Literature and Revolution

Trotsky's work, translated into many languages, widely popular among leftist intellectuals of the West, first published in 1923, later banned in the USSR, and published in Russia only in 1991. The book, on which the author worked intermittently for many years from 1907 to 1923, reflects in his assertively expressive style on the ideological role of art — not only literature but also painting, theater, and even architecture — in shaping a new type of personality, and he harshly criticizes, on one hand, the proletarian pretentiousness of semi-literate ideologists and their influential representatives of bohemian avant-gardeism who dreamed of throwing the old culture off the ship of modernity, and on the other hand, he sharpens his critique against the traditionally patriarchal tastes in the art of Lenin and especially Stalin, although none of them are explicitly named in the book.