In the wake of Soviet aesthetics

The article is devoted to the problems of the evolution of Russian artistic culture in the light of the aesthetic and methodological searches of the largest Russian and Soviet humanitarian scientist M. S. Kagan at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The scientist sought to overcome the remnants of Soviet ideologized philosophy, but at the same time not to deviate from Marxism. This internal struggle was reflected in his concept of the future of artistic culture, which was supposed to remain a projection of Marxist ideas about normative aesthetics and at the same time meet the challenges of the time (interdisciplinarity, a systematic approach, cultural studies, synergetics, etc.). However, the rapid transformation of modern art culture towards media culture and postmodernism has far outstripped the scientist’s most daring theoretical predictions.