On the conformity of Soviet ontology with the ideas of V.I. Lenin

The subject of the study is Soviet ontology, as well as the relationship of ontology with epistemology, reflected in the definition of matter. The traditional point of view is that Soviet philosophy corresponds to the ideas of V.I. Lenin. It is argued, for example, that Soviet ontology is a development of the ideas formulated in the work "Materialism and Empirio-criticism." However, the study of his later works suggests the need to reconsider this view. The author discusses the ontological ideas of V.I. Lenin's work "Philosophical Notebooks", which was written later than the work "Materialism and empirio-criticism". The emphasis is placed on V.I. Lenin's attitude to the interrelation of the categories of being and non-being, which in Soviet philosophy was officially characterized as idealistic. The relationship between being and non-being must be taken into account in the ontological definition of matter. The research method is dialectical-materialistic methodology. Attention is drawn to the existence of contradictions in Soviet philosophy on this issue at the official and unofficial levels. The main conclusions of the conducted research are the following. It is argued that the problem under consideration is of fundamental importance for materialistic philosophy, since the categories of being and non-being are of the same order as the category of matter. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that it shows the possibility of another variant of the development of dialectical materialism. This option was suggested by many philosophers, but it was never brought to its logical conclusion. Taking into account the role of the categories of being and non-being in the system of ontological categories fundamentally changes the content of materialism. If in Soviet ontology the category of non-existence was officially considered meaningless and unrelated to materialism, then the article shows that the problem of non-existence is essential for understanding matter. At the same time, ontology is freed from the influence of epistemology, characteristic of Soviet philosophy, which consists in replacing the meaning of the category "matter" with the content of the category "objective reality". It makes sense to distinguish between Soviet or traditional dialectical materialism and dialectical materialism as such.