Leopold Averbakh

Leopold Leonidovich Averbakh (1903–1937) was the head of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) in the 1920s, and the most prominent of a group of communist literary critics who argued that the Bolshevik revolution, carried out in 1917 in the name of Russia's industrial working class, should be followed by a cultural revolution in which 'bourgeois' literature workers' would be supplanted by literature written by and for the proletariat. Averbakh was a powerful figure in Russian cultural circles until Josif Stalin ordered RAPP to cease its activities, in 1932.

Leopold Averbakh was born to Jewish parents in 1903 in Saratov, though most of his family links were in Nizhny Novgorod. His father, Leonid, owned a small steamship on the Volga. Aged only 14 at the time of the Bolshevik revolution, he had exceptionally good family links with the new regime. His mother was the sister of Yakov Sverdlov and of Zinady Sverdlov, who became the adopted son of Maxim Gorky. He was also related to Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich. His sister, Ida, married Genrikh Yagoda, future head of the NKVD. He played a prominent role in the Bolshevik youth movement in his teens, and by the age of 19, he was editor of the literary journal Moldaya gvardiya ('Young Guard'), and a leading member of the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (VAPP), the forerunner of RAPP. He was one of three representatives of VAPP who signed an agreement in 1923 with the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky promising that their respective organisations would co-operate to "steadfastly unmask bourgeois-gentry and pseudo-sympathetic literary groups" and to promote "class artistry". . One of the 'bourgeois' writers they targeted was Mikhail Bulgakov, whom Averbakh denounced in September 1924 as a writer "who doesn't pretend to disguise himself as a fellow traveller."

Late in 1925, the Soviet communist party's ruling triumvirate of Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev split. Illarion Vardin, effective leader of VAPP, joined the Zinoviev faction. Averbakh and most of VAPP's younger members broke with him and founded RAPP, as a kind of literary wing of the Stalinist faction, though they never sought or received Stalin's formal endorsement. Averbakh was RAPP's unchallenged leader for the whole of its existence. He wrote extensively - "a prolific critic who hoped to apply Karl Marx’s understanding of historical materialism to literary production, Averbakh’s theoretical contribution to Soviet literary scholarship cannot be negated."

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