Mikhail Alexandrowitsch Lifschitz

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Mikhail Alexandrowitsch Lifschitz (1933)

Mikhail Lifshitz ( Russian Михаил Александрович Лифшиц ; born July 10 . Jul / July 23, 1905 greg. In Melitopol , Russian Empire ; †  28. September 1983 in Moscow ) was a Soviet Marxist literary critic and philosopher of art. In the 1930s he was a close friend and colleague of Georg Lukács and from 1975 had a leading position in the Art Academy of the USSR .

life and work

Lifschitz was born in Melitopol and began studying at the School of Art Vkhutemas in Moscow. After disputes with his teachers, however, he moved to the Moscow Marx-Engels Institute in 1929 , where he met Georg Lukács in 1930 and made him aware of Marx's aesthetic ideas. He was secretary of the editorial office of the magazines Letopisi marksizma and the archive Marksa i Engel'sa , in which many first prints of Marx-Engels manuscripts were published. When in March 1931 all employees of the Marx-Engels-Institute were checked for their remaining or their dismissal, the “Central Revision Commission of the Workers and Peasants Inspection” decided to “Leave”. From 1932 he also worked at the Communist Academy . In the 1930s, the series “Classics of Aesthetics” with works by Winckelmann , Lessing , Goethe , Schiller and Vico was published under his editorship . Lifschitz also wrote many essays, reviews and polemics in literary magazines such as the 1940 forbidden Literaturnyjkritik and the well-known Literaturnaja Gazeta .

When the German-Soviet War broke out , he volunteered for the Red Army. In the late 1950s, Lifschitz's writings on socialism and the development of Soviet society led to arguments with leading Soviet intellectuals and his expulsion from the CPSU . At the same time, the thaw period , a collaboration between Lifschitz and the Soviet philosopher Ewald Ilyenkov arose . Despite his criticism of the Soviet system, Lifschitz remained a proponent of Marxism-Leninism and was accepted into the USSR Art Academy in 1975 . At the request of the writer Alexander Twardowski , Lifschitz wrote a review of Solzhenitsyn's debut work A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1961 , which was published in the magazine Nowy Mir . In his writings on art theory, he dealt particularly critically with modern art.

Most of his works are only available in Russian. Karl Marx und die Ästhetik , the collection Die dreissiger Jahre , was published in German translation . Selected writings , which also contains a revised version of Karl Marx and the aesthetics , as well as Crisis of the Ugly. From Cubism to Pop Art a critique of modern art in the fundus series of VEB Verlag der Kunst Dresden. As early as 1948, the anthology he edited was Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels. About art and literature. A collection of their writings published in German. The Philosophy of Art of Karl Marx was published in English as early as 1938 .

Selected Works

  • The philosophy of art of Karl Marx. Ed. by Angel Flores. Transl. from Russian by Ralph B. Winn. Critics Group, New York 1938.

In German translation:

  • Karl Marx and the aesthetics . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1960 (2nd edition 1967) (Fundus series 3).
  • Crisis of the ugly. From cubism to pop art . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1971 (Fundus series 26).
  • The thirties. Selected writings . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1988 (Fundus series 113–115).

As editor in German translation:

  • Marx / Engels. About art and literature. A collection from their writings . Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1948 (6th edition 1953).

Web links

Commons : Mikhail Aleksandrovich Lifshitz  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian language Wikipedia
personal data
SURNAME Lifschitz, Michail Alexandrowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ли́фшиц, Михаи́л Алекса́ндрович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet Marxist literary critic and art philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Melitopol , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1983
Place of death Moscow