Lukács' main writing as a Marxist critic of literature falls largely within [the] period in which it was most difficult, or even dangerous, to air venturesome thoughts that might not quite fit in with the canon of rigid and fixed rulings about what one should or should not think. (p. 173)

To recall these facts of history and to append to them these conjectures is not to exculpate the philosopher, let alone to applaud him. But Lukács' critical activities did not happen in a void, and they reflect certain facts about the world he lived in. During his stay in Moscow, Lukács did not announce his views through participation in the polemics on Socialist Realism, the new Russian orthodoxy exported to the rest of Europe via the network of party organs. He wrote of Tolstoy or Gorky, but not much of the successors of Sholokhov. He...