with all this emphasis on formal experimentation, some futurists were not indifferent to politics. in particular, mayakovsky's poems, with their lyrical sensibility, appealed to a broad range of readers. he vehemently opposed the meaningless slaughter of world war i and hailed the russian revolution as the end of that traditional mode of life which he and other futurists ridiculed so zealously. although never a member of the russian communist party (rkp(b)), he was active in early 1919 in the attempt to set up komfut as an organisation promoting futurism affiliated to the viborg district branch of the party.