[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.
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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.
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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.