LUNACHARSKY, ANATOLY VASILIEVICH (1875— ).933), Russian politician, author and dramatist, was born in Poltava of well-to-do parents. He joined the revolutionary move ment when at college in Kiev, and afterwards studied natural science and economics at Zurich. He began his revolutionary activities in Russia in 1892 and was deported to Vologda in 1898, where he remained for three years, achieving a reputation as a brilliant writer and lecturer on Socialism. In 1903 Lunacharsky joined the Bolshevik wing of the social democratic party. He met Lenin in the following year, and joined the editorial staff of the Bolshevik V pered (Forward). He was chiefly concerned with social democratic propaganda and with lectures and political meetings for Russian students and political refugees abroad.
During the revolution of 1905 Lunacharsky was imprisoned, and when the reaction set in he left Russia for Italy. Together with Gorky and Bogdanov, a well-known social democrat, he formed the so-called "left-wing" of Bolshevism (opposed to Lenin on theo retical points), and was one of the promoters of the social demo cratic party schools at Capri and Bologna.
During the World War Lunacharsky maintained a determined internationalist attitude, and disseminated violent anti-war prop aganda in Paris and Switzerland, renewing closer contact with the Lenin group after a temporary estrangement. In March 1917 he
joined Lenin and Trotsky in Russia in their revolutionary opposi tion to the provisional government. He was arrested after the Bolshevik rising in July; but was subsequently liberated and elected vice-president of the Petrograd municipal board. In the initial stages of the November revolution and during the civil war, Lunacharsky was one of the ablest speakers of the party, and acted as emissary of the military revolutionary council to the various war fronts. As people's commissar for public instruction, 1917-29, in the new Government, Lunacharsky ensured the preser vation of works of culture and art during the civil war. He pro moted mass instruction, while his especial concern for the welfare of the theatre furthered the development of the Russian stage.
Lunacharsky wrote 14 plays (published in 2 vol.), of which several were produced with conspicuous success in Russia and in Berlin. "Vasilisa the Wise," "Faust and the City" and "The Magi" were translated into English by Leonard Magnus and published under the title of Three Plays (1923). He was appointed ambassador to Spain in 1933. He died Dec. 26, 5933.