The founder and leader of the Italian Communist Party A. Gramsci is one of the most significant thinkers of the 20th century. His ideas were formed as in a polemic with the Italian philosopher B. Croce, and in a lively dialogue with the largest Soviet theorists of the 1920s, in particular with N. Bukharin. His articles, letters and notes from "Prison notebooks," concern both general philosophical problems of aesthetics, literature, art, and individual, more particular issues related to the relationship between the intelligentsia and the people, the role of mass culture in modern society.