In publishing the articles by A. Tsipko and V. Pechenev in this issue, we hope that the problems they raise concerning the renewal of a Marxist-Leninist conception of man will attract attention. Of course one cannot agree with all the positions presented. But considering that many of the ideas discussed by the authors are reflected in debates taking place in society, we think their publication will be useful and hope that the polemic will continue.

Glasnost', a mechanism of self-awareness ratified by resolutions of the Nineteenth Ail-Union Party Conference, is needed in all things, and that includes acquiring a knowledge of the intellectual history of society.

The present-day debates on socialism are one of the features of the intellectual crisis we are living through. We usually speak and write on this topic without giving ourselves the trouble to think or know something about the subject. Today everyone argues about socialism. But up till now no one has seen to it that the purity of the notion, without which this whole argument loses sense, is preserved. Few of those who intimidate us with the Gehenna of capitalism are (...) aware of what socialism is and what it defends in practice. People do not know elementary things, do not know that Marxism is only a step in the development of the teaching on socialism. They do not know that there have been no socialist values and ideals distinct from the values of humanism, that Marxism is connected with socialism only through one aspect, that the whole of it consists in the teaching on possible conditions and means for building up happiness for people. By and by, due to this reason, the present-day crisis of the Marxist teaching on the salvation of Man and civilization can by no means be considered as the crisis of the very idea of socialism, leave alone its ideals. If one road leads to a dead end, then people will return back and start looking for another. Indeed, "he who seeks, finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.". (shrink)