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scholars who dominated the academy in its first
century. Through public lectures inaugurated in
1746, he contributed to the diffusion of scientific
knowledge among Russian audiences. Thanks to
Elizabeth's support, he established the first Russian
glass and mosaic manufacturing industry, produc-
ing among others mosaics that celebrated Russian
historical themes like Peter the Great or the Bat-
tle of Poltava. In his final years he devoted more
time to administrative tasks at the academy. He
also laid the groundwork for the foundation of
Moscow University, established in 1755 and
named after him since 1940. In the 1760s Lomon-
osov's influence began to decline, the result of age,
illness, and a changing political climate around the
time of Elizabeth's death in 1761. He died in St.
Petersburg in April 1765, and is buried in the city's
Aleksandr Nevsky Monastery.
Lunacharsky escaped and fled to western Europe,
where he lived in various locations until the
FEBRUARY REVOLUTION
permitted him to return to
Russia. Intellectually restless and open to new
ideas, Lunacharsky was influenced by the spiritual
current within Russian Marxism that Lenin
denounced as a deviation in his work
Materialism
and Empirio-criticism.
His work
Religion and Social-
ism
(1908), in which he argued that socialism was
the new religion of humankind, was well received
in European intellectual circles. Lunacharsky
broke with Lenin, although he would later return
to the Bolshevik fold a few months before the
October Revolution. In April 1917, Lunacharsky
accompanied Lenin in the famous “sealed train”
that brought many Bolsheviks back to Russia from
Switzerland through Germany. Imprisoned by the
KERENSKY
government during the anti-Bolshevik
backlash that followed the
JULY DAYS
, he was freed
by the October Revolution, after which he was
appointed commissar of enlightenment in the Bol-
shevik government. Despite limited resources in a
nation torn by war and hunger, Lunacharsky
advanced an ambitious agenda, reorganizing the
Soviet educational system by introducing pro-
gressive education that also allowed students—
many of them of working-class background—to
gain vocational skills. The attempt to rush the for-
mation of new working-class elites through hastily
organized Workers' Faculties was less successful.
One area where Lunacharsky's efforts are gener-
ally given high marks was the mass campaign to
eliminate adult illiteracy. By 1929, amid a major
social upheaval, Lunacharsky had little influence
with
STALIN
and his inner circle. He was replaced
as commissar of enlightenment and appointed to
diplomatic posts. At the time of his death in 1933
he had been appointed Soviet ambassador to the
newly installed Spanish republic.
Lunacharsky, Anatolii Vasilievich
(1875-1933)
revolutionary and writer
A Bolshevik since 1904, as commissar of enlight-
enment Lunacharsky played an important role in
the areas of culture and mass education in the first
decade after the
OCTOBER REVOLUTION
of 1917.
Lunacharsky was born in Poltava, the Ukraine,
and pursued college studies in Kiev, where he first
joined a Marxist revolutionary group. In 1892, he
was forced to flee Russia, settling down first in
Zurich, where he met Rosa Luxemburg, and, in
1894, in Paris. In 1896, Lunacharsky returned to
Russia and resumed his political activities in the
social democratic movement. Frequently arrested,
during one of his terms of internal exile he met
Alexander Bogdanov, a talented Marxist philoso-
pher who would later clash with Vladimir
LENIN
.
In 1904, while traveling in Paris, Lunacharsky met
Lenin, eventually choosing to side with him and
other
BOLSHEVIKS
in the factional struggle against
the Mensheviks. During the 1905 Revolution,
Lunacharsky was back in St. Petersburg as editor
of
Novaia zhizn
(
New Life
), the first legal social
democratic newspaper. Arrested again in the
reprisals that followed the 1905 Revolution,
Luria, Aleksandr Romanovich
(1902-1977)
psychologist
One of the pioneers of modern neuropsychology,
Luria was born in the city of
KAZAN
, to the east of
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