Ladislav Štoll

Ladislav Štoll (26 June 1902 – 6 January 1981) was a Czech Marxist literary and art theorist, political activist and statesman. One of the leading cultural ideologues of Socialist Czechoslovakia, he promoted the Socialist realist stance in art and literature.

Biography Śtoll was born in to a middle-class family. His father Emil died in the First World War. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1929.

From 1930, he attended the lectures of František Xaver Šalda and Zdeněk Nejedlý at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University. He worked in Prague at the Živnostenská Banka as an official, from where he was dismissed in 1931 for his articles in the Left Front and promotion of communism among other bank officials. After his release, he became a full-time journalist and began to devote himself to literary criticism.

He was a leading member of the Left Front and responsible editor of the magazine of the same name. From 1934 he was the editor of Rudé právo. In 1934, he was sent by the party to Moscow as a translator of Marx and Engels' writings from German; where he stayed with his family in Moscow until 1936.

With Julius Fučík, he participated in the Czech broadcast of Moscow Radio. He participated in the mobilization as a lieutenant of the bombing squadron detached in Horní Počernice. During the occupation of Czechoslovakia, he worked in the Joint Stock Company for Corn Processing (1939–1945), participated in issuing illegal Rude pravo newspapers, for which he was investigated by the Gestapo several times in 1944.

Štoll was head of the commission of the creation of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. From 1956 he was a corresponding member of the CSAV and from 1960 an academician.

From 1960 onwards, Štoll's position within the party began to weaken however he was still actively involved in banning some literary works. In the years 1962–1968, he headed the Institute for Czech and World Literature of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After the failure of the Prague Spring, he was significantly involved in normalization in culture and social sciences.

In 1972, he was again appointed director of the Institute for Czech and World Literature of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, a position he held until his death.

Works In the interwar period, Štoll initially wrote fiction, but from 1928 he devoted himself to literary criticism and journalism subordinated to the interests of the Communist Party.

Člověk v aeroplánu, 1927 Otrávený chléb, 1929 Politika a světový názor, 1946 Skutečnosti tváří v tvář, 1948 Třicet let bojů za českou socialistickou poesii, 1950 Veliký člověk Maxim Gorkij, 1951 projev vydáno i knižně Literatura a kulturní revoluce 1959 Z bojů na levé frontě, 1964 O tvar a strukturu v slovesném umění, 1966 Umění a ideologický boj., dva díly první do r. 1959 a druhý do 1971 O modernosti a modernismu v umění, 1974 Socialismus a osobnosti, 1974 Básník a naděje, 1975 Občan F. X. Šalda, 1977 K dějinám politických ideologií v období renesance, 1983 Z kulturních zápasů, 1986