2 Institution Building: The Proletkult's Place in Early Soviet Culture
The Proletkult was conceived in the revolution and took root during the Russian Civil War. Its transformation from a local workers' organization into an important national institution was both enriched and complicated by the tumultuous political environment in which it grew. An ally of the new order, it expanded with the government's aid. At the same time, its outspoken demands for independence and power brought it into conflict with many other institutions, including the Communist Party and the state's cultural bureaucracy.
During the first years of the Soviet regime, all new institutions were in flux and in potential competition. In order to build a social base and justify their organization's existence, Proletkult leaders laid claims to a distinct constituency and a special role within society. In their view the Proletkult was to be the industrial proletariat's independent advocate in the field of culture, an agenda that was partially determined by the movement's prerevolutionary predecessors. However, the precise meaning of Proletkult autonomy and the limits to its authority were structured gradually through dissension and dialogue with its many cultural rivals. Its identity was also shaped by clashes between the national organization and its provincial affiliates, which were only too eager to interpret autonomy as an endorsement of local control.
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Organizing Soviet Culture
The October Revolution led to an explosion in the number of new cultural groups and organizations. Independent clubs and societies sprang up, as did cultural sections for unions, soviets, factories, Komsomol groups, cooperatives, and the Red Army.[1] The state's educational apparatus financed theaters, meeting halls, and schools. Open lectures abounded on themes from religion to Esperanto. New festivals honoring revolutionary holidays, such as May Day, brought enthusiasts into the streets and the public squares. This remarkable expansion gave early Soviet culture a great vitality, although critics wondered if quantity was not completely eclipsing quality. To the theater director Prince Sergei Volkonskii, the population seemed to be gripped with some kind of organizational fever. Amazed by the mushrooming of new theaters, Volkonskii wrote: "Yes, if art consisted in numbers, it would be possible to say that the dramatic art flourished in Russia."[2]
The Soviet government recognized immediately that education and artistic creation were powerful channels through which to establish a new social and political ethos.[3] As soon as they took power, the Bolsheviks began a structural reorganization of national cultural life. Despite the precarious position of the regime, the state offered funds, physical resources, and food rations to a broad array of revolutionary cultural circles. At the same time, it denied support to institutions whose sympathies were suspect, even intervening to close them down.
The People's Commissariat of Enlightenment, known by its
[1] See E. N. Gorodetskii, "Bor'ba narodnykh mass za sozdanie sovetskoi kul'tury, 1917–1920 gg.," Voprosy istorii , no. 4 (1954), pp. 18–37; and V. V. Gorbunov, "Oktiabr' i nachalo kul'turnoi revoliutsii na mestakh," in Velikii Oktiabr' , ed. Iu. A. Poliakov (Moscow, 1978).
[2] Serge Wolkonsky, My Reminiscences , trans. A. E. Chamot (London, 1924), vol. 2, p. 220.