Pyotr Nikolayevich Fedoseyev (1908–1990) was a Soviet philosopher and public figure, an Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences and a Hero of Socialist Labor. He was born on August 22, 1908 (August 9, Old Style), in the selo of Starinskoye in Sergach Uyezd of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate (now Pilninsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region). He spent most of his life in Moscow, but his Nizhny Novgorod roots determined his first steps in scholarship: it was in Gorky that he received his first higher education.[1]

Education and the Beginning of His Scholarly Career

In 1930, Fedoseyev graduated from the Gorky Pedagogical Institute, where, in the social and economic department of the faculty of education, he was approved as a promoted candidate for training as a teacher of philosophy.[1] In 1936, he completed postgraduate studies at the Moscow Institute of History and Philosophy, defending a candidate's dissertation in philosophy titled "The Formation of the Philosophical Views of F. Engels." He defended his doctoral dissertation, "Marxism-Leninism on Religion and Its Overcoming," in 1940.[1] From 1936 to 1941, he worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences.[2]

Scholarly and Party Work

From 1941 to 1955, Fedoseyev worked in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)/CPSU: he headed the editorial boards of the journals Bolshevik (until July 1949, when he was removed by a Central Committee resolution) and Partiynaya Zhizn (Party Life), and chaired the Department of Dialectical Materialism at the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee.[1] During the Great Patriotic War, he served as a senior political officer and was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, First Class (1945).[1]

From 1955 to 1962, he was director of the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1959 to 1967, he was Academician-Secretary of the Department of Philosophy and Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1962–1967 and 1971–1988, he was a vice president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, overseeing its humanities division. From 1967 to 1973, he was director of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee.[2] After the fire at the Library of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1988, he left the post of vice president and worked as an adviser to the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences for the rest of his life.[1]

Fedoseyev's scholarly works deal with problems of historical materialism, scientific communism, and scientific atheism, and with the critique of bourgeois philosophy and sociology. He was elected a member of the CPSU Central Committee at the 22nd through 27th Party Congresses and a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 6th through 11th convocations; he chaired the Commission on Public Education, Science, and Culture of the Soviet of Nationalities.[2]

Recognition and Awards

Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1960 (corresponding member from 1946). Hero of Socialist Labor (1978). Winner of the Lenin Prize (1983). Awarded the K. Marx Gold Medal of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1981).[2] Awarded four Orders of Lenin (1967, 1971, 1975, 1978), the Order of the October Revolution (1983), the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (1945), four Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1944, 1945, 1958, 1988), and the Mongolian Order of Sukhbaatar (1982).[1] He was an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1972), the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, and the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. From 1958 he served as chairman of the board of the Society of Soviet-Hungarian Friendship.[2]

Final Years and Remembrance

He died on October 18, 1990, in Moscow. He was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery; his wife, Larisa Georgiyevna Fedoseyeva-Bukhartseva (1926–1995), a Doctor of Philological Sciences, was interred with him.[2]

Sources

  1. moypolk.ru — Immortal Regiment. Nizhny Novgorod. Fedoseyev Pyotr Nikolayevich
  2. novodevichiynecropol.narod.ru — Fedoseyev Pyotr Nikolayevich (1908–1990)
  3. moypolk.ru — Immortal Regiment. Nizhny Novgorod. Fedoseyev Pyotr Nikolayevich (archive)