Anatoly Lunacharsky

Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky

Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky (Russian: Анатолий Васильевич Луначарский, born November 23 [O.S. November 11] 1875 in Poltava, Ukraine – December 26, 1933, Menton, France) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and the first Soviet People's Commissar of Enlightenment responsible for culture and education. He was active as an art critic and journalist throughout his career.

[edit] Biography

Lunacharsky was born in Poltava, Ukraine, Russian Empire. He was an illegitimate child of Alexander Antonov and Alexandra Lunacharskaya, née Rostovtseva. His mother was at the time married with statesman Vasily Lunacharsky, hence Anatoly's surname and patronym. Alexandra later divorced Lunacharsky and married Antonov, but Anatoly kept his old name.

Lunacharsky became a Marxist at the age of fifteen. He studied at the University of Zurich for two years without taking a degree. While in Zürich, he met European socialists like Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

In 1903 the party split into Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin and Mensheviks led by Julius Martov and Lunacharsky sided with the Bolsheviks. When the Bolsheviks, in turn, split into Lenin's supporters and Alexander Bogdanov's followers in 1908, Lunacharsky supported Bogdanov, his brother-in-law. In 1909, he joined Bogdanov and Maxim Gorky at the latter's villa on the island of Capri, where they started a school for Russian socialist workers. In 1910, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky and their supporters moved the school to Bologna, where they continued teaching classes through 1911.

In 1913, Lunacharsky moved to Paris, where he started his own "Circle of Proletarian Culture". After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Lunacharsky adopted an internationalist anti-war position, which put him on a course of convergence with Lenin and Leon Trotsky. In 1915, Lunacharsky and Pavel Lebedev-Poliansky restarted the social democratic newspaper Vpered with an emphasis on "proletarian culture" ^[1]. After the February Revolution of 1917, Lunacharsky returned to Russia and, like other internationalist social democrats returning from abroad, briefly joined the Mezhraiontsy before they merged with the Bolsheviks in July-August 1917.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Lunacharsky was appointed Commissar of Enlightenment (Narkompros) in the first Soviet government and remained in that position, which put him in charge of education, among other things, until 1929. Lunacharsky was associated with the establishment of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in 1919, working with Maxim Gorky, Alexander Blok and Maria Andreeva. During this period he was also in charge of the Soviet state's first censorship system. Lunacharsky helped his former colleague, Alexander Bogdanov, found a semi-independent proletarian art movement, Proletkult. Lunacharsky oversaw massive improvements in Russia's literacy rate. He invited Harriet G. Eddy, a California county library organizer for the California State Library, to Moscow in 1927 to: 1) observe their library work; 2) explain the California County Free Library Plan; and 3) offer suggestions for its application to Russian library work. She returned again in 1930. He argued for the protection of historic buildings against elements in the Bolshevik Party who wanted to destroy them by arguing for their architectural importance.

When Joseph Stalin consolidated his power in the late 1920s, Lunacharsky lost all of his important positions in the government. In 1930 he represented the Soviet Union at the League of Nations and in 1933 he was appointed ambassador to Spain. He died in Menton, France, en route to Spain.

Lunacharsky's body was returned to Moscow and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, a rare privilege during the Soviet era, but during the later years of Stalin's rule Lunacharsky's importance was downplayed. A revival came in the late 1950s and 1960's, with a surge of memoirs about Lunacharsky and many streets and organizations named or renamed in his honor. During that era, Lunacharsky was viewed by the Soviet intelligentsia as an educated, refined, and tolerant Soviet politician.

Some Soviet built orchestral harps also bear the name of Lunacharsky, presumably in his honor. These concert pedal harps were produced in Leningrad, (now, Saint Petersburg) Russia.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Fitzpatrick, Sheila (1970). The Commisariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521524385.