A Russian Essay Collection Under the Editorship of a Revolutionary Cultural Commissar
A Compilation of Essays
The book known in English as Art and Revolution is Iskusstvo i Revoliutsiia: Sbornik Statei, a Russian-language compilation of essays. Anatoly Lunacharsky is identified as its editor, and the volume’s form is that of a collection rather than a single continuous treatise or monograph. Its full title makes this explicit: the Russian subtitle, Sbornik Statei, designates a gathering of separate pieces, while the main title places art and revolution together as the volume’s organizing pair of concepts.
The Editor and the Cultural Field
Lunacharsky was a Marxist revolutionary, playwright, critic, essayist, and the first Soviet People’s Commissar of Education. His dual profile—political official and active literary-artistic critic—helps explain why a collection organized around art and revolution would carry his editorial name. The book’s interest lies in that conjunction: it brings essays together under two terms that framed much of Lunacharsky’s own work as a revolutionary cultural administrator and critic.
Lunacharsky was born in Poltava, in the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), as the illegitimate child of state councillor Alexander Antonov and Alexandra Lunacharskaya, née Rostovtseva. His mother was then married to statesman Vasily Lunacharsky, a nobleman of Polish origin, whence Anatoly’s surname and patronym. She later divorced Vasily Lunacharsky and married Antonov, but Anatoly kept his former name. 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. He also lived for a time in France.
Publication Record
The Zimmerli Art Museum record dates the object to 1924 and lists its medium as photomechanical. It classifies the object as a book and records the credit line as Collection Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University; the object number is 2017.002.004. The record identifies Lunacharsky as Russian and gives his dates as 1875–1933.
