Since the Twentieth Party Congress, a controversy has developed in the Soviet Union concerning the activities and views of Anatolii Vasilievich Lunacharsky (1875-1933). Lunacharsky was the USSR's first commissar of education and an important and controversial figure in the arts during the 1920s. Of particular interest in the current debate is the underlying issue of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union today. In praising or attacking Lunacharsky, writers can set forth in an oblique manner their views on topics that cannot always be openly discussed. In this debate those who advocate change in the arts policy and those who support the current policies can confront each other, in an acceptable way, on such issues as censorship, the party's role in the world of art, artistic experimentation, and a variety of other issues of vital concern to artists and writers in the Soviet Union.