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Writer of irony and hope. On the fifth anniversary of the death of Anatole France

Anatole France is one of the figures who stood at the boundary between the old and the new worlds. A refined representative of bourgeois culture, having collected in himself everything subtle that various epochs of human history have given, Anatole France came to the conclusion that the current, losing ground to the priests, rude imperialist and vulgar bourgeois order, which he most clearly observed in his native France, represents the twilight of this culture. Fervently devoted to the further development of mankind, Anatole France, long before the war, came to the conclusion that the salvation of culture could be expected only from the proletariat, that socialism was that brilliant page in the history of mankind, which should replace the cultural twilight of bourgeois imperialism.

But the bourgeoisie managed to "arrange" the Great World War. This forced Anatole France to step even more to the left and join the Communist Party.

However, this renegade of the bourgeoisie, this fellow traveler, must by no means be mistaken for a real communist. Anatole France is much more a rebellious, refined bourgeois than a representative of the proletariat. Under favorable conditions, such rebellious bourgeois can really turn into genuine bearers of a new world outlook. There were examples of this. But Anatole France, too old, was captured by the birth of a new world in the storms of October. Nevertheless, his subtle ironic literary production, which ridiculed the vices of the last capitalist period, his clear Helladic hope for a straightened person, for the victory of collectivism over egoism, make us treat him as a writer-friend.

For our taste, for the taste of the young fighting class, the very style of Anatole France, his images are too refined, complex and fragile. But nowhere does it say that our own style must necessarily be rough, baggy and clubfoot . We are not averse to taking lessons in this charming subtlety, not in order to imitate it, but in order to soften in some cases our own, as we can proudly say, "plebeian" literary manner.

We still have a lot of work to do on Anatole France in order to have time to separate the real wheat from the chaff there. But we can say with confidence that there is a lot of good grain in the works of Anatole France . It would be the same mistake to worship this refined gentleman who rebelled against capital, and the clumsy denial of his gift to humanity for the sake of this nobility. We must be careful in our analysis. We must be careful and skilful in using the heritage of the past, in which everything good cannot but be a valuable contribution to our own cause at this initial stage in the development of socialist culture