1
Proletarian Culture and the Russian Revolution:
The Origins of the Proletkult Movement

The movement for proletarian culture that spread across Soviet Russia in the early years of the revolution had a complex social and intellectual heritage. It was most directly inspired by the theories of the left Bolshevik intellectual Aleksandr Bogdanov, who believed that the proletariat had to found a new cultural system, that is, a new morality, a new politics, and a new art, in order to succeed against the old elite. But proletarian culture proved to be an expansive slogan that easily bore many other meanings. It appealed to workers who were eager to break all ties with intellectuals and to cultural radicals who wanted nothing to do with Russia's past. It also inspired liberal reformers who hoped to share their knowledge of classic Russian culture with the masses.

Russian socialism, in its varied manifestations, was simultaneously a political and an educational movement. Intellectual socialist leaders keenly felt the rift between themselves, as representatives of privileged and cultured society, and the Russian masses, who were essential for a successful political upheaval. They hoped to transcend this divide by educating the masses to perceive their true interests. By doing so they believed that they were preparing the masses for radical political change. The educators had laudable goals. They tried to

convey some knowledge of Russian high culture to their students, while at the same time convincing them of the need for revolution. Yet despite these good intentions, there were strains between the teachers, who conceived of themselves as the bearers of culture (kul'turtreger ), and their students, cast in the role of willing and grateful recipients.^[1]

Aleksandr Bogdanov's theory of proletarian culture was conceived as a way to transcend this tension. Inspired by his own experiences in populist circles, Bogdanov believed that it was possible to enlighten workers without dominating them.^[2] His purpose was not primarily to transmit political theory or high culture. Rather he hoped to encourage workers to take control of the socialist movement themselves. This unique didactic process would allow the proletariat to formulate its own class ideology and morality, which was eventually to serve as the basis for the socialist society of the future.

Moved by their own desire to reach the people, many intellectuals devised popular educational projects in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Philanthropists, liberals, populists, and socialists of all persuasions turned in increasing numbers to become teachers in evening classes, Sunday schools, open universities, and clubs. Their efforts also encouraged a popular educational press that aimed to bring scientific knowledge, contemporary literature, and a sense of cultural community to the laboring population at large. Proletarian culture also loosely described these endeavors. The intelligentsia was bringing culture, the finest artistic and scientific accomplishment of their society, to the working

[1] See Norman M. Naimark, Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement under Alexander III (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 154–86; Allan K. Wildman, The Making of a Workers' Revolution (Chicago, 1967), pp. 89–117; and Reginald E. Zelnik, "Russian Bebels: An Introduction to the Memoirs of Semen Kanatchikov and Matvei Fisher," Russian Review , vol. 35 (1976), pp. 249–89, 417–47. The Russian word kul'turtreger is taken from the German Kulturträger .

[2] See James D. White, "Bogdanov in Tula," Studies in Soviet Thought , vol. 22 (1981), pp. 33–58.

classes. They hoped to share this precious heritage and imbue the people with a sense of political and social responsibility.

For aspiring worker-intellectuals educated in study groups and, after 1905, in institutions affiliated with the labor movement, proletarian culture was an expression of their aim to challenge the cultural predominance of the intellectual elite. Some workers openly rejected the intelligentsia's aid and claimed that self-education was their goal. Although the members of these circles usually aspired to the fruits of high culture, they also encouraged their fellow workers to express their own artistic views and to criticize "bourgeois culture" and the class that sustained it.

When the Proletkult emerged in 1917 all these unlikely collaborators could claim some responsibility for its formation. Bogdanov and his allies molded Proletkult ideology to reflect their commitment to proletarian cultural leadership. The movement incorporated the participants in union clubs, people's universities, and self-education circles and reflected the ambivalent attitudes of these participants toward bourgeois culture and the intellectuals who possessed it. It also attracted part of the staff and the clientele of the liberal adult education movement, with its inclusive, democratic approach to education. These diverse understandings of culture, politics, and the proletariat would both shape and limit what the Proletkult could become.

Left Bolshevism and Proletarian Culture

The intellectual foundations for the Proletkult movement were laid in the years after the failure of the Revolution of 1905. The defeat of the revolutionary forces marked a severe crisis for the Russian socialist movement and for the Bolsheviks in particular. When the government disbanded the Second Duma in 1907 and the police began to restrict the activities of political parties and legalized worker groups, Social Democrats had to decide whether to participate in parliamen-

tary elections or to continue the revolutionary struggle through underground agitation. This dilemma split the Bolshevik faction in two. Lenin argued that it made no sense to eschew legal channels because a new revolutionary upsurge lay far off in the future. He was opposed by a group known as the "left Bolsheviks," led by Aleksandr Bogdanov, who believed that the revolution would soon continue and that the Bolsheviks should not be lulled into quiescent parliamentarianism.

The left Bolsheviks, who included Bogdanov, Anatolii Lunacharskii, Maxim Gorky, and Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii, challenged Lenin's claims to leadership and his vision of party politics. They attacked him on three different fronts: political strategy, party organization, and, most fundamentally, socialist theory.^[3] Lenin's authoritarian methods of party organization received special criticism. Because the ranks of intellectual leaders had been depleted through arrests, disaffection, and exile, the left Bolsheviks feared that workers in Russia had been left without guidance. They argued that the Bolsheviks needed to encourage more collective and inclusive organizational tactics and to devote more resources to the training of worker-leaders who could assume positions of power.

Most important, the left Bolsheviks were deeply committed to a reinterpretation of Marxist theory that would give ideology and culture a more creative and central role. Opposed to the rigid materialism of Lenin and Plekhanov, they believed that the ideological superstructure was more than a reflection of society's economic base. Lunacharskii had long been fasci-

[3] There is a large and growing literature on left Bolshevism. For the most recent works see John Biggart, "'Anti-Leninist Bolshevism': The Forward Group of the RSDRP," Canadian Slavonic Papers , vol. 23, no. 2 (1981), pp. 134–53; Robert C. Williams, "Collective Immortality: The Syndicalist Origins of Proletarian Culture, 1905–1910," Slavic Review , vol. 39, no. 3 (1980), pp. 389–402; idem, The Other Bolsheviks (Bloomington, 1985); and Avraham Yassour, "Lenin and Bogdanov: Protagonists in the 'Bolshevik Center,'" Studies in Soviet Thought , vol. 22 (1981), pp. 1–32.

nated by the power of art to inspire political action. Both he and Gorky were convinced that socialism could convey the force of a "human religion" and inspire individuals to look beyond themselves to a higher good, one that encompassed the fate of all humanity. Taken together, their ideas came to be known as "god-building" (bogostroitel'stvo ).^[4] At the same time, Bogdanov was engaged in a massive project to integrate the process of cognition into Marxism in order to develop a more sophisticated understanding of ideology.

From 1907 to 1911 the leftists were serious contenders for control of the Bolshevik center. Initially, their activist political tactics were very appealing to the rank and file.^[5] They spread their ideas about ideology and society in socialist journals; Bogdanov even published a popular science fiction novel, Red Star , which depicted the results of a successful socialist revolution on Mars.^[6] Bogdanov also reached out to a scholarly socialist audience. In his book Empiriomonism , made famous by Lenin's violent objections to it, he employed the ideas of contemporary Western European thinkers such as Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius.^[7] In Bogdanov's view the socialist polity of the future would demand a new awareness of the relationship between the individual and society and would require a different approach to ethics, science, human values, and art.

[4] Jutta Scherrer," 'Ein gelber und ein blauer Teufel': Zur Entstehung der Begriffe 'bogostroitel'stvo' und 'bogoiskatel'stvo,'" Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte , vol. 25 (1978), pp. 322–23; A. V. Lunacharskii, Velikii perevorot (Petrograd, 1919), pp. 14–22; and idem, "Ateisti," in Ocherki po filosofii marksizma (St. Petersburg, 1908), pp. 107–61.

[5] Geoffrey Swain, Russian Social Democracy and the Legal Labour Movement (London, 1983), pp. 41–43.

[6] See Loren R. Graham, "Bogdanov's Inner Message," in Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia , by Alexander Bogdanov, ed. Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites (Bloomington, 1984).

[7] Dietrich Grille, Lenins Rivale (Cologne, 1966), pp. 110–19; Kenneth M. Jensen, Beyond Marx and Mach (Dordrecht, 1978), pp. 67–86; and Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 42–45.

The leftists attempted to put their ideas about party organization and tactics into practice by starting two exile schools for worker-cadres in Capri and Bologna between 1909–1911.^[8] Because training and education were a central part of their program, the leftists attached great significance to these schools. The first opened at Gorky's villa on the island of Capri in the summer of 1909 with thirteen worker-students elected from Russian party committees sympathetic to the left Bolsheviks' political stance. The teachers were prominent intellectuals, including Gorky, Bogdanov, Lunacharskii, and the historian Mikhail Pokrovskii. They devised an ambitious curriculum that included classes on the history of the socialist movement, literature, and the visual arts. In addition, the school offered practical courses on agitational techniques, newspaper writing, and propaganda.^[9]

Capri school leaders also tried to give life to their ideas about party organization. To elaborate their critique of the Bolshevik center, the instructors gave lectures on socialist party organization with titles such as "On Party Authoritarianism." They tried to put party democracy into action on a small scale. Both students and teachers were elected to a school council that oversaw day-to-day affairs. When the council concluded that the lectures were too long and did not leave students enough time for questions, the teaching sched-

[8] On the background of the Capri school see Jutta Scherrer, "Les écoles du patti de Capri et de Bologne," Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique , no. 19 (1978), pp. 259–84. On the schools in general, see S. Livshits, "Kapriiskaia partiinaia shkola, 1909 g.," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia , no. 6 (1924), pp. 33–73; idem, "Partiinaia shkola v Bolon'e, 1910–1911 gg.," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia , no. 3 (1926), pp. 109–44; N. Semashko, "O dvukh zagranichnykh partiinykh shkolakh," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia , no. 3 (1923), pp. 142–51; Heinz Fenner, Die Propaganda-Schulen der Bolschewisten: Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte der Proletkultbewegung (Berlin, 1920); Williams, The Other Bolsheviks , pp. 151–59; and the memoirs of one participant, V. Kosarev, "Partiinaia shkola na ostrove Kapri," Sibirskie ogni , no. 2 (1922), pp. 63–75.

[9] On the Capri students see Livshits, "Kapriiskaia shkola," pp. 51–53; on classes see Kosarev, "Partiinaia shkola," pp. 70–73; and Scherrer, "Les écoles du parti," pp. 270–77.

ule was restructured and questions were integrated into the teaching format.^[10]

This first experiment did not fulfill the organizers' high hopes. The teachers fought among themselves, and Gorky eventually broke with Lunacharskii and Bogdanov. Five of the Capri students deserted the program to join Lenin. Only one worker-participant, Fedor Kalinin, would go on to distinguish himself as an important party leader. Nor did the school succeed in consolidating the left Bolsheviks' political position. Already in 1908, Lenin denounced their reinterpretation of Marxism in a weighty tome entitled Materialism and Empiriocriticism .^[11] He ousted Bogdanov from the Bolshevik faction before the first classes in Capri began.^[12] He even tried to co-opt some of the leftists' ideas by starting a party school of his own near Paris.^[13]

Despite these setbacks, the Capri experiment was a formative experience for many left Bolsheviks, Bogdanov in particular. At the conclusion of the school, a group of students and teachers came together and gave themselves a new name: the Vpered (Forward) circle.^[14] The Vperedists, who gained recog-

[10] Kosarev, "Partiinaia shkola," pp. 66–67.

[11] On Lenin and Bogdanov's philosophical disputes see David Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science (New York, 1961), pp. 27–44. On the publication of this book see Nikolay Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin , trans. Paul Rosta and Brian Pearce (London, 1968), pp. 233–39.

[12] See Georges Haupt and Jutta Scherrer, "Gor'kij, Bogdanov, Lenin: Neue Quellen zur ideologischen Krise in der bolschewistischen Fraktion, 1908–1910," Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique , vol. 19 (1978), p. 329.

[13] Ralph Carter Elwood, "Lenin and the Social Democratic Schools for Underground Party Workers, 1909–11," Political Science Quarterly , vol. 81, no. 3 (1966), pp. 370–91.

[14] On Vpered in general see Krisztina Mänicke-Gyöngyösi, "Proletarische Wissenschaft" und "Sozialistische Menschheitsreligion" als Modelle proletarischer Kultur (Berlin, 1982), pp. 25–67; K. A. Ostroukhova, "Gruppa 'Vpered,' 1909–1917 gg.," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia , no. 1 (1925), pp. 198–219; "Vpered," in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1926–1947), vol. 13, columns 386–89; and N. Voitinskii, "O gruppe 'Vpered,' 1907–1917 gg.," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia , no. 12 (1929), pp. 59–119.

nition from the Bolshevik faction only as a literary group, included a new element in their critique of Lenin and his politics: proletarian culture. In the Vpered platform, written by Bogdanov, they argued that the party had to look beyond narrow political and economic interests to prepare ideologically for the coming revolution.

There is only one conclusion. Using the old bourgeois culture, create a new proletarian one opposed to the old and spread it to the masses. Develop a proletarian science, strengthen authentic comradely relations in the proletarian milieu, devise a proletarian philosophy, and turn art in the direction of proletarian aspirations and experience.^[15]

From this point on, proletarian culture became a major theme in Bogdanov's political writings. He made it clear that he did not mean art, science, or philosophy alone. Rather for Bogdanov proletarian culture meant a distinctive class ideology. It was the spirit of socialism already apparent in embryonic form within capitalist society and expressed through the proletariat's comradely collective working habits and organizational structures.^[16] In his expansive use of the term, culture had the function of organizing human perception and hence shaping action in the world. Because of the existence of social classes, there could be no unified, common basis to human perception. It was the proletariat's task to create its own ideology, its own way to structure human experience. Because the working class was organized collectively through a labor process that enhanced comradely social relations, proletarian culture would contain a more unified, harmonious view of the world than the class cultures that preceded it.

Bogdanov's ideas on proletarian culture paralleled those of Marx on proletarian class rule. The proletariat was the "uni-

[15] "Platforma gruppy 'Vpered': Sovremennoe polozhenie i zadachi partii," reprinted in Sochineniia , by V. I. Lenin, 3d. ed. (Moscow, 1936), vol. 14, pp. 452–69, quotation p. 455.

[16] A. A. Bogdanov [Maksimov, pseud.], "Sotsializm v nastoiashchem," Vpered , no. 2 (1911), columns 59–71, esp. 70–71.

versal class"; it alone embodied the values of the classless society. Proletarian culture, Bogdanov argued, would be the most universal and inclusive of all class cultures. It would provide a fundamental preparatory step toward the creation of a truly human, classless culture in the future.^[17] He insisted that cultural transformation was not a frivolous enterprise; on the contrary, it was an essential prerequisite for a successful socialist revolution. Until the proletariat devised its own collective class ideology it would forever depend on the values of the bourgeoisie. Proletarian culture was the only way to insure the victory of socialism. It had to be nurtured and developed before the proletarian revolution in order for socialism to flourish.

To implement his ambitious ideas, Bogdanov looked to institutions like the Capri school. Such programs, which he called "proletarian universities," would be open to the most sophisticated representatives of the working class. They, in turn, were to form the basis of the new proletarian intelligentsia, which would then begin the task of organizing the broad mass of workers.^[18] Thus Bogdanov's program was essentially an exclusive one; he was not proposing methods for mass education. Rather than abandoning the vanguardist principles of Bolshevism, he reassessed them to insure that the vanguard came from the proletariat itself.

Vpered was not a successful political group. The Capri school had only one brief sequel, in the socialist city of Bologna during the winter of 1910–1911. By then it had no official ties to the Bolshevik center. Vperedists fell victim to émigré infighting, and Bogdanov left the circle entirely by 1911.^[19] His

[17] See A. A. Bogdanov, Kul'turnye zadachi nashego vremeni (Moscow, 1911), pp. 23, 54.

[18] Ibid., pp. 69–70.

[19] Bogdanov's exodus from Vpered is usually explained by his disagreements with other members over the definition and importance of proletarian culture. See Voitinskii, "O gruppe 'Vpered,'" pp. 109–10. However, Dietrich Grille speculates that he might have abandoned his political contacts in order to qualify for a general political amnesty in 1913. See Grille, Lenins Rivale , p. 33.

political challenge to Lenin's control of the Bolshevik faction was over.

But the left Bolsheviks did not give up their commitment to proletarian culture. Even after he left Vpered, Bogdanov continued to elaborate his theories. Lunacharskii pursued his interest in fine art and ideology by founding a circle for proletarian literature in Paris. There he trained exiled worker-writers, including Aleksei Gastev, Fedor Kalinin, and Mikhail Gerasimov, all influential figures in the early history of the Proletkult.^[20]

With the start of the First World War Vpered was reconstituted in Geneva by Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii, who would later serve as the Proletkult's first president. With Lunacharskii's aid, he used the concept of proletarian culture to explain why most European socialists had given their support to the war effort. Their patriotism revealed that socialists' ideological development was weak. The only way to end workers' dependence on the bourgeoisie was to develop proletarian culture and make scientific and socialist education the central task of social democracy.^[21]

The need to educate the working class for revolution was the Vperedists' central message. Culture, art, science, literature, and philosophy—these were the weapons needed to prepare a proletarian victory. If the working class devoted itself to education, if it shaped its own revolutionary leadership and class ideology, then it would not stand helpless and divided as it had in the years of reaction following 1905. But even as the Vperedists wrote about the proper preparations for revolution, the revolution itself overtook them.

[20] On Lunacharskii's circle see Robert C. Williams, Artists in Revolution: Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde , 1905–1925 (Bloomington, 1977), pp. 52–53; Lunacharskii, Velikii perevorot , p. 51; and Kurt Johansson, Aleksej Gastev: Proletarian Bard of the Machine Age (Stockholm, 1983), pp. 40–42.

[21] "Ot redaktsii," and V. Polianskii, "Russkie sotsial'shovanisty i zadacha revoliutsionnoi sotsial' demokratii," Vpered , no. 1 (1915), pp. 1–3, 7–8.

Culture for the Proletariat: Adult Education

Vperedists arrived at their cultural platform in part because they believed that the Russian intelligentsia was not a reliable partner for the working class. Suspicions between the workers and the intelligentsia, indeed between educated society and the lower classes in general, were deeply rooted in Russia, and the failure of the Revolution of 1905 only increased this tension. Many intellectuals were leaving politics altogether. Some began to attack the ethos of the old intelligentsia, including its traditional sense of moral responsibility for the lower classes.^[22] Artists and writers who had once been concerned with social and political problems in their work began to pursue new aesthetic approaches, such as modernist writing and abstract painting, which were much less accessible to popular audiences.^[23] The intelligentsia seemed confused and divided over what, if any, its social role should be.

Workers' organizations and left-wing political parties interpreted these changes in the simplest way: bourgeois intellectuals, frightened by the revolution, had abandoned the lower classes.^[24] This generalization was not entirely unjustified. Many intellectuals did indeed give up illegal underground activity in the years of repression, a shift felt keenly by the workers in these movements.^[25] Nonetheless, not all intellectuals lost their sense of social obligation. Instead many turned away from revolution and embraced legal activity, both cultural and educational. Members of the intelligentsia

[22] Jane Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism , 1917–1922 (New York, 1986), pp. 8–10.

[23] For the debate on modernism see Jeffrey Brooks, "Popular Philistinism and the Course of Russian Modernism," in Literature and History: Theoretical Problems and Russian Case Studies , ed. Gary Saul Morson (Stanford, 1986), pp. 90–110.

[24] See, for example, the complaints of workers in the Bolshevik press, reprinted in S. Breitenburg, ed., Dooktiabr' skaia Pravda ob iskusstve i literature (Moscow, 1937), pp. 31–32.

[25] See the comments of the Bolshevik worker and Proletkult organizer Aleksandr Samobytnik-Mashirov in A. Mashirov, "Zadachi proletarskoi kul'tury," Griadushchee , no. 2 (1918), pp. 9–10.

organized and staffed the numerous adult education courses, people's universities, educational societies, libraries, and theaters that multiplied in cities and villages between 1906 and 1914. Through their work they created a much richer and more complex network of educational experiences for the lower classes than had existed before the Revolution of 1905.

The intelligentsia's involvement in workers' educational programs had begun in the mid-nineteenth century with the Sunday school movement. Inspired by the writings of a Kievan educator, university students and other intellectuals had opened Sunday and evening schools for the urban lower classes in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and several other Russian cities. These programs were staffed by sympathetic intellectuals who frequently devised their own curricula. The study plans varied greatly from place to place, ranging from simple literacy programs to rather elaborate training in the social and natural sciences. From these first experiments a whole complex of evening classes and weekend schools emerged.^[26]

In the late nineteenth century more comprehensive educational programs began to take shape, modeled on some of the longer running Sunday and evening schools and inspired in part by English experiments in workers' adult education.^[27] The Revolution of 1905 gave an enormous boost to these efforts, and new schools opened in St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1906 and soon thereafter in over twenty cities, including Ufa, Baku, Warsaw, and Tomsk. These institutions, called "people's universities," were sponsored by a variety of local groups and relied on the services of the local intelligentsia. For example, the Kuban People's University in Ekaterinodar was staffed by local doctors, lawyers, and gymnasium teachers.^[28]

[26] On the Sunday school movement in St. Petersburg see Reginald E. Zelnik, Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg , 1855–1870 (Stanford, 1971), pp. 160–99.

[27] See Ia. V. Abramov, Nashi voskresnye shkoly: Ikh proshloe i nastoiashchee (St. Petersburg, 1900); and E. N. Medynskii, Vneshkol'noe obrazovanie: Ego znachenie, organizatsiia i tekhnika (Moscow, 1918).

[28] V. M. Riabkov, "Iz istorii razvitiia narodnykh universitetov v gody sotsialisticheskogo stroitel'stva v SSSR," in Klub i problemy razvitiia sotsialisticheskoi kul'tury (Cheliabinsk, 1974), pp. 35–36; and Medynskii, Vneshkol'noe obrazovanie , pp. 266–70.

Along with the popular universities there were also new art and music schools open to the general population. The People's Conservatory in Moscow, founded in 1906, was richly endowed with an excellent musical staff. Among the teachers were Aleksandr Kastalskii and Arsenii Avraamov, who would become important organizers of Proletkult musical training.^[29] People's theaters, first begun in the late nineteenth century, also mushroomed in the years after 1905. These drama circles aimed to acquaint the lower classes with the best of Russian playwrights, including Gogol, Tolstoy, and especially Ostrovsky.^[30] Although these programs made some concessions to popular tastes, such as incorporating folk music into conservatory curricula, inevitably the intellectual organizers conveyed their own standards of excellence.

Another educational forum were "people's houses" (narodnye doma ). Before the Revolution of 1905 the houses were largely used as organizational centers for cultural activities in city districts and towns. After 1905 they began to take on a more independent educational function. Like people's universities, they were sustained by many different local groups. Zemstva and cooperative organizations were by far the most common sponsors, and the government contributed money from its Trusteeship of the People's Temperance, founded with funds from the liquor monopoly.^[31] Organizers hoped that the friendly and comfortable clublike atmosphere of the houses would make education more appealing to the local population. The most famous of these institutions was the

[29] N. Briusova, "Massovaia muzykal' no-prosvetitel' naia rabota v pervye gody posle Oktiabria," Sovetskaia muzyka , no. 6 (1947), pp. 46–47; and Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia , rev. ed. (Bloomington, 1983), p. 5.

[30] Gary Thurston, "The Impact of Russian Popular Theatre, 1886–1915," Journal of Modern History , vol. 55, no. 2 (1983), pp. 237–67.

[31] Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature , 1861–1917 (Princeton, 1985), pp. 313–14.

Ligovskii People's House, run by the Countess Panina in St. Petersburg. Opened in 1891 as a cafeteria for students, it was taken over by the Imperial Technical Society and transformed into a night school. In 1903, when Countess Panina took control, the center greatly expanded its activities, adding a theater, art classes, and much more extensive educational programs.^[32] Several worker activists involved in the Petrograd Proletkult had had some contact with this cultural center.

The public served by these varied cultural institutions was diverse, reflecting the organizers' desire to reach "the people." It included workers, peasants, and the poorer townspeople. Fees were kept as low as possible, and some events were free. Although the regime hoped cultural offerings would divert the lower classes from political action, it was not always confident they would do so. Despite close government scrutiny, it proved difficult to separate politics from cultural work. Socialist teachers found opportunities to convey Marxist and other critical ideas in their classes, and working-class pupils learned to use cultural centers as a shield for clandestine political work.^[33]

A popular educational press, which took root in Russia between 1905 and 1917, also propagated the cause of adult education. Publications such as Herald of Knowledge (Vestnik znaniia ) and New Journal for Everyone (Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh ) gained large followings, especially among culturally ambitious white-collar employees.^[34] The editors, who were themselves intellectuals, aimed to provide a general overview of the most pressing scientific, social, and cultural issues of the day in an easily accessible format. Thus these journals served as guides for those interested in self-education. Although they attracted a readership among clerks, skilled

[32] Medynskii, Vneshkol'noe obrazovanie , pp. 102–3.

[33] See the memoirs of socialist teachers in one of Moscow's best-known schools for workers, E. M. Chemodanova, ed., Prechistenskie rabochie kursy: Pervyi rabochii universitet v Moskve (Moscow, 1948), pp. 13–140.

[34] Brooks, "Popular Philistinism."

workers, and primary school teachers, their simplified approach to complex issues earned them the scorn of many intellectuals, who believed their offerings were at the level of "third-rate people's universities."^[35]

The intellectuals involved in these varied programs had many different motives. Some, especially after the experience of 1905, were frightened by the specter of a revolution by the "dark," uneducated Russian masses. Others hoped to combat the danger of a rising popular culture of adventure novels and tabloid newspapers, which offended many intellectuals' cultural values.^[36] Political activists believed they could divert legal programs to further the revolutionary cause. But no matter what their immediate motivation or their political persuasion, they were all continuing an intelligentsia tradition of enlightenment and propaganda that had begun much earlier in the nineteenth century. These new institutions were a forum where the "culture bearers" could pass their burden on to the people and in the process help to shape the people's cultural heritage.

Clearly, most of these intellectuals had different goals than the Vperedists. They understood "culture" as the finest products of Russian and European civilization, not as a class ideology. They wanted to enlighten all of the laboring masses, not the industrial proletariat alone. Regardless of their political beliefs, they felt that the transmission of high culture was the single most important step toward positive social change. Yet despite these fundamental disagreements, both Vperedists and the reform-minded intelligentsia shared common ground. Both were convinced that education was essential for emancipation and that intellectuals had a role to play in the process of enlightenment. Although their emphasis was very different, both found value in Russia's cultural heritage. Thus it is not surprising that many of those who took part in adult educational projects offered their services to the Proletkult

[35] Ibid., p. 99.

[36] Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read , especially pp. 295–352.

after the October Revolution. There they continued the task of bringing culture to the masses, now rechristened as the proletariat.

Culture by the Proletariat: Workers' Institutions

The Revolution of 1905 spurred yet another cultural network, one that was controlled by the laboring classes themselves. The organizational laws of 1906, which allowed the legal formation of unions, encouraged the creation of workers' clubs and educational societies closely tied to the labor movement. With names such as "Enlightenment," "Education," and "Knowledge," these groups gained great popularity among both unionized and nonunionized workers.^[37] The intended membership was the urban proletariat, which, although not always easy to define, was surely a narrower public than the people earmarked for general adult education. The programs were also more limited, largely because of restricted resources.

The rapid growth of cultural circles showed the workers' desire for education and entertainment. It was also an expression of their profound distrust of the intelligentsia. Many believed that the liberals had betrayed them in the revolution and were appalled by the socialist intellectuals' waning interest in the political struggle.^[38] The new institutions were a way to educate a proletarian leadership through channels workers themselves controlled. Participants hoped that these circles would encourage an independent working-class intelligentsia, thus insuring that the proletariat would never have to

[37] Victoria E. Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion: Workers' Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow , 1900–1914 (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 328–34.

[38] See David Mandel, "The Intelligentsia and the Working Class in 1917," Critique , no. 14 (1981), pp. 68–70; and A. Mashirov, "Zadachi proletarskoi kul'tury," Griadushchee , no. 2 (1918), pp. 9–10.

depend on unreliable intellectual allies, as it had during the Revolution of 1905.^[39]

Unions and clubs had an uneasy relationship with people's universities and related groups associated with the highly suspect liberal intelligentsia.^[40] Although workers attended these institutions, many believed that their own clubs and societies should replace them and become, in the words of one union publication, "the center of [workers'] entire intellectual lives."^[41] They aspired to self-education (samoobrazovanie ) and aimed to exclude the intelligentsia entirely. Yet despite these optimistic hopes for autonomy, cultural circles still solicited the help of intellectuals as teachers and lecturers. These contradictory sentiments of need and resentment further strained relations between workers and educated society.^[42]

The offerings in workers' clubs and theaters revealed the dominant influence of the prevailing high culture. Along with classes on the history of the socialist movement were events very similar to those offered in people's universities and people's houses. Tchaikovsky and Rimskii-Korsakov were performed at musical evenings and the repertoire of proletarian drama circles was not markedly different from that of people's theaters. In its first season the theater at the Petrograd workers' society "Source of Knowledge and Light" performed Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare. Russian classics were by far the favorites in club libraries.^[43] Although the proletariat

[39] See I. N. Kubikov, "Rabochie kluby v Petrograde," Vestnik kul'tury i svobody , no. 1 (1918), pp. 28–29; Leopold Haimson, "The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905–1917," in The Structure of Russian History , ed. Michael Cherniavsky (New York, 1970), p. 346; and Swain, Russian Social Democracy , pp. 34–35.

[40] Swain, Russian Social Democracy , pp. 36–37.

[41] Nadezhda , no. 2 (1908), p. 8, cited in Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion , p. 332. Bonnell's translation.

[42] Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion , pp. 332–34.

[43] I. N. Kubikov, "Literaturno-muzykal'nye vechera v rabochikh Klubakh," Vestnik kul'tury i svobody , no. 2 (1918), pp. 32–34; idem, "Uchastie zhenshchin-rabotnits v klubakh," Vestnik kul'tury i svobody , no. 2 (1918), pp. 34–37; I.D. Levin, Rabochie kluby v dorevoliutsionnom Peterburge (Moscow, 1926), pp. 108–10; Medynskii, Vneshkol'noe obrazovanie , p. 293; and Breitenburg, Dooktiabr'skaia Pravda , pp. 50–51.

was certainly not immune to the attractions of the tabloid press and popular adventure stories, these societies tried to encourage more "refined" cultural tastes.^[44]

Not all workers were content to accept the Russian classics as their own, however. While participants in proletarian clubs debated the value of bourgeois culture, creative literature by workers began to appear in the socialist press. Inspired in part by the example of Maxim Gorky, proletarian authors began to describe their lives of labor and political struggle in stories, poems, and plays. The worker-poet Egor Nechaev made a name for himself at the end of the nineteenth century with his evocations of political freedom, socialism, and factory life. By the first decades of the twentieth century socialist newspapers and journals published more and more literature by authors with direct experience in the factory. The best known writers associated with the Proletkult, including Mikhail Gerasimov, Vladimir Kirillov, and Aleksei SamobytnikMashirov, all began publishing in leftist journals and newspapers before 1917.^[45] Sympathetic workers and intellectuals pointed to this new literature as evidence that the proletariat could create a significant artistic culture of its own.

The results did not please everyone. A prominent Menshevik, Aleksandr Potresov, gave a very somber assessment of workers' creative accomplishments. Because of their timeconsuming economic and political struggles, he believed that workers did not have the leisure to turn to culture. The art

[44] On the attraction of popular culture see Semen Kanatchikov, A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov , trans, and ed. Reginald E. Zelnik (Stanford, 1986), pp. 19, 401; and Swain, Russian Social Democracy , p. 60.

[45] For an overview of this literature see V. L. L'vov-Rogachevskii, Ocherki proletarskoi literatury (Moscow, 1927), pp. 32–44; L. N. Kleinbort, Ocherki narodnoi literatury , 1880–1923 gg. (Leningrad, 1924), pp. 108–28; and A.M. Bikhter, "U istokov russkoi proletarskoi poezii," in U istokov russkoi proletarskoi poezii , ed. R. A. Shatseva and O. E. Afonina (Moscow, 1965), pp. 5–30.

they engendered was modest and unoriginal, and revealed the overwhelming dominance of bourgeois culture over their creative lives. The proletarian community, organized around struggle, was a Sparta, not an Athens. Workers should not delude themselves into thinking that they could create a proletarian culture under capitalism; instead they should alleviate the conditions that caused their subjugation.^[46]

Many people, including Gorky himself, stood up to defend the quality of proletarian literature against such charges.^[47] But the most passionate responses came from those who insisted that Potresov did not understand how culture and politics were intertwined. Valerian Pletnev, a Menshevik workerintellectual who would eventually become president of the Proletkult, argued that the proletariat was creating a culture through its clubs, evening schools, and theaters. Workers should be encouraged in these pursuits; they should not be told that their efforts were of little value, for the proletariat could only be victorious if it challenged the power of the bourgeoisie with its own proletarian culture.^[48]

Writing in an exile journal, the Vperedist Lunacharskii insisted that Potresov minimized the importance of art in workers' lives and in the working-class movement as a whole. Potresov's depressing predictions about the dominance of capitalist culture were irrelevant. Workers should learn from the art of the past, but they would also learn how to apply that knowledge for their own ends.^[49] Rather than turning their

[46] A. Potresov, "Tragediia proletarskoi kul'tury," Nasha zaria , no. 6 (1913), pp. 65–75. See also idem, "Otvet V. Valerianu," Nasha zaria , no. 10/11 (1914), pp. 41–48.

[47] See M. Gor'kii, "Predislovie k 'Sbornik proletarskikh pisatelei,' "in Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh , by M. Gor'kii (Moscow, 1953), vol. 24, p. 170.

[48] V. F. Pletnev [V. Valerianov, pseud.], "K voprosu o proletarskoi kul'ture," Nasha zaria , no. 10/11 (1913), pp. 35–41.

[49] A. V. Lunacharskii, "Chto takoe proletarskaia literatura i vozmozhna li ona?" Bor'ba , no. 1 (1914), reprinted in Sobranie sochinenii v vos'mi tomakh , by A. V. Lunacharskii, ed. I. I. Anisimov (Moscow, 1967), vol. 7, pp. 167–73.

backs on culture for politics, they should discover how to use art as a weapon in the struggle for socialism.

The links between culture and politics were illustrated very graphically when the revolutionary movement began to regain its momentum in the turbulent years from 1912–1914. Workers' clubs and educational societies became increasingly politicized, as many participants moved from the more cautious Menshevism to Bolshevism.^[50] Because unions were under close surveillance, clubs became centers for underground organization. The St. Petersburg educational society "Science and Life," dominated by Bolsheviks, was a planning center for the strike activity that swept the city in July 1914.^[51]

The outbreak of the First World War abruptly halted the expansion of workers' cultural groups. Fear of worker unrest led the government to repress independent workers' organizations. However, people's universities and people's houses did not suffer the same fate. Associated mainly with the liberal intelligentsia, the government did not view them as a substantial threat. The network of people's houses even expanded during the war as its two main sponsors, cooperatives and the zemstva, increased their power and responsibilities. Enterprising workers intent on continuing illegal activities learned to conduct their propaganda within this moderately neutral setting.^[52] This avenue for workers' cultural activities survived even during the repressive war years.

Workers' circles offered no consensus on the meaning of proletarian culture. United by their distrust of the old intelligentsia, the collaborators in this network had a complicated

[50] See Haimson, "The Problem of Social Stability," pp. 355–59; and Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion , pp. 400–403.

[51] Haimson, "The Problem of Social Stability," p. 358.

[52] On the repression of workers' organizations during the war see John L. H. Keep, The Russian Revolution: A Study in Mass Mobilization (New York, 1976), pp. 42–45; on people's houses and universities see Medynskii, Vneshkol'noe obrazovanie , pp. 99–100, 269–70; on illegal political activities in the Ligovskii People's House see "Podpol'naia rabota v gody imperialisticheskoi voiny v Petrograde," Krasnaia letopis ', no. 2/3 (1922), pp. 129–30.

link to the cultural world that intellectuals represented. The elite's definitions of refinement and learning held many workers in their sway. But by 1917 some were ready to sweep away this old cultural edifice along with the political and economic institutions that sustained it.

The Founding of the Proletkult

The broad array of cultural programs that flourished before 1917 shared one common purpose: they were preparatory courses for political change. The activists in these diverse projects disagreed about the most fundamental issues, but they all agreed that cultural training was necessary for a lasting and meaningful transformation of Russian society. The February Revolution of 1917, which came as a surprise to organized political parties and labor groups, immediately changed the context of further political discussion and altered the assumptions of cultural activists. Programs for enlightenment now became a way to continue the revolution, to shape its outcome, and to determine the purity of its goals.

The February Revolution inspired a multitude of new organizations, from factory committees to soviets, that from the outset challenged the efforts by the Provisional Government to consolidate its power.^[53] The precarious new government, formed from the defunct Duma, took charge until elections could be held. It was overseen by a popularly controlled system of soviets that put forward its own agenda for political change. This complex arrangement, known as "dual power," was not limited to politics. In the economic sphere capitalists faced recalcitrant factory committees and unions, and landowners were opposed by the land-hungry peasantry. There

[53] For a discussion of these new institutions see Keep, The Russian Revolution , pp. 65–152; Marc Ferro, The Russian Revolution of February 1917 , trans. J. L. Richards (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972), pp. 93–96; and Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, 1981), pp. 142–86.

was also a cultural divide. The government's authority was undercut by a plethora of organizations at the grass roots that tried to impose their own visions of cultural transformation.

The Provisional Government inadvertently contributed to the growth of new cultural programs by its inactivity. The new Ministry of Education, headed by the Moscow University professor A. A. Manuilov, was not eager to begin major educational reforms until the revolution became more secure. Manuilov believed that the government's major responsibility was to remove the many strictures on education developed under tsarism. The new regime of course supported the democratization of education and the expansion of institutions open to the lower classes. Significantly, Countess Panina, whose people's house had played such an important role in the lives of many Petersburg workers, was named assistant Minister of Education under Kerensky. However, the government had neither the time nor the inclination to develop bold educational policies that promised significant change or a new approach to cultural affairs.^[54]

While the government hesitated, alternative cultural programs were springing up everywhere. Unions and factory committees founded their own educational sectors, as did political parties and soviets. In Petrograd alone, workers' groups claimed some 150 clubs with one hundred thousand members.^[55] Participants in these programs condemned the new government for its lack of concern for public education, and the state's inaction invested them with political and moral authority. It appeared that they, not the government,

[54] Daniel T. Orlovsky, "The Provisional Government and its Cultural Work," in Bolshevik Culture , ed. Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites (Bloomington, 1985), pp. 39–56; William G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution (Princeton, 1974), pp. 82–83, 97, 279; and Oskar Anweiler, Geschichte der Schule und Pädagogik in Russland vom Ende des Zarenreichs bis zum Beginn der Stalin Ära (Berlin, 1964), pp. 70–72.

[55] G. E. Bylin, "Iz istorii kul'turno-prosvetitel'noi deiatel'nosti profsoiuzov i fabzavkomov Petrograda v period podgotovki Oktiabr'skogo vooruzhennogo vosstaniia," Uchenye zapiski VPSh VTsSPS , vol. 1 (1969), p. 115.

had the cultural interests of the workers at heart. Cultural policy became yet another contested arena between the Provisional Government and the opposition.

Despite their numbers, the hastily formed cultural circles were very unstable. They lacked staff and supplies, and often had very shallow roots. Many competing groups laid claims to the same scarce resources, and there were no generally recognized institutions to oversee and manage affairs. Some participants believed that the best solution would be to create some centralized coordinating body, but this posed additional problems. In the polarized political atmosphere between February and October, it was difficult to decide just who should take control. If the Provisional Government was not to be in charge, then who was?

The most obvious candidates were the soviets. In some parts of Russia local soviets moved quickly to establish influential cultural and educational divisions.^[56] The national Congress of Soviets also tried to devise a cultural agenda. Faced with an inactive government, it proposed to start a national commission that would arrogate to itself the tasks of a state ministry, overseeing education from the elementary school to the university level. But with such broad duties, the specific needs of the adult working-class population were a relatively minor issue.^[57] Accordingly, proletarian groups began to question whether the soviets could meet their needs.

Trade unions, as long-standing supporters of workers' enlightenment, were the first to propose a new institution to sustain specifically proletarian cultural projects. At the national union conference in June 1917 the Menshevik Ivan Maiskii argued eloquently for unions to assume responsibility for cultural training. "The workers' movement is, among other things, also a cultural movement. Only a worker who is

[56] On soviet programs in Moscow and Petrograd see V. P. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn' Moskvy i Petrograda v 1917 godu (Moscow, 1983), pp. 127–35.

[57] See the discussion on education at the first national soviet in June 1917, Pervyi Vserossiiskii s"ezd sovetov rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov (Moscow, 1930), vol. 2, pp. 277–97, esp. pp. 291–94.

consciously concerned with his surroundings can be a convinced socialist and an active participant in the union movement."^[58] He proposed that unions form a broad national apparatus, with its central committee in Petrograd, to coordinate workers' cultural-educational activities. This new structure would include representatives from unions, soviets, cooperatives, and Social Democratic parties.^[59] But the union bureaucracy faced pressing political and economic problems that left it little time for education. Maiskii's entire presentation had a somewhat plaintive tone; he seemed to beg his colleagues to give more time to culture. Not surprisingly, union efforts brought few results.^[60]

It was the most militant workers' organizations, the factory committees, that succeeded in founding a proletarian cultural network. These bodies, intended first as defensive mechanisms to insure jobs when the Russian economy began its long spiral downward, expanded rapidly after the February Revolution.^[61] Many factory committees formed cultural commissions devoted to education, leisure activities, and agitational work at the factory site. These cultural circles were particularly active in Petrograd.^[62] When the Petrograd factory com-

[58] Tret'ia Vserossiiskaia konferentsiia professional'nykh soiuzov, 3–11 iiulia (20–28 iiunia staryi stil') 1917 goda: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1927), reprint, ed. Diane Koenker (Millwood, N.Y., 1982), p. 405.

[59] Ibid., pp. 407, 412–13, 464–65.

[60] Knizhnik, Karl Ozol'-Prednek, and A.M., "God bor'by za proletarskuiu kul'turu," Griadushchee , no. 8 (1918), pp. 13–14.

[61] There is a growing literature on factory committees. For works that focus on the pre-October period see Paul Avrich, "The Bolshevik Revolution and Workers' Control in Russian Industry," Slavic Review , vol. 22, no. 1 (1963), pp. 47–63; David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime: From the February Revolution to the July Days 1917 (New York, 1983); idem, The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power: From the July Days 1917 to July 1918 (New York, 1984); and S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd: The Revolution in the Factories , 1917–1918 (Cambridge, Eng., 1983).

[62] See Smith, Red Petrograd , pp. 84–85, 94–98; I. A. Baklanova, Rabochie Petrograda v period mirnogo razvitiia revoliutsii (Leningrad, 1978), pp. 142–43; and I. I. Mints et al., eds., Fabrichno-zavodskie komitety Petrograda v 1917 godu: Protokoly (Moscow, 1982), pp. 60, 142, 145–47, 157.

mittees gathered in a citywide meeting in August 1917, the delegates proposed to create a new body to unify and direct the proletariat's cultural work.

That factory committees succeeded in this endeavor was in large part because of the efforts of cultural activists from the Vpered circle. In 1917 they returned from exile and, except for Bogdanov, rejoined the Bolshevik Party. Lunacharskii, who followed Lenin from Switzerland in a second sealed train, was the most important figure.^[63] It was he who united the theoretical positions of Vpered with the growing network of proletarian cultural groups and thus created the basis for the Proletkult.

When he arrived in Petrograd, Lunacharskii started work on Gorky's newspaper, New Life (Novaia zhizn' ), using this platform to popularize his views on cultural transformation.^[64] He proclaimed that cultural organization should be the "fourth form" of the working-class movement alongside political parties, unions, and cooperatives.^[65] The creation of a central structure for workers' cultural societies was more than an administrative convenience. It was a way to start a new proletarian movement that alone could insure that culture became a central focus of revolutionary change.

Lunacharskii made his points forcefully at the August 1917 gathering of factory committees. He argued against those who seemed to think that culture was some sort of dessert, a treat to be enjoyed when the political situation had stabilized. "Cultural-educational work is just as essential as the other forms of the workers' movement. In our understanding of it, this does not mean just adult education and literacy classes. It

[63] On Lunacharskii in 1917 see Timothy O'Connor, The Politics of Soviet Culture: Anatolii Lunacharskii (Ann Arbor, 1983), pp. 13–14.

[64] N. N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution: A Personal Record , ed. and trans. Joel Carmichael (Princeton, 1984), pp. 374–76.

[65] A. V. Lunacharskii, "Kul'tura sotsializma torzhestvuiushchego i sotsializma boriushchegosia," Novaia zhizn ', June 21, 1917; and idem, "Politika i kul'tura," Novaia zhizn ', July 30, 1917.

is the development of a sensible, harmonious world view."^[66] To insure an institutional structure suited to their demands, workers had to form their own cultural administration. Because the soviets and the city duma were not class-exclusive institutions, they could not represent workers alone. Unions, which were class-exclusive, were mainly interested in technical education. Thus the proletariat had no choice but to create a new center of its own.^[67] Convinced by Lunacharskii's arguments, delegates passed a resolution confirming culture's dominant position in the labor movement. To realize these ideas, the conference proposed to found a centralized cultural institution that would assume control of all cultural activities among workers, first in Petrograd and then throughout Russia.^[68]

The first step in this ambitious program was to call a conference of all the city's proletarian cultural-educational organizations. Lunacharskii was at the center of these preparations, aided by his old friends from exile, Lebedev-Polianskii, Kalinin, and Pavel Bessalko. Members of the newly formed Society of Proletarian Writers, especially I. I. Nikitin and Aleksei Samobytnik-Mashirov, also took part in the planning. Other organizers included the avant-garde writer Osip Brik, the Bolshevik art and theater expert Platon Kerzhentsev, and a proletarian actor named Vasilii Ignatov.^[69] Except for Brik, all of these men were to become important figures in the early history of the Proletkult.

Conference preparations were very thorough. Planners drew up questionnaires soliciting information about the range and content of cultural work in the capital. In the hope that the conference would represent all circles serving the working class, they invited factory committees, unions, army

[66] P. N. Amosov et al., eds., Oktiabr'skaia revoliutsiia i fabzavkomy: Materialy po istorii fabrichno-zavodskikh komitetov (Moscow, 1927), vol. 1, p. 234.

[67] Ibid., p. 235.

[68] Ibid., pp. 236–37.

[69] A. V. Lunacharskii, "Ideologiia nakanune Oktiabria," in Vospominaniia i vpechatleniia , by A. V. Lunacharskii (Moscow, 1968), pp. 166–67.

groups, socialist parties, and soviets to take part. The socialist press printed impassioned appeals explaining the significance of cultural organization. To quote one:

The proletariat believes that true art ennobles and elevates the individual, making him capable of great emotions and deeds. Unlike any other force, [art] organizes the masses into a unified collective. Knowledge and beauty cultivate the individual and the class. . . . Education and creation in science and art are an integral part of every powerful social movement, every revolution.^[70]

Although conference planning was technically in the hands of the factory committees, the Bolsheviks, who by now controlled most of these committees, were crucially important.^[71] The main organizers were party members, although many were recent converts from the Vpered faction, and the Bolshevik press was the most active in publicizing the event. However, other socialist parties did not view the conference as a strictly partisan affair. Both the Menshevik Internationalist paper New Life and the Menshevik Worker's Paper (Rabochaia gazeta ) greeted the preparations and gave the conference good coverage.^[72] Discussions about aesthetics and education did not break down neatly along party lines.

In mid-October, just one week before the storming of the Winter Palace, the first conference of proletarian cultural-

[70] "Vozzvanie," Novaia zhizn ', September 15, 1917.

[71] Soviet scholarship gives the Bolsheviks full credit. See Bylin, "Iz istorii kul'turno-prosvetitel'noi deiatel'nosti," pp. 114–23; T. A. Khavina, "Bor'ba Kommunisticheskoi partii za Proletkul't i rukovodstvo ego deiatel'nost'iu, 1917–1932 gg." (Candidate dissertation, Leningrad State University, 1978), pp. 21–30; and V. V. Gorbunov, "Iz istorii kul'turno-prosvetitel'noi deiatel'nosti Petrogradskikh bol'shevikov v period podgotovki Oktiabria," Voprosy istorii KPSS , no. 2 (1967); pp. 25–35.

[72] See Novaia zhizn ', September 15, October 17, October 19, October 20, 1917; and Rabochaia gazeta , October 15, October 17, October 20, 1917.

educational organizations opened in the Petrograd city duma. The Bolsheviks had already begun preparations for an armed uprising; the first national conference of factory committees was meeting in Petrograd at the same time; and there was also a gathering of garrison committees. All of Petrograd's political parties were preparing for the upcoming Congress of Soviets.^[73] In this politically charged atmosphere, some two hundred workers and intellectuals met to discuss the role of fine arts and education in the working-class movement.^[74]

Lunacharskii presided over the conference, aided by Fedor Kalinin (representing unions), the Bolshevik organizers Konkordiia Samoilova and Iurii Steklov, as well as Vasilii Ignatov.^[75] In the opening address Lunacharskii asked delegates to confirm the importance of culture in the struggle for socialism. Despite some objections from the floor, his position carried the day: "The cultural-educational movement must be part of the general working-class movement together with political, economic, and cooperative organizational forms."^[76]

Most of the lectures on artistic practice were given by intellectuals. Lunacharskii addressed problems of literature, the futurist Osip Brik spoke on the arts as a whole, and the folk music expert Arsenii Avraamov lectured on music.^[77] Both Brik and Avraamov reflected the values of the prerevolutionary adult education movement. They hoped the new organization would help to bring art to the masses. Brik in particular used the vocabulary of liberal and leftist intellectual educa-

[73] For a detailed account of the days preceding the revolution see Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (New York, 1976), pp. 209–44.

[74] According to Lunacharskii there were 208 delegates. A. V. Lunacharskii, "Pervaia proletarskaia prosvetitel'naia konferentsiia," in I. S. Smirnov, comp., "K istorii Proletkul'ta," Voprosy literatury , no. 1 (1968), pp. 118–19. The most detailed newspaper report lists 189 representatives, mainly from factories, unions, and clubs. See also Rabochaia gazeta , October 19, 1917.

[75] Rabochii put ', October 17, 1917.

[76] Rabochaia gazeta , October 17, 1917.

[77] Rabochii put ', October 17, October 26, 1917.

tors. Avoiding any references to proletarian culture, he insisted on the need to democratize the arts.^[78]

The prominent role of intellectuals irritated some workers, who raised the same objections that participants in workers' clubs and educational societies had voiced since 1905. Intellectuals, particularly those who were not socialists, were fickle allies. Lunacharskii tried unsuccessfully to get delegates to agree that they should accept the help of all sympathetic intellectuals, regardless of their political views. One worker, B. D. Mandelbaum, objected so violently that he swayed the assembly to override the proposal. Delegates determined that nonparty intellectuals would only be accepted to teach in the natural sciences, presumably the area where they could do the least harm.^[79]

The February Revolution created a new problem that cultural activists before 1917 had not seriously considered. What relationship would this new cultural organization have to the existing state? The delegates agreed with the Bolshevik intellectual D. I. Leshchenko that the structure they were founding had to be completely independent from the government, reflecting the general dissatisfaction with the Kerensky regime. Only workers themselves could guarantee that their education had a revolutionary, Marxist content.^[80] At the same time, however, conference participants insisted that the groups they represented had to retain their own integrity. The new organization would not be able to dictate the practices of the clubs and circles gathered within it. The center would be an exchange (birzha ) for supplies and staff, but it would in no way limit local control.^[81]

Defining proletarian culture proved to be the most difficult problem of all. Whereas Osip Brik did not even address the issue of class culture, Vasilii Ignatov took a militant position.

[78] Rabochiiput' , October 17, 1917.

[79] Rabochii put' , October 26, 1917; and Rabochaia gazeta , October 17, 1917.

[80] Rabochaia gazeta , October 19, 1917.

[81] Novaia zhizn' , October 20, 1917.

He argued that proletarian theater should use only proletarian actors and a proletarian repertoire, resorting to plays written by intellectuals only when they specifically met the needs of the working class. The audience was also split. Some delegates insisted that workers should first absorb the cultural classics, but others denied that "bourgeois" culture had anything to teach them.^[82]

Lunacharskii emerged somewhere in the middle. He endorsed the idea of proletarian culture wholeheartedly but reminded workers that they had much to learn from the culture of the past. His position eventually prevailed, and the final resolution was worded so that both sides could support it:

In both science and art the proletariat will develop its own independent forms, but it should also make use of all the cultural achievements of the past and present in this task. . . . Nonetheless, [the proletariat] must have a critical approach to the fruits of the old culture. It accepts them not as a student, but rather as a builder who is called to erect bright, new structures using the bricks from the old ones.^[83]

Although all the preparations were completed at the October conference, it was only in mid-November, after the Bolsheviks took power, that the organizing committee had a chance to meet. It set up an office within the state's educational commission and began plans to start a theater and a library.^[84] At this point the group's secretary, Ignatov, suggested an abbreviation for their cumbersome title. The amalgam of proletarian cultural-educational organizations would henceforth be known as the Proletkult.^[85]

[82] Novaia zhizn' , October 19, 1917; and Rabochii put' , October 17, 1917. See also Lunacharskii, Vospominaniia i vpechatleniia , pp. 166–68.

[83] Rabochii put' , October 17, 1917.

[84] Izvestiia TslK , November 27, December 1, 6, 22, and 29, 1917.

[85] P. I. Lebedev-Polianskii, "Kak nachinal rabotat' Narodnyi Komissariat Prosveshcheniia: Lichnye vospominaniia," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia , no. 2 (1926), p. 51.

The Proletkult inherited many persistent controversies from its precursors. Long-standing debates about the meaning of proletarian culture, from the transmission of elite learning to the discovery of working-class art, resurfaced at the founding conference. The Proletkult's planners did not move far past the old disputes about intellectuals' place in proletarian movements. The heated discussions about workers' need for a grounding in the culture of the past could have been taken directly from the pages of labor journals in the years after 1905.

However, the organization that took shape in 1917 was more than the sum of its prerevolutionary parts. The political struggle fought in the name of the proletariat unavoidably enhanced its goals. Lunacharskii's vision of a cultural movement parallel to unions, socialist parties, and cooperatives was much more ambitious than the elite training schools Bogdanov had proposed. It was also less cohesive. Individual circles' demands for autonomy foreshadowed future tensions between the advocates of local control and those who hoped to forge a centralized national movement.

The revolutionary origins of the Proletkult also complicated its relationship to the state and to the party that would play such an important role in state affairs. Many times during conference preparations, Lunacharskii stressed that governmental institutions could never represent the needs of the working class alone. Only a consciously proletarian organization could be an effective advocate for the workers' educational and cultural demands. This stance was formulated in opposition to the Provisional Government. But for many involved in the planning of the Proletkult, their strong commitment to class institutions did not end when the Bolsheviks heralded the beginning of the new Soviet state.