The Moscow Methodological Circle was a philosophical, cultural, and political phenomenon which took part in the rebirth of the study of logic in the USSR, vastly influenced Soviet economy, and still has its place in today’s Russian politics. It originated from the Moscow Logical Circle, which was created in the late 1950s by Aleksandr Zinov’ev, Boris Grušin, Merab Mamardashvili, and Georgij Ščedrovickij, at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Moscow. The leader of the group was Zinov’ev, a PhD student at that time, who became a prominent researcher in many-valued logic (see, e.g. (Zinov’ev 1963)).
The study of logic in the USSR had been made possible again in 1946 - after being de facto banned since 1917 because outside of party and class interests. Stalin himself gave to logic studies a push with his articles on linguistics (Stalin June 20, July 4, and August 2, 1950) in Pravda, the daily newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Stalin had already showed an interest in logic in 1942, when he secretly asked philosopher Valentin Asmus to train a group of Red Army officers in formal logic (Roccucci 2024). Naturally, as soon as mathematical logic entered the scene, a major philosophical problem emerged in Soviet academia: its reconciliation with the dialectical logic that Marxism had inherited from German idealism. For this reason, the original aim of the Circle was to study the dialectical logic of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. But soon logic gained an entire new role: it became the sanctuary for those professors and students of philosophy who were looking for a research field free from the official government-imposed ideology (Roccucci 2024).
Nevertheless, the original Circle did not last long: a contrast between Zinov’ev - who preferred to keep studying logic formally - and Ščedrovickij - who wanted to develop logic as a theory of thought in process - led to its collapse in 1954. Ščedrovickij later re-created the group as the Moscow Methodological Circle, now with a focus on the connection between logic and psychology, departing the group’s attention also from dialectical materialism, and moving it to non-marxist philosophers, such as Cassirer, Husserl, and Popper (Roccucci 2024). This was possible due to the new wave of (quite moderate) academic freedom that sparked after Nikita Chruščëv became the Secretary of the CPSU in 1953. Despite some problematic episodes, such as the censorship of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, the Chruščëvian era was in fact one of generalised cultural rebirth in the Soviet Union. This period lasted until Chruščëv was ousted from power in 1964 by Leoníd Bréžnev, who brought back dogmatism and intolerance, repressing the cultural movements that had emerged in the previous years. This had direct repercussions also on the members of the Circle: Ščedrovickij was expelled from the CPSU in 1968 for speaking in favor of the authors of a samizdat’, that is, an unofficial publication of censored material that got hand-passed from reader to reader (see (Johnston 1999)).
Despite this, Georgij Petrovič Ščedrovickij surely did not have the profile of the typical dissident, and was instead to became later an insider in Soviet power circles, well known for his mysterious and charismatic personality, that led one of his students to compare him to Master and Margarita’s Woland (Rindzevičiūtė 2015). Aside from being the greatest love story ever told, Michail Bulgàkov’s Master and Margarita is the book on intellectual dissidence in the USSR. It was written from 1928 to 1940, during the Stalin era, and circulated as a samizdat’ until 1966. The story goes like this: the devil, Woland, arrives in Moscow, ensuing chaos among Soviet society. The Master, a writer, has created a manuscript about Pontius Pilate, which leads to his persecution and eventual retreat into a mental institution. Before this, the Master and Margarita had lived together in happiness, deeply in love. However, the Master’s troubles begin when his manuscript is rejected, leading him to burn the manuscript in despair. Margarita, devastated by the Master’s disappearance, longs to be reunited with him. When Woland, the devil, arrives in Moscow with his retinue, chaos ensues. Margarita encounters Woland and his entourage, including the sinister cat Behemoth and the enigmatic Azazello. Woland offers Margarita a chance to find the Master if she agrees to serve as the queen of a surreal ball hosted by him, where she meets various damned souls, including Frida, a woman tormented by guilt for having killed her child. Frida’s anguish is palpable, and Margarita feels deep compassion for her. Woland grants Margarita a wish. Instead of using it to reunite with the Master, Margarita selflessly chooses to save Frida from her eternal torment. Woland, impressed by Margarita’s compassion and selflessness, ultimately helps her reunite with the Master anyway. But the Master cannot live without his manuscript, as this loss consumes him. Understanding this, Woland claims: “manuscripts don’t burn”, forging the greatest line in Soviet dissident literature, and restores the work that had been thought lost forever, so that the Master and Margarita are finally able to live together in peace. Just to say to what kind of character students compared Ščedrovickij: devilish, charismatic, decisively effective - the representation of the arbitrariness and opacity of power. Going back to our story, we should say that the oppression of the Bréžnevian era hit also Zinov’ev, the noble father of the moscovian Circle: he was exiled from the USSR in 1978 after the publication of his Yawning Heights, a satiric novel on Soviet society which brought him at the apex of dissident writers, second only to Aleksandr Solženicyn.
Despite this climate repression, the members of the Circle managed to find an intellectual and practical space for developing their ideas in the spectrum between dissidence and orthodoxy. This approach characterised the methodologists in the period between 1964 and 1985. In these twenty years, Ščedrovickij led the group to develop a theory of thought as an embodied activity, always looked at as a part of a system. Accordingly, they developed a “methodology”, intended as a mean of formulating and coordinating group goals via formal scientific tools. Therefore, the methodologists started looking at decision theory and game theory, but they adopted an entirely different approach from the one developed in the West by institutions like the RAND Corporation. In fact, Ščedrovickij remained committed to the Marxian idea that scientific knowledge should be action‑oriented (Rindzevičiūtė 2015). This approach brings him closer to western behavioral economics, and led to the development of a peculiar notion of governance, based on an embodied and collective reason, that could be expanded via social and communicative activities. The Circle applied this approach to Soviet economy in collaboration with the government, becoming one of the most important management and consulting groups in Soviet planned economy. In particular, they started developing organisational activity games for the managers of state-owned corporations, factories, ministries, party bureaus, which approached Ščedrovickij and the methodologists to see their governance problems resolved. The games were seminars lasting several days, with the participation of groups ranging from fifty to two hundred people (Roccucci 2024). Under the direction of the methodologists, the managers involved discussed some the concrete problem, analyzing the situation, determining the objectives, and examining the dynamics that sparked among them, before proposing a solution. This way, Ščedrovickij became the most important consultant, or “management guru”, as Rindzevičiūtė calls him, in the Soviet Union, conducting throughout the 1980s almost one hundred training sessions.
Ščedrovickij continued to develop and spread his ideas trough perestroika, the liberalisation of Soviet economy started in 1985, and the fall of the USSR in 1991, bringing them into the new Russian market economy. After his death in 1995, his followers, above all his son Pëtr, were invited by Prime Minister Sergej Kirienko to apply the methodology to the new landscape of Russian politics, effectively making the m the spin doctors of the coalition that brought Vladimir Putin to win the 1999 elections. During the electoral campaign, Pëtr Ščedrovickij led an organisational game designed to overcome the conflicts among the leaders of the coalition (Roccucci 2024), and in 2005 he was appointed director‑general for strategy at the Russian nuclear authority Rosatom (Rindzevičiūtė 2015). To this day, he continues to train Russian managers, and to spread the methodologists’ ideas in Russian society.
Bibliography
Johnston, Gordon. 1999. “What Is the History of Samizdat?” Social History 24 (2): 115–33.
Rindzevičiūtė, Egle. 2015. “The Future as an Intellectual Technology in the Soviet Union: From Centralised Planning to Reflexive Management.” Cahiers Du Monde Russe 56 (1): 113–34.
Roccucci, Adriano. 2024. “The Methodological School of Moscow.” Limes, no. 1, 199–216.
Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovič. June 20, July 4, and August 2, 1950. “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics.” Pravda, June 20, July 4, and August 2, 1950.
Zinov’ev, Aleksandr. 1963. Philosophical Problems of Many-Valued Logic. Dordrecht, Holland,: D. Reidel Pub. Co.