“Think what vitality the theatre had to possess,” said Chaliapin, “to maintain itself through the revolution.” “Think what hunger the Russian masses had for learning,” said Madame Lenin, “that they could grasp even this hard moment to learn to read and study.” Both these assertions are true, but in spite of that hunger and that vitality both forces might have gone down for some years, had it not been for the splendid leadership of Lunacharsky. Even those ardent revolutionists who could see no further than the immediate moment are beginning to realize that the very fact that the Soviets have kept intact their national art gives them a prestige which money could never buy; it is an indisputable evidence of their faith in civilization. And it is Lunacharsky who has managed to save for them this evidence of faith when hotheads would have cast it aside. It always seems a pity that we are aware now of only the prominent political figures in Russia. If we can think back on the French guillotine days and the burning of libraries, the mad destruction of art, the sacking of palaces by angry mobs, we can understand that if there had been men in France in those days who could have held those mobs in check and made them want to read the books they were burning, made them turn the palaces into museums, Napoleon might never have worn a crown. In Russia the influence of the men who hold the political reins would be so much slighter and so much less significant if they were not backed up by men like Lunacharsky. He had the art galleries heated in the most bitter of the fuel famine days and the immense crowds going in partly to keep warm strolled all day under historical canvases and came to know all the great pictures of Russia. The Winter Palace became a Revolutionary Museum, one of the most unique museums in the whole world, the Palace of Nicholas II at Tsarskoe Selo became a Children’s Home, as did every great estate in the provinces threatened with destruction by quarreling peasants. It is interesting to note that the wives of three prominent revolutionists rendered Lunacharsky valuable aid in his difficult work, the wife of Trotsky, the wife of Gorky, and the wife of Leo Kaminev. Madame Trotsky has under her direction all private art collections and all the small palaces; she hands a monthly inventory of these places over to Lunacharsky. In the last three years she has been very gradually and systematically removing the most valuable objects in the collections to the museums. Madame Kaminev, Trotsky’s sister, is the head of Prolocult, a movement which aims at a new culture, especially in the theatre, which is free from Greek or other influences. It is Madame Kaminev’s theory that such a culture, springing from the workers and peasants and unspoiled by the imperfections and influences of former civilizations, will do much to stimulate and renew art in general, which she believes has become decadent