Anatoly Lunacharsky

Lunacharsky was born on 23 or 24 November 1875 in Poltava, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) as the illegitimate child of Alexander Antonov and Alexandra Lunacharskaya, née Rostovtseva. His mother was then married to statesman Vasily Lunacharsky, whence Anatoly's surname and patronym. She later divorced Vasily Lunacharsky and married Antonov, but Anatoly kept his former name.[4][5] In 1890, at the age of 15, Lunacharsky became a Marxist. From 1894, he studied at the University of Zurich under Richard Avenarius for two years without taking a degree. In Zürich, he met European socialists including Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

In 1896, Luncharsky returned to Russia, where he was arrested and sent to Kaluga in Siberia through 1901–1902, when he returned to Kiev. In February 1902, he moved in with Alexander Bogdanov, who was working in a mental hospital in Vologda, Russia.[1][4]

People's Commissariat for Education (Narkompros)

After the October Revolution of 1917, Lunacharsky was appointed head of the People's Commissariat for Education (Narkompros) in the first Soviet government and remained in that position until 1929.[4][5] In 1921, The New York Times reported his resignation.[8]

Lunacharsky, People's Commissar for Education on 13 Congress of Soviets of the RSFSR, April 1927

Lunacharsky was associated with the establishment of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in 1919, working with Maxim Gorky, Alexander Blok and Maria Andreyeva. He was also in charge of the Soviet state's first censorship system. Lunacharsky helped his former colleague Alexander Bogdanov start a semi-independent proletarian art movement called Proletkult. Lunacharsky also oversaw improvements in Russia's literacy rate. By arguing for their architectural Importance, he argued for the protection of historic buildings against elements in the Bolshevik Party who wanted to destroy them.

Lunacharsky directed some of the great experiments in public arts after the Revolution such as the agit-trains and agit-boats that circulated over all Russia spreading Revolution and revolutionary arts. He also gave support to constructivism's theatrical experiments and the initiatives such as the ROSTA Windows, revolutionary posters designed and written by Mayakovsky, Rodchenko and others.

While commissar, Lunacharsky's initiatives included the establishment of Isadora Duncan's school in Moscow, but he was also a playwright, critic, essayist and a widely admired man of culture. As the first Commissar of Enlightenment after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he was credited with preserving much of Russia's cultural heritage.[3]

In June 1919, The New York Times decried Lunacharsky's efforts in education in an article entitle "Reds Are Ruining Children of Russia". It claimed that he was instilling a "system of calculated moral depravity [...] in one of the most diabolical of all measures conceived by the Bolshevik rulers of Russia".[9]

In 1929, Lunacharsky supported a change in the Soviet Union from Cyrillic to Latin alphabet.[4][5]

Lunacharsky died at 58 on 26 December 1933 in Menton, France en route to take up the post of Soviet ambassador to Spain as the conflict that would become the Spanish Civil War appeared increasingly inevitable.[1][5][10]

A monument to Lunacharsky in Menton, France

In 1902, he married Anna Alexandrovna Malinovkaya, Alexander Bogdanov's sister. They had one child, a daughter named Irina Lunacharsky.[2][4] In 1922, he met Natalya Rozenel, an actress at the Maly Theater. He left his family and married her.[4]

Lunacharsky was known as an art connoisseur and a critic. Besides Marxist dialectics, he had been interested in philosophy since he was a student. For instance, he was fond of the ideas of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Frederich Nietzsche and Richard Avenarius.[11] He could read six modern languages and two dead ones. Lunacharsky corresponded with H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Romain Rolland. He met numerous other famous cultural figures such as Rabindranath Tagore[12] and Nicholas Roerich.[13][14][15]

Lunacharsky once described Nadezhda Krupskaya as the "soul of Narkompros".[2]

Friends included Igor Moiseyev.[16]

Lunacharsky's remains were returned to Moscow where his urn was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, a rare privilege during the Soviet era. During the Great Purge of 1936-1938, Lunacharsky's name was erased from the Communist Party's history and his memoirs were banned.[17] A revival came in the late 1950s and 1960s, 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.

In the 1960s, his daughter Irina Lunacharsky helped revive his popularity. Several streets and institutions were named in his honor.[4]

In 1971, Asteroid 2446 was named after Lunacharsky.[4]

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).

The New York Times dubbed Nikolai Gubenko, last culture commissar of the Soviet Union, "the first arts professional since Anatoly V. Lunacharsky" because he seemed to "identify" with Lunacharsky.[3]

Lunacharsky was also a prolific writer. He wrote literary essays on the works of several writers, including Alexander Pushkin, George Bernard Shaw and Marcel Proust. However, his most notable work is his memoirs, Revolutionary Silhouettes, which describe anecdotes and Lunacharsky's general impressions of Lenin, Trotsky and eight other revolutionaries. Trotsky reacted to some of Lunacharsky's opinions in his own autobiography, My Life.

In the 1920s, Lunacharsky produced Lyubov Popova's The Locksmith and the Chancellor at the Comedy Theater.[18]

Some of his works include:

• Outlines of a Collective Philosophy (1909)[5]
• Self-Education of the Workers: The Cultural Task of the Struggling Proletariat (1918)[19]
• Three Plays (1923)[5]
• Revolutionary Silhouettes (1923)[20]
• Theses on the Problems of Marxist Criticism (1928)[21]
• Vladimir Mayakovsky, Innovator (1931)[22]
• George Bernard Shaw (1931)[23]
• Maxim Gorky (1932)[24]
• On Literature and Art (1965)[25]

• God-Building
• New Soviet man
• Working-class culture
• Proletkult
• Proletarian literature
• Proletarian novel

• Works by Lunacharsky at Marxist internet archive
• Robert C Williams, 'From Positivism to Collectivism: Lunarcharsky and Proletarian Culture', in Williams, Artists in Revolution, Indiana University Press, 1977
• Vasilisa the Wise (A play by Lunacharsky, in English)
• Anatoly Lunacharsky on IMDb

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Anatoliy Lunacharskiy.

• Newspaper clippings about Anatoly Lunacharsky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW