[79] Rabochii put' , October 26, 1917; and Rabochaia gazeta , October 17, 1917.
[80] Rabochaia gazeta , October 19, 1917.
[81] Novaia zhizn' , October 20, 1917.
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He argued that proletarian theater should use only proletarian actors and a proletarian repertoire, resorting to plays written by intellectuals only when they specifically met the needs of the working class. The audience was also split. Some delegates insisted that workers should first absorb the cultural classics, but others denied that "bourgeois" culture had anything to teach them.[82]
Lunacharskii emerged somewhere in the middle. He endorsed the idea of proletarian culture wholeheartedly but reminded workers that they had much to learn from the culture of the past. His position eventually prevailed, and the final resolution was worded so that both sides could support it:
In both science and art the proletariat will develop its own independent forms, but it should also make use of all the cultural achievements of the past and present in this task. . . . Nonetheless, [the proletariat] must have a critical approach to the fruits of the old culture. It accepts them not as a student, but rather as a builder who is called to erect bright, new structures using the bricks from the old ones.[83]
Although all the preparations were completed at the October conference, it was only in mid-November, after the Bolsheviks took power, that the organizing committee had a chance to meet. It set up an office within the state's educational commission and began plans to start a theater and a library.[84] At this point the group's secretary, Ignatov, suggested an abbreviation for their cumbersome title. The amalgam of proletarian cultural-educational organizations would henceforth be known as the Proletkult.[85]
[82] Novaia zhizn' , October 19, 1917; and Rabochii put' , October 17, 1917. See also Lunacharskii, Vospominaniia i vpechatleniia , pp. 166–68.
[83] Rabochii put' , October 17, 1917.
[84] Izvestiia TslK , November 27, December 1, 6, 22, and 29, 1917.
[85] P. I. Lebedev-Polianskii, "Kak nachinal rabotat' Narodnyi Komissariat Prosveshcheniia: Lichnye vospominaniia," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia , no. 2 (1926), p. 51.
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The Proletkult inherited many persistent controversies from its precursors. Long-standing debates about the meaning of proletarian culture, from the transmission of elite learning to the discovery of working-class art, resurfaced at the founding conference. The Proletkult's planners did not move far past the old disputes about intellectuals' place in proletarian movements. The heated discussions about workers' need for a grounding in the culture of the past could have been taken directly from the pages of labor journals in the years after 1905.
However, the organization that took shape in 1917 was more than the sum of its prerevolutionary parts. The political struggle fought in the name of the proletariat unavoidably enhanced its goals. Lunacharskii's vision of a cultural movement parallel to unions, socialist parties, and cooperatives was much more ambitious than the elite training schools Bogdanov had proposed. It was also less cohesive. Individual circles' demands for autonomy foreshadowed future tensions between the advocates of local control and those who hoped to forge a centralized national movement.
The revolutionary origins of the Proletkult also complicated its relationship to the state and to the party that would play such an important role in state affairs. Many times during conference preparations, Lunacharskii stressed that governmental institutions could never represent the needs of the working class alone. Only a consciously proletarian organization could be an effective advocate for the workers' educational and cultural demands. This stance was formulated in opposition to the Provisional Government. But for many involved in the planning of the Proletkult, their strong commitment to class institutions did not end when the Bolsheviks heralded the beginning of the new Soviet state.
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