We bring to the attention of readers a course of lectures given by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Lifshitz (1905–1983) in the late 1930s - very early 1940s at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History named after N.G. Chernyshevsky (MIFLI, abbreviated as IFLI). The course was called “Introduction to Marxist-Leninist Theory of Art.” IFLI, the “red lyceum,” was the country’s main humanitarian university in that era. Professor Lifshits held the position of associate professor in the department of art history and headed the department of theory and history of art. According to the literary critic A. Anikst, Lifshitz’s lectures “came from all over the city, from other institutes and institutions, students, teachers and simply those who loved culture, literature, and art.” At this time, public discussions on aesthetics issues took place at IFLI. One of the witnesses describes Lifshitz’s participation in them in the following words: “... he was all sparkling with witticisms, paradoxes, spectacular comparisons, elegant ridicule. Under his speech, his opponents withered away before our eyes, and in their subsequent speeches the melancholy of deliberate failure was evident...” Lifshitz’s course of lectures at IFLI had just begun. According to his listener, future art critic N.A. Dmitrieva, “he didn’t have time to get to the most basic thing - the presentation of his own ideas related to Marxist aesthetics, as he understood it, in this course, the war interfered.” Notes to the lectures introduce the intellectual context of the era and are based mainly on sources from 1920 -1930s.