Lunacharsky was indispensable in the relations with the old university and overall pedagogical circles that convincingly expected full annihilation of science and art by the ‘ignorant usurpers.’ Lunacharsky showed to this closed world that the Bolsheviks not only had respect for culture, but were also not unfamiliar with it. In those days, more than just one lecturing-desk priest had to look at this vandal with stupefaction, as he could read in half a dozen modern languages and in two ancient ones and occasionally showed such versatile erudition that it would easily suffice for a good dozen of professors.” Leon Trotsky, Siluety: politicheskie portrety [Silhouettes: Political Portraits] (Moscow, 1991), 369–370.
Quoted from the greeting letter by A. S. Bubnov in Works of the First All-Russia Museum Convention (Moscow, 1930).
Nikolai Kovalenskaya, “The Experience of the Marxist Exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery,” Soviet Museum no. 1 (1931): 50–59 .
This was the nickname invented by Trotsky for naive proletarian art.
