[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.
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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.
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