During his early, pre-Revolution period leading into
1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Russian Futurist
movement. He co-signed the Futurist manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public
Taste (1913), and wrote such poems as "A Cloud in Trousers" (1915)
and "Backbone Flute" (1916).
Mayakovsky produced a large and diverse body of work
during the course of his career: he wrote poems, wrote and directed plays,
appeared in films, edited the art journal LEF, and produced agitprop posters in
support of the Communist Party during the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922.
Though Mayakovsky's work regularly demonstrated
ideological and patriotic support for the ideology of the Bolsheviks and a
strong admiration of Vladimir Lenin, his relationship with the Soviet state was
always complex and often tumultuous. Mayakovsky often found himself engaged in
confrontation with the increasing involvement of the Soviet state in cultural
censorship and the development of the State doctrine of Socialist realism.
In 1930 Mayakovsky committed suicide. Even after
death his relationship with the Soviet state remained unsteady. Though
Mayakovsky had previously been harshly criticized by Soviet governmental bodies
such as the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), Premier Joseph
Stalin described Mayakovsky after his death as "the best and the most
talented poet of our Soviet epoch".
