[31] Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature , 1861–1917 (Princeton, 1985), pp. 313–14.
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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."
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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.
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after the October Revolution. There they continued the task of bringing culture to the masses, now rechristened as the proletariat.