34 Facts About Aleksei Losev

Aleksei Fedorovich Losev was a Russian philosopher, philologist and culturologist, one of the most prominent figures in Russian philosophical and religious thought of the 20th century.

Aleksei Losev was named after his maternal grandfather, Aleksei Polyakov; a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Aleksei Losev's father was Fyodor Petrovich Aleksei Losev, a violinist and conductor by avocation and a teacher of mathematics and physics by trade.

Aleksei Losev was schooled in the classics at gymnasium from the age of ten.

Aleksei Losev was little interested in his studies until he was introduced to philosophy.

Aleksei Losev held season tickets to the Bolshoi Theatre where he watched every opera he could.

Aleksei Losev stayed at Moscow Imperial University to prepare for a position as lecturer in Classical Philology.

When Russia erupted in the 1917 February and October Revolutions, Aleksei Losev kept a low profile, spending all of his time writing and studying.

In 1919, Aleksei Losev became a professor of classical philology at the newly opened University of Nizhni Novgorod.

Aleksei Losev found work teaching aesthetics at the State Institute of Musical Science, at the State Academy of Artistic Science, and at the Moscow Conservatory where he was named professor.

Aleksei Losev married Valentina Mikhailovna Sokolova on 5 June 1922; she was a student of mathematics and astronomy who was five years younger than Aleksei Losev.

Aleksei Losev had seen her since 1917 when he began renting a room from her parents in Moscow.

Aleksei Losev wrote eight monograph volumes, beginning the work in 1923.

The series was to conclude with a ninth volume but The Dialectics of Myth caused a great deal of controversy, and Aleksei Losev never finished the final monograph.

In 1930's The Dialectics of Myth, Aleksei Losev rejected dialectical materialism and proposed that myth should be treated on equal terms with physical matter.

On 18 April 1930 Aleksei Losev was arrested and held in solitary confinement in the basement prison of the Lubyanka Building.

Marianna Gerasimova, an investigator with the Joint State Political Directorate, an agency of secret police, was assigned to investigate Aleksei Losev with the goal of proving that he was a leader of the secret religious splinter group called Onomatodoxy, based on the idea that the Name of God is God Himself, and that Aleksei Losev was involved in planning violence against the Soviet government.

Aleksei Losev was indeed associated with Onomatodoxy but his role was theological, not practical.

Gerasimova led a team of investigators who gathered and fabricated evidence over the course of 17 months while Aleksei Losev was held in prison.

In December 1931, Maxim Gorky wrote acidly in Pravda and in Izvestia that he regretted Aleksei Losev was still alive to foul the Soviet air.

Yekaterina Peshkova, formerly an activist with the Political Red Cross and in the 1930s the chair of the follow-on group Assistance to Political Prisoners, worked to free Aleksei Losev, finally succeeding in late 1932 to overturn his conviction.

Aleksei Losev had been very admiring of the famous pianist Maria Yudina.

Aleksei Losev had met with her at his Moscow home in early April 1930, prior to a concert she performed on April 16.

The flawed heroine Aleksei Losev created, Maria Valentinovna Radina, was a woman musician who spouted high-minded philosophy but slipped to lower standards in her personal life.

In 1943, Aleksei Losev was awarded a doctorate degree in the classics honoris causa: from the mass of work previously accomplished.

From 1942 to 1944, Aleksei Losev taught at Moscow University and from 1944 on at the Moscow State Pedagogical University.

Aleksei Losev published some 30 monographs between the 1950s and 1970s.

Aleksei Losev was even awarded the USSR State Prize in 1986 for his eight-volume History of Classical Aesthetics, two years before his death.

Katsis compared Aleksei Losev's supposed relationship with Stalin to the relationship between Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Hitler, with Rosenberg helping to shape Hitler's ideology.

Aleksei Losev said the antisemitic statements listed in Gerasimova's politically motivated investigation from 1930 to 1931 could not be trusted as originating from Losev.

Aleksei Losev's defenders characterized him as a principled critic of all religions including Protestantism, Judaism, and his own orthodoxy, and said that he was never anti-Jew.

Aleksei Losev was said to be in approval of Communist totalitarianism even while he freely criticized the emptiness of Communist ideology.

Aleksei Losev found the issue to be more nuanced than he previously thought, and agreed that "all attempts to distort" Losev's legacy were "politically motivated".

Aleksei Losev entered into the controversy raging within Eastern Orthodoxy over the nature of the Name of God, siding with and clearly articulating the Imiaslavie position which was at odds with the official stance taken by the Russian Orthodox Church.