Art as the Cognition of Life
Selected Writings of A.K. Voronsky, 1911–1936
Volume of essays by Soviet Art critic Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky, the founder and chief editor of the literary journal Krasnaia nov’ (Red Virgin Soil), the leading literary journal in the USSR in the 1920s. An Old Bolshevik, Voronsky supported Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition in the struggle against Stalinism. He was executed by Stalin in 1937.
Foreword……vii
1911
Polemical Remarks about Gorky (Iasnaia zaria no.66)……1
Polemical Remarks about Gorky (Iasnaia zaria no.67)……5
1918
Communism, Church, and State……11
1919
The Red Province……15
1920
G. V. Plekhanov……19
In Memory of G.V. Plekhanov……27
1921
H.G. Wells about Soviet Russia……33
The Decline of Ideology……45
1922
Literary Silhouettes: Boris Pilniak……51
1923
Sharp Phrases and the Classics……77
Art as the Cognition of Life, and the Contemporary World……95
On Proletarian Art and the Artistic Policy of Our Party……147
1925
Freudianism and Art……173
On Art……203
Mikhail Vasilievich Frunze……227
1926
In Memory of Esenin……233
Larisa Mikhailovna Reisner……247
Scoundrels and Toadies……251
1927
From the Past……259
Notes on Artistic Creativity……267
Ten Years of October and Soviet Literature……299
One Thunderous Applause……311
1928
On Artistic Truth……323
The Art of Seeing the World……361
1930
On Pereval……393
1936
Meetings and Conversations with Gorky……401
1925
Appendix 1: Resolution of the First All-Union Conference of Proletarian Writers……435
Appendix 2: On Party Policy in the Realm of Imaginative Literature……443
1927
Appendix 3: Five Years of Red Virgin Soil……451
Appendix 4: Letter from Voronsky to Ordzhonikidze, 3 March 1927……453
Appendix 5: To the Central Committee of the All-Russian Union of Metalworkers……455
Appendix 6: Leon Trotsky: Culture and Socialism……461
Glossary……485
Biographical Notes……489
Name Index……503
Subject Index……513
Index of Literary Works and Characters……523
Translated and edited by Frederick S. Choate
ISBN 0-929087-76-3
526 pages
Published 1998 by Mehring Books, Inc.
Oak Park, Michigan
“Our telephone was tapped and from time to time dubious figures would show up, claiming to be admirers of my grandfather [Voronsky] and wanting to know a lot about the Left Opposition and the death of Frunze. They started to wiretap my phone again in the 1990s, when I began publishing works by Voronsky. I don’t know whether I’m still under supervision. I don’t think so. But frankly, I don’t care. They should come and listen if they don’t have anything better to do.”
—Tatiana Isaeva, Voronsky’s granddaughter