Revolutionary activity in Lunacharsky. Attachments for Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky. After the October Socialist Revolution
The first people's commissar of education in the Soviet government. Not the worst option. He created theaters, opened museums and monuments, stood up for cultural figures before Lenin himself. However, there is a version that it is he who is the prototype of Woland's image in Bulgakov's novel. There was blackness in Anatoly Vasilyevich, there was ...
Biography of Anatoly Lunacharsky
He was born in 1875 in Poltava. Since childhood, the boy had an undisguised antipathy for religion. It happened that he split icons on the table. My stepfather drank heavily, and my mother was an eccentric lady with a difficult character. So Anatoly's childhood could not be called happy. The boy studied poorly, and once even stayed for the second year. He looked eccentric, was the subject of universal ridicule. And in his heart he always wanted to be the first, the best. And he was determined to make it happen.
In 1892, the young man was captured by the ideas of social democracy, he joins a secret gymnasium society. He quickly learned to manage his peers, it turned out not to be difficult at all. After graduating from high school, Anatoly decided to continue his studies in Switzerland, where he became interested in the work of French materialist philosophers. There he met and became close friends with the Emancipation of Labor group.
Studying was combined with a stormy personal life. He was intelligent, witty and outwardly effective. That is why he was successful with the weaker sex. In Switzerland he became a member. The idea to remake the world completely fascinated him. Returning to Russia, he began an active life as an underground revolutionary. In 1900, after another arrest, he was exiled to provincial Vologda. Here he met a psychiatrist and colleague A. Bogdanov, who dreamed of granting immortality to people. Lunacharsky marries Bogdanov's sister, having strengthened friendly ties with relatives.
In 1904, Lunacharsky returned to Switzerland, editing Bolshevik newspapers. The RSDLP split. He joined the Bolsheviks. This happened to a large extent thanks to acquaintance with Lenin. Lunacharsky is in love with Lenin, actively participates in the work of congresses and the struggle against the Mensheviks. He writes articles, speaks to the workers and tries in every possible way to prove his loyalty to Lenin. but he accurately grasped that, for all his erudition, Lunacharsky was prone to superficial generalizations and was politically unstable.
From the future leader of the revolution, Lunacharsky received the nickname "destroyer Frivolous." Indeed, this man was a brilliant amateur, which allowed him to rise so high. He knew a little about everything and nothing exactly. He didn't have to change his mind. After the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, it was Lunacharsky who began to build bridges between the new government and the intelligentsia. He succeeded in something. He knew how to make a favorable impression on intellectuals. They believed him, followed him. It was to Lunacharsky from Poltava that the writer Korolenko appealed, asking him to stop.
Lunacharsky did his best to prevent the destruction of cultural monuments. In 1920, the People's Commissar headed Proletkult. The broad masses of the people began to be introduced to culture. About 7 million people learned to read and write in a short time. Lunacharsky's star began to decline after Lenin's death. In 1933 he was appointed ambassador to Spain. However, on the way to a new duty station, he became seriously ill and died (12/26/1933) in the French town of Menton. Perhaps avoiding the fate of being repressed in their homeland.
- One of the examples of Lunacharsky's oratorical art has been preserved in a phonographic record. He delivers a speech in memory of K. Liebknecht and R. Luxembourg.
, Statesman , Public figure , Translator , Publicist , Critic , Art critic
Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (1875-1933) - Soviet political and statesman, writer, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1930). Participant October revolution(Petrograd). Since 1917 People's Commissar of Education. Since 1929 Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. In 1933, the plenipotentiary in Spain. Works on the history of social thought, problems of culture, literary-critical works. Plays.
A. Lunacharsky was born November 11 (23), 1875, in Poltava. Died December 26, 1933, Menton, France.
Great music was somehow always recognized almost on time. She is very powerful in our hearts. I don't know if there is even one great musician who can be said to be outdated. The simplest song coming from the depths of millennia is alive.
early years
Anatoly Lunacharsky was born into the family of an official. He graduated from the Kyiv gymnasium, studied at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), at the natural and philosophical faculty. During his studies, he was a fan of the ideas of both R. Avenarius' empirio-criticism and Plekhanov's version of Marxism. He became closely acquainted with M. M. Kovalevsky, the head of the Russian sociological school, a well-known freemason.
Bolshevik God Seeker
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 especially became close to Bogdanov, to whose sister he was married by his first marriage.
In 1903 Lunacharsky returned from exile to Kyiv. Collaborates in the newspaper "Kyiv responses". On the call of Lenin, he leaves for Switzerland, joins the Bolshevik Party. He becomes close to M. Gorky and creates, together with Bogdanov, a school for training party leaders in Capri. He publishes the two-volume Religion and Socialism, which provoked sharp condemnation from Lenin. In 1908, together with Bogdanov, V. A. Bazarov, and Gorky, he published Essays on the Philosophy of Collectivism. The book was sharply criticized by Lenin for interpreting the ideas of the Austrian physicist and philosopher E. Mach, who believed that the initial concepts of classical physics (space, time, motion) are subjective in origin, the task of science is to describe them.
And each of us who assumes that we can lead others must study constantly and intensely.
Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilievich
In 1911, Anatoly Lunacharsky moved to Paris, where he created, together with M. N. Pokrovsky, F. I. Kalinin, and others, the Forward group. Actively participates in polemical battles with the Mensheviks, GV Plekhanov on the issues of strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle. Brilliantly well-read, making acquaintances with many cultural figures in Europe. With the outbreak of the First World War, he was a member of a group of internationalists (together with L. Trotsky, D. Manuilsky, V. Antonov-Ovseenko). He returned to Petrograd in May 1917. As part of the Mezhraiontsy, he joined the RSDLP (b) at the VI Congress in June 1917.
Enlightened People's Commissar
In October 1917, Anatoly Lunacharsky was appointed People's Commissar of Education and 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", the impotence "to stop this horror". The letter of resignation was published in the Menshevik Novaya Zhizn. 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 business, because for you the disappointment will be much worse.”
A teacher is the person who must pass on to the new generation all the valuable accumulations of centuries and not pass on prejudices, vices and diseases.
Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilievich
Lunacharsky was always disliked by the party elite and never fully trusted him. Lunacharsky himself was well aware of this. He, the only one of the other "long-liver" of the Council of People's Commissars (from October 1917 to 1929), was never a member of the Central Committee of the party. Hence the extreme difficulty in interpreting his position. There is an opinion about Lunacharsky as a romantic and utopian, who even in harsh times reminded of the inviolability of the ideals of beauty, love and kindness as the foundations of human life. It is called capricious, and vaudeville, and anecdotal. They remember that he resigned eight times, having learned about the shelling of the Kremlin, he fainted, and that he did not make any compromises. By the second marriage he was married to the actress of the Maly Theater, the famous beauty N. A. Rozenel.
The worldview of Anatoly Lunacharsky was eclectic. However, this was a person who stood out noticeably among other party functionaries with his ideological predilections, far from organic to the Russian version of Marxism.
A bad leader knows what needs to be done. A good one shows how to do it.
Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilievich
Philosophical views
Anatoly Lunacharsky was under the great charm of the ethical ideas of J. Fichte, but his secret idol was Friedrich Nietzsche. Together with his friend Bogdanov, he popularized the ideas of G. Spencer, a representative of positivism and utilitarianism in ethics. The views of these philosophers played a big role in winning the minds of the public long before the revolution, and influenced the formation of Lunacharsky's own system of views. They allowed him to approach the formation of the cultural policy of the Soviet government from a more rationalistic position, to admit fragments of liberalism in it. Lunacharsky also shared the ideas of P. Natorp, one of the leaders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism.
In Fichte, Anatoly Lunacharsky found a specific addressee of Pestalozzi's humanistic call to "teach everyone" in the person of the national state. Fichte formulated the object of education: the national whole - the people, concretizing the ideas of Immanuel Kant and Pestalozzi about the task of educating the human race as a whole, adding at the same time that love for the nation and faith in the nation connects not only with the national whole, but with the whole human race. The period of Lunacharsky's tenure as People's Commissar of Education was marked by the greatest attention to ethnocultural features Russian society. It will lay the foundations for the development of the national education systems of many peoples of the USSR. Anatoly Lunacharsky was the only people's commissar of education who considered himself a Russian people's commissar who had no right to decide for the people's commissar of education Ukrainian, Tatar, or otherwise. After his departure, such ideas about the equal importance of cultures, their uniqueness will be eradicated from political practice.
The physical education of the child is the basis for everything else. Without the correct application of hygiene in the development of the child, without the correct physical education and sports, we will never get a healthy generation.
Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilievich
Pedagogical Attitudes
Anatoly Lunacharsky contributed to the activities of the Petrograd group of reformers who sought to preserve the role of non-politicized and non-ideologized knowledge in the content of education in the Russian school. Thanks to him, the Russian school in the 1920s taught many subjects according to pre-revolutionary, so-called "Ignatiev" programs. He did not recognize Krupskaya's ideas about the primacy of "productive labor" in the school, emphasizing that "the school is still a school", and K. Marx was far from recognizing productive labor in it as an economic necessity for the country.
In the principles of managing the cultural sphere, Lunacharsky tried to implement the idea of P. Natorp that the state should be governed by the advice of specialists, implement socialism not of the masses, but of science and reason, not mechanical-political, but organically corporate socialism. This, according to Lunacharsky, is the opposite of the bureaucratic mechanism of an absolutist state.
Of course, Anatoly Lunacharsky failed to realize these ideas. However, their presence in his worldview and worldview makes him one of the most controversial figures in the Bolshevik leadership, the most subject to criticism from all sides. But it was he who was chosen by V. Korolenko as the addressee of his famous letters, for he understood that Lunacharsky was one of the few able to understand their content.
Commissioner and writer
A. Lunacharsky did not escape the magnetism of the world revolution, internationalism. An excellent orator, he was a fiery tribune. This is also evidenced by his literary works("Faust and the City"), opportunistic, frankly filed on the topic of the day, rather weak from a professional point of view. But Lunacharsky, with his inconsistency, was the official from whom many representatives of the intelligentsia sought protection (and sometimes found) during the years of the most severe terror of the Civil War. It should also be seen that M. N. Pokrovsky was appointed party commissar in the People's Commissariat for Education, and financial matters were placed under the control of E. A. Litkens.
Lunacharsky A.V.
(1875-1933;autobiography) - genus. in Poltava, in the family of an official. In view of the radical moods that dominated the family, very early, in childhood, he freed himself from religious prejudices and became imbued with sympathy for the revolutionary movement. Educated 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 establishments Kyiv. From the age of 17, he began to conduct propaganda work among the workers of the railway workshops and artisans. After graduating from the gymnasium, he avoided entering a Russian university and went abroad for a freer study of philosophy and social sciences. He entered the University of Zurich, where he worked for two years in natural science and philosophy, mainly in the circle of the creator of the empirio-critical system, Richard Avenarius, while at the same time continuing a deeper study of Marxism under the guidance of Axelrod, and partly G. V. Plekhanov.
The serious illness of his elder 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. By this time, his close acquaintance with Prof. M. M. Kovalevsky, whose library and instructions L. used and with whom he established very good relations, accompanied, however, by constant disputes. Despite the serious illness of his brother, L. managed to promote 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, together with them, L. returned 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, and leads strikes along with other members of the Moscow. committee. As a result of the provocation by A.E. Serebryakova, who was a member of a peripheral organization under the Moscow. committee, most of the members of the organization are arrested, and so 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 all those present at a charity essay in favor of students about Ibsen, stops his work. Two months of imprisonment follow in the Lukyanovsky prison, where, by the way, L. became friends with M. S. Uritsky. Barely released from this prison, L. was again arrested on the Moscow case and taken to Moscow, where he remained in the Taganka prison for 8 months. This conclusion is used by him for intensive work on philosophy and history, especially on the history of religion, which he studied for two years and in Paris, at the Guimet Museum. Reinforced studies and a loner greatly upset L.'s health. But at last he is released with the prospect of a further administrative sentence and with a temporary exile in 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, and V. A. Bazarov. Intense mental work was in full swing here, translations of major German works were published with the help of a Marxist-minded young manufacturer D. D. Goncharov. Soon after A. A. Bogdanov's departure, L. and Skvortsov began active agitation in the railway depot, among teachers, etc. At this time, L.'s friendship with the Goncharov family was growing. He moved to their factory "Linen Factory", works there among the workers and proceeds to the first literary works, printed. in the newspaper "Courier". Later, the workers of the linen factory renamed this factory into the "Paper and Paper Factory named after L."
Finally, L. receives a sentence of three years' 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 boiled over here with the idealists headed by Berdyaev. Such people as Savinkov, Shchegolev, Zhdanov, A. Remizov and many others took an active part in them. The Vologda stay is marked for L., mainly by the struggle against idealism. Here, the late S. Suvorov joins the former Kaluga company, which has not broken its ties, and together they publish against the book Problems of Idealism, Essays on a Rationalist World View. This book went through two editions. L. writes many articles on psychology and philosophy in "Education", in "Pravda", the main goal of which is the same struggle against idealism. At the same time, however, the entire group is moving away from Plekhanov's interpretation of Marxist materialism. Thus, not all Social Democrats shared the views of the group, which, nevertheless, gained considerable weight in the then Russian ideological world.
A quarrel with the 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 thwarted by the formidable 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 those works that later appeared in the collection Critical and Polemic Etudes. Here he wrote a popularization of the philosophy of Avenarius. All the time L. most energetically continues his education, 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 fully joins the Bolsheviks.
Letter from Geneva VI Lenin invited L. immediately leave for Switzerland and take part in the editing 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 "Vperyod" and "Proletary" as wide detours of all the colonies in Europe and reports on the nature of the split. Along with political reports, he also spoke on philosophical topics.
At the end of 1904, the illness forced L. to move to Florence. There he found him and the news of the revolution and the order of the Central Committee to immediately leave for Moscow, which L. obeyed with the greatest pleasure. Upon arrival in Moscow, L. entered the red. "Novaya Zhizn", and then successively replacing it with legal newspapers, and conducted intensified oral propaganda among the workers, students, etc. Even before that, at the 3rd Party Congress, Vladimir Ilyich instructed L. to report on the armed uprising. L. took part in the Stockholm Unity Congress. On January 1, 1906, L. was arrested at a workers' 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 the Bogdanov group and together with him organized the Vperyod group, participated in editing its journal 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 rather strong condemnation from the majority of party critics, who saw in it a bias towards some kind of refined religion. The terminological confusion in this book gave sufficient grounds for such accusations. By the time of L.'s stay in Italy is his rapprochement with Gorky, which was reflected, among other things, in Gorky's story "Confession", also quite severely condemned by V. G. Plekhanov.
In 1911, L. moved to Paris. Here the Vperyod group acquires a slightly different bias, thanks to the departure of Bogdanov 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 a member of the Bolshevik delegation at the Stuttgart International Congress, represented the Bolsheviks there in the section that worked out the well-known resolution on the revolutionary significance of the profession. unions. Here there were rather 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 Lenin's insistence, represented the Bolsheviks in the commissions 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-Ovseenko, edited the anti-militarist in Paris itself. magazine "Nashe Slovo", etc. Feeling the inability 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 had a fairly close acquaintance with Romain Rolland and friendship with August Forel, as well as 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 takes their point of view and offers to work on 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, that is, through Germany. Immediately upon arrival, the most vigorous work of preparing the revolution began. There were no disagreements between L. and the Bolsheviks, but, according to the decision of the Central Committee of the latter, it was decided that L., like Trotsky, would remain in the organization of the Mezhrayontsy in order to later merge into the Bolshevik organization with a possible large quantity supporters. This maneuver was successfully carried out. 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 faction in the duma. In the July days, L. took an active part in the events, was accused, along with Lenin and others of treason and German espionage, and imprisoned. Both before prison and in prison, a situation that was extremely dangerous for his life was repeatedly created. After leaving prison, during the new Duma elections, the Bolshevik faction grew enormously, and L. was chosen as a commodity. urban head with the entrustment to him of the entire cultural side of urban affairs. Simultaneously and steadily L. carried out the most heated agitation, mainly in the circus "Modern", but also in numerous plants and factories.
Immediately after the October Revolution, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party draws up the first council of people's commissars and includes L. in it as people's commissar for education. When the entire government moved to Moscow, L. preferred to stay in Petrograd in order to work together with comrades Zinoviev, Uritsky, and others who had been left there at a dangerous post. L. remained in Petrograd for more than a year, and M. H. Pokrovsky from Moscow was in charge of the People's Commissariat for Education. In the era of the civil war, L. constantly had to break away from his people's commissariat, as he traveled almost all the fronts of the civil and Polish wars as a plenipotentiary Revolutionary Military Council and conducted active agitation among the troops and among the inhabitants of the front line. He was also appointed representative of the Revolutionary Military Council in the Tula fortified camp in the most dangerous days of Denikin.
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 number of plays, some of which were staged, went on and goes on in the capitals and in many provinces. cities.
[From 1929 Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. In 1933, the Plenipotentiary of the USSR in Spain. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1930).]
Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilievich
(pseudonyms - Voinov, Anyutin, Anton Levy, etc.) - a 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 he became acquainted with Marxism. He was the head of an underground organization of secondary school students, which united about 200 people, studied Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, Lavrov, etc., read illegal social-democracy. literature that organized mayevkas across the Dnieper on boats. In 1892 L. joined the social-democracy. organization, worked as an agitator and propagandist in the working suburbs of Kyiv, participated in the hectographed social-democracy. newspaper. The four in behavior in the gymnasium certificate - the result of the political suspicions of the authorities - closed 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 empirio-critic philosopher R. Avenarius. Abroad L. met GV Plekhanov and other members of the Emancipation of Labor group. Returning to Moscow in 1897, L., together with A. I. Elizarova and M. F. Vladimirsky, restored the MK, which had been destroyed by arrests, worked as an agitator and propagandist, and wrote leaflets. After the arrest, L. was bailed out to his father in Poltava. This is followed by: an arrest at a lecture, 2 months in the Lukyanovskaya prison, a new arrest on the order of the Moscow secret police, 8 months of solitary confinement in Taganka, temporary deportation to Kaluga, and finally a three-year exile in the Vologda province. After serving the link, L. moved to Kyiv, and in the fall of 1904, on the call of V. I. Lenin, he arrived in Geneva. The Bolsheviks were then going through a difficult time. The leading organs of the party fell into the hands of the Mensheviks, who persecuted Lenin and his like-minded people. Deprived of the newspapers, which had most of the intellectual forces of the Social-Democrats against them. emigration, the Geneva Bolsheviks were forced to confine themselves to everyday defensive warfare with the raging Martov, Dan, etc. L. immediately managed to show himself a great master of speech. "What a wonderful combination it was, when the heavy blows of the historical sword of Lenin's indestructible thought were combined with the graceful swings of the Damascus saber of warrior wit" (Lepeshinsky, On the turn). L. became one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks, was a member of the editorial board of the gas. Vperyod and Proletary, at the Third Party Congress read a report on the armed uprising, in October 1905 sent by the Central Committee to Russia, where he worked as an agitator and a member of the newspaper editorial board. " New life"Arrested on New Year's Day 1906, L., after 1½ months in 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 (ultimatists, then the Vperyod group) arose, L. joined this trend, became one of its leaders, participated in the organization of two Bogdanov party schools (on Capri and in Bologna), participated as a representative of the Vperyodists at the Copenhagen Congress of the International. During the days of the imperialist war, Lunacharsky occupied 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 people, he returned to the ranks of the Bolsheviks. Since the October Revolution, L. for 12 years served as the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR, in addition to fulfilling a number of responsible political assignments of the party and government (during the Civil War, he made detours of the fronts on behalf of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic; in 1922, he acted 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. - Chairman of the Academic Committee of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, member of the Academy of Sciences, director of the Research Institute of Literature and Art Komakademiya, editor-in-chief of the "Litth Encyclopedia".
At the heart of Lunacharsky's philosophical quest lies the desire to philosophically comprehend his political practice. However, these searches turned in a clearly erroneous 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 was 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 well-known 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 annihilating Bolshevik criticism of these constructions is given first of all in V. I. Lenin's book "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism". Articles sharply critical of L.'s views appeared in the Party's Central Organ: "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 passion for the bourgeois-reactionary philosophical fashion, with those strivings for an idealist revision of the philosophical foundations of Marxism, which were revealed with particular force after the defeat of the revolution of 1905 in part of the then social democrats. . intelligentsia. Lenin's irreconcilable attitude towards these tendencies, 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, is well known. And despite the fact that almost every representative of the Machist revision (including Lunacharsky) appeared, so to speak, in the individual guise of his own "system", Lenin, with brilliant insight and ruthlessness, exposed behind individual, third-rate, 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 sliding towards idealism, and through this to fideism as one of the varieties of religious worldview. Lenin does not make any exception in this respect for L.: “One must be blind,” wrote V. I., “not to see the ideological relationship between Lunacharsky’s “deification of the highest human potentialities” and the “general substitution” of the “psychic for all physical nature Bogdanov. This is one and the same thought, expressed in one case predominantly from an aesthetic point of view, in another - epistemological" (Lenin, Sobr. sochin., ed. 1st, vol. X, p. 292, our detente).
L. also 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 would perceive only rhythmic, harmonious, smooth, pleasant; in which all movements would be free and easy; in which the very instincts of growth and creativity would be luxuriously satisfied. The ideal of a person - beautiful and harmonious in their desires, creative and thirsting for ever-growing life for humanity, the ideal of a society of such people - is an aesthetic ideal in a 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 singles out the theory of knowledge and ethics. Everything is aesthetic that gives an unusually large mass of perceptions per unit of energy expended. 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 own internal laws. As later, in "Religion and Socialism", in this aesthetic concept, the very noticeable influence of L. Feuerbach and his largest Russian follower N. G. Chernyshevsky affected ( cm.). A number of formulations of "Positive Aesthetics" are extremely reminiscent of the provisions of "The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality" by Chernyshevsky. However, the school of empirio-criticism prevented L. take from Feuerbach's most powerful and revolutionary side - his clear materialistic line in the basic questions of the theory of knowledge. Feuerbachianism is assimilated here by L. mainly from the side of his abstract, ultimately idealistic, non-historical humanism, which grows out of the metaphysical, anti-dialectical character inherent in all pre-Marxian materialism. This circumstance greatly devalues the interesting attempt of L. to erect the building of Marxist art criticism on a broad philosophical basis, taking into account the conclusions of social and natural sciences. L.'s constant repulsion from vulgarization, simplification, and fatalistic "economic materialism" does not at times save him from another type of simplification, the reduction of the phenomena of social life to biological factors. It is quite obvious that here L. took over the main. way the weakest side of Feuerbachism, namely, the substitution of concrete historical dialectics community development, the class struggle as a completely abstract category of the biological genus - species (for an exhaustive critique of this feature of Feuerbachism, see excerpts from The German Ideology, The Archive of K. Marx and Fr. Engels, vol. I). At the same time, it should be noted that the biology of "Positive Aesthetics" is to a large extent not a 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. fully accepts the formula of the ancient sophist and subjectivist Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things” (see The Foundations of Positive Aesthetics, 1923, p. 71), this most ancient postulate of any subjective idealism.
Over the past 10 years, L. seal abandoned a number of their philosophical and aesthetic views. He corrected his attitudes by studying the literary legacy of Lenin and by critically revising Plekhanov's literary views. Lunacharsky owns many works on the theater, music, painting, and especially literature. In these works, the author's general theoretical views are developed and deepened. L.'s performances in art history are distinguished by their breadth of outlook, a wide variety of interests, extensive erudition, and a lively and captivating presentation.
Historical and literary activity of L. 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 major European writers of various classes and eras paved the way for an interesting two-volume course of lectures for students of 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 but be an improvisation, but an improvisation of an exceptionally versatile educated critic of the arts, who in this work managed to unfold complex and abundant material as a fascinating, lively and plastic picture of the constant movement and struggle of classes, artistic trends.
L. did a great job of revising the legacy of Russian literature. The work of Pushkin and Lermontov, Nekrasov and Ostrovsky, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Gorky, Andreev and Bryusov was appreciated in his articles (the most important of them were included in the book "Little 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 estimates of L. are indisputable; emotional perception at times causes a certain damage to genuine scientific research.
Lunacharsky is an extremely prolific critic. His critical articles are characterized by a combination of scientific approach and temperamental journalism, emphasized political orientation. In this regard, the collection of critical articles of the era of the first revolution "Responses of Life" is especially indicative. The passion of a fighter, the sharp polemicism completely permeate this book, in which there is not a grain of hypocritical bourgeois "objectivism".
L. is one of the pioneers of class proletarian cultural construction. Despite his long closeness to Bogdanov on political and philosophical issues, L. managed to avoid the fundamental political mistakes made by Bogdanov in developing the problem of 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 a stranger to Bogdan's assertion of the equal rights of the political and cultural movement of the proletariat and was always aware of the leading role of political struggle in the life of the working class. Contrary to Bogdanov's emphasis on the laboratory production of proletarian culture, L. always defended the principle of the mass nature of the proletarian cultural movement. Needless to say, L. was deeply hostile to the Menshevik thesis of Bogdanov, that the seizure of power by the proletariat was impossible until a developed proletarian culture was built.
L. one of the first gave a detailed formulation of the question of proletarian literature. The starting point and the 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 the articles of L. began to theoretically comprehend itself and outline its own path. At the beginning of 1907 in the Bolshevik journal. L.'s historical article "The Tasks of Social-Democratic Artistic Creation" appeared in Vestnik Zhizn. L. formulated the basic principles of proletarian literature even more clearly 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 mean by that we say class. This literature must be of a class character, express or develop a class world outlook." Refuting the liquidationist theses of the Menshevik A. Potresov about the impossibility of creating proletarian art, Lunacharsky, among other things, pointed to collections of proletarian poets that had already appeared, to the direct participation of workers in the fiction section 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 great talents in the working environment and powerful allies from the bourgeois intelligentsia cannot be denied either ... "Do beautiful works of this most recent literature already exist? Yes. They do exist. Perhaps there is not yet a decisive masterpiece; there is not yet a proletarian Goethe; there is not yet an artistic to her and prepares her."
At the same time, L. took a lively part in organizing the first circles of Russian proletarian writers abroad, among whom were such prominent figures as F. Kalinin, P. Bessalko, M. Gerasimov, A. Gastev, and others. In 1918-1921 Lunacharsky was an active member of 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 currents in the proletarian writers' movement (represented by Ch. arr so-called napostovsky "left"). L. participated in the development of a resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) on the policy of the party in the field of fiction. From the founding in 1924 of the International Liaison Bureau for Proletarian Literature (now MORP) and until the Second International Conference of Revolutionary Writers (Kharkov, November 1930), L. headed this Bureau.
Dramas occupy the most prominent place in L.'s artistic output. 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 short stories, Ideas in Masks, appeared. The most intensive dramaturgical activity of L. falls on the pre-October period. Lunacharsky's plays are characterized by extensive use of the experience of bourgeois drama from the time of the rise of Western European capitalism. Philosophical saturation plays gives them depth and sharpness, but also often makes them controversial, because they often express controversial or clearly erroneous moments of the author's philosophical views. Thus, in the comedy The Wand of Babel, dogmatic metaphysical thinking is criticized not from the standpoint of dialectical materialism, but from the standpoint of empirio-critical agnosticism (see especially the last lengthy speech of Mercury). The very concept of the dramatic fantasy "Magi" is highly controversial. In the preface, L. stipulates that he would never have dared 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 the data of science, while in poetry one can put forward any hypothesis. 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. The emphasis on the historical progressiveness of Cromwell and the groundlessness of the Levellers (although described with sympathy) contradicts, firstly, the requirement of dialectical materialism (as opposed to bourgeois objectivism) to take the point of view of a certain social group, and not be limited to indications of progressiveness or reactionaryness, contradicts, in secondly, the true correlation of class forces in the English revolution and in all great bourgeois revolutions. For only the movement of the "groundless" plebeian elements in town and countryside gave the struggle such a scope as was necessary for the destruction of the old order. Cromwells, Luthers, Napoleons could only triumph thanks to the Levellers, peasant wars, the Jacobins and the rabid, plebeian crackdown on the enemies of the bourgeoisie. There is reason to present the drama of L. "Oliver Cromwell" with the reproach made by Engels to Lassalle about the drama of the latter "Franz von Sickingen": representation." Much more indisputable is the second historical drama Thomas Campanella. Of the other plays L. note the drama "for reading" "Faust and the City" and "Freed Don Quixote" - vivid 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 between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. These plays are characteristic and interesting attempts at a critical reworking of the legacy of the young bourgeois drama. Many of L.'s plays have been 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. Of the literary translations of L., translations of Lenau's poem Faust, a book of selected verses, 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. So, in collaboration with Grebner, he wrote "Bear Wedding" and "Salamander".
Bibliography: I. L. Books on Literature: Critical and Polemic Etudes, ed. "Pravda", Moscow, 1905; The Royal Barber, ed. "Case", St. Petersburg, 1906; Responses of Life, ed. O. N. Popova, St. Petersburg, 1906; Five Farces for Amateurs, ed. "Rosehip", St. Petersburg, 1907; Ideas in Masks, ed. "Dawn", 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, edition Peter. 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; Magi, ed. Teo Narkompros, Yaroslavl, 1919; Vasilisa the wise, Guise, P., 1920; Ivan in Paradise, ed. "Palace of Art", M., 1920; Oliver Cromwell, Giese, M., 1920; Chancellor and locksmith, Guise, M., 1921; Faust and the city, Guise, M., 1921; Temptation, ed. Vkhutemas, M., ІU22; Don Quixote Unleashed, Guise, 1922; Foma Campanella, Guise, M., 1922; Etudes critical, Guise, 1922; Dramatic works, vols. I - II, Guise, M., 1923; Fundamentals of positive aesthetics, Giese, M., 1923; Art and Revolution, ed. "New Moscow", M., 1924; The history of Western European literature in its most important moments, ch. 1-2, Guise, 1924; Bear wedding, Guise, M., 1924; Pyro, ed. "Red New", 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 studies (Western European literature), ZIF, Moscow, 1925; Poison, ed. MODPIK, M., 1926; In the West, Guise, M. - L., 1927; In the West (Literature and Art), Guise, M. - L., 1927; Velvet and Rags, Drama, ed. Moscow theatre. publishing house, M., 1927 (together with Ed. Stukken); N. G. Chernyshevsky, Articles, Giz, M. - L., 1928; About Tolstoy. Sat. articles, Giese, M. - L., 1928; The Person of Christ modern science and literature (about "Jesus" by Henri Barbusse), Transcript of the dispute between A. V. Lunacharsky and Al. Vvedensky, ed. "Godless", M., 1928; Maxim Gorky, Guise, M. - L., 1929.
II. Kranikhfeld V., On Critics and on One Critical Misunderstanding, " Modern world", 1908, V; Plekhanov G., Art and social life, Collected 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. "Worker of Education", M., 1926; Lelevich G., Lunacharsky, "Journalist", 1926, III; Pelshe R., A. V. Lunacharsky - theorist, critic, playwright, orator , "Soviet art", 1926, V; Kogan P., A. V. Lunacharsky, "Krasnaya Niva", 1926, XIV; Dobrynin M., About some mistakes of Comrade Lunacharsky, "On a 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 Academy of Sciences of the USSR, elected on February 1, 1930", L., 1931; Sretensky N. N., Quiet backwater, reviewed on the article "Criticism" in the "Literary Encyclopedia", journal "On litpostu", 1931, No. 19.
III. Mandelstam R., Books by A. V. Lunacharsky, GAKhN, L. - M., 1926; her, Fiction in the assessment of Russian Marxist criticism, ed. N. K. Piksanova, Guise, M. - L., 1928; Her, Marxist Art Criticism, ed. N. K. Piksanova. Guise, M. - L., 1929; Vladislavlev I.V., Literature of the great decade (1917-1927), vol. I, Guise, M. - L., 1928; Writers modern era, vol. I, ed. B. P. Kozmina, GAKhN, M., 1928.
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(Lit. Enz.)
Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilievich
genus. November 23, 1875 in Poltava, mind. Dec 26 1933 in Menton (France). State and public figure, writer, publicist. Studied philosophy and biology at the University of Zurich, self-educated under the guidance. GV Plekhanov and other revolutionary figures. After the Great October Socialist Revolution, an active participant in the construction of owls. culture. In 1917-1929 people. commissar for education, in 1929-1933 before. Committee for scientists and educational institutions under the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Since 1929 Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was the initiator of many undertakings in the field of music, including the first muses in the USSR. competitions (1925, 1927), contributed to the creation of philharmonic societies in Leningrad (1921) and Moscow (1922), a number of muses. collectives, societies and committees. Since 1903, he conducted a systematic musical and journalistic work. and critical. activity, publishing in Russian. newspapers articles about the work of composers of the past and present, reviews of performances and concerts. In Soviet times, he delivered reports and speeches in connection with the solemn muses. events, said opening speech to concerts.
Among the most significant works are articles and speeches "The Cultural Significance of Chopin's Music" (1910), "On the 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), "To the fortieth anniversary of the activity of A. K. Glazunov" (1922), "To the centenary of the Bolshoi Theater" (1925), "Taneyev and Scriabin" (1925), "Fundamentals of theater policy Soviet Power" (1926), "Franz Schubert" (1928), "The Social Origins of Musical Art" (1929), "New Ways of Opera and Ballet" (1930), "The Way of Richard Wagner" (1933), "N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov "(1933). Musicological works of L. were repeatedly published in various collections, the most complete of which is" In the World of Music "(M., 1958, 2nd ed. 1971).
Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilievich
Rus. owls. prose writer, playwright, critic, literary scholar, prominent state. and political figure, better known other genres. Genus. in Poltava (now Ukraine), attended a course in philosophy and natural science at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), but did not receive a formal higher education, devoting himself entirely to revolutionary activity (member of the RSDLP since 1895). Member ed. Bolshevik gas. - "Forward", "Proletary", was arrested and exiled; active member Oct. revolution, the first people's commissar of education owls. pr-va, subsequently held posts before. Scientist at the CEC of the USSR, plenipotentiary in Spain. He lived in Switzerland, Italy, France, where he died. One of the organizers education system, author of works on revolutionary history and philosophy. thought, cultural issues. Acad. Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
Among the many lit. heritage L. interest are allegorical istorich. plays with fantasy elements "Faust and the City" (1918 ), a trilogy about T. Campanelle, ed. in 2 h. - "People" (1920 ), "Duke" (1922 ); "Chancellor and locksmith" (1922 ), "Arsonists" (1924 ); pl. compiled Sat. "Ideas in Masks" (1924 ).
Lit.:
A.A. Lebedev "Aesthetic views of 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).
Big biographical encyclopedia. 2009 .
- Lermontov Encyclopedia - (11/11/1875, Poltava, Ukraine 12/26/1933, Menton, France), Soviet political and statesman, writer, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1930). He studied at the First Kyiv Gymnasium, then at the University of Zurich (1895-1898). From a young age, I took... Cinema Encyclopedia
- (1875-1933), participant in the revolutionary movement, statesman, writer, literary critic, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1930). Member of the Communist Party since 1895. In 1903-07, a Bolshevik, member of the editorial boards of the newspapers Vpered, Proletary, New ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"
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 in the family of a Kyiv official. Already in the gymnasium, at the age of 14, he became acquainted with the ideas of Marxism and, being a schoolboy, led an underground organization of students in Kyiv secondary schools (200 people), who studied the works of the democrats of the 1860s and populists, and organized May Day meetings. In 1892 he joined the Social Democratic group (1892), worked as an agitator in the workers' quarter of Kyiv. As 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, empirio-criticist R. Avenarius. There he met P.B. Akselrod, V.I. Zasulich, who were members of the Marxist “Labor Emancipation Group”; 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, exiled to Vologda, then Totma (1901-1903). After the II 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 Proletary. 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 argued the importance of organizing an armed uprising, but even then he had philosophical disagreements with V.I.
Having published the great work Religion and Socialism in 1908, he became the main theorist of "God-building" - the theological and philosophical rethinking of the ideas of Marxism in the spirit of the philosophy of Mach and Avenarius (the rationale for 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 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 rostrum and other semi-legal and legal opportunities for party revolutionary work of the RSDLP. In his work Philistinism and Individualism (1909) he tried to reconcile Marxism with empirio-criticism and religion, which provoked a sharp rebuke from Lenin. In 1910-1911 he took part in the work of factional party meetings and "schools" in Italy.
In 1912 he moved away from the Vperyodists, and in 1913 joined the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper. With the outbreak of the First World War, he defined himself as an internationalist, 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 impotence of the government and the fatigue of the soldiers in order to carry out a radical coup 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 work on June 3, 1917, but on June 13 he was arrested by the Provisional Government and imprisoned in the Kresty prison. He was elected in absentia to the honorary chairman of the VI Congress of the RSDLP (August 1917). On August 8, he was released from prison, introduced to the editorial offices of the Proletariy newspaper and the Enlightenment magazine. In the October days of 1917 he worked as a member 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 system of education, higher and vocational training. During the Civil War of 1918-1920 he traveled to the fronts and campaigned. He did a lot to preserve old monuments of architecture and culture in the conditions of building a "new way of life".
He tried to attract the old intelligentsia to cooperate with the Soviet authorities, to protect scientists from persecution by the Cheka. Nevertheless, he was involved in the demolition of some cultural monuments and the creation of new ones dedicated to the leaders of the revolution and their predecessors, by altering them from existing ones. He was a supporter of the organization of the "philosophical ship" in 1922 (mass expulsion of the largest Russian scientists and thinkers abroad), the dismissal of old professors from Soviet universities for political reasons. The former author of a huge number of works on various issues of literature, music, the history of theater and painting, architecture, anti-religious propaganda, he could not prevent and actually sanctioned the destruction of the old Academy of Sciences in the name of creating the Communist Academy as a counterbalance to traditional higher education.
Under his leadership, the Soviet education system was reoriented from the acquisition of knowledge to the political processing of new generations in the spirit of communist ideology. Linking the assessment of the artistic level with the social criteria of works, an active member of Proletcult, Lunacharsky became one of the founders of the theory of socialist realism. Not always consistent in his views and assessments, often changing them in a changing situation, 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 to the conference on disarmament. Headed the Soviet delegation to the League of Nations
In 1929, he left the post of people's commissar when he was appointed chairman of the Scientific Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.
From 1933 he was appointed plenipotentiary to Spain, but fell ill on the way and soon died (in Menton, in southern France).
The ashes were buried in the Kremlin wall.
