Towards the History of Publishing F. Engels' ‘Dialectics of Nature’: the Beginning of the ‘Dialectification of Natural Science’ in the USSR

The article examines one of the crucial points in the history of the ideologization of Russian science – the publication of ‘Dialectics of Nature’, one of the key Marxist works. The circumstances of the discovery of Engels' manuscripts, the historical context and reaction to their publication among the philosophical and scientific community, and the fate of the first edition of the book are examined in detail.
Particular attention is given to historical figures who had a key role in the fate of the `Dialectics of Nature': D.B. Ryazanov, Eduard Bernstein, Leo Arons, and Albert Einstein.
Based on the analysis of a broad range of sources, some of which were introduced for scientific use for the first time, it is concluded that – similar to the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance in the early 20th century – the period from 1924 to 1929 saw a rediscovery of the works of K. Marx, F. Engels, and V.I. Lenin that were published in Russian in the late 19th – early 20th century and had a very limited audience.