[12] Richard Sakwa, "The Commune State in Moscow in 1918," Slavic Review , vol. 46, no. 3/4 (1987), p. 444; and Rigby, Lenin's Government , p. 178.
[13] Alexander Rabinowitch, "The Evolution of Local Soviets in Petrograd, November 1917–June 1918: The Case of the First City District Soviet," Slavic Review , vol. 46, no. 1 (1987), pp. 20–37, esp. pp. 27–28.
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To be sure, some leaders envisioned the Proletkult as the Communist Party's equal, which lent a peculiar bravado to their statements. In this regard the most extreme was Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii, the first Proletkult national president. He insisted on a kind of symmetry between the Proletkult and the Communist Party; if no one questioned the party's need for independence, they should not question his organization's autonomy either. "If a proletarian political organization is necessary and its existence does not contradict the institution of Soviet power, then the Proletkult is also necessary as an independent workers' organization. Like the party, it will not contradict the basis of Soviet power, but rather will strengthen it."[14] There might come a time when the Proletkult was no longer necessary, but by then the Communist Party would not be needed either.
Not all of the organization's members defined their relationship to the party in such provocative terms. Instead they felt that the Proletkult could aid the Bolsheviks' cause. "Of course Communists play a leading role in the Proletkult," wrote one activist in Tambov. "But the Communist Party's hegemony is in essence a political dictatorship; its performance in the field of cultural construction leaves much to be desired. Therefore the Proletkult remains the pure dictatorship of the proletariat in the creation of socialist values."[15]
Proletkultists did not present themselves as opponents of the Communist Party. Indeed, the national organization had a high percentage of Bolsheviks among its leaders, including Lebedev-Polianskii. At the first national conference in 1918 over half the delegates were party members. By the 1920 conference the share had risen to two–thirds, and the only person on the national presidium who was not a Bolshevik was Bogdanov.[16] Prominent leaders included people with impeccable party credentials, such as the old Bolsheviks Anna
[14] P. I. Lebedev-Polianskii IV. Polianskii, pseud.], "Zlobodnevnye voprosy," Griadushchee , no. 2 (1918), pp. 1–3, quotation p. 3.