At the end of 1907 within a couple of months Lunačarskij met both Gor’kij and Brzozowski in Italy and found many important points of contact with each. To compare Lunačarskij’s thought at that time with Brzozowski’s “philosophical program” of 1907 casts some new light on the great variety of interpretations that enlivened Easter European Marxism at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, it explains Lunačarskij’s “economism” as distinct both from Brzozowski’s extreme anthropologism and (...) Gor’kij’s “cosmism”; on the other, it shows that Lunačarskij’s “philosophy of labour” promoted a violent attitude of conquest and humankind’s domination of nature. Although he criticized Brzozowski’s sympathies with German Idealism, Lunačarskij shared with him a deep appreciation of human creative power, which is evident in his peculiar form of collectivism as well. (shrink)

The study of the processes and methods through which elements of Hegelian philosophy and aesthetics have been appropriated and adjusted to the needs of Marxist–Leninist criticism is essential for understanding Bolshevik–Marxist aesthetics in the process of its consolidation into an official doctrine in Soviet Russia. By looking at the career of the Bolshevik Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunačarskij, it is possible to discern the extent to which the process was forged by the unsanctioned presence of Goethe and Hegel. The (...) article traces their important contributions in the causes of sustaining revolutionary romanticism and its eventual overcoming in favor of the rationality and solemnity of socialist realism. (shrink)

Dopo la Grande Guerra e la Rivoluzione d’Ottobre, l’Europa e la Russia vissero una intensa crisi. Il saggio ricostruisce la dimensione internazionale della situazione in Italia tra il 1919 e 1922. Esso si concentra in particolare su due “futuristi di sinistra”, Vinicio Paladini e Ivo Pannaggi, influenzati da Alexandr Bogdanov e Anatolij Lunačarskij, il futuro Commissario del Popolo per l’Istruzione. Esso si concentra anche sulla rivista “Vešč/Gegenstand/Objet", fondata da El Lissitzky e Ilya Ehrenburg a Berlino nel 1922, i suoi (...) legami con il Purismo francese e Pannaggi. (shrink)

The article treated various concerns of Russian Marxists relating to the concept of personality. In fact, it was not the individual per se and the kindred conceptual constructs that shaped discussions inside Russian Social-Democracy. The individual, on the contrary, was seen as an alien concept, as a central idea of the opponents: the Narodniks, anarchists, Cadets, and liberals in general. The post-1907 Marxist writings demonstrated a significant shift of accent in their approaches to the category of individuality. This was the (...) result of polemics on the psychological particularities of the "reactionary" period (1907-1910). This profound and frequently concealed interest in the individual was typical, in general, of the new generation of Social-Democrats (Bogdanov, Bazarov, Lunacarskij) disillusioned with the classical positivism of the "fathers" and the dogmatic materialism of the "older comrades.". (shrink)

"The revolutionary desire to realize the Kingdom of God is the beginning of modern history." "Friedrich Schlegel" "The world has to be purified, recreated." "Anatolij Lunačarskij" "Ubi Lenin, ibi Israel." "Ernst Bloch" "Socialism is the religion that will kill off Christianity." "Antonio Gramsci"I. The Millennial Vision of History The millennialism that penetrated the heart of western civilization was one of the most incisive and enduring results of the spiritual victory of Christianity over the Greco-Roman culture. This is a vision (...) of history, formulated by the prophets of Israel from the eighth century…. (shrink)