And at Lunacharsky he was the leader. Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilievich - biography

Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilyevich, Soviet statesman, one of the creators of socialist culture, writer, critic, art critic, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1930). Member of the Communist Party since 1895. Born into the family of a high-ranking official. As a high school student, he joined the Marxist self-education circle of an illegal general student organization in Kyiv (1892), and conducted propaganda in workers’ circles. In 1895-98 - in Switzerland, France, Italy; took a course in philosophy and natural science at the University of Zurich; studied the works of K. Marx, F. Engels, as well as the works of the classics of French materialism of the 18th century and German idealistic philosophy of the 19th century; became close to the Liberation of Labor group. From 1898 he carried out revolutionary work in Moscow; in 1899 he was arrested, exiled to Kaluga, then transferred to Vologda, Totma (1900-04). The end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries for L. was a period of internally contradictory process of developing a Marxist worldview and passion for the idealistic philosophy of R. Avenarius, which was later reflected in his philosophical views and aesthetic views: on the one hand, emphasizing the role of subjective and biological factors, the influence empirio-criticism (“Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics”, 1904), on the other hand, highlighting social and class criteria (“Marxism and Aesthetics. Dialogue about Art”, 1905). After the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP (1903) Bolshevik. In exile he carried out propaganda work. Collaborated in periodicals. In 1904, L., at the suggestion of V.I. Lenin went abroad, joined the editorial staff of the Bolshevik newspapers “Forward” and “Proletary”, and actively participated in the fight against Menshevism. He worked under the leadership of Lenin, who highly valued L.'s literary and propaganda talent. At the 3rd Congress of the RSDLP (1905), he made a report on the armed uprising, and participated in the work of the 4th Congress (1906). Representative of the Bolsheviks at the Stuttgart (1907) and Copenhagen (1910) congresses of the 2nd International. In 1904-07, L. played a major role in the struggle for Lenin’s revolutionary tactics. At the same time, there were serious philosophical differences between him and Lenin, which deepened during the years of reaction of 1908-10. L. joined the “Forward” group, became a member of the faction of party schools on the island of Capri and in Bologna, under the influence of the philosophy of empirio-criticism, he preached the ideas of God-building (“Religion and Socialism”, vol. 1-2, 1908-11; “Atheism”, 1908 ; "Pistinism and individualism", 1909). Lenin's political and philosophical errors were sharply criticized by Lenin in his work “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.” However, in aesthetics, L. remained a consistent defender of realism, a critic of decadence, a supporter of the connection between art and the ideas of socialism and revolutionary struggle, and a theorist of proletarian art (“Tasks of Social Democratic artistic creativity", 1907; "Letters on Proletarian Literature", 1914; article about the plays of M. Gorky and others).
During the First World War 1914-18 - an internationalist. In May 1917 he returned to Russia, joined the “Mezhrayontsy”, with whom he was accepted into the party at the 6th Congress of the RSDLP(b) (1917). In the October days of 1917, he carried out important assignments of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. After the October Socialist Revolution, in 1917-29, People's Commissar of Education. During the Civil War of 1918-20, he was authorized by the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic at the fronts and in front-line areas. Since September 1929, Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Since 1927, deputy head of the Soviet delegation at the disarmament conference at the League of Nations. In 1933 he was appointed plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Spain. Delegate to the 8th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 16th Party Congresses.
A man of encyclopedic knowledge, an outstanding theorist of art and literature, an original critic, writer and playwright, publicist and speaker, L. made an enormous contribution to the creation of socialist culture. The formation of the Soviet school, the system of higher and vocational education, the restructuring of scientific institutions, theater, cinema, and publishing are inextricably linked with his name. Together with N.K. Krupskaya, M.N. Pokrovsky and others developed the basic issues of the theory and practice of public education. L. did a lot to unite the old intelligentsia around the Soviet government and the Communist Party, to create a new intelligentsia from among the workers and peasants. In his work and activities, a large place was occupied by such problems as culture and socialism, the intelligentsia and the revolutionary people, the relationship between the party, state and art, the tasks and methods of party leadership in the artistic sphere, the importance of cultural heritage for the literature and art of the victorious working class. Defending the position that the proletariat is the sole heir to all the cultural values ​​of the past, rebuffing nihilistic leftism, L. closely linked the issues of mastering the artistic heritage with the problems of proletarian, socialist art and literature. L. was the first major theorist and critic of Soviet art. He played a major role in the formation and development of Marxist aesthetics and art criticism, and made a huge contribution to the struggle for the ideological richness and artistic diversity of socialist art. In L.'s articles and speeches, for the first time, correct assessments of many Soviet artists, literary groups and artistic movements were expressed. In L.'s works, acute socio-political characteristics are combined with a subtle aesthetic analysis of works of art. L. was one of the first to point out the importance of Lenin’s epistemological and historical principles for all art, systematized Lenin’s statements about literature (“Lenin and Literary Studies,” 1932) and substantiated a new method of Soviet art (“Socialist Realism,” 1933). L.'s meetings with foreign artists contributed to the rallying of progressive artistic forces around the Republic of Soviets. A personal friend of R. Rolland, A. Barbusse, B. Shaw, B. Brecht and other Western artists, L. “was a universally respected ambassador of Soviet thought and art” (Rolland) abroad.
Works in recent years have testified to Lenin's revision of certain erroneous aspects of his philosophical and aesthetic views.

Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilyevich (pseudonyms - Voinov, Anyutin, Anton Levy, etc.) (November 11, 1875, Poltava - December 26, 1933, Menton, France) - Russian and Soviet political and statesman, art critic, literary critic, playwright, translator, academician of the Academy of Sciences USSR (1930).

Born into the family of a Kyiv official. Already in the gymnasium, at the age of 14, he became acquainted with the ideas of Marxism and, as a high school student, led an underground organization of students from Kyiv secondary schools (200 people), who studied the works of democrats of the 1860s and populists, and organized May meetings. In 1892 he joined the Social Democratic group (1892), worked as an agitator in the working-class quarter of Kyiv. Being politically unreliable, he did not receive permission to study at the capital's universities, so he left for Zurich, where he became a student of the idealist philosopher and empiriocritic R. Avenarius. There he also met P.B. Axelrod and V.I. Zasulich, who were members of the Marxist “Group for the Liberation of Labor”; admired G.V. Plekhanov, who introduced him to the study of classical philosophy, as well as the works of K. Marx and F. Engels.

In 1897 he returned to Russia, was elected a member of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, but was soon arrested and exiled to Kaluga. There he, together with other Social Democrats, especially A.A. Bogdanov, who had a strong influence on him, launched propaganda work. He was arrested again and exiled to Vologda, then Totma (1901-1903). After the Second Congress of the RSDLP he became a Bolshevik. Since 1904 - in exile in Geneva, where he was included in the editorial staff of the newspapers “Forward!” and "Proletarian". In the same 1904 he published his first work - Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics. He was considered a major journalist of the RSDLP; At the III Congress of the RSDLP he spoke out with a justification for the importance of organizing an armed uprising, but even then he had philosophical differences with V.I. Lenin, which became the reason for Lunacharsky’s departure from Bolshevism after participating in the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International in 1907.

Having published his great work Religion and Socialism in 1908, he became the main theorist of “God-building” - a theological and philosophical rethinking of the ideas of Marxism in the spirit of the philosophy of Mach and Avenarius (the justification of a new proletarian religion without God, which actually turned into the deification of the collective and progress). Lunacharsky believed that “Marx’s philosophy is a religious philosophy” and “follows from the religious dreams of the past.”

In December 1909 he became one of the organizers of the group “Forward!” (Bogdanov, G.A. Aleksinsky, M.N. Pokrovsky, V.R. Menzhinsky and others), who acted among Russian political emigrants and opposed the use of the Duma tribune and other semi-legal and legal opportunities for the party revolutionary work of the RSDLP. In his work Philistinism and Individualism (1909), he tried to reconcile Marxism with empirio-criticism and religion, which caused a sharp rebuke from Lenin. In 1910-1911 he took part in factional party meetings and “schools” in Italy.

In 1912 he left the Vperyodists and in 1913 joined the editorial board of the newspaper Pravda. With the outbreak of the First World War, he identified himself as an internationalist and opposed chauvinism in politics and art. The events of 1917 found him in Geneva, where, speaking at a rally on January 9, he argued that “Russia must now take advantage of the powerlessness of the government and the fatigue of the soldiers in order to carry out a radical revolution with the help of the revolution.” After the February Revolution of 1917, leaving his wife and son in Switzerland, he returned to Russia, was a delegate to the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which began on June 3, 1917, but on June 13 he was arrested by the Provisional Government and imprisoned in the Kresty prison. Elected in absentia to honorary chairmen of the VI Congress of the RSDLP (August 1917). On August 8, he was released from prison and introduced to the editorial staff of the newspaper Proletary and the magazine Prosveshchenie. In the October days of 1917 he worked as part of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP(b).

From October 1917 to 1929 - People's Commissar of Education. One of the organizers and theorist of the Soviet education system, higher and vocational training. During the Civil War of 1918-1920, he went to the fronts and campaigned. He did a lot to preserve old architectural and cultural monuments in the context of the construction of a “new way of life.”

He tried to attract the old intelligentsia to cooperation with the Soviet government, to protect scientists from persecution by the Cheka. However, he was involved in the demolition of some cultural monuments and the creation of new ones, dedicated to the figures of the revolution and their predecessors, by remaking them from existing ones. He was a supporter of the organization of the “philosophical steamship” of 1922 (mass expulsion of the largest Russian scientists and thinkers abroad), and the dismissal of old professors from Soviet universities for political reasons. Formerly the author of a huge number of works on various issues of literature, music, history of theater and painting, architecture, anti-religious propaganda, he was unable to prevent and actually sanctioned the destruction of the old Academy of Sciences in the name of creating a Communist Academy as a counterweight to traditional higher education.

Under his leadership, the Soviet education system was reoriented from the acquisition of knowledge to the political indoctrination of new generations in the spirit of communist ideology. Linking the assessment of artistic level with the social criteria of works, an active figure in Proletkult, Lunacharsky became one of the founders of the theory socialist realism. Not always consistent in his views and assessments, often changing them in changing conditions, he nevertheless entered Russian culture as an original thinker, a talented defender of realism in culture and art, a prolific agitator and propagandist, a man of encyclopedic knowledge.

Since 1927 he was involved in diplomatic work: he was deputy. head of the Soviet delegation at the disarmament conference. Headed the Soviet delegation to the League of Nations

In 1929, he left the post of People's Commissar when appointed to the post of Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

In 1933 he was appointed plenipotentiary envoy to Spain, but on the way he fell ill and soon died (in Menton, in the south of France).

The ashes are buried in the Kremlin wall.

Lunacharsky A.V. (1875-1933; autobiography) - b. in Poltava, in the family of an official.

Due to the radical sentiments that dominated the family, very early, in childhood, freed himself from religious prejudices and became imbued with sympathy for the revolutionary movement.

He received his education at the 1st Kyiv Gymnasium.

From the age of 15, under the influence of several Polish comrades, he began to diligently study Marxism and considered himself a Marxist.

He was one of the participants and leaders of an extensive organization of students that covered all secondary educational institutions in Kyiv. At the age of 17, he began to conduct propaganda work among railway workshop workers and artisans.

After graduating from high school, he avoided entering a Russian university and went abroad to study philosophy and social sciences more freely. He entered the University of Zurich, where for two years he worked in natural science and philosophy, mainly in the circle of the creator of the empiriocritical system, Richard Avenarius, while at the same time continuing a deeper study of Marxism under the leadership of Axelrod, and partly G.V. Plekhanov.

The serious illness of his older brother, Platon Vasilyevich, forced L. to interrupt this work.

He had to live for some time in Nice, then in Reims and finally in Paris.

His close acquaintance with Prof. dates back to this time. M. M. Kovalevsky, whose library and instructions L. used and with whom he established very good relations, which were, however, accompanied by constant disputes.

Despite his brother’s serious illness, L. managed to propagate him and his wife Sofya Nikolaevna, now Smidovich, so that they became Social Democrats and later both played a fairly prominent role in the labor movement.

In 1899, L. returned with them to Russia, to Moscow.

Here, together with A.I. Elizarova, the sister of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vladimirsky and some others, he resumes the work of the Moscow Committee, conducts propaganda in workers' circles, writes leaflets, leads strikes along with other members of the Moscow. committee.

As a result of the provocation of A.E. Serebryakova, who was a member of a peripheral organization under Moscow. committee, most of the members of the organization are arrested, as is L. However, after a short period of time, due to the lack of serious evidence, L. is released on bail to his father in Poltava province, and then receives permission to move to Kyiv. Here, in Kyiv, L. begins work again, but an accident, his arrest along with everyone present at a charity talk in favor of students about Ibsen, stops his work.

Two months of imprisonment follow in the Lukyanovskaya prison, where, by the way, L. became friends with M. S. Uritsky.

Barely released from this prison, L. was again arrested in the Moscow case and transported to Moscow, where he remained in the Taganskaya prison for 8 months.

He used this conclusion for intensive work on philosophy and history, especially on the history of religion, which he studied for two years in Paris, at the Guimet Museum. Intensive training and solitary confinement greatly upset L's health. But finally he is released with the prospect of a further administrative sentence and temporary exile to Kaluga.

A close Marxist circle is being created in Kaluga, which, in addition to L., includes A. A. Bogdanov, I. I. Skvortsov (Stepanov), V. P. Avilov, V. A. Bazarov.

Intensive intellectual work was in full swing here; translations of major German works were published with the help of the Marxist-minded young manufacturer D. D. Goncharov.

Soon after the departure of A.A. Bogdanov, L. and Skvortsov began active campaigning in the railway depot, among teachers, etc. At this time, L.’s friendship with the Goncharov family grew.

He moves to their factory "Polotnyany Zavod", works there among the workers and begins his first literary works, published. in the newspaper "Courier". Later, the workers of the linen factory renamed this factory into the "Paper Factory named after L." Finally, L. receives a sentence of three years of exile in the Vologda province. He manages to stay in the mountains. Vologda, which by that time was a very large emigrant center. A. A. Bogdanov already lived here, with whom L. settled.

Disputes with the idealists, headed by Berdyaev, were in full swing here.

People such as Savinkov, Shchegolev, Zhdanov, A. Remizov and many others took an active part in them.

For L., his stay in Vologda was marked mainly by the struggle against idealism.

Here the late S. Suvorov joined the former Kaluga company, which had not broken its connection, and together they published the book “Problems of Idealism” and “Essays on a Rationalistic World Outlook.” This book went through two editions.

L. writes many articles on issues of psychology and philosophy in Education and Pravda, the main goal of which is the same struggle against idealism.

However, at the same time, the entire group is moving away from the interpretation of Marxist materialism that Plekhanov gave.

Thus, not all Social Democrats shared the views of the group, which nevertheless acquired significant weight in the Russian ideological world of that time. A quarrel with Governor Ladyzhensky, accompanied by many curious incidents, throws L. into the small town of Totma, where he is the only exile at that time. Attempts by the local intelligentsia to contact L. are stopped by the menacing shout of the local police officer, and L., together with his wife, A. A. Bogdanov’s sister, A. A. Malinovskaya, lives in almost complete isolation.

Here he wrote all the works that were later published in the collection “Critical and Polemical Etudes.” Here he wrote a popularization of the philosophy of Avenarius.

All the time, L. continues his education in the most energetic way, surrounding himself with books.

At the end of his exile in 1903, L. returned to Kyiv and began work in the then semi-Marxist legal newspaper “Kyiv Responses”. Meanwhile, a split occurred in the party, and the conciliatory Central Committee, headed by Krasin, Karpov and others, turned to L. with a request to support his policy.

However, soon, under the influence of Bogdanov, L. leaves the conciliatory position and completely joins the Bolsheviks.

In a letter from Geneva, V.I. Lenin invited L. to immediately go to Switzerland and take part in editing the center. organ of the Bolsheviks.

The first years of work abroad were spent in countless disputes with the Mensheviks.

L. worked not so much in the magazines “Forward” and “Proletary”, but rather in extensive tours of all the colonies in Europe and reports on the essence of the schism.

Along with political reports, he also spoke on philosophical topics.

At the end of 1904, illness forced L. to move to Florence.

There the news of the revolution and the order of the Central Committee found him to immediately leave for Moscow, which L. obeyed with the greatest pleasure.

Upon arrival in Moscow, L. entered the editorial office. "New Life", and then the legal newspapers that successively replaced it, and conducted intensive oral propaganda among workers, students, etc. Even before this, at the 3rd Party Congress, Vladimir Ilyich entrusted L. with a report on the armed uprising.

L. took part in the Stockholm unification congress. On January 1, 1906, L. was arrested at a work meeting, but a month later he was released from Kresty. However, a little later, serious charges were brought against him, threatening very grave consequences.

According to the advice of the party organization, L. decided to emigrate, which he did in March 1906 through Finland.

During the years of emigration, L. joined Bogdanov’s group and together with him organized the “Forward” group, participated in editing its magazine and was one of the most active leaders of the Vperyod workers’ schools in Capri and Bologna.

At the same time, he published a two-volume work, “Religion and Socialism,” which caused quite strong condemnation from the majority of party critics, who saw in it a bias towards some kind of sophisticated religion.

The terminological confusion in this book provided ample grounds for such accusations.

The time of L.'s stay in Italy dates back to his rapprochement with Gorky, which was reflected, among other things, in Gorky's story "Confession", also quite strictly condemned by V. G. Plekhanov.

In 1911 L. moved to Paris. Here the “Forward” group takes on a slightly different slant, thanks to Bogdanov’s departure from it.

She is trying to create a united party, although her efforts in this regard have been in vain.

At that time, M.H. Pokrovsky, F. Kalinin, Manuilsky, Aleksinsky and others belonged to it. L., who was part of the Bolsheviks. delegation at the Stuttgart International Congress, represented the Bolsheviks there in the section that developed the well-known resolution on the revolutionary significance of the profession. unions.

Here there were quite sharp clashes on this issue between L. and G.V. Plekhanov.

Approximately the same thing happened at the Copenhagen Congress.

L. was delegated there by a group of Russian Vperyodists, but even here he came to an agreement on all the most important points with the Bolsheviks and, at the insistence of Lenin, represented the Bolsheviks in the commission on cooperatives.

And again he found himself in sharp opposition to Plekhanov, who represented the Mensheviks there.

As soon as the war broke out, L. joined the internationalists and, together with Trotsky, Manuilsky and Antonov-Ovseyenko, edited an anti-militarist movement in Paris itself. magazine "Our Word" and others. Feeling it was impossible to objectively observe the events of the great war from Paris, L. moved to Switzerland and settled in Saint-Liège near Vevey. By this time, he became quite close to Romain Rolland and friendship with August Forel, as well as a rapprochement with the great Swiss poet K. Spitteler, some of whose works L. translated into Russian (not yet published).

After the February Revolution, L. immediately went to Lenin and Zinoviev and told them that he irrevocably accepted their point of view and proposed to work according to the instructions of the Bolshevik Central Committee.

This proposal was accepted.

L. returned to Russia a few days later than Lenin in the same order, i.e. through Germany.

Immediately upon arrival, the most vigorous work began to prepare the revolution.

There were no disagreements between L. and the Bolsheviks, but, according to the resolution of the Central Committee of the latter, it was decided that L., like Trotsky, would remain in the Mezhrayontsy organization in order to later join the Bolshevik organization with as many supporters as possible.

This maneuver was successfully completed.

The Central Committee sent L. to municipal work.

He was elected to the city duma and was the leader of the Bolshevik and inter-district factions in the duma. In the July days, L. took an active part in the events that took place, was accused, along with Lenin and others, of treason and German espionage and put in prison.

Both before prison and in prison, an extremely dangerous situation for his life was repeatedly created.

Upon release from prison, during the new Duma elections, the Bolshevik faction grew enormously, and L. was chosen as a commodity. urban heads with the entrustment of the entire cultural side of city affairs to him. At the same time and steadily, L. carried out the most ardent agitation, mainly in the Modern circus, but also in numerous plants and factories.

Immediately after the October Revolution, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party constituted the first council of people's commissars and included L. in it as the people's commissar for education.

When the entire government moved to Moscow, L. chose to stay in Petrograd to work together with comrades Zinoviev, Uritsky and others, who were left there in a dangerous post. L. remained in Petrograd for more than a year, and the People's Commissariat of Education was in charge of M.N. Pokrovsky from Moscow.

During the era of the Civil War, L. constantly had to break away from his People's Commissariat, since he traveled around almost all the fronts of the civil and Polish war as the plenipotentiary of the Revolutionary Military Council and conducted active agitation among the troops and among the residents of the front line.

He was also appointed as a representative of the Revolutionary Military Council in the Tula fortified camp during the most dangerous days of Denikinism.

Working as a party agitator, member of the Council of People's Commissars and People's Commissar for Education, L. continued his literary work, especially as a playwright.

He wrote a whole series of plays, some of which were staged, were and are still being performed in capitals and many provinces. cities. [Since 1929, Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. In 1933, USSR Plenipotentiary Envoy to Spain.

Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1930).] (Granat) Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilyevich (pseudonyms - Voinov, Anyutin, Anton Levy, etc.) - politician, art critic, literary critic, playwright and translator.

Genus. in Poltava in the family of a radical official.

Graduated from high school in Kyiv. At the age of 14 I became acquainted with Marxism.

He was the leader of an underground organization of secondary school students, uniting about 200 people, studying Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, Lavrov, etc., reading illegal socialist democrats. literature, who organized May-wars on boats across the Dnieper.

In 1892, L. joined the social democrats. organization, worked as an agitator and propagandist in the working-class suburbs of Kyiv, participated in the hectographed social-democracy. newspaper.

A "B" in behavior in the high school certificate - the result of the political suspicions of the authorities - blocked Lunacharsky's access to the capital's universities, as a result of which he left for Zurich, where he studied natural science and philosophy for two years under the guidance of the empiriocritic philosopher R. Avenarius.

Abroad, L. met G.V. Plekhanov and other members of the Liberation of Labor group. Returning to Moscow in 1897, L., together with A. I. Elizarova and M. F. Vladimirsky, restored the MK destroyed by the arrests, worked as an agitator and propagandist, and wrote proclamations.

After the arrest, L. was given bail to his father in Poltava.

This is followed by: arrest at a lecture, 2 months in the Lukyanovskaya prison, a new arrest on a warrant from the Moscow secret police, 8 months in solitary confinement in Taganka, temporary deportation to Kaluga and finally exile by court for three years in the Vologda province. After serving his exile, L. moved to Kyiv, and in the fall of 1904, at the call of V.I. Lenin, he came to Geneva.

The Bolsheviks were going through a difficult time at that time. The leading bodies of the party fell into the hands of the Mensheviks, who persecuted Lenin and his like-minded people.

Deprived of the newspapers, who had against them most of the intellectual forces of the social democrats. emigration, the Geneva Bolsheviks were forced to limit themselves to an everyday defensive war with the rampaging Martov, Dan, etc. L. immediately managed to show himself as a great master of speech. “What a wonderful combination it was, when the ponderous blows of the historical sword of Lenin’s indestructible thought were combined with the graceful swings of the Damascus saber of military wit” (Lepeshinsky, At the Turning).

L. became one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks and was a member of the editorial board of GAZ. “Forward” and “Proletary”, at the III Party Congress he read a report on the armed uprising, in October 1905 he was sent by the Central Committee to Russia, where he worked as an agitator and a member of the editorial board. "New life". Arrested on New Year's Day 1906, L. after 1? months prison was put on trial, but fled abroad.

In 1907, as a representative of the Bolsheviks, he participated in the Stuttgart Congress of the International.

When the ultra-left faction of A. A. Bogdanov emerged (the Ultimateists, then the “Forward” group), L. joined this movement, became one of its leaders, participated in the organization of two Bogdanov party schools (in Capri and Bologna), and participated as a representative of the “Forwardists” "at the Copenhagen Congress of the International.

During the days of the imperialist war, Lunacharsky took an internationalist position.

Returning to Russia after the March Revolution of 1917, he joined the inter-district organization, worked together with the Bolsheviks, in the July days he was arrested by the Provisional Government and imprisoned in the "Crosses", then, together with the inter-district members, returned to the ranks of the Bolsheviks.

Since the October Revolution, L. held the post of People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR for 12 years, in addition fulfilling a number of important political assignments of the party and government (during the civil war - tours of the fronts on behalf of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic; in 1922 - acting as one of the state prosecutors at the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries; in recent years - participation as a representative of the USSR in international conferences on disarmament, etc.). Currently, L. is the chairman of the scientific committee of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, a member of the Academy of Sciences, director of the Scientific Research Institute of Literature and Art of the Academy, and executive editor of the Literary Encyclopedia. At the core philosophical quests Lunacharsky lies in the desire to philosophically comprehend his political practice.

However, these searches turned in a clearly wrong direction.

L. tried to combine dialectical materialism with the empirio-criticism of Avenarius, one of the countless varieties of modern bourgeois idealist philosophy.

This attempt culminated in L.’s two-volume work “Religion and Socialism,” where L. tried to prove that “Marx’s philosophy is a religious philosophy” and that “it follows from the religious dreams of the past.” These revisionist philosophical constructions of L. (along with his participation in the famous collection of Russian social-democratic Machists, “Essays on the Philosophy of Marxism,” St. Petersburg, 1908) provoked a sharp rebuff from G. V. Plekhanov, but especially from the Bolsheviks.

The destructive Bolshevik criticism of these constructions is given primarily in V. I. Lenin’s book “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.” In the Central Organ of the Party, articles sharply criticizing L.'s views appeared: “Not on the Road” and “Religion against Socialism, Lunacharsky against Marx.” In his main philosophical work, Lenin examines and criticizes the Machist constructions of L. in connection with the fascination with the bourgeois reactionary philosophical fashion, with those aspirations for an idealistic revision of the philosophical foundations of Marxism, which emerged with particular force after the defeat of the revolution of 1905 in part of the then social democracy. . intelligentsia.

Lenin's irreconcilable attitude towards these trends is well known, which he absolutely rightly regarded as one of the currents of international revisionism, as one of the manifestations of bourgeois influences in the labor movement.

And despite the fact that almost each of the representatives of the Machist revision (including Lunacharsky) spoke, so to speak, in the individual guise of his own “system,” Lenin, with brilliant insight and mercilessness, exposed the individual, tertiary, and often only terminological differences in school labels, the complete unity of the Russian Machists in the main and essential - in their denial of the very foundations of the philosophy of dialectical materialism, in their slide towards idealism, and through this to fideism as one of the varieties of the religious worldview.

Lenin does not make any exception in this regard for L.: “You have to be blind,” wrote V.I., “in order not to see the ideological kinship between Lunacharsky’s “deification of the highest human potentials” and the “universal substitution” of the psychic under the entire physical nature of Bogdanov.

This is one and the same thought, expressed in one case primarily from an aesthetic point of view, in another - from an epistemological point of view" (Lenin, Collected Works, 1st ed., vol. X, p. 292, our discharge). L . worked on a broad theory of art, which he first outlined in 1903 in the article “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics,” reprinted without any changes in 1923. L. proceeds from the concept of the ideal of life, that is, the most powerful and free life in which the organs perceived. if only rhythmic, harmonious, smooth, pleasant; in which all movements would occur freely and easily; in which the very instincts of growth and creativity would be luxuriously satisfied. The ideal of a personality - beautiful and harmonious in its desires, creative and thirsting for an ever-growing life for humanity, the ideal of a society of such people is an aesthetic ideal in the broad sense.

Aesthetics is the science of evaluation - from three points of view: truth, beauty and goodness. In principle, all these assessments coincide, but if there is a discrepancy between them, a single aesthetics distinguishes itself from the theory of knowledge and ethics. Anything that produces an unusually large mass of perceptions per unit of energy expended is aesthetically pleasing.

Each class, having its own ideas about life and its own ideals, leaves its mark on art, which, being determined in all its destinies by the fate of its bearers, nevertheless develops according to its internal laws.

As later, in “Religion and Socialism,” this aesthetic concept was influenced by the very noticeable influence of L. Feuerbach and his greatest Russian follower N. G. Chernyshevsky (see). A number of formulations of “Positive Aesthetics” are extremely reminiscent of the provisions of Chernyshevsky’s “Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality.”

However, the school of empirio-criticism prevented L. from taking from Feuerbachianism its most powerful and revolutionary side - its clear materialist line in the basic questions of the theory of knowledge.

Feuerbachianism was assimilated here by L. mainly from the side of his abstract, ultimately idealistic, ahistorical humanism, growing out of the metaphysicality and anti-dialecticalism inherent in all pre-Marxian materialism.

This circumstance greatly depreciates L.'s interesting attempt to erect the edifice of Marxist art criticism on a broad philosophical basis, taking into account the conclusions of the social and natural sciences. L.'s constant repulsion from vulgarization, simplification, and fatalistic "economic materialism" does not save him from time to time from another type of simplification, the reduction of the phenomena of social life to biological factors.

It is quite obvious that here too L. adopted the main principle. thus the weakest side of Feuerbachianism, namely, the replacement of the concrete historical dialectic of social development, class struggle with a completely abstract category of biological genus - species (for an exhaustive criticism of this feature of Feuerbachianism, see excerpts from “German Ideology”, “Archive of K. Marx and F. Engels” , vol. I). It should be noted that the biology of “Positive Aesthetics” is, to a large extent, not materialistic biology, but only a biologized scheme of L. Avenarius’s empirio-criticism (the theory of “vitality,” “affectional,” etc.). And it is no coincidence that L. completely accepts the formula of the ancient sophist and subjectivist Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things” (see “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics,” 1923, p. 71), this most ancient postulate of all subjective idealism.

Over the past 10 years, L. has renounced a number of his philosophical and aesthetic views.

He corrected his attitudes by studying Lenin's literary heritage and subjecting Plekhanov's literary views to critical revision.

Lunacharsky owns many works on issues of theater, music, painting and especially literature.

In these works, the author’s general theoretical views find development and deepening.

L.'s art criticism performances are distinguished by his breadth of outlook, wide variety of interests, extensive erudition, and lively and fascinating presentation.

L.'s historical and literary activity is based essentially on the experience of a systematic revision of the literary heritage from the point of view of the cultural and political tasks of the proletariat.

Numerous articles about the largest European writers of various classes and eras paved the way for an interesting two-volume course of lectures for students at Sverdlovsk University - “The History of Western European Literature in its Most Important Moments.” By the very conditions of its origin, L.’s “History” could not help but be an improvisation, but an improvisation of an exceptionally well-educated art critic, who in this work was able to develop complex and abundant material as a fascinating, lively and plastic picture of the constant movement and struggle of classes and artistic movements.

L. also did a lot of work to revise the heritage of Russian literature.

The works of Pushkin and Lermontov, Nekrasov and Ostrovsky, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Gorky, Andreev and Bryusov were appreciated in his articles (the most important of them were included in the book “Cast Silhouettes”, M., 1923; 2nd edition, L., 1925). L. is not limited to establishing the social genesis of this or that artist, but always strives to determine the function of his work in the modern class struggle of the proletariat.

Naturally, not all of L.’s assessments are indisputable; emotional perception at times causes certain damage to genuine scientific research.

Lunacharsky is an extremely prolific critic.

His critical articles are characterized by a combination of a scientific approach and temperamental journalism, with an emphasized political orientation.

In this regard, the collection of critical articles from the era of the first revolution, “Responses of Life,” is especially indicative. The passion of a fighter and sharp polemics completely permeate this book, in which there is not a grain of hypocritical bourgeois “objectivism.” L. is one of the instigators of class proletarian cultural construction.

Despite his long closeness to Bogdanov in political and philosophical issues, L. managed to avoid the fundamental political mistakes made by Bogdanov when developing the problem proletarian culture.

L. did not mechanically identify the class culture of the proletariat and the culture of a classless socialist society and understood the dialectical relationship between these two cultures.

Lunacharsky was alien to Bogdanov’s assertion of the equality of the political and cultural movement of the proletariat and was always aware of the leading role of the political struggle in the life of the working class.

Contrary to Bogdanov’s emphasis on the laboratory development of proletarian culture, L. always defended the principle of the mass character of the proletarian cultural movement.

Needless to say, L. was deeply hostile to Bogdanov’s Menshevik thesis that the seizure of power by the proletariat was impossible until a developed proletarian culture had been built.

L. was one of the first to give a detailed formulation of the question of proletarian literature.

The starting point and main basis here was, of course, Lenin’s formulation of the question in the famous article “Party Organization and Party Literature.” The proletarian literary movement in L.'s articles began to theoretically comprehend itself and outline its path. At the beginning of 1907 in the Bolshevik magazine. "Bulletin of Life" appeared a historical article by L. "Tasks of social-democratic artistic creativity" - one of the earliest programmatic statements of proletarian literature, clear and consistent.

L. formulated even more clearly the basic principles of proletarian literature in several “Letters on Proletarian Literature,” which appeared in 1914. The first of these letters was called “What is proletarian literature and is it possible?” L. rightly wrote that not every work about workers, just as not every work written by a worker, belongs to proletarian literature. “When we say proletarian, we thereby say class.

This literature must have a class character, express or develop a class worldview." Refuting the liquidationist theses of the Menshevik A. Potresov about the impossibility of creating proletarian art, Lunacharsky, among other things, pointed to the collections of proletarian poets that had already appeared, to the direct participation of workers in the fiction department of the legal workers' press.

The article ended with the significant words: “The interest of the proletariat in the creation and perception of its own literature is obvious.

The enormous objective importance of this cultural work must be recognized.

The objective possibility of the emergence of the greatest talents among the working class and powerful allies from the bourgeois intelligentsia also cannot be denied... Do wonderful works of this newest literature already exist? Yes. They exist.

Perhaps there is no decisive masterpiece yet; there is no proletarian Goethe yet; there is no artistic Marx yet; but a huge life is already unfolding before us when we begin to get acquainted with socialist literature leading to it and preparing it." At the same time, L. took an active part in organizing abroad the first circles of Russian proletarian writers, among whom were such prominent figures , like F. Kalinin, P. Bessalko, M. Gerasimov, A. Gastev and others. In 1918-1921 Lunacharsky was an active figure in Proletkult.

During the literary and political discussion of 1923-1925, L. did not officially join any of the groups, but actively opposed the capitulators who denied the possibility of the existence of proletarian literature (Trotsky - Voronsky), as well as against the ultra-left trends in the proletarian literary movement (represented by Ch. arr. so-called Napostovskaya "left"). L. participated in the development of a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the party’s policy in the field of fiction. From the founding in 1924 of the International Bureau of Relations of Proletarian Literature (now MORP) to the II international conference Revolutionary Writers (Kharkov, November 1930) L. headed this Bureau. Dramas occupy the most prominent place in Latvian artistic production. L.'s first play, “The Royal Barber,” was written in prison in January 1906 and published the same year. In 1907, Five Farces for Amateurs appeared, and in 1912, a book of comedies and stories, Ideas in Masks. L.'s most intense dramatic activity occurred in the pre-October period.

Lunacharsky's plays are characterized by a wide use of the experience of bourgeois drama from the time of the rise of Western European capitalism.

The philosophical richness of the plays gives them depth and poignancy, but also often makes them controversial, because they often express controversial or clearly erroneous points philosophical views author.

Thus, in the comedy "Babel" the criticism of dogmatic metaphysical thinking is carried out not from the position of dialectical materialism, but from the position of empiriocritical agnosticism (see especially the last lengthy speech of Mercury).

The very idea of ​​the dramatic fantasy "The Magicians" is extremely controversial. In the preface, L. stipulates that he would never dare to put forward the idea of ​​“pan-psychic monism” carried out in the play as a theoretical thesis, because in life he considers it possible to rely only on scientific data, while in poetry any hypothesis can be put forward.

This opposition of the ideological content of poetry to the content of philosophy is of course erroneous.

Much more valuable and interesting are L.'s attempts to create a proletarian historical drama. The first such attempt - "Oliver Cromwell" - raises some fundamental objections.

Emphasizing the historical progressiveness of Cromwell and the groundlessness of the Levellers (albeit depicted with sympathy) contradicts, firstly, the requirement of dialectical materialism (as opposed to bourgeois objectivism) to take a certain point of view social group, and not limiting ourselves to indications of progressiveness or reactionism, contradicts, secondly, the true balance of class forces in the English revolution and in all great bourgeois revolutions.

For only the movement of the “groundless” plebeian elements of the city and countryside gave the struggle such a scale as was necessary to defeat the old order.

The Cromwells, Luthers, Napoleons could triumph only thanks to the Levellers, the peasant wars, the Jacobins and the rabid, who dealt with the enemies of the bourgeoisie in a plebeian manner.

There is reason to present to L.’s drama “Oliver Cromwell” the reproach made by Engels to Lassalle regarding the latter’s drama “Franz von Sickingen”: “What, it seems to me, you have not paid proper attention to is the unofficial plebeian and peasant elements with their corresponding theoretical representation." The second historical drama, Thomas Campanella, is much more indisputable. Among other plays by L., we note the drama “for reading” “Faust and the City” and “Don Quixote Unbound” - striking examples of a new interpretation of age-old images.

The image of Don Quixote serves, for example, to reveal the role of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia in the class struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie.

These plays are characteristic and interesting experiments in the critical processing of the legacy of young bourgeois drama. Many of L.'s plays were repeatedly performed on the stage of various Soviet theaters, as well as in translation and on the foreign stage. Of the plays on Soviet themes, the melodrama “Poison” should be noted. Among L.'s literary translations, translations of Lenau's poem "Faust", a book of selected poems, are especially important. Petofi and K.F. Meyer.

In conclusion, it should also be noted that Lunacharsky is a co-author of a number of film scripts.

Thus, in collaboration with Graebner, he wrote “The Bear’s Wedding” and “Salamander”. Bibliography: I. Books by L. on literary issues: Critical and polemical studies, ed. "Pravda", Moscow, 1905; The Royal Barber, ed. "Delo", St. Petersburg, 1906; Responses of life, ed. O. N. Popova, St. Petersburg, 1906; Five farces for lovers, ed. "Rosehipnik", St. Petersburg, 1907; Ideas in masks, ed. "Zarya", M., 1912; The same, 2nd edition, M., 1924; Cultural Tasks of the Working Class, ed. "Socialist", P., 1917; A. N. Radishchev, the first prophet and martyr of the revolution, Peter's edition. council, 1918; Dialogue on Art, ed. All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Moscow, 1918; Faust and the City, ed. Lit.-ed. Department of Narkompros, P., 1918; Magee, ed. Theo Narkomprosa, Yaroslavl, 1919; Vasilisa the Wise, Guiz, P., 1920; Ivan in Paradise, ed. "Palace of Art", M., 1920; Oliver Cromwell, Guise, M., 1920; Chancellor and mechanic, Guise, M., 1921; Faust and the City, Guise, M., 1921; Temptation, ed. Vkhutemas, M., ІУ22; Don Quixote Unbound, Guise, 1922; Thomas Campanella, Guise, M., 1922; Critical studies, Guise, 1922; Dramatic works, vol. I - II, Guise, M., 1923; Fundamentals of positive aesthetics, Guise, M., 1923; Art and Revolution, ed. "New Moscow", M., 1924; History of Western European literature in its most important moments, part. 1-2, Guise, 1924; Bear Wedding, Guise, M., 1924; Arsonist, ed. "Red Nov", M., 1924; Theater and revolution, Guise, M., 1924; Tolstoy and Marx, ed. "Academia", L., 1924; Literary silhouettes, Guise, L., 1925; Critical Studies, ed. Book sector Lengubono, L., 1925; The fate of Russian literature, ed. "Academia", L., 1925; Critical sketches (Western European literature), "ZIF", M., 1925; Poison, ed. MODPiK, M., 1926; In the West, Giza, M. - L., 1927; In the West (Literature and Art), Guise, M. - L., 1927; Velvet and Rags, Drama, ed. Moscow theater. publishing house, M., 1927 (together with Ed. Stukken);

N. G. Chernyshevsky, Articles, Giza, M. - L., 1928; About Tolstoy.

Sat. articles, Giza, M. - L., 1928; The Person of Christ to modern science and literature (about “Jesus” by Henri Barbusse), Transcript of the dispute between A.V. Lunacharsky and Al. Vvedensky, ed. "Atheist", M., 1928; Maxim Gorky, Guise, M. - L., 1929. II. Kranichfeld V., About critics and one critical misunderstanding, " Modern world", 1908, V; Plekhanov G., Art and public life, Collection works., vol. XIV; Averbakh L., Involuntary review.

Instead of a letter to the editor, "On duty", 1924, 1/V; Polyansky V., A. V. Lunacharsky, ed. "Education Worker", M., 1926; Lelevich G., Lunacharsky, “Journalist”, 1926, III; Pelshe R., A.V. Lunacharsky - theorist, critic, playwright, speaker, "Soviet Art", 1926, V; Kogan P., A.V. Lunacharsky, “Red Niva”, 1926, XIV; Dobrynin M., About some mistakes of Comrade Lunacharsky, “At the literary post”, 1928, XI - XII; Mikhailov L., On some issues of Marxist criticism, ibid., 1926, XVII; Dobrynin M., Bolshevik criticism 1905, “Literature and Marxism”, 1931, I; Sakulin P., Note on the scientific works of A.V. Lunacharsky, “Notes on the scientific works of full members of the USSR Academy of Sciences, elected on February 1, 1930”, L., 1931; Sretensky N.N., Quiet Backwater, rec. at the station "Criticism" in the "Literary Encyclopedia", journal. "At the literary post", 1931, No. 19. III. Mandelstam R., Books by A.V. Lunacharsky, State Academy of Agricultural Sciences, L. - M., 1926; Her, Fiction in the assessment of Russian Marxist criticism, ed. N.K. Piksanova, Giza, M. - Leningrad, 1928; Hers, Marxist Art Criticism, ed. N.K. Piksanova, Guise, M. - Leningrad, 1929; Vladislavlev I.V., Literature of the Great Decade (1917-1927), vol. I, Guise, M. - L., 1928; Writers of the Modern Age, vol. I, ed. B. P. Kozmina, State Academy of Agricultural Sciences, M., 1928. R. K. (Lit. enc.) Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilievich b. November 23, 1875 in Poltava, d. 26 Dec 1933 in Menton (France).

Statesman and public figure, writer, publicist.

He studied philosophy and biology at the University of Zurich, and was self-educated. G.V. Plekhanov and other revolutionary figures.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution, he was an active participant in the construction of the Soviet Union. culture.

In 1917-1929 people. Commissioner for Education, 1929-1933 before. Committee on Scientists and Educational Institutions under the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Since 1929, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was the initiator of many initiatives in the field of music, including the first music in the USSR. competitions (1925, 1927), contributed to the creation of philharmonic societies in Leningrad (1921) and Moscow (1922), a number of muses. groups, societies and committees.

Since 1903 he conducted systematic musical journalism. and kri-tich. activities, publishing in Russian. newspapers articles about the work of composers of the past and present, reviews of performances and concerts.

In Soviet times, he gave reports and speeches in connection with ceremonial music events. events, pronounced introduction for concerts.

Among the most significant works are articles and speeches “The Cultural Significance of Chopin’s Music” (1910), “On Musical Drama” (1920), “Boris Godunov” (1920), “Prince Igor” (1920), “Richard Strauss” (1920 ), "Beethoven" (1921), "About Scriabin" (1921), "The Death of Faust" by Berlioz (1921), "V. V. Stasov and his significance for us" (1922), "On the fortieth anniversary of the activity of A.K. Glazunov" (1922), "On the centenary of the Bolshoi Theater" (1925), "Taneev and Scriabin" (1925), "Fundamentals of theatrical policy Soviet power" (1926), "Franz Schubert" (1928), "Social origins of musical art" (1929), "New paths of opera and ballet" (1930), "The path of Richard Wagner" (1933), "N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov" (1933). L.'s musicological works were repeatedly published in various collections, the most complete of which is "In the World of Music" (M., 1958, 2nd ed. 1971). Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilyevich (1875 -1933). Russian prose writer, critic, literary scholar, prominent statesman and politician.

Genus. in Poltava (now Ukraine), attended a course in philosophy and natural science at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), but formal higher education did not receive it, completely dedicating himself to revolutionary activities (member of the RSDLP since 1895). Member ed. Bolshevik gas. - “Forward”, “Proletary”, was arrested and exiled; active participant Oct. revolution, first People's Commissar of Education of the Soviet Union. pr-va, subsequently held positions before. Scientist at the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, plenipotentiary representative in Spain.

He lived in Switzerland, Italy, France, where he died. One of the organizers of the owls. education system, author of works on revolutionary history and philosophy. thoughts, cultural problems.

Academician Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Among the numerous lit. L.'s inheritance is of interest in allegorical historical. plays with elements of fantasy - “Faust and the City” (1918), trilogy about T. Campanella, ed. in 2 h. - “The People” (1920), “The Duke” (1922); "The Chancellor and the Locksmith" (1922), "Arsonists" (1924); pl. compiled Sat. "Ideas in Masks" (1924). A.L. Lit.: A.A. Lebedev " Aesthetic views Lunacharsky" (2nd ed. 1969). I.P. Kokhno "Character Traits.

Pages of the life and work of A.V. Lunacharsky" (1972). N.A. Trifonov "A.V. Lunacharsky and modern literature" (1974). A. Shulpin "A.V. Lunacharsky.

Theater and Revolution" (1975). "About Lunacharsky.

Research.

Memoirs" (1976). "A.V. Lunacharsky.

Research and Materials" (1978).

Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (November 11, 1875, Poltava, Russian Empire - December 26, 1933, Menton, France) - Russian revolutionary, Soviet statesman, writer, translator, publicist, critic, art critic.

From October 1917 to September 1929, he was the first People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR, an active participant in the revolution of 1905-1907 and the October Revolution of 1917. Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (02/01/1930).

Anatoly Lunacharsky was born into the family of an official. He graduated from the Kyiv Gymnasium and studied at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Philosophy.

In 1899, Anatoly Lunacharsky returned to Russia, engaged in propaganda and literary activities, and was exiled to Vologda. There he met A. Bogdanov, N. A. Berdyaev, A. Remizov, B. Savinkov and others. He became especially close to Bogdanov, whose sister he was married to in his first marriage.

In 1911, Anatoly Lunacharsky moved to Paris, where, together with M. N. Pokrovsky, F. I. Kalinin and others, he created the “Forward” group. Actively participates in polemical battles with the Mensheviks and G. V. Plekhanov on issues of strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle. He returned to Petrograd in May 1917. As part of the “Mezhrayontsy” he joined the RSDLP (b) at the VI Congress in June 1917.

In October 1917, Anatoly Lunacharsky was appointed People's Commissar of Education and became a member of the Council of People's Commissars. But already on November 2 (15), 1917, having learned about the bombing of the Kremlin during the establishment of Soviet power in Moscow, he resigned. She is motivated by the impossibility of coming to terms with the destruction of the most important artistic values, “a thousand victims,” the fierceness of the struggle “to the point of bestial malice,” and the powerlessness “to stop this horror.” The resignation letter was published in the Menshevik “New Life”. However, the Council of People's Commissars did not accept his resignation; Lenin persuaded Lunacharsky to stay. At the same time, A. Bogdanov wrote to Lunacharsky: “I am sad that you got involved in this matter, because for you the disappointment will be much worse.”

Lunacharsky was always disliked by the party elite and never completely trusted him. Lunacharsky himself was well aware of this. He, the only “long-liver” of the Council of People’s Commissars (from October 1917 to 1929), was never a member of the party’s Central Committee. Hence the extreme difficulty in interpreting his position. There is an opinion about Lunacharsky both as a romantic and a utopian, who even in harsh times reminded of the inviolability of the ideals of beauty, love and goodness as the foundations of human life. He is called capricious, vaudeville, and anecdotal. They remember that he resigned eight times after learning about the shelling of the Kremlin, fainted, and that he did not make any compromises. His second marriage was to the actress of the Maly Theater, the famous beauty N.A. Rosenel.

In 1929, Lunacharsky was removed from his post as People's Commissar of Education. This is the year of the “great turning point”, begun by I. Stalin and reflected in the sphere of culture. The People's Commissariat for Education was headed by the military A. Bubnov, who put an end to the eclecticism of the “liberal” Lunacharsky.

September 12, 1929 Lunacharsky is appointed chairman of the Committee for the Management of Scientists and educational institutions Central Executive Committee of the USSR, engaged in literary work. His works on general theoretical issues of culture, especially art, literary criticism, theater studies, aesthetics, and pedagogy are known. He is elected academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

In 1933, Anatoly Lunacharsky was appointed ambassador to Spain. On the way to Menton he died.

Books (12)

Introduction to the history of religion. In 6 popular lectures

We present to the attention of readers a book by the famous Soviet political figure, publicist, critic, art critic, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences A.V. Lunacharsky (1875-1933), dedicated to the history of religion.

The book was based on lectures given by the author in October 1918 in St. Petersburg. The work gives an idea of scientific explanation religious beliefs and their origin, sets out the history of religious beliefs starting from the very first stages of development; two types of religious views are described - metaphysical and historical.

The author examines the main pagan religions - Hindu, Iranian and Hellenic, introduces the reader to the most important moments in the development of the Jewish religion, and then details the history of Christianity up to its modern forms.

Europe in the Dance of Death

The book “Europe in the Dance of Death” takes its rightful place in the literary heritage of A.V. Lunacharsky.

Dedicated to an extremely interesting and difficult period - the first imperialist war, it is a collection of articles and essays, reports from the battlefields, as well as recordings of conversations with prominent political figures in Europe, published for the first time. All this was sent by the author to the newspapers “Kyiv Mysl” and “Den”, whose French correspondent he was.

About upbringing and education

The book presents selected works by A.V. Lunacharsky, devoted to the main problems of the construction of the Soviet school, issues of upbringing and education.

The publication is intended for a wide range of readers interested in the history of Soviet culture and education.

About atheism and religion

Lectures, articles, letters and other materials.

Here are materials from correspondence with V.I. Lenin, lectures and articles on the history of religion, the history of atheism, morality and religion, art and religion.

Interesting debate by A.V. Lunacharsky with representatives of the church.

Why can't you believe in God?

Selected atheistic works.

In order to print everything that Lunacharsky wrote on issues of religion and theism, several large volumes would be required.

This book contains only some of his works from those that were written mainly after the October Socialist Revolution, during the period of Soviet power.

This collection contains 38 different works. All of them are divided into four sections and are arranged mainly chronologically within each section. The collection, as a rule, includes materials already published in print. However, along with this, some manuscripts stored in the Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism and the hitherto unpublished report “The Immediate Tasks of Schools in Areas of National Minorities,” “ Final word at the II Congress of the Union of Militant Atheists”, article “Easter”, articles related to exhibitions of objects religious art abroad, responses to notes from listeners and some others.

Silhouettes: political portraits

In the essays of A. Lunacharsky, K. Radek, L. Trotsky, whose journalistic talent is undeniable, the reader will find voluminous portraits of such bright and original historical figures as L. Kamenev, L. Reisner, L. Martov, B. Savinkov, P. Struve , P. Milyukov and others.

The originality of the vision of the country's past is also manifested in the uniqueness of the authors' perception of the work of democratic writers, the gigantic figure of V.I. Lenin.

The son of a major official. Studied at the University of Zurich. He was close to the Liberation of Labor group. In 1897 he returned to Russia, a member of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP. He was arrested and exiled several times.

Since 1904 in exile. In Geneva, he was a member of the editorial board of the newspapers "Forward" and "Proletary". In 1907 he abandoned Bolshevism and was a supporter of the “Forward” group and “God-building.” In 1912 he left the Vperyodists and in 1913 joined the editorial board of the newspaper Pravda.

One of the organizers and theorist of the Soviet education system, higher and vocational education. During the Civil War, he constantly went to the fronts, conducted agitation and propaganda among the troops. He tried to attract the old intelligentsia to cooperate with the Soviet government, tried to protect scientists from persecution by the Cheka.

From the beginning of the October Revolution, for twelve years, he was the first people's commissar of education. A man of exceptional and versatile talent - a politician, diplomat, speaker, critic, publicist, researcher, playwright and poet, to whom not only friends, but even enemies paid tribute - he had rare knowledge in the most diverse areas of the humanities, was versed in certain fields of natural science, biology, physics, chemistry and was a major and exceptional scholar in the field of literature and art. A keen connoisseur of all types of art, he equally deeply studied the sculpture of classical antiquity and Renaissance painting, gothic architecture and medieval primitives, classical music and theater history, printmaking and ballet. But his competence in the field of the history of modern art and literature was absolutely amazing. Not a single more or less noticeable phenomenon in the field of Western European and Russian art, theater, music, cinema, painting, sculpture, or architecture passed him by. His numerous books and essays on these issues represent a documentary encyclopedia of culture, art and literature of the 20th century.

However, A.V. Lunacharsky worked most of all in the field of theory and history of literature, world and Russian. His “Literary Silhouettes”, a course on the history of Western European literature, “Critical Etudes”, the collection “Philistinism and Individualism”, which were repeatedly published and sold in huge editions, as well as a huge mass of his uncollected works, scattered across magazines, collections, encyclopedias (their number exceeds thousand), contain broadly generalized, deep, passionate, exciting original characteristics of the main phenomena of Russian literature of the 18th-20th centuries. and world literature from the Greco-Roman era to the present day.

The Literary Encyclopedia, the founder and editor-in-chief of which was A.V. Lunacharsky, suffered an irreplaceable loss with his death. It was as if he was created to lead this complex and difficult matter. Enormous knowledge and political tact helped him avoid the extremes into which literary criticism has more than once fallen over the years. And as a person and comrade of exceptional sensitivity, attentiveness, simplicity and charm, he knew how to group around him the people needed for the cause.

Since 1927 he was involved in diplomatic work, deputy. head of the Soviet delegation at the disarmament conference. In 1929 he left the post of People's Commissar and was appointed chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

In 1933, Lunacharsky was appointed plenipotentiary envoy to Spain, but on the way he became seriously ill and soon died.

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