Anatoli
Lunacharsky,
the son of a local government official, was born in Poltava, Ukraine,
in 1875. When he was fifteen he joined an illegal Marxist
study-circle in Kiev.
Lunacharsky
was aware of the lack of academic freedom in Russia so he decided
to study social sciences at Zurich University. while there he developed
a close friendship with Rosa Luxemburg
and Leo Jogiches who had also been converted
to Marxism.
In 1896
Lunacharsky returned to Russia and joined the illegal Social
Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) but was soon arrested by Okhrana.
Lunacharsky was sentenced to internal exile in Siberia
where he met Alexander Bogdanov, who
later became his brother-in-law.
At the
Second Congress of the Social Democratic Labour
Party in London in 1903, there was
a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius
Martov, two of SDLP's leaders. Lenin argued for a small party
of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers
and supporters. Martov disagreed believing it was better to have a
large party of activists.
Julius
Martov based his ideas on the socialist parties that existed in
other European countries such as the British
Labour Party. Lenin argued that the situation was different in
Russia as it was illegal to form socialist political parties under
the Tsar's autocratic government. At the end of the debate Martov
won the vote 28-23 . Vladimir Lenin was
unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks.
Those who remained loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks.
Lunacharsky
joined the Bolsheviks and with Alexander
Bogdanov co-edited a party journal in Switzerland. He also wrote
an important books on Marxist philosophy,
An Essay in Positive Aesthetics
and Religion and Socialism. Lunacharsky also worked
with Vladimir Lenin publishing Vpered
and Proletarri and smuggling copies
into Russia.
Lunacharsky
returned to Russian during the 1905 Revolution
and co-edited the journal, Zovaya Zhizn
with Maxim Gorky, the first Bolsheviks
newspaper to be published legally in Russia.
When Vladimir
Lenin attacked Lunacharsky for having deviant Marxist
views, he left and joined the Mensheviks.
In August, 1914, he began co-edited the anti-war newspaper, Our
World, with Julius Martov and
Leon Trotsky. when the paper was banned
by the authorites Lunacharsky moved to Switzerland.
After the
February Revolution Lunacharsky returned
to Russia and along with Leon Trotsky
joined the Bolsheviks in August, 1917.
An impressive orator, Lunacharsky played an important role in persuading
the industrial workers of Petrograd to support the October
Revolution.
In November,
1917, Vladimir Lenin appointed Lunacharsky
as the government's Commissar for Education and Enlightenment. He
tried to completely reform Russian education system. He also introduced
a system for subsidizing the arts. Another inovation was Workers'
Faculties that provided intensive and accelerated courses to train
technicians and administrators from the working classes and the peasantry.
Lunacharsky
was also responsible for the Soviet Government's campaign against
adult illiteracy. In 1917 over 65 per cent of the adult population
were illiterate but by the time Lunacharsky left office it was virtually
zero.
In 1930
Lunacharsky and Maxim Litvinov represented
the Soviet Union at the League of Nations
in Geneva. Joseph Stalin appointed him
ambassador to Spain in 1933 but he died before he could take up his
post.
(1)
In 1924 Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote an autobiography for
The Granat Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution.
As soon as war broke out, I joined the internationalists,
and with Trotsky, Manuilsky and Antonov-Ovseyenko edited the anti-militarist
journal
(2)
Anatoli Lunarcharsky wrote about the role of Leon
Trotsky in the failed 1905 Russian Revolution his book Silhouettes.
Trotsky's
popularity among the St. Petersburg proletariat was very great by
the time of his arrest, and this was increased still further by his
strikingly effective and heroic behaviour at the trial. I must say
that Trotsky, of all the Social Democratic leaders of 1905-06, undoubtedly
showed himself, in spite of his youth, the best prepared; and he was
the least stamped by the narrow emigre outlook which handicapped even
Lenin. He realized better than the others what a state struggle is.
He came out of the revolution, too, with the greatest gains in popularity;
neither Lenin nor Martov gained much. Plekhanov lost a great deal
because of the semi-liberal tendencies which he revealed. But from
then on Trotsky was in the front rank.
(2) Neville
Chamberlain, letter to a friend (26th March, 1939)
I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia.
I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective
offensive, even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives, which
seem to me to have little connection with our ideas of liberty, and
to be concerned only with getting everyone else by the ears. Moreover,
she is both hated and suspected by many of the smaller States, notably
by Poland, Rumania and Finland.
(3)
On 16th April, 1939, the Soviet Union suggested a three-power military
alliance with Great Britain and France. In a speech on 4th May, Winston
Churchill urged the government to accept the offer.
Ten or twelve days have already passed since the Russian
offer was made. The British people, who have now, at the sacrifice
of honoured, ingrained custom, accepted the principle of compulsory
military service, have a right, in conjunction with the French Republic,
to call upon Poland not to place obstacles in the way of a common
cause. Not only must the full co-operation of Russia be accepted,
but the three Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, must also
be brought into association. To these three countries of warlike peoples,
possessing together armies totalling perhaps twenty divisions of virile
troops, a friendly Russia supplying munitions and other aid is essential.
There is
no means of maintaining an eastern front against Nazi aggression without
the active aid of Russia. Russian interests are deeply concerned in
preventing Herr Hitler's designs on eastern Europe. It should still
be possible to range all the States and peoples from the Baltic to
the Black sea in one solid front against a new outrage of invasion.
Such a front, if established in good heart, and with resolute and
efficient military arrangements, combined with the strength of the
Western Powers, may yet confront Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Ribbentrop,
Goebbels and co. with forces the German people would be reluctant
to challenge.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
