Deborin, Abram

(pseudonym of A. M. Ioffe). Born June 4 (16), 1881, in the small town of Upyna, now in Silale Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died Mar. 8, 1963, in Moscow. Soviet philosopher. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929). Born into a petit bourgeois family. Became a Social Democrat in 1903 and was a Menshevik from 1907 to 1917. Member of the CPSU from 1928.

Deborin graduated from the faculty of philosophy of the University of Bern in 1908. Beginning in 1905 he conducted a struggle against Machism. After 1920, he was engaged in research and editorial work and teaching. From 1926 to 1930 he was managing editor of the journal Pod znamenem marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism). In 1935 he began to work in the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In the 1920’s he criticized mechanism in defending materialist dialectics. In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, Deborin and his group, which was in charge of the journal Pod znamenem marksizma, were subjected during debate to criticism for errors; the errors consisted of an underestimation of the Leninist stage of Marxist philosophy, a certain separation of philosophy from practice, and efforts to link the dialectic of Marx to the idealistic dialectic of Hegel.

The resolution of the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik) of Jan. 25, 1931, on the journal Pod znamenem marksizma noted that “on a number of highly important questions” the Deborin group had adopted positions of “Menshevizing idealism” (see “O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati,” Sb. dokumentov, 1954, p. 407). From the 1930’s to the 1950’s, Deborin wrote a series of works on the history of sociopolitical doctrines of modern times and the history of the philosophy of Marxism. Deborin was awarded two orders and also medals.