LENIN ON LITERATURE, LANGUAGE, AND CENSORSHIP

Sophisticated Marxists have always been aware of the important contributions to literary criticism of Marx, Engels, Trotsky and Gramsci. Yet, except for Lukacs, there has been almost no discussion of Lenin's great interest in literature. This paper glances at some of the contemporary evidence of Lenin's concern with the classic Russian novelists - especially Tolstoy, to whom he devoted four essays (his only works of formal literary criticism). Lenin placed great emphasis from the earliest days of the revolution on building a popular library system and on publishing good fiction cheaply. He also had an informed interest in language and was a life-long opponent of literary censorship. In this connection, his struggle against the sectarianism of the Proletkult movement is recorded.