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Authors of the 62 articles collected here include Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Krupskaya, Kollontai, Vinokurov, Lunacharsky, and many others. The essays are grouped under a variety of general topics: The Ideal Communist; Sex Roles, Marriage and Family; Social Welfare, Religion, Language, Prostitution; Proletarian Law; Labor and Education; and the Arts. Revolution provides that rarest of opportunities: the possibility of creating a new social and cultural architecture. When the old structures are completely destroyed, something new must take their place. In this collection of the early writings of the most prominent post-revolutionary Soviet critics and theoreticians we can see the diversity of opinions about what the new social order should be, vague outlines as well as the faint outlines of the social architecture’s final shape. It is interesting that much of this material was banned in later decades, when the spirit of frank discussion was regarded as suspicious. The problems discussed are those basic to any post-revolutionary society: if the old morals are discredited, what should take their place? If the old art is reactionary, how avant-garde should the new be? If theater had been an experience for the elite, how best could it be democratized? What should a Communist "be like", and how should children be raised? The critics represented in this collection are exhilarated by the very idea of being able to address these issues seriously, but at the same time they are caught in a welter of contradictions. The issues covered here range from sex roles to the dangers of local nationalism and religion. Some of the ideas which were put into practice would become terrible failures - the legal reforms, for example, but others, in the areas of medicine and mass education, were quite successful for their time. The most striking successes, of course, were in the arts. The Revolution was a catalyst for the avant-garde groups which had existed earlier, and out of this came the major achievements of the Constructivists, Eisenstein and many others

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