Is philosophy in Russian possible?

Abstract It seems obvious that under Stalin nothing worthy of the name ‘philosophy’ could ever exist. The XX Congress of the CPSU (1956) which marked the beginning — with Khrushchev's blessing — of efforts to rid Leninism of Stalinism, was also a fresh starting point for philosophical thinking. But, for sure, young people hungry for knowledge didn't stop there, and very soon started to filter Marxism out of Leninism. In the late fifties, the Moscow Methodological Circle, the ‘MMC’ so called, was formed. To begin with, the Circle concentrated exclusively on the works of Marx. It did so, not just because the texts were readily available (besides Marx himself, there were also the works of his ‘predecessors’ — Hegel, Adam Smith and the French socialists of the first half of the nineteenth century), but largely because they incited independent thinking among young philosophers. The works of Marx - namely, the first volume of Capital, critique of Hegel's philosophy of the law (and later, the Economic and philosophical papers of 1844 which were translated into Russian in 1961) were a real eye opener for this generation, which had grown up with Party documents as the only form of spiritual manna. However, loyalty to Marx quickly gave way to the discovery of new masters. Some discovered Hegel, others, Kant, or Husserl. Others still developed an interest in the philosophy of science, while still yet another group took up Marx's critique of society using it to undermine his understanding of history.