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On the upbringing of a man of a new society

Contemporaries were struck by the creative range of activity of Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky (1875–1933), an outstanding figure in the Communist Party and the Soviet state, the first people's commissar of education, a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

A man of encyclopedic knowledge, an outstanding theorist of art and literature, history, an original critic and a brilliant publicist, writer and playwright, he made an enormous contribution to the creation of socialist culture.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of A. V. Lunacharsky, the State Library of the USSR named after V. I. Lenin prepared the first volume of a complete bibliography of his works, it included more than 4000 titles. Almost everything that was published in Russian was taken into account. But after all, many articles, not to mention interviews, by Anatoly Vasilyevich were written and published directly in foreign languages ​​(he spoke six languages). They have not yet been taken into account by anyone and are waiting for their researcher.

The Archives of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR contain documents describing the activities of Academician Lunacharsky. The readers of the journal are offered a small selection of archival materials. Excerpts from two of Lunacharsky's speeches are published here. They were uttered in different years, but they are united by one theme - a person and his upbringing in a socialist society. Lunacharsky paid constant attention to these questions. The formation of the Soviet school, the system of higher and vocational education are inextricably linked with his name. Together with N. K. Krupskaya, M. N. Pokrovsky and others, he developed the main questions of the theory and practice of public education in our country.

In alliance with science
From a speech on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Academy of Sciences. This text does not coincide with the article on the site on the same occasion .

The revolution that has taken place in our country, and those revolutions that we think are inevitable throughout the world, are completely new phenomena, because they are headed by an unusually wide class, which constitutes the core and main continent of working people and at the same time time very deeply feeling culture and even reflecting it through the facets of his class psychology deeper, brighter than other classes.

I'm talking about the proletariat. As an urban class, easily organized, as a class whose work is inseparably connected with the machine, that is, with applied science, which connects the improvement of its position with the development of technology, the proletariat is a selfless friend of science ...

If we are now emphasizing the dictatorial position of the proletariat class in our country, it is precisely because enlightenment is also a preliminary condition for the genuine disappearance of any state and the absolute creation of true self-government of mankind. We can say that winning the right to enlightenment was the main central goal of the revolution. A revolution is a struggle for the right of the masses to enlightenment.

Of course, the revolution could not immediately take up education, and I, as the people's commissar of education, must especially emphasize that during the first years we had to state with sorrow that we still had a weak approach to this central task, did not have sufficient funds for it. But this is because the right to enlightenment had not only to be won at one particular political moment, but its activity had to be protected from possible encroachments from outside.

For this we had to create an army, strengthen the state, raise our material existence to the level of conceivable life through intensive work on the economy. And in recent years we have already begun to justify this position. Over the past two years, in our state budget and in the local budget, spending on public education has been growing extremely rapidly and overtaking spending on all other commissariats, and we hope that the day is not far off when the increased resources of the country will give us the opportunity to prove to the whole world that in no other country, except the country of the real and complete emancipation of the working masses, is it possible to achieve such a broad and profound enlightenment in the interests of the masses.

We take the pure gold of science - this is its natural-scientific, experimental work, imbued with the strictest criticism, which constitutes its soul and from which all counterfeit semi-scientific products that seek to attach themselves to it fall away. With this science, which has always been a victorious luminous force..., with this science we have and will have a strong, lasting alliance.

In the field of communist construction, in the field of further advancement towards a rational harmonious system—the cooperation of all mankind—science will fully and entirely prove to be the benefactor of the human race as a whole. We always picture communism not only as based on the possibilities of the exact sciences in their present state, but also on their rapid further development.

We must rise to a height of general technical and political education incomparable with the past, we must arm the masses of the people so that they can defend their existence in a free socialist union of peoples against the world of enemies with whom we are still surrounded. Our defense and the success of our economy can only take place through constant collaboration with science.

In alliance with science (Another fragment)

Published according to "Science and Life" No. 2, 1974. The first two paragraphs are repeated.

... The revolution that has taken place in our country, and those revolutions that we think are inevitable throughout the world, are a completely new phenomenon, because they are headed by an unusually wide class, representing the core of the working people and at the same time deeply feeling culture.

I'm talking about the proletariat. As an urban class that easily organizes itself, as a class whose labor is inseparably connected with the machine, i.e., with applied science, as a class that aims to improve its position in connection with the development of technology, the proletariat is an unreserved friend of science.

Never before has there been a party that emerged from the depths of the people themselves, which possessed scientific methods with such perfection as our proletarian party. When we remember Comrade. Lenin, then we see before us the greatest theoretician, the greatest scientist, who, with an extraordinary objectivity of thought, using the methods of an equally great predecessor, Karl Marx, studied the phenomena of his environment and then made his extraordinarily accurate forecasts, after which he moved on to practical work. The whole strategy, all the tactics of Vladimir Ilyich, and, consequently, of our entire Russian Communist Party, are based on the deepest work of thought, on colossal observation of facts and on the strictest conclusions from these facts. We proudly call the doctrine that guides our activities scientific socialism.

From this, of course, it is clear that, while placing science so highly in our immediate social-reformist creativity, the Russian proletariat cannot help but place science as a whole on an enormous height...

We know that the true foundation for the revolution can only be laid when the working masses are enlightened, and only when they take fate into their own hands... Even now, over the past two years, our state budget and our local budget for public education grow extremely rapidly and overtake the costs of all other commissariats. We hope that the day is not far off when the increased resources of the country will give us the opportunity to prove to the whole world that in no country, except the country of the real and complete emancipation of the working masses, is it possible to achieve the broadest, deepest enlightenment in the interests of the masses of the people.

In addition to the fact that science provides a huge amount of knowledge necessary for human life, enlightenment is also an active and militant process. The darkness of ignorance is inhabited by ghosts, but ghosts not devoid of the power of resistance and even offensive power.

To smash religious prejudices is the greatest task, and this task the Communist Party cannot accomplish except in deep alliance with scientists. True, we do not close our eyes to the fact that science, developing itself in bourgeois society, sometimes turns out to be infected with this antiquity in the person of one or another of its representatives, that science itself is sometimes covered with some rust, turns out to be somewhat twisted, distorted. But we take the pure gold of science—its natural-science, experimental work, imbued with the strictest criticism, which constitutes its soul and from which all the falsified semi-scientific products that seek to attach themselves to it fall off like an empty husk.

And with this science, which has always been a victorious light force that dispersed all these vampire-like ghosts of antiquity, with this science we have and will have a strong and lasting alliance ... Science has brought many benefits. There is even a prejudice - this time a scientific prejudice - that the further development of science will be able to solve all the damned social questions. We do not stand on this point of view. We believe that although the sun shines equally on the rich and the poor, this does not prevent the pomegranates and oranges from ripening in the garden of the rich man, and in the yard of the poor it generates miasma in some heap of dirt. Acting in a normal society built on class advantages, science sees its rays refracted in the most unexpected way in this muddy environment.

There is no need to give examples; I will only say that science first of all brought its immeasurable gifts to the service of a small minority of mankind - the upper classes. It is enough to remember one fact from which every human heart shudders, it is enough to open any newspaper to find out with what zeal and with what infernal success science is working on the invention of apparatus for the destruction of human life, human property.

It suffices to recall this service that science, voluntarily or involuntarily, renders to people preparing destruction, to answer for every honest scientist that he cannot be at peace with the results of this work that he is doing in his laboratory or his office.

But in the field of communist construction, in the field of movement towards a rational harmonious system, towards the cooperation of all mankind—in this field science will be wholly the benefactor of the human race. Communist construction is impossible without the further development of technology.

As for our country, the vigorous construction to which our people have given themselves up requires more than ever the help of science, we need to rise to an incomparable height in the field of technical and political education in order to defend our lives from the world enemy that surrounds us . Our defense and the success of our economy can only take place through constant collaboration with science.

One of Vladimir Ilyich's ideas was, among other things, the idea of ​​organizing the State Planning Commission, in which many of the best forces in our country work. This is an institution where most of the work is done by Russian non-Party scientists. It develops those milestones with which we outline the path to the future. For the first time, it introduces accounting and the deepest consciousness into the economic processes taking place on a sixth of the land with a population of one and a half hundred million.

Of course, the government did not immediately agree with the scientists. The scientific world of Russia was in part connected with the old world, in part it was not prepared to immediately understand everything that was happening, in part it was painfully bruised by the direct destruction of living conditions and the conditions of scientific work. All this served as some obstacle to our quickly shaking hands with each other. But it seems that the time for hesitation and searching has completely passed. Now the Soviet government is doing its enormous scientific work, relying on Russian scientists. I must state that the Academy of Sciences took a wise and expedient position from the very beginning. I cannot forget that moment when, immediately after the revolution, when power had not yet been established, when the civil war was still in full swing,

Very soon after I was appointed People's Commissar of Education, I had the good fortune to greet our esteemed President of the Academy. The Academy kept its word and helped us in a number of important tasks. I will not enumerate the enormous services that the Academy has to the Soviet government.

Comrades and citizens, on behalf of the People's Commissariat of Education, I congratulate the Academy not only on the past two centuries, which it has the right to be proud of, but I congratulate it on the decades and centuries that it still has ahead of it. Perhaps not all academicians are aware of the extraordinary situation that the Academy, founded by the tsars and having been under their heavy hand for so long, will be the first to enter under the triumphal arch of the revolutionary turning point in the life of all mankind, will enter into that system in which the magical forces, still bound up to this day until then, will be developed into incredible power and will make humanity, guided by science, victorious.

Study topic: Man

From a report delivered on July 23, 1931 at the Extraordinary visiting session of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

…Our time, to a large extent, is technical time. Owning the economy and technology - this is the task of our time ... It is necessary to possess technical knowledge, it is necessary to fight for the triumph of technical knowledge ...

Technique is the basis for the development of broad, reasonable, profound social human happiness. Man is thus the most powerful factor in technology and the end for the further activity and development of which all these technical improvements are made.

... We want such a social system in which a person can develop all his abilities, which hindered in a capitalist society ...

... Giving all our attention to technology, it must be said that it is necessary to organize ourselves technically.

We need to study man as the author of labor, as the subject of the labor process. At the present time we do not have such a scientific center that would take care of the study of man... In general, posing the question of people's health is a fundamental technical question. We must take care of the growth of the population, of the bearing, of the eradication of insidious diseases that cripple the population - the source of the labor force. We must take care to introduce the principles of correct hygiene into the life of the people, including, of course, in correct sports. From all this it is clear to everyone that here we have a huge mass of scientific questions ... We need a powerful center that would be able to equally combine sports and labor into public hygiene, which will come together, because public health and public physical development, from childhood to old age , there are the necessary ingredients for raising the question of correct work. We don't have such a body...

... A huge number of tasks are opening before us in the field of social science. We are witnessing the process of self-education of our masses with exceptional force. In this concept I put the whole process by which the population of our country, which is at different stages of development, is moving forward towards the mastery of knowledge and technology. Social science is faced with the task of monitoring how this process actually occurs and, on the basis of factual material, drawing conclusions about the experience of certain methods, that is, developing a real scientific method for this self-education. This includes the press, and popular literature, and cinema, and the life of our clubs, museums and exhibitions, etc.

Direct conclusions must be drawn from this study, namely, how to continue the appropriate work in order to obtain the possible acceleration of the pace and the broadest possible results.

... It comes down not only to the processes of self-education of the masses, but also the self-education of the masses. Gradually, a new man is born - an expression that we can hear in passing. Lenin said: "We are all people of the old generation." He could make an exception for himself, but out of modesty he did not do this, for Lenin is a personality, a prototype of what a person should be.

... We do not have a center of scientific pedagogy that would examine in a Marxist and systematic way what a child, a teenager, a young man in general is and what he is in a transitional time in various strata of our population.

… But the matter comes down not only to pedagogy, it comes down to what I would call anthropology, that is, human studies. We are all children, we are all born for a new life, we have a great future ahead of us. We are changing rapidly and we want to change... This process of re-education of colossal proportions is led by the party. All the people's Soviets, especially the grassroots Soviets, are a school of self-education, a school through which millions of people must pass.