, who, following Josef Dietzgen, were labeled "diplomaed lackeys of clericalism."² In the same year, this "persecution" took on a literal meaning: Berdyaev, Lossky, and other leading thinkers, including attentive readers and interpreters of Nietzsche, were expelled from the Soviet Union. Among them was Semyon Frank (1877–1950), a representative of religious philosophy who had already published the study Fr. Nietzsche and the Ethics of 'Love for the Furthest' in 1902.

The expulsion of philosophers was only one method of organizing the new intellectual space; according to the authorities, it was also necessary to put books in order. As early as 1923, the Main Committee for Political Education (Glavpolitprosvet; or Glavlit for short), led by Nadezhda Krupskaya, issued the Instruction for the Review of Library Book Collections and the Removal of Counter-Revolutionary and Artistically Inferior Literature³. It not only regulated the procedure for purging libraries but also established normative categories for undesirable literature, leaving local authorities enough leeway to continue the culling process according to the prescribed ideological criteria. The following year, the "Model Lists of Books for the Instruction on the Purging of Libraries"⁴ appeared—lists also known as "Krupskaya’s blacklists"—in which Nietzsche was included among the undesirable philosophical literature. Maxim Gorky provided an almost ironic commentary from a contemporary on this concern for proper reading: in a letter to Vladislav Khodasevich dated November 8, 1923, which the latter later published in his memoirs, the writer indignantly listed the banned authors: "Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Vl. Solovyov, Taine, Ruskin, Nietzsche..."⁵.

A continuation of the general "intellectual education" of the working class, which was also to extend to philosophical work, was the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B) of January 25, 1931. This now demanded that the journal Under the Banner of Marxismbe a "militant organ of Marxism-Leninism," consistently implement the "Leninist principle of partisanship in philosophy," engage in "merciless criticism of all anti-Marxist" positions, and train "philosophical cadres hardened in the Bolshevik spirit."⁶ From then on, philosophy was to possess a kind of party membership card : The right to think remained, but its validity depended on conformity with the party's general line. In 1938, Stalin formulated this construct with extreme brevity: "Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party."⁷

However, Soviet library policy later developed a far more subtle instrument than the mere disappearance of a bookthe SPEZCHRAN (special collection). An undesirable text could physically remain in a large library while simultaneously ceasing to be a book for the ordinary reader; Glavlit’s secret order No. 10 of October 25, 1938, already explicitly regulated the establishment of these "special collections"⁸, their registration, storage, and use.⁹ The ban thus transformed into a gradation of access: the decisive factor was no longer just what one was allowed to read, but also who was permitted to do so. This possibility was open to only a few. With regard to Nietzsche’s fate in the USSR, literary scholar Elmar Schenkel aptly describes this process as a "renaissance of the poison cabinets."¹⁰

The space created in this way—cleansed of a portion of independent interpreters, disciplined by the principle of party-mindedness, and equipped with a single, supposedly correct worldview—obviously left little room for the open development of Nietzsche’s thought. But if the repressive apparatus could control publications and names, was it also capable of controlling the movement of ideas and their implicit or, in a sense, subterranean development? This is what we must now clarify by focusing our analytical lens on the identification of possible forms of the philosopher’s presence in the USSR .

Of course, it would be quite an undertaking to track down the entire Nietzsche in the entire Soviet Union —a task for which even several five-year plans would likely not suffice. We therefore make no claim to an exhaustive reconstruction of his Soviet fate, but merely propose a possible perspective for its interpretation: the distinction between official and unofficial forms of Nietzsche’s presence, which we intend to illustrate using a few selected, telling examples.

The first of these forms is the emergence of an official Nietzsche—an ideologically constructed image of the thinker who was allowed to be mentioned primarily so that he could be unmasked in accordance with the directives of party leaders. Less obvious is another form, the contours of which emerge from our question regarding the possible forms of his presence: Does Nietzsche remain present in hiding—that is, do his concepts, motifs, and intuitions enter into new cultural and ideological constructions of the Soviet space in altered form, without necessarily referencing their source, or do they persist in intellectual milieus that were suppressed by Soviet ideology? These very questions will serve as our roadmap for the path ahead—for without them, in the thicket of Soviet bans, appropriations, silences, and reinterpretations of Nietzsche, it is all too easy to mistake the traces of his presence for proof of his absence.

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"The Official Nietzsche" or "Five Years Without Nietzsche—in Four Years!"

If one could remove Nietzsche’s books from library shelves, a more difficult problem remained: what was one to do with Nietzsche himself if, given his extraordinary influence, one still had to speak about him? At the beginning of the 1930s, the answer to this question was by no means clear. The case of the Ukrainian philosopher Petro Demchuk (born 1900) is revealing here. At first glance, he read Nietzsche entirely in line with the course set by the Soviet authorities—within the framework of the ideological confrontation with contemporary "bourgeois philosophy." Yet within this framework, there remained room for a far less unambiguous reading. In his essay "The Philosophical Wisdom of the Contemporary Bourgeoisie," published in 1930 in the journal The Red Path¹¹ veröffentlichten Aufsatz „Die philosophische Weisheit der gegenwärtigen Bourgeoisie“¹² For Demchuk, Nietzsche appeared not only as a subject for ideological debunking but also as an important source of newer European intellectual currents: citing the Baltic German writer Eduard von Keyserling, he characterized the philosopher as the "savior of the West" and the "first and greatest prophet of a new world rising."¹³ The fate of Demchuk himself showed just how narrow the line between required criticism and dangerous independence had become. As contemporary researchers note, engaging with Nietzsche became "literally dangerous, even from ideological positions." The case of Demchuk is considered particularly telling: "In his essay 'On the Philosophy of Fascism (Using the Example of the "Philosophy of Life" by Leopold Ziegler)'¹⁴ he traced the origins of Nietzscheanism. This was presumably one of the reasons he was accused of an uncritical understanding of the relationship between theory and practice, and in 1937, he was deported to a concentration camp and executed as a 'representative of Ukrainian national fascism.'"¹⁵ Admittedly, it would be an exaggeration to attribute the repression against Demchuk directly to his study of Nietzsche: it may have been merely one of several pretexts within a much broader mechanism of political persecution, to which the philosopher himself eventually fell victim. The Demchuk case highlighted the real problem: it was not enough to decide whether one was allowed to talk about Nietzsche or not—one also had to determine how he was to be read.

The Soviet nomenklatura found an answer quite quickly: the dangerous Nietzsche had to be issued a proper passport . One of the first clear attempts at such a classification can be found in the eighth volume of the official Literary Encyclopedia¹⁶ from 1934. The extensive article "Nietzsche" was written by Georg Lukács and Boris Mikhailovsky: the former provided a general characterization of the philosopher and his influence, while the latter examined the reception of Nietzsche in Russia separately.¹⁷ And this was by no means a randomly chosen forum: the multi-volume Literary Encyclopedia, which appeared within the institutional framework of the Communist Academy and the Soviet Encyclopedia¹⁸ publishing house, claimed to be an authoritative reference work on literature and culture. Including Nietzsche in its pages meant that the broad Soviet reading public was not simply presented with one of several possible interpretations, but rather a portrait of the philosopher in the name of official culture . Thus, the article "Nietzsche" in the Literary Encyclopedia served a very clear political function: the spread of Nietzscheanism in the USSR was linked to the increasing activity of "counter-revolutionary social groups," while his philosophy was interpreted from the perspective of its social function for the bourgeois reaction.

In the same year, Lukács summarized this interpretation in another essay, the title of which left the reader with little room for suspense: "Nietzsche as a Forerunner of Fascist Aesthetics"¹⁹: "There is not a single motif in fascist aesthetics that does not go back directly or indirectly to Nietzsche."²⁰ Even before the "Nietzsche-Fascism" connection became one of the most persistent Soviet clichés, the fundamental coordinates of such a reading were already on the map: class origin, reaction, counter-revolution, fascism.

It is significant that this interpretation of Nietzsche did not remain merely a collection of individual ideological elaborations, but took on an institutionally developed form. As recent research²¹ Based on archival materials from the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Institute's editorial board worked specifically from April to December of the following year, 1935, on an anthology dedicated to the critique of fascism and racism. As part of this work, Ber Bernadiner's essay "Nietzscheanism in the Ideology of Fascism" was²² discussed, which became another model interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy for that era.²³ Its fundamental interpretive framework reduced Nietzsche's doctrine primarily to the will to power and declared the politics of German and Italian fascism to be its practical realization. Knowledge was interpreted as an instrument of power, the critique of reason as an apology for instinct and illusion, hierarchy as a justification for subjugation, and the eternal recurrence as a denial of social progress and even as an expression of racism. It was therefore no longer merely a matter of banning or negatively evaluating Nietzsche, but of establishing a specific normative interpretive framework that determined the form in which Nietzsche could be portrayed in official Soviet discourse.

This interpretive framework was not limited to a single text or a single author. Researcher Julia Sineokaya reconstructs the formation of what she calls the Soviet "anti-Nietzsche" and traces its further development in the writings and lectures of a whole series of Soviet philosophers—including Abram Deborin and Boris Bychowski.²⁴ In the following years, this perspective was refined and supplemented, as if adjusting the way in which Nietzsche was to be visible to the Soviet reader. The aforementioned researcher points out that in a lecture in April 1935, Deborin explicitly rejected the possibility of any rapprochement between Nietzsche and Marx, socialism, anarchism, or materialism, and characterized his perspectivism as "absolute voluntarism and optical illusion."²⁵ This perspective took on an even clearer political character during the war. In his essay "Nietzsche and Fascism," published in 1942 in the journal we are already familiar with, Under the Banner of Marxism published essay "Nietzsche and Fascism"²⁶ Boris Bychowski slotted Nietzsche’s philosophy into a nearly complete table of ideological correspondences: the pathos of distance became a justification for social hierarchy and exploitation, master-slave morality became the ethics of "rulers, rapists, and masters," and the eternal recurrence became a negation of the idea of social progress.²⁷ Nietzsche himself ultimately appeared as a "reservoir for Nazi propaganda."²⁸ The anti-Nietzsche thus increasingly acquired its own canon: the philosopher remained present in the Soviet intellectual sphere, albeit as a specifically constructed negative image of his teachings. The paradox here was that even the production of such an anti-Nietzsche required reading Nietzsche – if only to be able to explain ever more precisely why one should not read him.

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The State-sanctioned Nietzsche Expert

It can be said that this image underwent its final systematization in the works of Stepan Oduyev (1918–2012), whose position in Soviet Nietzsche research was almost unique. Today’s scholars of Nietzsche’s reception in this region almost unanimously describe him as effectively the only officially recognized Nietzsche researcher in the USSR.²⁹ In this way, we encounter a kind of authorized expert who mediated between Nietzsche and the Soviet reader. The institutional origin of his first major work speaks for itself: The Reactionary Nature of Nietzscheanism³⁰ was published in 1959 by the publishing house of the Higher Party School and the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU. Oduyev himself noted at the beginning of the book that Marxist studies on Nietzsche remained rare and were primarily concerned with clarifying the connection between Nietzscheanism and the ideology and politics of fascism. In doing so, he effectively aligned his own work with the already familiar line of Bernardiner, Bychowski, and other authors of the preceding decades.³¹ Now, however, this line received a much more systematic elaboration: the "transvaluation of all values" was interpreted as reactionary, the eternal recurrence as a campaign against social progress, the will to power as a distortion of social conditions, and the Übermensch as a reactionary myth, while Nietzsche’s hierarchical thinking was said to lead to anti-democratism, racism, and the glorification of war.³² Oduyev formulated the actual task of such a reading with telling candor: Nietzscheanism was to be exposed as an "illusory theoretical anticipation and justification of the politics and practice of the monopoly bourgeoisie."³³

It is significant, however, that the official interpretation of Nietzsche did not remain stagnant. In his much more extensive work published in 1971, On the Paths of Zarathustra³⁴ Oduyev’s ideological judgment did not fundamentally change, but the study itself became noticeably more nuanced: he now acknowledged the extent and duration of Nietzsche’s influence on 20th-century philosophy, warned against reducing his thought to a series of political formulas, and set himself the task of tracing the various forms of the appropriation of Nietzscheanism in German philosophy.³⁵ Between 1959 and 1971, it was not the official judgment of Nietzsche himself that changed, but rather the permissible complexity of his scholarly interpretation: the anti-Nietzsche could gradually become the subject of increasingly serious philosophical inquiry while simultaneously remaining within established ideological boundaries.

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Nietzsche in Soviet Reference Works

How the Nietzsche image developed by experts transitioned into normative Soviet knowledge is best seen not through specialized studies, but through histories of philosophy, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, in which the reader was, in a sense, provided with a brief set of instructions on how to properly handle Nietzsche. For instance, his doctrine was treated in the third volume of the six-volume History of Philosophy³⁶ from 1959 within the context of the reactionary bourgeois philosophy of the imperialist era.³⁷ This normative image stands out even more clearly in the Philosophical Dictionary³⁸ which was published in 1963 under the editorship of Mark Rosenthal and Pavel Yudin by the Publishing House for Political Literature with a print run of 400,000 copies: Nietzsche is described here as "one of the precursors of fascist ideology," and his philosophy is characterized, among other things, by a hatred for the "spirit of revolution" and the masses of the people.³⁹

Eleven years later, the third edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia⁴⁰ already a somewhat different "official Nietzsche": While Alexander Mikhailov's article maintains the characterization of his philosophy as irrationalism and voluntarism, it deals more extensively with his works, the Apollonian and Dionysian principles, his cultural criticism, the will to power, and his influence on later European thought. The ideological safeguards, however, had by no means disappeared: in the end, the reader was reminded of the use of Nietzscheanism by the ideologues of German fascism, and Oduyev's work was included among the recommended literature. On the Paths of Zarathustra.⁴¹ It thus becomes clear that the official Nietzsche was allowed to become more complex in the 1970s, yet one still did not want to leave him unsupervised: the philosophical content increased, but the ideological framework continued to define the boundaries of his interpretation.

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Nietzsche Beyond the Soviet Center

The Moscow canon naturally provided the normative framework for the publications of the individual Soviet republics as well. However, local academic circles reveal how differently this framework functioned on the ground. In the second edition of the Ukrainian Philosophical Dictionary⁴², which was published in 1986 under the editorship of Volodymyr Shynkaruk, there was no separate entry for Nietzsche at all. Instead, "Nietzscheanism" was defined as a "reactionary ideological current," which was, however, already associated with the philosophy of irrationalism and subjectivism as well as with the "latest mythology of the bourgeoisie."⁴³

In Georgia, this framework took on a noticeably more flexible form over time. While Alexandre Kutelia published a text in Tbilisi in 1944 with the telling title The Origins of the Ideology of German Fascism (Nietzsche and Fascism)⁴⁴ ,⁴⁵ Tamaz Buachidze dedicated an extensive, independent chapter to Nietzsche in his 1986 book At the Origins of Modern Bourgeois Philosophy: A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, S. Kierkegaard⁴⁶ which included an independent analysis of nihilism, the will to power, the Übermensch, and eternal recurrence. The ideological framework remains recognizable here as well: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Kierkegaard are linked to the "deep crisis" of bourgeois society, and the objective of the study includes a "critical evaluation" of their teachings.⁴⁷ Avtandil Popiashvili, a senior research fellow at the same Institute of Philosophy, moved even further away from the familiar anti-Nietzsche stance in his monograph The Problem of the Individual in the Philosophy of S. Kierkegaard and F. Nietzsche⁴⁸ (1988). The focus of his interpretation was now the individual and their search for a worldview-based orientation, while Nietzsche’s "death of God" and the Übermensch were viewed in the context of the crisis of European culture. The associations with racism, fascism, or class-based reaction, which were characteristic of the Soviet anti-Nietzsche, did not determine the explicitly formulated research framework of the work.⁴⁹

The few episodes I have found do not, of course, provide a complete map of the "Baltic Nietzsche." However, they do reveal something that is even more important for our presentation: even in neighboring Soviet republics and at almost the same time, the boundaries of what could be said about the philosopher could be surprisingly different. As late as 1980, the then Minister of Education of the Estonian SSR, Ferdinand Eisen, reproduced in the republican pedagogical journal Soviet School⁵⁰ almost the classic Soviet anti-Nietzsche: the philosopher appeared as an "ideologue of the German reactionary bourgeoisie and the landed gentry," his doctrine as directed against the class struggle of the proletariat and socialism. Nietzsche’s philosophy itself was described as a "reactionary, racist ideology" that had become "one of the most important theoretical sources of fascist ideology."⁵¹ Already the following year, we encounter a different case and, what is particularly important, a different institutional environment: the Lithuanian philosopher Zenonas Burnys dealt in the philosophical journal Problems⁵² with Nietzsche’s ethics as an independent philosophical problem. In doing so, he no longer subjected Nietzsche himself to criticism from Leninist-Stalinist-Marxist positions, but instead critically examined the limitations of neo-Thomist Nietzsche criticism in interwar Lithuania.⁵³ The "proper passport" that Soviet culture had issued to Nietzsche in the 1930s thus proved to be a document of long validity. Yet even in neighboring republics, the entries made in it could differ significantly.

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Thaw in the Late USSR

The differences between the individual Soviet republics were, however, only one manifestation of a more comprehensive change that emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s. The intensity of academic interest is already revealing: according to research calculations, of the ten dissertations⁵⁴ on Nietzsche that were defended in the USSR between 1938 and 1988, six were from the last decade of that period.⁵⁵ Even more revealing, however, is the shift in the themes being addressed. Recent studies show that while Nietzsche was previously the subject of dissertations primarily in the context of fascism, imperialism, or the "reactionary nature" of Nietzscheanism, research interest has now gradually shifted toward the internal complexities of his philosophy: in 1979, nihilism in Nietzsche and Heidegger was examined; in 1981, Nietzsche's philosophical development; in 1985, his epistemological views; and in 1986, his philosophical-aesthetic conception.⁵⁶ However, the old vocabulary remained recognizable: at times, Nietzsche was still classified as part of "modern German bourgeois philosophy," and echoes of the mandatory ideological critique still resonated. Thus, it was not Nietzsche's official status that had changed, but rather what one dared to ask about him: nihilism, the development of his thought, Dionysus, epistemology, and aesthetics.

Researchers emphasize that these changes concerned not only the subjects of study but also the question of what one was now permitted to read about Nietzsche. A particularly clear signal was the scientific-analytical overview published in 1984 by Iskra Andreyeva for the Institute of Scientific Information in the Social Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences (INION AN SSSR), which was intended for restricted official use by academy staff. This work already addressed recent international Nietzsche research and the most important trends in its development.⁵⁷ An almost paradoxical situation emerged: the state that had denazified so much after 1945 was unable to denazify Nietzsche for the general public. Abroad, his texts and their interpretations had long led a different academic life, while in the USSR, access to this new Nietzsche was initially opened literally through official channels .  

By the end of the decade, the shift had finally become unmistakable. In 1989, the journal Questions of Philosophy⁵⁸ published the first two main sections of Beyond Good and Evil. The accompanying editorial text sounded almost like an admission regarding the results of the preceding decades: "Nietzsche's work is very little known to the Soviet reader." Subsequently, the publication was declared the beginning of a "difficult task of researching and appropriately interpreting his philosophy."⁵⁹ In its introduction, the editorial board formulated a downright revolutionary thesis: "The most accurate definition of the will to power in Nietzsche is 'self-overcoming,' not the striving for dominance, rank, honors, and other consequences of the subordination of some people to others."⁶⁰ The path from the "reactionary nature of Nietzscheanism" to the demand for its "appropriate interpretation" had thus been covered—at least by individual representatives of a narrow and strictly controlled academic stratum.

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To be continued.

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Article image

Gustav Klutsis: On World October (1932) (image source)

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Vitalii Mudrakov is a philosopher born in Ukraine. He studied music, ethics, and aesthetics at the Humanitarian Pedagogical Academy (Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine), followed by philosophy and religious studies at the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (Ukraine). He has been living and conducting research in Germany since 2022. After academic positions at the Friedrich Nietzsche College of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics" at the University of Münster, and the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr University Bochum, he is currently a fellow of the Philipp Schwartz Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Friedrich Nietzsche College in Weimar. Furthermore, he is academically affiliated with the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig.  

His research focuses on the reception of Nietzsche in Ukraine, the methodologies and methods of Nietzsche’s philosophizing—particularly in their various manifestations within his epistemology—as well as philosophy in times of crisis. Another focus is the development of a concept of "identity security" (identity security) in the context of national identity, cultural transformations, and social crises.

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Footnotes

1: In Russian: Под знаменем марксизма.

2: Lenin, V. I. (1970): On the Significance of Militant Materialism. In: Полное собрание сочинений. 5th ed. Vol. 45. Moscow: Publishing House for Political Literature, pp. 23–33. https://ru.djvu.online/file/F2WvIoLBUdDX6

3: In Russian: Инструкция о пересмотре книжного состава библиотек и изъятию контр-революционной и анти-художественной литературы.

4: In Russian: Примерные списки книг к инструкции по очистке библиотек.

5: Khodasevich, Vladislav (1989): Memories of Gorky. Moscow: Pravda, p. 23.

6: Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1931): Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) "On the Journal 'Under the Banner of Marxism'" of January 25, 1931. https://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/445920-postanovlenie-tsk-vkp-b-o-zhurnale-locale-nil-pod-znamenem-marksizma-locale-nil-25-yanvarya-1931-g?

7: Stalin, I. V. (1997): On Dialectical and Historical Materialism. In: Works. Vol. 14. Moscow: Pisatel, p. 253. https://grachev62.narod.ru/stalin/t14/t14_55.htm

8: In Russian: special collections.

9: Order No. 10/s (1938): Order of the Plenipotentiary of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR for the Protection of Military Secrets in the Press and Head of Glavlit "On the Organization of Special Collections in Libraries" of October 25, 1938. In: History of Soviet Political Censorship. Documents and Commentaries. Moscow, 1997, pp. 492–493 (https://opentextnn.ru/censorship/russia-after-1917/institutions-after-1917/central-censorship-organization/glavlit/1922-1938-glavlit/instrukcii-cirkuljary/1938-25-oktjabrja-prikaz-10-upolnomochennogo-snk-sssr-po-ohrane-voennyh-tajn-v-pechati-i-nachalnik-glavlita-ob-organizacii-osobyh-fondov-bibliotek). The original document is kept in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF): Fund R-9425, Inventory 1, File 2, sheets 32–34. The order was marked "SECRET" and regulated the establishment, registration, storage, and use of materials in the special collections of libraries. However, it did not initiate the practice of special collections, which had already emerged much earlier, but rather documented the further institutionalization of a system of restricted access to literature. The history of its origin and functioning in the 1920s and 1930s has been examined in detail by Mikhail Zelenov. See: Zelenov, M. V. (2000): Special Collections (Spetskhran) and Historical Science in Soviet Russia in the 1920s–1930s. In: Otechestvennaya Istoriya, No. 2, pp. 129–141.

10: Schenkel, Elmar (2025): Nietzsche Global. Around the World in 80 Supermen. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, p. 178.

11: In Ukrainian: Chervonyi shliakh.

12: In Ukrainian: Philosophical Wisdom of the Modern Bourgeoisie.

13: Demchuk, P. (1930): Philosophical Wisdom of the Modern Bourgeoisie (On the Characterization of the Keyserling Philosophical School). In: Chervonyi shliakh, No. 10, p. 105. https://irbis-nbuv.gov.ua/ulib/item/ukr0000027048

14: Demchuk, P. (1930): On the Philosophy of Fascism (Regarding Leopold Ziegler’s "Philosophy of Life"). In: Prolitfront, No. 5–6, pp. 241–300.

15: Liutyi, Taras (2017): Nietzsche. Self-Overcoming. Kyiv: Tempora, p. 841.

16: In Russian: Literary Encyclopedia.

17: Lukács, G.; Mikhailovsky, B. (1934): Nietzsche. In: Literary Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. Moscow: OGIZ RSFSR, State Dictionary and Encyclopedic Publishing House "Soviet Encyclopedia", pp. 91–108. https://feb-web.ru/feb/litenc/encyclop/le8/le8-0911.htm. Ed. note: For more on Lukács’ reception of Nietzsche, see also the corresponding article by Moritz Pliska on this blog (link).

18: In Russian: Soviet Encyclopedia.

19: In Russian: Nietzsche as a Precursor of Fascist AestheticsEditor's note: The article was also published in German in 1934 and sparked intense controversy within the German leftist "emigrant community" in the context of the "Expressionism debate."

20: Lukács, György (1934): Nietzsche as a Precursor of Fascist Aesthetics. In: Literary Critic, No. 12, p. 27. https://libcat.ru/knigi/nauka-i-obrazovanie/kulturologiya/257113-georg-lukach-nicshe-kak-predshestvennik-fashistskoj-estetiki.html

21: Sineokaya, Yulia V. (2018): The Prohibited Nietzsche: Anti-Nietzscheanism in Soviet Russia. In: Studies in East European Thought 70, pp. 273–288. DOI: 10.1007/s11212-018-9315-3

23: In Russian: Nietzscheanism in the Ideology of Fascism.

23: Bernadiner, B. M. (1936): Nietzscheanism in the Ideology of Fascism. In: Against Fascist Obscurantism and Demagoguery: collection of articles. Edited by I. Dvorkin, A. Deborin, M. Kammari, M. Mishin, M. Savelyev. Moscow: Sotsekgiz, pp. 265–293. https://djvu.online/file/a2ukwIE2oQrYC?

24: Sineokaya, Yulia V. (2018): The Prohibited Nietzsche: Anti-Nietzscheanism in Soviet Russia. In: Studies in East European Thought 70, issue 4, pp. 280–282. DOI: 10.1007/s11212-018-9315-3

25: Deborin, A. M. (1935): Nietzsche's Philosophy. Transcript of a lecture from April 3, 1935. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), f. R-5205, op. 1, d. 213, p. 3. Cited in: Sineokaya (2018), pp. 281–282.

26: In Russian: Nietzsche and Fascism.

27: Bykhovsky, B. E. (1942): Nietzsche and Fascism. In: Under the Banner of Marxism, No. 8–9, pp. 120, 123. Cf.: Sineokaya (2018), pp. 280–281.

28: Bykhovsky, B. E. (1942): Nietzsche and Fascism. In: Under the Banner of Marxism, No. 8–9, pp. 112–124. Cited in: Sineokaya (2018), pp. 280–281.

29: (1) Sineokaya, Y. V. (1999): The Reception of Nietzsche's Ideas in Russia: Main Stages, Trends, Significance. In: Friedrich Nietzsche and Philosophy in Russia. Ed. N. V. Motroshilova, Y. V. Sineokaya. St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the Russian Christian Humanitarian Institute, p. 35; (2) Lyutyi, Taras (2017): Nietzsche. Self-Overcoming. Kyiv: Tempora, p. 825.

30: In Russian: The Reactionary Essence of Nietzscheanism.

31: Oduyev, S. F. (1959): The Reactionary Essence of Nietzscheanism. Moscow: Publishing House of the Higher Party School and the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU, p. 4.

32: Oduyev, S. F. (1959): The Reactionary Essence of Nietzscheanism. Moscow: Publishing House of the Higher Party School and the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU, pp. 62–255.

33: Oduyev, S. F. (1959): The Reactionary Essence of Nietzscheanism. Moscow: Publishing House of the Higher Party School and the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU, p. 5.

34: In Russian: On the Paths of Zarathustra.

35: Oduyev, S. F. (1971): On the Paths of Zarathustra. The Influence of Nietzscheanism on German Bourgeois Philosophy. Moscow: Mysl, pp. 7–18.

36: In Russian: History of Philosophy.

37: History of Philosophy (1959): In 6 vols. Vol. 3. Moscow: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, pp. 356–360.

38: In Russian: Philosophical Dictionary.

39: Philosophical Dictionary (1963): ed. by M. M. Rosenthal and P. F. Yudin. Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature, pp. 310–311.

40: In Russian: Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

41: Mikhailov, Al. V. (1974): Nietzsche. In: Great Soviet Encyclopedia. 3rd ed. Vol. 18. Ed. by A. M. Prokhorov. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia. https://gufo.me/dict/bse/%D0%9D%D0%B8%D1%86%D1%88%D0%B5

42: In Ukrainian: Philosophical Dictionary.

43: Philosophical Dictionary (1986): Ed. by V. I. Shynkaruk. 2nd ed., rev. and exp. Kyiv: Main Editorial Office of the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia, p. 449.

44: In Georgian: The Origins of the Ideology of German Fascism (Nietzsche and Fascism).

45: Kutelia, Alexandre (1944): The Origins of the Ideology of German Fascism (Nietzsche and Fascism). Tbilisi: Sakhelgami. For the position of this work in the history of Georgian Nietzsche reception, see: Nietzsche in Georgia (2007). Ed. by Tengiz Iremadze. Tbilisi: Arhe, p. 22. https://dspace.nplg.gov.ge/handle/1234/555461.

46: In Georgian: At the Origins of Modern Bourgeois Philosophy: A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, S. Kierkegaard.

47: Buachidze, Tamaz (1986): At the Origins of Modern Bourgeois Philosophy: A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, S. Kierkegaard. Tbilisi: Metsniereba, pp. 3–6, 76–87.

48: In Georgian: The Problem of the Individual in the Philosophy of S. Kierkegaard and F. Nietzsche.

49: Popiashvili, Avtandil (1988): The Problem of the Individual in the Philosophy of S. Kierkegaard and F. Nietzsche. Tbilisi: Metsniereba.

50: In Estonian: Nõukogude Kool.

51: Eisen, Ferdinand (1980): The Collapse of German Fascist Ideology in the Second World War. In: Nõukogude Kool, No. 5, pp. 4–5. http://www.digar.ee/id/nlib-digar:235792

52: In Lithuanian: Problemos.

53: Burnys, Zenonas (1981): On the Neo-Thomist Critique of F. Nietzsche's Ethics in Lithuania. In: Problemos, Vol. 26, pp. 84–87. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15388/Problemos.1981.26.6295.

54: Of the ten works, nine were candidate dissertations ("кандидатская диссертация" – roughly comparable to a PhD) and only one was a doctoral dissertation ("докторская диссертация" – as a higher academic qualification, roughly comparable to a habilitation), namely the work by Stepan Oduyev. Cf.: Sineokaya, Yulia V. (2018): The Prohibited Nietzsche: Anti-Nietzscheanism in Soviet Russia. In: Studies in East European Thought 70, p. 275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-018-9315-3

55: Sineokaya, Yulia V. (2018): The Prohibited Nietzsche: Anti-Nietzscheanism in Soviet Russia. In: Studies in East European Thought 70, p. 275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-018-9315-3.

56: Ibid.

57: Andreeva, I. S. (1984): Contemporary foreign research on Nietzsche's philosophy: a scientific-analytical reviewMoscow: INION AN SSSR. Cited in: Sineokaya (2018), p. 284.

58: In Russian: Voprosy Filosofii.

59: From the editors (1989). In: Voprosy Filosofii, No. 5, p. 112. https://imwerden.de/pdf/voprosy_filosofii_1989_05__ocr.pdf.

60: Ibid.