Levin, Joseph Davydovich

Born in Warsaw in the family of an accountant. The elder brother of philologist Viktor Davydovich Levin (1915-1997). From 1911 to 1918 he studied at a classical gymnasium in Odessa.

In 1919 he entered the Faculty of Social Sciences of Moscow State University .

In the 1920s, he worked in the People’s Commissariat of the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate of the USSR , the Communist Academy; an active participant in Moscow philosophical circles ^[1] .

In the 1930s and 1940s, he was a senior research fellow at the Institute of Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences . In 1935 he received a Ph.D. in law, in 1939 - a doctor of law.

Son Yuri (1935-2010) - candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, semiotics and literary critic.

He was buried at Pyatnitsky cemetery .

I.D. Levin made a significant contribution to the development of Soviet state law . One of his most important works is the monograph Sovereignty (1948).

I.D. Levin used a class approach to understanding the right of nations to self-determination and state sovereignty . In his opinion, “the question of the self-determination of a nation cannot be posed without regard to the question of the class bearer of the right to self-determination and, thus, the classical content of this right in these specific conditions, with the question of the class nature of the political sovereignty of the nation” ^[2] .

The basis of political sovereignty of any social layer (class), according to I. D. Levin, is property , since the vital interests of any state are primarily economic interests. Any force that undermines the economic condition of any state (for example, leading to de-industrialization, to the decline of agriculture, to the liquidation of energy enterprises, etc.), thereby undermines the basis of the state’s sovereignty.

The researcher believed that the Roman empire of the dominance "was a prototype of a sovereign absolutist state" ^[3] .

Major works

He published about 10 monographs and more than a hundred articles on jurisprudence, while not one of Levine's philosophical works was published during the author's lifetime. ^[four]

• The Ph.D. thesis “Philosophy of Knowledge” (1922), which was highly appreciated by G. G. Shpet, was banned in 1924 after two years of “traveling” to censorship authorities ^[5] . The manuscript was destroyed in 1953 during the " case of doctors " ^[1] .
• The sixth plan is a brief spiritual (philosophical) autobiography, written in 1974-1975, published in the “ Historical and Philosophical Yearbook —91” (M., 1991) ^[1] .
• Compositions. Volume I — II. - M.: Radix, 1994.
• Sovereignty. - St. Petersburg: Legal Center Press, 2003.

• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (06/10/1945)

• Sayings of Levin I. D.