Authors

Discussion

The purpose of my paper is to analyze the character of the official philosophy in totalitarian states. The focus is on Soviet and Putin’s Russia.  I compare Marxist-Leninist philosophy with the contemporary philosophy as represented by the “Moving for the Russian Idea”. I demonstrate that these types of philosophy have a distinct mythical character that can be explained from their functions in a totalitarian state. Because they serve to legitimize and to support the ruling regime, they have to be loyal to it and to justify their ideology and politics. They are only able to do this by creating supporting myths and giving up their tasks of critical thinking. In my paper, I reconstruct the main features of mythical thinking in Russia’s philosophy and develop an ideal of philosophy as a critical and autonomous thinking.