The aim of Soviet IFN was a complete Marxist-Leninist history of philosophy. This project was understood, firstly, as the reproduction of the historical process of philosophy, and, secondly, as a Marxist-Leninist science of that process, i.e. an explanation in terms of laws or regularities [Ch.4.iii].² This points to a division of labor in IFN between presentation and interpretation, already noticed by Ballestrem in 1963, but it leaves unaffected the claim to a scientific understanding of an objective process.³ One of the consequences of this claim is the idea of a definitive account and explanation of that process, reflected by the project of a universal history of philosophy [Ch.3.ii–iv].