(CZ) Prvý ľudový komisár osvety Anatolij Vasiljevič Lunačarskij
(EN) The First People’s Commissioner of Education, Anatolij Vasilievich Lunacharskij

The author wrote the essay about A. V. Lunacharskij on the occasion of the centenary of this significant Marxist aesthetic, literary historian and critic, writer, dramatist and translates Party and state official, one of the creators of socialist culture, academician and the first people’s commissioner of adult education. In preparing this essay he used the Works by V. I. Lenin, documents, memoirs, monographies and essays about Lunacharskij as well as his speeches and articles published in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. After a brief outline of the life and political activity of A. V. Lunacharskij in the period prior to the Great October Socialist Revolution, the author describes Lunacharskij’s activities as people’s commissioner in 1917—1929. The author writes about the methods of work of the people’s commissioner of education and about the problems and difficulties A. V. Lunacharskij and his colleagues had to solve. He quotes some of Lunacharskij’s speeches and documents presented just after the victory of the revolution, in which he formulated the most important tasks of the new Soviet power in the sphere of education. In the following part the author writes about Lunacharskij’s efforts to construct a unified, work, polytechnical Soviet school, which would be a general, free school closely linked with life and the practice of socialist construction giving a broad scope for the creative work of the teachers. By some characteristic quotations the author documents Lunacharskij’s opinions of the most important problems concerned with the construction of the Soviet educational system. The author deals specifically with such questions as the contents of education as conceived by Lunacharskij, his share in the elaboration of the theory of education by taking care of the development of science as such and educational science in particular and with Lunacharskij’s relation to Soviet teachers. At the end of the essay, which gives an overall survey of A. V. Lunacharskij’s activities, we can also find a brief history of his publications in the Soviet Union.