Everything about Anatoliy Lunacharskiy totally explained
Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky (
Russian: Анатолий Васильевич Луначарский), to the
Nazis,
Mondschein (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.
Biography
Lunacharsky became a
Marxist at the age of fifteen. He studied at
Zurich University for two years without taking a degree. While in Zurich, 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" . 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. 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 1950's 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, St. Petersburg) Russia.
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