Lunacharsky on Lenin

Lunacharsky on Lenin

TO GIVE THE "LENINIADA" MEANS TO GIVE AN EPIC ON THE THEMES OF THE STRUGGLE,
ABOUT CONSTRUCTION, ABOUT THE REVOLUTION, ABOUT CULTURE IN THE GREAT LENIN YEARS, TO SHOW HOW LENIN GREW OUT OF THIS AGE, AND THEN FERTILIZED THIS AGE...

A. V. Lunacharsky

From the compiler

In the multifaceted heritage of Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, a special place belongs to the biographies of remarkable people.

For the first time turning to the genre of biographical portrait at the beginning of the century, at the dawn of his literary and journalistic activity, Anatoly Vasilyevich worked in it especially systematically and fruitfully in the last years of his life. This time was marked by the greatest maturity and depth in the approach to the chosen topic. Here is a list of what was written in 1931–1933: The Novels of Chernyshevsky, Heine the Thinker, Goethe and His Time, The Path of Richard Wagner, Baruch Spinoza and the Bourgeoisie, Gogoliana, N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov”, the two most significant works about Gorky - “On the 40th Anniversary of Creativity” and “Samghin” and, finally, the unfinished biography of Francis Bacon. In the introduction to this book, which was to be published in the Life of Remarkable People series, Lunacharsky wrote:

“Mehring, in one of his articles on Goethe, rightly points out that only Marxism makes it possible to approach biography properly. The foolish tales that we deny the role of the individual and that therefore we have nothing to do with individual biographies do not even deserve a refutation. And the fact that we perceive personality not as something accidental or mysterious, but precisely as a knot of currents, forces, principles of a given era in their contact and in their struggle, for the first time makes it possible to reveal the true essence of personality.

A Marxist biography is the only true biography. Needless to say, we add, in order to be truly Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, it must be talented and based on a good study of the subject.

A magnificently formulated theoretical proposition sums up Lunacharsky's attitude to biographies-research, to the work of a Marxist biographer.

It can be assumed that such a purposeful, deeply and comprehensively meaningful work of Anatoly Vasilyevich in this direction was at the same time his gradual preparation for writing a “genuinely scientific biography” of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

The creation of a book about Lenin - "a man in whom historical greatness was in harmony with extraordinary personal charm, ... so pure ideologically, so infinitely gifted that he seemed to surpass the boundaries of the human, although in fact he filled them for the first time" - was not only for him the subject of constant deep reflection, but also, judging by the diary entries, a very specific perspective of creativity.

The idea of a long biography-biography of Lenin appeared to Lunacharsky, apparently, immediately after the death of Vladimir Ilyich. He wrote about the urgent need for such a book in February 1924.

The birth of this idea belongs to the first post-revolutionary years. In 1919, at the request of the well-known publisher Grzhebin, who turned to Lunacharsky on Gorky's recommendation, Anatoly Vasilyevich wrote "memoirs of the great upheaval." Some of these memoirs made up the book Revolutionary Silhouettes, published in 1923. The essay "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" opened the book. Its second edition was undertaken in Ukraine.

And during the life of Lenin, and especially after his death, Lunacharsky very often spoke with memories of the time when "in the same room, at the same table, at the same common cause" it was possible to work together "with this amazing person." Many memoirs-speeches date back to the end of January 1924: they were delivered on mournful days of mourning.

All this, of course, were only fragments, grains, strokes, but they were also "preparatory attempts to embrace Lenin as a phenomenon", deep and whole, to show the life path of Lenin - a brilliant thinker, leader of the revolution, founder of the proletarian state.

In her book "Memory of the Heart", Natalia Alexandrovna Lunacharskaya-Rozenel tells about the conversation between Anatoly Vasilyevich and his doctor in Menton (France), where he spent the last month of his life.

“I want to live longer, if only to write a book about Lenin. It's my duty. This book will be the most significant of all that I have done in my life.

He got carried away and spoke passionately about this future book, and the doctor did not stop him, he himself, holding his breath, listened to Lunacharsky.

And on the night before his death, Anatoly Vasilyevich told her:

“I need three years, three more years. I can do a lot in these three years. I will write a book about Lenin, I will not scatter as before.

The feeling of unfulfilled duty burned Lunacharsky. This is evidenced by public statements of recent years, memoirs of contemporaries, letters to his wife.

In a letter to Natalia Alexandrovna in 1930, Anatoly Vasilievich wrote that it was precisely for the sake of working on a book about Lenin that he decided to ask for his transfer to work abroad, where, far from the "Moscow noise of life", he could concentrate on this work, which he considered as a book-study, as a serious scientific work.

II
Here, perhaps, it is necessary to explain to the reader why it was almost impossible to work on a book about Lenin in Moscow. Not only the many "posts" - service, scientific, public, which he held, demanded and took a lot of time and effort, but also the colossal work of the party publicist, propagandist, writer, art critic - such was the daily life of Anatoly Vasilyevich of those years. All this, multiplied by the inability, and unwillingness to refuse, created an inhuman overload.

The satirist poet Alexander Arkhangelsky dedicated an epigram to Lunacharsky: “I was born with a preface forward and delivered an introductory word.” Indeed, a rare solemn meeting, a significant anniversary, a theatrical premiere, a meeting of creative organizations took place without a report or an introductory word from Lunacharsky. As a brilliant orator, an encyclopedically educated person, he was approached by party organizations (as a lecturer of the Central and Moscow Party Committees, he traveled all over the Soviet Union, and spoke in Moscow and the Moscow region several times a month), writers, artists, musicians, directors , publishing houses with requests for speeches, prefaces, reviews.

Anatoly Vasilievich, as they say, was "torn to pieces." Sometimes, in one day he had to dictate to the stenographer 5-6 newspaper and magazine articles, reviews, notes on the “top of the day”. He did this either from 7 in the morning, before work, or on free days, and it happened on days when malaise forced him to stay at home. Lunacharsky's working day sometimes lasted 16 hours.

A note by Anatoly Vasilyevich, intended for the Ogonyok magazine, has been preserved - “How I rest.” It begins with the words: “Strictly speaking, I never rest at all. Even on holidays, I very rarely get anything like what is usually called rest, but I don’t have to talk about weekdays at all.

Commenting on this quote in volume 82 of the "Literary Heritage" "A. V. Lunacharsky. Unpublished materials”, N. A. Trifonov writes: “And it was not for nothing that this man’s life was compared to a candle lit from two ends.”

Lunacharsky's correspondence, official and personal, was also huge.

About the excessive generosity with which he gave away his strength, time, health, he began to think only in the last years of his life. Returning mentally to the past and thinking about the future, he wrote to Natalia Alexandrovna from Geneva, where, starting in 1928, he regularly spent several months participating in the work of the League of Nations. “It’s time to start living more purposefully. The evening of life is coming, and so little has been done ... "

"So little done"... This dissatisfaction shows the extreme severity of Anatoly Vasilyevich's self-esteem. Having lived for 58 years, he wrote more than two thousand critical articles, 40 plays, many poems, several scripts.

The range of interests of Lunacharsky as a critic, the subtlety and depth of analysis of the work of a particular writer, composer, artist are amazing.

Bernard Shaw, speaking in the Hall of Columns in Moscow during his visit to the USSR in 1931, said: “A week ago, Lunacharsky was a very famous name for me. But now he is a living person for me. And I found in him not only a communist party member, but also something that Russians and only Russians can give me: the ability to understand and appreciate my own works with such depth and subtlety, which - I must admit - I have never met in Western Europe".

The complete bibliography of Lunacharsky's works published in the USSR in Russian, prepared by the V. I. Lenin Library, contains about four thousand three hundred titles.

Recall that he was the author of poetic inscriptions on the first memorial plates-monuments erected immediately after the revolution to the “Fighters of the Revolution” on the Field of Mars in Petrograd. It is impossible even today to read these inscriptions without excitement:

To the host of the great ones,

Departed from life

In the name of a flourishing life

Heroes of uprisings of different times,

To the crowds of Jacobins, fighters of 48,

To the crowds of Communards

Now the sons of Petrograd have joined.

Or:

Heroes not victims

Lie under this grave

Not grief, but envy

Gives birth to your destiny

in hearts

all grateful

descendants

in red scary days.

nice you lived

And they died beautifully.

A first-class writer himself, Lunacharsky welcomed the appearance in Soviet literature of young names - Leonid Leonov, Lydia Seifullina, Fyodor Panferov, Mikhail Sholokhov, Iosif Utkin, Alexander Bezymensky, Mikhail Svetlov, Eduard Bagritsky and others.

Lunacharsky was the initiator of many cultural undertakings of the young Republic of Soviets.

This short "reference" is given by us in order to show the reader the reason for the anxiety of Anatoly Vasilyevich, who perfectly understood that in Moscow he would never be able to get the opportunity for systematic, purposeful scientific work. And time, irreversible time, passed, putting off the implementation of great creative ideas, about which Lunacharsky wrote: "the main works of life are ahead."

If we trace the "geography" of his last, largest works, we will be convinced that the most significant was written during trips to Geneva or for treatment in Germany and France, that is, when official time was limited, and meetings, both business and and personal, did not take much time.

III
As already mentioned, Lunacharsky considered the biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to be the most important "work of life" - a book-study in which he hoped to convey to the general reader all the unique originality of the "moral and psychological character" of the "incomparable" personality of the leader, the whole depth of his ingenious creativity. Reading the diaries, letters to his wife, and a document we recently found in the Central Party Archive allow us to reconstruct in time the chain of events preceding this fundamentally important decision for Lunacharsky. They can also be regarded as a kind of motivating impulse for a specific approach to the implementation of the plan.

The decision to undertake this enormous work was made in the autumn of 1930. That's under what circumstances, if you write in the form of a report.

On July 6, 1930, Anatoly Vasilyevich went abroad. After the vacation, he was supposed to make presentations at two European congresses - philosophical in Oxford and dedicated to aesthetic education - in Hamburg. To prepare for the reports, Anatoly Vasilyevich had to work in libraries in Paris and Berlin.

On the twelfth of September the Lunacharskys arrived in Paris, and on the 17th they visited their old friend Henri Barbusse at his house in Saint-Lys, near Paris. This is evidenced by Lunacharsky's diary entries, which he kept very carefully, recording both the plans of the day and their execution. So, the entry on the 17th in the morning: "Today I'm going to Saint-Lys (Saint-Lys) to have breakfast with Barbusse." Postscript in the evening: “He was quite interesting. <…> An important conversation with Schwartz from Agence Litteraire International (ALI). 1 It is especially important about the book dedicated to Lenin.

The ALI proposal gave a direct impetus to Lunacharsky's consideration of the plan for the book, and judging by the fact that less than a month later Lunacharsky writes to Schwartz from Berlin and receives an answer on October 11, the negotiations were of a very concrete nature.

In a letter dated October 11 (as we have already mentioned, it was recently found in the Central Party Archive), announcing the receipt of Lunacharsky's letter, Schwartz asks him "nevertheless, for the sake of order, to confirm his consent before the end of the year (1930. - I. L.) so that the Agency can distribute the prospectus of the book in different countries. In the text of the letter, the book is named as such: a biography of Lenin.

Another most valuable document has been preserved: the main motto is the idea of the book. Let us remind you that in preparing for major reports or articles, Lunacharsky thoroughly thought out for himself their basic, dominant idea. Thinking through, identifying such a dominant was the most crucial moment in preparation, because it required analysis, careful "sifting" of the entire amount of knowledge about the subject of work. Evidence of this is the recollections not only of Lunacharsky's employees, but also of the listeners of his brilliant many hours of reports that he made, often pacing the stage and not having any written plans in his hands. In fact, there were such plans, theses, sketched out in several abbreviated phrases and words, on separate sheets of paper from a notebook, on the back of official letters, even on the margins of books that accidentally fell into the hands of books. Some of these sketches have survived, and transcribing and studying them will help fill in the missing transcripts.

For the book about Lenin, the main thesis was thought out very deeply and carefully. It is set forth in a letter to Natalia Alexandrovna, written from Geneva, where Lunacharsky arrived in early November 1930 for a meeting of the League of Nations.

The letter is dated 23 November. We present it in full.

“ALI contacted me here as well about a book about Lenin (this letter from the Agency has not yet been found. - I. L.). But two indicative/ chapters are out of the question: for this one needs to work very/very/seriously. Meanwhile, I will again have to write to them that the work will drag on for one to a year and a half, that I can only start it later.

Of course, I can and will send them something like a table of contents. But what confuses me, baby! I'll tell you straight - in Moscow I will never write such a book. Only embarrassment with the contract will come out. Therefore, I can sign it only if I receive a foreign, more/more/or less/quiet appointment.

And I would like to write a book about Lenin. In essence, my theme is Lenin as a type of genius and hero. The book would be about what a genius and a hero are, outwardly a model and example of humanity. And Lenin as a complete, new and, so to speak, transparent in its socio-psychological structure type of genius. It has never been so convincing. Others are much more confusing.

But this is a very big job. And they want, of course, a reportage, biographical/aphoristic/details, if possible, and some kind of/nb./something/"revelations", new documents and easy reading. I won't give you all this. I can't and don't want to. I will, of course, write a prospectus and send it to them. M/maybe/b/be/, I'm wrong, and I'll cook porridge with them.

But that's not the point: anyone will accept my book. But write. For this, I have everything ... except time. It takes a year, a year and a half, with weekly painstaking work of hours at 12-15. I mean another 10 hours a week for parallel/literary/work and 25 hours for service./…/ Is this possible in Moscow? To limit the service (with the highest conscientiousness without bureaucracy, compactly) to 3 hours a day and taking 4-5 hours for scientific work: to read, write completely purposefully.

(The letter is given without amendments, in the original spelling. - I. L.)

So, Lunacharsky saw the only possibility of "completely purposeful" work for 4-5 hours a day only in an assignment outside Moscow. Many documents have been preserved - copies of official letters, entries in diaries that reflected this "struggle for time".

In August 1933, A. V. Lunacharsky was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Spain.

Who knows, if it were not for a rapidly developing heart disease, maybe in a year and a half or two, during which work in Madrid could be relatively calm, Anatoly Vasilyevich, with his amazing capacity for work, almost incredible pace of work "in one breath" - And I would have been able to write this book...

Presentation of credentials was expected at the end of January 1934.

In the autumn of 1933, Anatoly Vasilievich underwent a course of treatment at the cardiological clinic of Professor Danzelo in Paris, and at the end of November, on the recommendation of the professor, he went to the south of France, to Menton, for rest.

He died on December 26 from a heart attack - "heartbreak", as they said then.

IV
The fact that Lunacharsky thought deeply and carefully about the content of the book about Lenin, preparing to work on it, convinces us not only a series of excellent essays-biographies, but also the article "Lenin and literary criticism", written by him especially for the Literary Encyclopedia in early 1932. In this article, and in essence, a pamphlet in 4 printed sheets, an attempt was made for the first time to systematize and generalize Lenin's thoughts and statements on questions of literature as part of culture, to give an analysis of modern literary problems in the light of Lenin's teachings.

It is necessary to emphasize the phrase from this article, which characterizes the attitude of Lunacharsky to work on everything that concerned Lenin:

“... the writer of these lines allows himself to make the following remark. Working for several years in the field of culture under the direct supervision of Lenin, he, of course, had several broad and deep conversations with the great leader on questions of culture in general, on issues of public education in particular, as well as art and fiction. He cannot permit himself to recount these conversations. Lenin's authority is immeasurable; it would be a crime to consecrate with this authority any subjective view that would have crept into such a presentation, made on the basis of memoirs without accurate records at a distance of many years.

In this self-restraint there is an enormous sense of responsibility and once again repeated regret: what a pity that I did not immediately write down everything that Vladimir Ilyich said during conversations and joint walks. Back in the memoir article “Again in Geneva” (it, like the article “Lenin and literary criticism”, is partially included in the proposed collection), Lunacharsky wrote: “I am sure that if I had been more ingenious and, having come home after these walks ( together with Lenin. - I. L.), immediately wrote down everything that I heard from his lips, I could now present to you, my young Komsomol readers, an interesting book, but I caught myself too late, like many others.

The thoroughness with which Anatoly Vasilievich treated the work on the encyclopedic article "Lenin and Literary Studies", repeatedly reworking and supplementing it (which he also wrote about in letters from Geneva in 1932), and entries in diaries confirm that a new appeal to the study and the perception of Lenin's legacy was also preparatory work for a book about Lenin. The importance and thoroughness of this study, devoted to the closest topic for Lunacharsky - culture, which could already be expanded into a book, makes us once again recall the phrase from the letter: "For this I have everything ... except time."

The role of Lenin in the life of Lunacharsky was enormous, his influence was decisive. Lunacharsky spoke and wrote about this many times, believing that the meeting with Vladimir Ilyich was for him the greatest gift of fate, Vladimir Ilyich highly appreciated Lunacharsky's business qualities, his contribution to the work of the editorial offices of party newspapers published in exile in Geneva and St. Petersburg in 1905, his speeches at political debates. This is evidenced by Lenin's letters to Anatoly Vasilyevich.

Here is an excerpt from a letter written by Vladimir Ilyich on July 20 (August 2), 1905:

“Remember, you wrote: there will be no damage from my absence from Geneva (Lunacharsky was in Italy at that time. - I. L.) , because I write a lot and from afar. It's so that you write a lot, and you can run a newspaper somehow (but no more than somehow, and we fucking need more) is possible. But there is not only damage, but enormous damage, which is more clearly felt every day. Personal influence and speaking at meetings in politics means a lot. Without them, there is no political activity, and even writing itself becomes less political.”

N. K. Krupskaya, recalling the arrival of Lunacharsky in Geneva and his entry into the editorial office of the Vperyod newspaper, wrote:

“Lunacharsky turned out to be a brilliant orator, he greatly contributed to the strengthening of the Bolshevik positions. From that time on, Vladimir Ilyich began to treat Lunacharsky very well, cheered up in his presence and was quite partial to him, even during his divergence with the Vperyodists (since 1908. - I. L. ). Yes, and Anatoly Vasilyevich in his presence was always especially lively and witty. I remember how once, it seems, in 1919 or 1920, Anatoly Vasilyevich, returning from the front (where he often went as a representative of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. - I. L. ), described to Vladimir Ilyich his impressions and how Vladimir Ilyich's eyes sparkled when he listened to him."

Talking about Lunacharsky's collaboration in the Vperyod newspaper, Nadezhda Konstantinovna recalls that Vladimir Ilyich especially appreciated the brilliant stylist in Lunacharsky, his ability to clothe every thought in an "elegant and fascinating form." “I had to,” writes Krupskaya, “several times to be present at the conversations of Vladimir Ilyich with Anatoly Vasilyevich and watch how they “charged” each other.”

For the first time after a sharp divergence in 1908-1909 due to disagreements on an important tactical issue - on the attitude towards the activities of the Bolshevik faction in the State Duma, and on philosophical issues, they met in 1910, at the Copenhagen Congress of the Second International.

Anatoly Vasilievich recalled:

“Before the congress, not before Copenhagen, already in Denmark, we met with Lenin and had a friendly conversation. We personally did not break off relations and did not aggravate them ... "

And here is the testimony of Nadezhda Konstantinovna:

“Ilyich, on his return to Paris, said that at the congress he managed to have a good talk with Lunacharsky. Ilyich always treated Lunacharsky with great predilection - he was painfully bribed by the talent of Anatoly Vasilyevich.

This recollection confirms what Lunacharsky wrote about - personal relations between them did not become aggravated, personal sympathy persisted even in separate years of mutual sharp polemics and a formal break, as a result of Lunacharsky's ideological mistakes. Lenin never ceased to regard this break as temporary.

The book about Lenin, conceived by Anatoly Vasilyevich, would be a hymn to the genius of Lenin. And he could not tell about his life without talking first of all about his "great teacher, about the great party to which he belonged." This was well understood by Gorky, who in several letters convinced Lunacharsky of the need to start writing his memoirs.

Here are excerpts from those letters.

“But don’t you think, dear Anatoly Vasilyevich, to write your memoirs? That would be a wonderful book. And very necessary for our youth, who are not familiar with the history of the old Bolsheviks.

Anatoly Vasilyevich reacted to this proposal with a great deal of bitterness, since he was already seriously ill and took this wish of an old friend as a kind of hint.

In a letter dated October 3, 1932, Gorky hurries to reassure Lunacharsky:

“Dear Anatoly Vasilievich, I suggested that you write your memoirs, of course, not because I consider you “finished” - contrary to the opinion of the Berlin doctors. No, I offer this to people who are younger than you, healthier. The reason for my perseverance is very clear: the history of the Bolshevik Party for our youth is insipid, dull food and does not contain the main thing - that "zest", which was precisely the Bolshevik underground worker, the master of the revolution. These masters leave one by one. I think there is no need to prove how good it would be if each of them left his autobiography for our youth. You would certainly write brilliantly."

And in another letter:

“You have lived a hard and bright life, you have done a great job. For a long time, almost all your life, you walked shoulder to shoulder with Lenin ... "

… Many years have passed since then. The memoir literature about Lenin was replenished with fiction, plays were written, films about his life were created ... But the world has not yet seen the "biography-poem" that Lunacharsky dreamed of. And although Anatoly Vasilyevich left his memoirs to us mainly in the form of speeches, reports, articles, interviews, they contain unique reflections, particles of the living image of Lenin the man.

Lunacharsky's article "More about the Theater of Red Life", published in Izvestia on September 1, 1923, contains the following phrase:

“He who does not understand that there is no contradiction between our deep collectivism and the fact that we are called Marxists, that is, by the name of a certain person, and that there is no contradiction between our faith in the masses and our enthusiastic love for Ilyich, is nothing understands!"

It is this "enthusiastic love" that makes some, even the shortest, sketches so vivid and memorable.

Therefore, the idea arose to try to collect in a single collection what was written and transcribed, to give, as it were, a generalized image of Lenin - a MAN OF THE NEW WORLD - the way Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky perceived it and passed it on to future generations.

I. Lunacharskaya