Mikhail Aleksandrovich Lifshitz (; 23 July 1905 in Melitopol ( Taurida Governorate, now

Zaporizhzhia Oblast Zaporizhzhia Oblast (), commonly referred to as Zaporizhzhia (), is an oblast (region) in south-east Ukraine. Its administrative centre is the city of Zaporizhzhia. The oblast covers an area of , and has a population of The oblast is an import ...

of Ukraine) – 20 September 1983 in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

) was a Soviet Marxian

literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...

and philosopher of art who had a long and controversial career in the former Soviet Union. In the 1930s, he strongly influenced Marxist views on aesthetics while being a close associate of

György Lukács György Lukács (born Bernát György Löwinger; ; ; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and Aesthetics, aesthetician. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an inter ...

. He also published important compilations of early Marxist literature on the role of art. In 1975, he was elected as a full member of the USSR Academy of Arts.

Biography

Born on 23 July 1905 in Melitopol, a city in Southern Ukraine, then part of

Imperial Russia Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor/empress, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * ...

, Lifshitz began higher education as an art student at the Vkhutemas ("Higher Art and Technical Studios") in

in the early 1920s, which was then the hotbed of

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

. He ended his studies there in 1925 because he disagreed with his modernist oriented instructors. Instead, he was offered a teaching position there; his job was to teach Marxist philosophy to artists. He pursued an analysis of aesthetics from a fundamentally Marxist perspective. His ideas became controversial at Vkhutemas, so he had to leave in 1930. He was offered a job instead at the Moscow's Marx-Engels Institute, where he developed a working relationship with the great Marxist philosopher

. Lukacs, himself, admitted that he was influenced by Lifshitz' views on

Marxist aesthetics Marxist aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics based on, or derived from, the theories of Karl Marx. It involves a dialectical and materialist, or dialectical materialist, approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifical ...

. Starting in 1933, he edited an influential Moscow magazine "The Literary Critic" (''Literaturny Kritik''), that was also followed by Marxist art theoreticians around the world through various translations published by Soviet government. Among the important contributors was writer Andrei Platonov, one of the most intriguing writers of fiction of the Soviet period, who is often referred to as the Soviet Kafka, as well as György Lukács. In 1938 Lifshitz's work "The Philosophy of Art of Karl Marx" was translated into English. His work also featured prominently in the influential work "Literature and Marxism: A Controversy by Soviet Critics" (1938). Lifshitz was considered a leading literary critic during the Stalin period. Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union Lifshitz entered the Second World War as a

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

volunteer.Gutov, Dmitriy. "Михаил Александрович Лифшиц" ("Mikhail Aleksandrovich Lifshitz"). 2003. ''Biographies''. ''Sovietika.ru''. Retrieved 25 Apr. 2009. http://www.sovetika.ru/bio/lifsh.htm Early on, he saw some serious combat. His unit was surrounded by the German army, and he had to escape back through the front lines. Later on, he worked as a journalist in military publications. He received awards for his service.

Post-war career

His post-war career as a critic was marked by considerable controversy. In the last years of Stalin, as a Jew, he was attacked as part of the " campaign against Cosmopolitanism". After Stalin's death in 1953, Lifshitz was in trouble again. A pamphlet he published in 1954, criticizing the writer Marietta Shaginyan, now displeased the old Stalinists, and provoked the ire of the established figures of Soviet intellectual life. He was severely criticized in the press and denied employment. According to some sources, at that stage, he was expelled from the Communist Party. Yet he perhaps was merely severely sanctioned as a member, coming very close to expulsion.Based on Russian Wikipedia His life improved after the official

de-Stalinization De-Stalinization () comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and Khrushchev Thaw, the thaw brought about by ascension of Nik ...

started in 1956, and the sanctions against him were gradually lifted. Many of his works were published again. The same time-frame was also a period of Lifshitz's collaboration with the Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov.

Ilyenkov's philosophy

...resembled that of Lifschitz in one important (and now almost forgotten) realm: the relationship between philosophy, culture (art, literature, music and so on) and the 'communist ideal' of a new human being, formed as a result of the political-economic changes to come...Evgeni V. Pavlov (2012)
Review of ''Perepiska (Letters), Mikhail Lifschitz and György Lukács. Moscow: Grundrisse, 2011.''
Historical Materialism, 20:4, 187-198

Lifshitz's main object of criticism in the 1960s was the

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

movement in the arts. From a political vantage point, Lifshitz, despite his criticism of the Soviet system, remained a strong proponent of Marxist-Leninist

socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

. In 1963 Lifshitz wrote the controversial article "Why Am I Not a Modernist?" where he defended Socialist Realism, which annoyed many modernists at the time. In 1968 it was included in his anthology "The Crisis of Ugliness" where he criticized

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

and Pop-art. In the early 1960s, Lifshitz gave considerable support to

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...

, then a beginning writer.

When in 1961 Alexander Solzhenitsyn approached Alexander Tvardovsky about the publication of his now-famous ''One Day in Life of Ivan Denisovich'' ... Tvardovsky forwarded Solzhenitsyn's manuscript to one of his oldest and most trusted friends, Mikhail Lifschitz. Lifschitz's report was unequivocal: 'It would be a crime not to publish this work'.

Yet later Solzhenitsyn was not kind in his remarks about him. Early on, Lifshitz was attacked in the mainstream Soviet press because of his criticisms of Modernist art; towards the end of his career he was honoured by the mainstream, and yet strongly disliked by the Soviet non-conformist artists. Lifshitz died in Moscow on 28 September 1983, eight years after his election as a full member of the USSR Academy of Arts, the most prestigious academic artistic organization within the Soviet Union. The vast majority of his work remains untranslated. One book on aesthetics, ''The Philosophy of Art of Karl Marx'', was published in English translation in 1938, and republished in 1980. Starting in the 1990s, Lifshitz acquired new popularity among the Nationalist circles in Russia, who appreciate his critique of "Western Modernist art", and his defence of traditional art. His works are being republished again.

Contributions

Lifschitz's collection of Marx and Engels's views on aesthetics – ''Marx and Engels on Art'' was published in 1933 (also an extended edition of 1938) as the first anthology of its kind. It was also published in German in 1948. In 1938, he published a similar anthology of Lenin's view on aesthetics called ''Lenin on Culture and Art''. In 1926–1940, Lifschitz also published a very large number of works dedicated to such diverse authorities as

Giambattista Vico Giambattista Vico (born Giovan Battista Vico ; ; 23 June 1668 – 23 January 1744) was an Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist during the Italian Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationali ...

Johann Joachim Winckelmann Johann Joachim Winckelmann ( ; ; 9 December 17178 June 1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenism (neoclassicism), Hellenist who first articulated the differences between Ancient Greek art, Greek, Helleni ...

Francesco Guicciardini Francesco Guicciardini (; 6 March 1483 – 22 May 1540) was an Italian historian and politician, statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance. In his maste ...

, Balzac,

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...

, and Pushkin.

Selected works (translations)

''The Crisis of Ugliness: From Cubism to Pop-Art''
Mikhail Lifshitz. Translated and with an Introduction by David Riff. Leiden: BRILL, 2018 (originally published in Russian by Iskusstvo, 1968)
''The Philosophy of Art of Karl Marx''.
Longwood Publishing Group, 1980. (Original English translation of 1938); available also in the German translation (Lifschitz 1960), and the Spanish translation (Lifshits 1982) *''Marx / Engels. Über Kunst und Literatur. Eine Sammlung aus ihren Schriften''. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1948 (6. Auflage 1953). (German edition of ''Marx and Engels on Art'' anthology.) *Mikhail Lifshitz
''Literature and Marxism: A Controversy''
(1938)

References

External links

*Mikhail Lifshitz, ttp://www.gutov.ru/lifshitz/texts/excerpts.htm Excerpts from a late interview.(First published in 1987) www.gutov.ru *Mikhail Lifshitz
''What are the Classics?''
Fragments from Chapter 9 "The Meaning of the World" – Moscow: Iskusstvo XXI vek Publishing House. 2004. (Ed. V. Arslanov) Translation from Russian: David Riff
“Art is dead! Long live art!” — Mikhail Lifshitz on ''Karl Marx's Philosophy of Art.''
thecharnelhouse.org

��A Russian-language biographical sketch by Dmitriy Gutov. www.sovetika.ru {{DEFAULTSORT:Lifshitz, Mikhail Aleksandrovich 1905 births 1983 deaths Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Crimean Jews Expelled members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Jewish socialists Marxist theorists Russian literary critics Soviet Jews Soviet military personnel of World War II Soviet philosophers 20th-century Russian philosophers People from Melitopol Vkhutemas alumni Academic staff of Moscow Art Theatre School Full Members of the USSR Academy of Arts