Publication Details

Abstract

The essay teuches the problems of the history of Marxist philosophy and of the history of social sciences in Slovakia. The author has written it on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Fridrich Engels’ birth. The main intention of this essay is to follow, from the beginning of this century and especially after the year 1918, the penetration of Engels’ particular works and thoughts to Slovakia, what kind of influence they acquired and what kind of role they played in the gradual development of Marxist thinking. It examines historically which works and thoughts of Engels’ theoretical work were most effective in particular stages of development of Marxist thinking in Slovakia and what the circumstances, conditions and results of this influence were like. The centre-of-gravity of this essay consists in especially in having collected and summarized the facts about these problems and in their adequate historical interpretation. It follows from the factual material that at first some of Engels’ works began to penetrate to Slovakia relatively most intensively in the first half of the twenties by means of the Communist press. They penetrated here together with particular works and thoughts of K. Marx and V. I. Lenin. The first work by F. Engels to be separately published in Slovak in 1924 were his „Principles of Communism“. In that time, besides „Communist Manifeste“ Engels’ work „The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State“ was relatively well-known; in the early twenties it was translated into Czech by Bohumír Šmeral, who wrote about it for the Slovak Communist press. In the thirties the founders and contributors of the magazine DAV were the formost propagators of Marxist theory. The author also follows briefly the history of penetration of Engels’ works after the year 1945, when much more favourable social conditions for spreading and development of Marxist theory were introduced also to Slovakia in result of national-democratic revolution. In this connection the author deals also with the historical influence and importance of the foremost Slovak philosopher I. Hrušovský’s book „Engels as Philosopher“, written and published in Bratislava in the years 1945 — 1946.