Mikhail Lifshitz

In 1975, he was elected as a full member of the USSR Academy of Arts.

Mikhail Lifshitz studied at Vkhutemas. The recorded working language is Russian. The field of work recorded is philosophy of art, literary studies and cultural history. Employment is recorded with Vkhutein, Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute and Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History. Distinctions recorded are Order of the Red Star.

Born on 23 July 1905 in Melitopol, a city in Southern Ukraine, then part of Imperial Russia, Lifshitz began higher education as an art student at the Vkhutemas ("Higher Art and Technical Studios") in Moscow in the early 1920s, which was then the hotbed of Modernism. 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 György Lukács. Lukacs, himself, admitted that he was influenced by Lifshitz' views on Marxist aesthetics. 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 volunteer. 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.

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. His life improved after the official de-Stalinization 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.

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, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Francesco Guicciardini, Balzac, Hegel, and Pushkin.

• 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)

Mikhail Lifshitz worked in philosophy of art, literary studies, cultural history and aesthetics. He was employed by Vkhutein, Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History, Institute of Red Professors and State Institute for Art Studies. He belonged to Russian Academy of Sciences and USSR Academy of Arts.

Mikhail Lifshitz is recorded as having received Order of the Red Star.