Although the Russian novelist and playwright Leonid Leonov had published extensively before 1917 he considered that his literary career began only in 1922 with the short story Buryga. His talent developed rapidly in the comparatively free cultural climate of the first decade of the Revolution and by 1927 his characteristic style and themes were already formed. It was in this year, however, that the Communist Party began to impose its demands on the artists and intellectuals.
Leonov's beliefs and values were incompatible with the Soviet version of Marxism but he tried to affirm them...
Although the Russian novelist and playwright Leonid Leonov had published extensively before 1917 he considered that his literary career began only ...
Professor Thompson's subject is the uneasy position of art within Marxist ideology: what part can the arts of the past play in the new society? On the one hand there was the sense of a continuing cultural tradition, more or less independent of ideological change symbolized in the image of the Venus of Milo, and on the other, the iconoclastic demands for a complete break with the past in all its forms made by revolutionary artists, who found in the myth of Lot's wife a symbol of the attractions of the past. Originally published in 1978, the book discusses the problems and paradoxes involved...
Professor Thompson's subject is the uneasy position of art within Marxist ideology: what part can the arts of the past play in the new society? On the...
