Anatoli Vasilyevich Lunacharsky

Anatoli Vasilyevich Lunacharsky , 1875-1933, Russian revolutionary, dramatist, and critic. He began his revolutionary career in 1892 and joined the Bolshevik party when it appeared, forming with Gorky and Bogdanov the left wing of the group, which was in opposition to Lenin . Later he was Lenin's ally in overthrowing the Kerensky government. His most important position was as commissar of education (1917-29). He advocated the creation of a new proletarian literature, but was also instrumental in the preservation of Russian cultural monuments during the revolution.

Lunacharsky, Anatoli Vasilevich (1875–1933), first Commissar for Education in Soviet Russia, an able and cultured man to whom the USSR owes the preservation and rejuvenation of those Imperial theatres—notably the Moscow Art Theatre—which survived the Revolution. He was also responsible for the organization of the new Soviet theatres which sprang up in vast numbers, many of which are named after him. He realized that the new audiences would inevitably demand new plays and methods of production, but that the old plays, both Russian and European, were part of the cultural heritage of the new world and must not be discarded. With this end in view he endeavoured, while supporting the move towards Socialist Realism, to counter some of the post-Revolutionary experimental excesses by a return to the past, skilfully adapted to meet contemporary requirements. He was himself the author of a number of plays mainly on revolutionary themes, one of which, Oliver Cromwell (1921), pays tribute to a fellow-revolutionary and draws an interesting parallel between the establishment of the Commonwealth in England in the 17th century and the Russian Revolution of 1917.