3 Proletkult Membership: The Problem of Class in a Mass Organization
The Bolsheviks promised to create a proletarian dictatorship in a largely peasant country, a formidable undertaking. For the Proletkult, even founding a proletarian institution posed insurmountable problems. The Communist Party and trade unions, the Proletkultists' closest reference points, had easier tasks. Although the party presented itself as the vanguard of the proletariat, it never claimed that its ranks would be composed of workers alone. Trade unions, with their roots in the factory, were guaranteed a working-class composition. Proletkult leaders saw their organization as a hybrid of these two forms—a vanguard that would be truly proletarian. But this proved to be a very difficult species to breed in the uncertain social climate of the Civil War.
Proletkult ideology demanded a worker following. According to the Proletkult's national leaders, only the industrial proletariat could express the collective spirit of socialism. These leaders had important organizational concerns as well: Proletkult autonomy was justified as a way to shield the movement's pure proletarian essence from the encroachments of the state. Because a proletarian identity was so important, central leaders devised a whole series of rules and restrictions to keep out socially undesirable elements. Yet
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despite their best efforts, the Proletkult attracted a very mixed membership drawn from the laboring classes as a whole.
The reasons were partly demographic. Factory workers were never a large social group in Russia, and their numbers diminished during the Civil War. But more important was the fact that the national Proletkult lacked the power to impose its vision of the organization on the provincial affiliates that rejected its narrow social rules. Local circles opened the organization to a broad alliance of the underprivileged, including artisans, white-collar workers, and sometimes even peasants. Thus as it grew, the Proletkult lost its pure class identity. In the process, however, it gained a mass following.