Anatoli Vasilyevich Lunacharsky

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(b. Poltava, 24 Nov. 1875; d. 26 Dec. 1933) Russian; Commissar for Enlightenment 1918 – 29Lunacharsky was the son of tsarist official of radical political views. He became interested in Marxism, while still in his teens and, as a student at Zurich University, met Rosa Luxembourg, who impressed him profoundly. Back in Russia in 1899 he was soon arrested for his political activities. When he returned to Switzerland in 1902 he joined the socialist philosopher A. A. Bogdanov, whose sister he married. Lunacharsky met Lenin in Paris in 1904, became editor of the Bolshevik newsheets Vpered and Proletary, and returned to Russia in 1905. He quarrelled with Lenin, who attacked his philosophical outlook in Materialism and Empiro-Criticism and returned to Switzerland in 1914, where he joined the "internationalists" associated with Trotsky. He rejoined Lenin in Russia in 1917, after the February Revolution, was made a member of Sovnarkom, and became Commissar for Enlightenment (equivalent to Minister of Education and the Arts), holding the position until 1929 when he became head of the Learned Council of the USSR Central Executive Committee. From 1930 to 1932 he and Litvinov represented the Soviet Union at the League of Nations. In 1933 he was appointed Soviet ambassador to Spain, but died on the outward journey.

(1875 - 1933), Bolshevik intellectual and early Soviet leader.

Born the son of a state councilor, Anatoly Lunacharsky joined the Social Democratic movement in 1898 and was soon arrested. As an exile in Vologda, he met Alexander Bogdanov. In Paris in 1904 both men joined the Bolshevik faction, but they left it again in 1911 after clashes with Lenin over philosophy. Bogdanov advocated empiriocriticism, claiming that only direct experience could be relied on as a basis for knowledge. Lunacharsky promoted God - building, an anthropocentric religion striving toward the moral unity of mankind. Lunacharsky rejoined the Bolshevik Party in August 1917 and became the first People's Commissar of Enlightenment (Narkom prosveshcheniya, or Narkompros), serving from October 1917 to 1929. A prolific writer on literature and the arts and an important patron of the intelligentsia, Lunacharsky was often regarded within the party as too "soft" for a Bolshevik. From the mid - 1920s he was increasingly marginalized, and his last years at Narkompros were marked by fierce battles over education and culture as his soft line in policy was discredited with the onset of the Cultural Revolution. After his resignation from Narkompros, he held various second - rank positions in cultural administration and spent much time abroad, partly for health reasons. In 1933 he was appointed ambassador to Spain, but died before assuming the position. His reputation plummeted after his death, but from the 1960s to the 1980s, thanks partly to the untiring work of his daughter, Irina Lunacharskaya, he became a symbol of a (pre - Stalinist) humanistic Bolshevism protective of the intelligentsia and committed to the advancement of high culture.

Bibliography

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1970). The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October 1917-1921. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

O'Connor, Timothy Edward. (1983). The Politics of Soviet Culture: Anatolii Lunacharskii. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.

—SHEILA FITZPATRICK

Lunacharsky, Anatoli Vasilyevich (ənətô'lyē vəsē'lyəvĭch lūnəchär'skē), 1875-1933, Russian revolutionary, dramatist, and critic. He began his revolutionary career in 1892 and joined the Bolshevik party when it appeared, forming with Gorky and Bogdanov the left wing of the group, which was in opposition to Lenin. Later he was Lenin's ally in overthrowing the Kerensky government. His most important position was as commissar of education (1917-29). He advocated the creation of a new proletarian literature, but was also instrumental in the preservation of Russian cultural monuments during the revolution.