Levant and Oittinen provide a window into the subterranean tradition of 'creative' Soviet Marxism, which developed on the margins of the Soviet academe and remains largely outside Western contemporary theory. With his 'activity approach', E.V. Ilyenkov, Soviet Marxism's principal figure in the post-Stalin period, makes a substantial contribution toward an anti-reductionist Marxist theory of the subject, which will be of interest to contemporary theorists who seek to avoid economic and cultural reductionism as well as the malaise of postmodern relativism.