Abstract
Alexandre Kojève declared himself a Stalinist. This declaration has puzzled his own students from the inter-war period and many later commentators. The present article takes Kojève at his word; its imaginative thrust is to cast Kojève’s declaration in the context of a more comprehensive reflection on revolution and the revolutionary project undertaken by Stalinism. Kojève envisages revolution as completing history and ushering in a new era, whose exact contours appear paradoxical, since the end of history is also the end of humanity. This conception of history Kojève associates with Hegel. At the same time Kojève suggests that revolution may never be complete but remains a continuous striving for an end that is always “underway.” This conception of history Kojève associates with Kant and, ultimately, with the universal and homogeneous state and, by extension, with the historical Stalinist state as well. Such a state expresses a skeptical attitude to revolution in terms of both its possibility and perhaps even its desirability.
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Notes
As I note below, this article looks to Kojève as offering a way of thinking Stalinism and does not purport to offer a detailed scholarly account of Kojève’s views on historical Stalinism and the Soviet Union more generally. Such an account would include an extensive engagement with a very long (over 900 manuscript pages) and as yet unpublished Russian text from 1940–1941 available to me only in an almost indecipherable manuscript version—that is, Sophia, Philosophy and Phenomenology—in addition to broader biographical research Alexei M. Rutkevich has published, containing several brief excerpts of this large text with an informative introduction to it. See Kojève (2007) and Kojève (2014). As of this date, the manuscript has been transcribed, and a French translation has been prepared by Rambert Nicolas.
I understand that historical Stalinism is an extraordinarily complex phenomenon, which cannot be simplified or reduced to the imaginative construction of Kojève’s thought I offer here. My intent is rather more humble: to present a particular reading of Stalinism as Kojève may have considered it, or as I can glean from Kojève’s writings and his enigmatic claims of fidelity to Stalin. I have canvassed many of Kojève’s texts, excluding, however, most of his major Russian text from 1940 to 1941—Sophia, Philosophy and Phenomenology—for the reasons I set out in my previous note.
Kojève (1968, p. 167). I have cited the French text in my translation, where there is no corresponding or easily available English translation as is the case here.
Kojève insists that atheism is the proper end of Christianity: Kojève (1968, pp. 241, 256, 300).
Also note, a passage on p. 142 of the same volume: “At the farthest limit, the citizen of the universal and homogeneous State achieves his “private” ends in acting on behalf of the “universal” good of the State and achieves this end acting in his own interest. But this is only a limit case that presupposes an absolute homogeneity.”
Schmitt refers to this element in terms of the relation of friend to enemy, but I would say that enmity is much more important in the process of community creation than friendship, for a community depends on a hostile other for its identity.
Kojève insists that atheism is the proper end of Christianity. See Kojève (1968, pp. 241, 256, 300).
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Love, J. Stalin with Kant or Hegel?. Stud East Eur Thought 76, 59–74 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09541-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09541-1