This essay by Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov (1924–79), “On the Coincidence of Logic with Dialectics and the Theory of Knowledge of Materialism,” was published in his most widely known work, Dialectical Logic: Essays on Its History and Theory (first edition in Russian, 1974). The English translation by H. Campbell Creighton is from the edition published by Progress Publishers, Moscow 1977. In this adapted essay, Ilyenkov discusses the idea of the coincidence of dialectics, logics, and theory of knowledge, which was one of the hallmarks of the Ilyenkovian current in post-Stalin Soviet philosophy. Originally, the idea was jotted down by V. I. Lenin in his Philosophical Notebooks when he was reading G. W. F. Hegel in 1914 and 1915, as a critique against the separation of the theory of knowledge from other fields of philosophy.
Ilyenkov was one of the most important and controversial Soviet Marxist philosophers. He contributed substantially to the Marx Renaissance that emerged in the so-called Thaw Period and aimed at the reconstruction of Marx’s original methodology. In 1960, his first book, The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s “Capital,” was published, to be followed by important articles and studies on the concept of the ideal and on problems of dialectical logic. Ilyenkov was known as an ardent critic of technocratic tendencies in the Soviet Union. He stressed that socialist society should express humanist values and not merely be an engineering project. Although Ilyenkov had constant problems with the Soviet philosophical establishment, which viewed his innovatory ideas with suspicion, he did not regard himself as a dissident and remained a member of the Party. He died by his own hands on March 21, 1979.