The paper is about the roots of one of the most impressive phenomena of Russian XX century thought, the Moscow Methodological Circle (MMC) for almost forty years led by G. P. Schedrovitsky. It is based on three hypotheses: (1) the development of the school took place as constructivization, operationalization and instrumentalization of Hegelian and Marxian logic the return to serious study thereof in the Soviet philosophy was connected to the name of E. V. Ilyenlov, (2) the key role in this

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... ent was played by the thesis of A. A. Zinovyev on the "method of ascension from abstract to concrete" in the Capital by K. Marx, and (3) the main novelty of Zinovyev was his rejection of the principle of identity of thought and being, which is a sort of second (after Kant) "Copernican revolution" in thinking. The main body of the paper is a synopsis of the first chapter of the mentioned thesis of Zinovyev with our comments showing how seminal ideas of Zinovyev develop into a huge tree of the methodology of Schedrovitsky and the MMC. There is a comprehensive list of texts by Schedrovitsky, published and archival, which should be further studied to reconstruct the history of the MMC. In the end of the paper one of the controversial question is discussed – on the nature of an act of thinking (based on the texts by V. V. Davydov, a psychologist of the same mental circle, and on comments to it by Schedrovitsky).