Literature and Revolution

Trotsky's work, translated into many languages, widely popular among leftist intellectuals in the West, was first published in 1923, then banned in the USSR and published in Russia only in 1991. The book, which the author worked on in fragments... for many years from 1907 to 1923. In his forceful and expressive manner, the author reflects 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-illiterate ideologists and the bohemian avant-gardists who influenced them, dreaming of casting off the old culture from the ship of modernity, and on the other hand, he no less sharply critiques the traditionally patriarchal preferences in the art of Lenin and especially Stalin, although none of them are directly named in the book.