Dialectics of individual and social in the concepts of the meaning of life by Russian thinkers of the Soviet period

The article analyzes the main milestones in studying the problems of the meaning of life by Russian scientists of the Soviet period. It is not only a criticism of teachings that are outside of Marxist methodology, subjecting the individual to external forces, but also an analysis of the meaning of life from the perspective of individual comprehensive development with the simultaneous importance of the social factor; understanding of the meaning of life as a dialectical interweaving of the individual and the social, as a result of personal reflexivity and searches derived from dissatisfaction with reality, which perceived as a life goal, and characterized by teleonomism, intentionality, imperativeness, the concrete historical framework. Special attention we pay to the works of the 1980s, in which the sociological approach was widely used, and made it possible to apply a more differentiated approach to the study of the meaning of life.