The fundamental question in the Marxist theory of revolution is that of the socioeconomic and class content of a revolution. Under today's conditions this question takes on primary significance and is central to the ideological struggle. Compelled to recognize the role of revolution in the development of society, bourgeois sociologists strive, however, to give the concept of revolution a new content, eliminating its class essence. Inasmuch as the revolution in science and technology now in progress is significantly changing the face (...) of the contemporary world, it is characteristic of leading Western sociologists that they seek to present the changes resulting from the technological revolution as a qualitative change in the existing system, a "transformation" of capitalism. "It is a fact," writes the prominent American sociologist and economist Adolph Berle, "that during and after the First World War the entire world was steeped in revolution, and that its base was substantially more technological than social." Technological and not social changes in society are thus proclaimed to be the most important problem of our time. (shrink)

V.K.: Aleksandr Mitrofanovich, as is well known, 25 December 2001 was the sixtieth anniversary of the reestablishment of the Philosophy Faculty within the structure of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. The Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature was incorporated into MGU. Even before the war you were a student at MIFLI, and after the war ended you returned to what had become the Philosophy Faculty of MGU. Tell us, please, about your youth before the war and about your (...) participation in the Great Patriotic War. (shrink)

The present epoch is one of socialist and national liberation revolutions, an epoch in which more and more peoples are taking the path of socialism. However, the distinguishing characteristic of this period is that world war has ceased to be a fatal inevitability. This means that many problems having to do with the relation of war and revolution must be posed differently than they were when wars were inevitable. The question arises as to the degree to which contemporary revolutionary processes (...) are associated with wars, whether the revolutionary process can develop under conditions of peace among peoples and, if it can, then how? All these questions are at present matters of the most acute ideological struggle. Therefore examination of the question of the relation between war and revolution is not only of theoretical but of practical political interest. (shrink)