Meeting the Soviet Philosophers

I make no claim to being an “area specialist” on the Soviet Union, but for many years I have read the literature on Soviet society and ideology. For several years I attended courses in the Russian language, and acquired a stuttering knowledge. My hope in going to the Soviet Union was to do what I had once done in Japan—namely, to engage in discussions with its philosophers, sociologists, and students, to speak with them while their doubts and searchings had not yet been blue-pencilled out of existence by editorial committees, administrators, and bureaucrats. I was to find that it took a month or more to learn in the Soviet Union what needed only a week in Japan. One could meet readily in Japan, for instance, with a variety of factions in the Zengakuren, but in the Soviet Union my meetings with free student circles had to be arranged with caution. Where Marxist professors in Japan would speak freely of their different tendencies, among Soviet professors there was a cond...