[63] On Lunacharskii in 1917 see Timothy O'Connor, The Politics of Soviet Culture: Anatolii Lunacharskii (Ann Arbor, 1983), pp. 13–14.
[64] N. N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution: A Personal Record , ed. and trans. Joel Carmichael (Princeton, 1984), pp. 374–76.
[65] A. V. Lunacharskii, "Kul'tura sotsializma torzhestvuiushchego i sotsializma boriushchegosia," Novaia zhizn ', June 21, 1917; and idem, "Politika i kul'tura," Novaia zhizn ', July 30, 1917.
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is the development of a sensible, harmonious world view."[66] To insure an institutional structure suited to their demands, workers had to form their own cultural administration. Because the soviets and the city duma were not class-exclusive institutions, they could not represent workers alone. Unions, which were class-exclusive, were mainly interested in technical education. Thus the proletariat had no choice but to create a new center of its own.[67] Convinced by Lunacharskii's arguments, delegates passed a resolution confirming culture's dominant position in the labor movement. To realize these ideas, the conference proposed to found a centralized cultural institution that would assume control of all cultural activities among workers, first in Petrograd and then throughout Russia.[68]
The first step in this ambitious program was to call a conference of all the city's proletarian cultural-educational organizations. Lunacharskii was at the center of these preparations, aided by his old friends from exile, Lebedev-Polianskii, Kalinin, and Pavel Bessalko. Members of the newly formed Society of Proletarian Writers, especially I. I. Nikitin and Aleksei Samobytnik-Mashirov, also took part in the planning. Other organizers included the avant-garde writer Osip Brik, the Bolshevik art and theater expert Platon Kerzhentsev, and a proletarian actor named Vasilii Ignatov.[69] Except for Brik, all of these men were to become important figures in the early history of the Proletkult.
Conference preparations were very thorough. Planners drew up questionnaires soliciting information about the range and content of cultural work in the capital. In the hope that the conference would represent all circles serving the working class, they invited factory committees, unions, army
[66] P. N. Amosov et al., eds., Oktiabr'skaia revoliutsiia i fabzavkomy: Materialy po istorii fabrichno-zavodskikh komitetov (Moscow, 1927), vol. 1, p. 234.
[67] Ibid., p. 235.
[68] Ibid., pp. 236–37.
[69] A. V. Lunacharskii, "Ideologiia nakanune Oktiabria," in Vospominaniia i vpechatleniia , by A. V. Lunacharskii (Moscow, 1968), pp. 166–67.
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groups, socialist parties, and soviets to take part. The socialist press printed impassioned appeals explaining the significance of cultural organization. To quote one:
The proletariat believes that true art ennobles and elevates the individual, making him capable of great emotions and deeds. Unlike any other force, [art] organizes the masses into a unified collective. Knowledge and beauty cultivate the individual and the class. . . . Education and creation in science and art are an integral part of every powerful social movement, every revolution.[70]
Although conference planning was technically in the hands of the factory committees, the Bolsheviks, who by now controlled most of these committees, were crucially important.[71] The main organizers were party members, although many were recent converts from the Vpered faction, and the Bolshevik press was the most active in publicizing the event. However, other socialist parties did not view the conference as a strictly partisan affair. Both the Menshevik Internationalist paper New Life and the Menshevik Worker's Paper (Rabochaia gazeta ) greeted the preparations and gave the conference good coverage.[72] Discussions about aesthetics and education did not break down neatly along party lines.
In mid-October, just one week before the storming of the Winter Palace, the first conference of proletarian cultural-
[70] "Vozzvanie," Novaia zhizn ', September 15, 1917.
[71] Soviet scholarship gives the Bolsheviks full credit. See Bylin, "Iz istorii kul'turno-prosvetitel'noi deiatel'nosti," pp. 114–23; T. A. Khavina, "Bor'ba Kommunisticheskoi partii za Proletkul't i rukovodstvo ego deiatel'nost'iu, 1917–1932 gg." (Candidate dissertation, Leningrad State University, 1978), pp. 21–30; and V. V. Gorbunov, "Iz istorii kul'turno-prosvetitel'noi deiatel'nosti Petrogradskikh bol'shevikov v period podgotovki Oktiabria," Voprosy istorii KPSS , no. 2 (1967); pp. 25–35.
[72] See Novaia zhizn ', September 15, October 17, October 19, October 20, 1917; and Rabochaia gazeta , October 15, October 17, October 20, 1917.
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educational organizations opened in the Petrograd city duma. The Bolsheviks had already begun preparations for an armed uprising; the first national conference of factory committees was meeting in Petrograd at the same time; and there was also a gathering of garrison committees. All of Petrograd's political parties were preparing for the upcoming Congress of Soviets.[73] In this politically charged atmosphere, some two hundred workers and intellectuals met to discuss the role of fine arts and education in the working-class movement.[74]
Lunacharskii presided over the conference, aided by Fedor Kalinin (representing unions), the Bolshevik organizers Konkordiia Samoilova and Iurii Steklov, as well as Vasilii Ignatov.[75] In the opening address Lunacharskii asked delegates to confirm the importance of culture in the struggle for socialism. Despite some objections from the floor, his position carried the day: "The cultural-educational movement must be part of the general working-class movement together with political, economic, and cooperative organizational forms."[76]
Most of the lectures on artistic practice were given by intellectuals. Lunacharskii addressed problems of literature, the futurist Osip Brik spoke on the arts as a whole, and the folk music expert Arsenii Avraamov lectured on music.[77] Both Brik and Avraamov reflected the values of the prerevolutionary adult education movement. They hoped the new organization would help to bring art to the masses. Brik in particular used the vocabulary of liberal and leftist intellectual educa-
[73] For a detailed account of the days preceding the revolution see Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (New York, 1976), pp. 209–44.
[74] According to Lunacharskii there were 208 delegates. A. V. Lunacharskii, "Pervaia proletarskaia prosvetitel'naia konferentsiia," in I. S. Smirnov, comp., "K istorii Proletkul'ta," Voprosy literatury , no. 1 (1968), pp. 118–19. The most detailed newspaper report lists 189 representatives, mainly from factories, unions, and clubs. See also Rabochaia gazeta , October 19, 1917.
[75] Rabochii put ', October 17, 1917.
[76] Rabochaia gazeta , October 17, 1917.
[77] Rabochii put ', October 17, October 26, 1917.
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tors. Avoiding any references to proletarian culture, he insisted on the need to democratize the arts.[78]
The prominent role of intellectuals irritated some workers, who raised the same objections that participants in workers' clubs and educational societies had voiced since 1905. Intellectuals, particularly those who were not socialists, were fickle allies. Lunacharskii tried unsuccessfully to get delegates to agree that they should accept the help of all sympathetic intellectuals, regardless of their political views. One worker, B. D. Mandelbaum, objected so violently that he swayed the assembly to override the proposal. Delegates determined that nonparty intellectuals would only be accepted to teach in the natural sciences, presumably the area where they could do the least harm.[79]
The February Revolution created a new problem that cultural activists before 1917 had not seriously considered. What relationship would this new cultural organization have to the existing state? The delegates agreed with the Bolshevik intellectual D. I. Leshchenko that the structure they were founding had to be completely independent from the government, reflecting the general dissatisfaction with the Kerensky regime. Only workers themselves could guarantee that their education had a revolutionary, Marxist content.[80] At the same time, however, conference participants insisted that the groups they represented had to retain their own integrity. The new organization would not be able to dictate the practices of the clubs and circles gathered within it. The center would be an exchange (birzha ) for supplies and staff, but it would in no way limit local control.[81]
Defining proletarian culture proved to be the most difficult problem of all. Whereas Osip Brik did not even address the issue of class culture, Vasilii Ignatov took a militant position.
[78] Rabochiiput' , October 17, 1917.