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The Commissariat of Enlightenment
A study in the formation and development of a Soviet government institution after the Revolution of October 1917. The commissariat - which was responsible both for education and the arts - was the main channel of communication between the government and Bolshevik party on the one hand, and the Russian intelligentsia on the other. The commissar, Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, was, in his own words, 'a Bolshevik among intellectuals and an intellectual among Bolsheviks'; his closest colleagues were Lenin's wife Krupskaya and the historian Pokrovsky.
408 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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About the author
Sheila Fitzpatrick
48 books165 followersSheila Fitzpatrick (born June 4, 1941, Melbourne) is an Australian-American historian. She teaches Soviet History at the University of Chicago.
Fitzpatrick's research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Stalinist period, particularly on aspects of social identity and daily life. She is currently concentrating on the social and cultural changes in Soviet Russia of the 1950s and 1960s.
In her early work, Sheila Fitzpatrick focused on the theme of social mobility, suggesting that the opportunity for the working class to rise socially and as a new elite had been instrumental in legitimizing the regime during the Stalinist period. Despite its brutality, Stalinism as a political culture would have achieved the goals of the democratic revolution. The center of attention was always focused on the victims of the purges rather than its beneficiaries, noted the historian. Yet as a consequence of the "Great Purge", thousands of workers and communists who had access to the technical colleges during the first five-year plan received promotions to positions in industry, government and the leadership of the Communist Party.
According to Fitzpatrick, the "cultural revolution" of the late 1920 and the purges which shook the scientific, literary, artistic and the industrial communities is explained in part by a "class struggle" against executives and intellectual "bourgeois". The men who rose in the 1930s played an active role to get rid of former leaders who blocked their own promotion, and the "Great Turn" found its origins in initiatives from the bottom rather than the decisions of the summit. In this vision, Stalinist policy based on social forces and offered a response to popular radicalism, which allowed the existence of a partial consensus between the regime and society in the 1930s.
Fitzpatrick was the leader of the second generation of "revisionist historians". She was the first to call the group of Sovietologists working on Stalinism in the 1980s "a new cohort of [revisionist] historians".
Fitzpatrick called for a social history that did not address political issues, in other words that adhered strictly to a "from below" viewpoint. This was justified by the idea that the university had been strongly conditioned to see everything through the prism of the state: "the social processes unrelated to the intervention of the state is virtually absent from the literature." Fitzpatrick did not deny that the state's role in social change of the 1930s was huge. However, she defended the practice of social history "without politics". Most young "revisionists" did not want to separate the social history of the USSR from the evolution of the political system.
Fitzpatrick explained in the 1980s, when the "totalitarian model" was still widely used, "it was very useful to show that the model had an inherent bias and it did not explain everything about Soviet society. Now, whereas a new generation of academics considers sometimes as self evident that the totalitarian model was completely erroneous and harmful, it is perhaps more useful to show than there were certain things about the Soviet company that it explained very well."
Fitzpatrick's research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Stalinist period, particularly on aspects of social identity and daily life. She is currently concentrating on the social and cultural changes in Soviet Russia of the 1950s and 1960s.
In her early work, Sheila Fitzpatrick focused on the theme of social mobility, suggesting that the opportunity for the working class to rise socially and as a new elite had been instrumental in legitimizing the regime during the Stalinist period. Despite its brutality, Stalinism as a political culture would have achieved the goals of the democratic revolution. The center of attention was always focused on the victims of the purges rather than its beneficiaries, noted the historian. Yet as a consequence of the "Great Purge", thousands of workers and communists who had access to the technical colleges during the first five-year plan received promotions to positions in industry, government and the leadership of the Communist Party.
According to Fitzpatrick, the "cultural revolution" of the late 1920 and the purges which shook the scientific, literary, artistic and the industrial communities is explained in part by a "class struggle" against executives and intellectual "bourgeois". The men who rose in the 1930s played an active role to get rid of former leaders who blocked their own promotion, and the "Great Turn" found its origins in initiatives from the bottom rather than the decisions of the summit. In this vision, Stalinist policy based on social forces and offered a response to popular radicalism, which allowed the existence of a partial consensus between the regime and society in the 1930s.
Fitzpatrick was the leader of the second generation of "revisionist historians". She was the first to call the group of Sovietologists working on Stalinism in the 1980s "a new cohort of [revisionist] historians".
Fitzpatrick called for a social history that did not address political issues, in other words that adhered strictly to a "from below" viewpoint. This was justified by the idea that the university had been strongly conditioned to see everything through the prism of the state: "the social processes unrelated to the intervention of the state is virtually absent from the literature." Fitzpatrick did not deny that the state's role in social change of the 1930s was huge. However, she defended the practice of social history "without politics". Most young "revisionists" did not want to separate the social history of the USSR from the evolution of the political system.
Fitzpatrick explained in the 1980s, when the "totalitarian model" was still widely used, "it was very useful to show that the model had an inherent bias and it did not explain everything about Soviet society. Now, whereas a new generation of academics considers sometimes as self evident that the totalitarian model was completely erroneous and harmful, it is perhaps more useful to show than there were certain things about the Soviet company that it explained very well."
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 5, 2025
Sin duda la mejor monografía sobre Lunacharski y el Narkomprós. He echado un poco de menos un análisis de carácter más ideológico pero por todo lo demás es excelente.
January 15, 2025
A partir d’actes de reunions, cartes, publicacions i altres documents, Sheila Fitzpatrick traça els primers anys del comissariat soviètic d’educació i les arts (Narkomprós) després de la revolució. Lunacharski, líder del Narkomprós i convençut que l’objectiu del comunisme era la il·lustració de les masses, navegarà constantment entre els actors culturals i polítics, tant del vell món burgès com del nou món revolucionari, per buscar l’equilibri entre ambdós en àmbits com la pedagogia, el teatre, la poesia, la pintura o el món editorial.
En tractar-se d’un llibre que fa història de les institucions, a parts és pesat, però alhora ajuda a aprofundir en alguns debats interessantíssims de l’època que mostren la complexitat de l’organització del poder soviètic i el component experimental de l’establiment del socialisme per part d'un estat.
En tractar-se d’un llibre que fa història de les institucions, a parts és pesat, però alhora ajuda a aprofundir en alguns debats interessantíssims de l’època que mostren la complexitat de l’organització del poder soviètic i el component experimental de l’establiment del socialisme per part d'un estat.
September 6, 2016
Good for those interested in the soviet arts as well as the education programs of the times. Bad for those who may struggle with the inordinate footnoting and citations necessary to manifest a total and unwavering 360 degree observation.
Lunacharsky strikes me as an individual who did the most with what he had (and in many cases, with what he didn't have). He believed in, and fought for, a lot of great and important policies. But bureaucratic vicissitudes were not uncommon. The number of staff in Narkompros kept fluctuating, the funds available were ever dwindling, and schools of thought rarely subsided long enough for some sectors (e.g., academics, Petrograd v. Moscow) to agree on what required funding and emphasis.
Fitzpatrick documents Lunacharsky's gradual loss of authority and support and the Soviet government's excessive red tape and poor, general management that forced his departure.
Lunacharsky strikes me as an individual who did the most with what he had (and in many cases, with what he didn't have). He believed in, and fought for, a lot of great and important policies. But bureaucratic vicissitudes were not uncommon. The number of staff in Narkompros kept fluctuating, the funds available were ever dwindling, and schools of thought rarely subsided long enough for some sectors (e.g., academics, Petrograd v. Moscow) to agree on what required funding and emphasis.
Fitzpatrick documents Lunacharsky's gradual loss of authority and support and the Soviet government's excessive red tape and poor, general management that forced his departure.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews