[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.
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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.
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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.
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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