Goethe and Hegel in the commissariat of enlightenment

Anatoly Lunačarskij's program of Bolshevik–Marxist aesthetics

Inessa Medzhibovskaya

pp. 227-241

in: David Bakhurst, Ilja Kliger (eds), Hegel in Russia, Studies in East European Thought 65, 2013.

Abstract

The study of the processes and methods through which elements of Hegelian philosophy and aesthetics have been appropriated and adjusted to the needs of Marxist–Leninist criticism is essential for understanding Bolshevik–Marxist aesthetics in the process of its consolidation into an official doctrine in Soviet Russia. By looking at the career of the Bolshevik Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunačarskij, it is possible to discern the extent to which the process was forged by the unsanctioned presence of Goethe and Hegel. The article traces their important contributions in the causes of sustaining revolutionary romanticism and its eventual overcoming in favor of the rationality and solemnity of socialist realism.

Cited authors

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Goethe Johann Wolfgang

Lunačarskij Anatolij