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.
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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.