Abstract

The fact that this study of Russian dialectical materialism originally appeared before the demotion of Stalin should not be allowed to obscure its value as a source book in the development of dialectical materialism in the U.S.S.R. The author notes its limitations in the preface to the second edition and remedies the situation somewhat in a second appendix with an account of significant developments from 1950 to 1958. Each of the two major parts of the main text, the first historical the second systematic, is marked by the author's capacity for terse and pointed analysis of his material.—R. H. K.